No gods but moderation

November 30, 2022

A few years ago, I called something “crazy” in a Slack room and was very rapidly pinged, in private, by a moderator, that calling things crazy was ableist...

Thanks for clearing security. Here is your plant.

$ · November 22, 2022

When you know O’Hare better than you know your own family, when you call flights segments, when you weave the B-to-C concourse tunnel like it’s the...

When does the next thing happen?

November 18, 2022

A few weeks ago, I wrote some text about the new dialectic, which tl;dr is a constellation of small, private, pseudonymous spaces. Since then, social media...

Dopp Gang

$ · November 16, 2022

Dudes don’t usually need much to clean up: soap, comb, shaver, deodorant. For doing this on the road, and for all other sundries, there is the dopp kit,...

Ask a question in the Flame Free Zone

November 14, 2022

Screw it, we’re doing forums. Forums will never die. Everything else will die. Forums are the closest thing we have to immortality. Forum people will outlast...

Pruned bonsai

$ · November 10, 2022

I used to throw parties that drew over 250 people. This was easy. You became known as a person who was good at craft beer, during a time when “craft beer”...

At least, like, ten or eleven questions about the direct-to-consumer bardo

November 8, 2022

It’s that time of year in Chicago when it’s cold enough that you don’t want to be outside any more than the bare minimum, so when you’re early to a place you...

Kintsugi (take two)

$ · November 4, 2022

Kintsugi is an ancient Japanese technique of repairing old broken objects, especially porcelain & ceramic ones, with gold-dusted or gold-mixed lacquer. You...

Kintsugi

$ · November 4, 2022

Kintsugi is an ancient Japanese technique of repairing old broken objects, especially porcelain & ceramic ones, with gold-dusted or gold-mixed lacquer. You...

Paw paws are both real and here

November 1, 2022

Paw paws are both real and here

What if it’s all scheduling?

$ · October 28, 2022

Last weekend, I hung out with my family, and I did something I almost never do: I arrived late. I missed the train by 30 seconds; due to the Ongoing...

Literally spend money when you use technology, for the love of everything

October 27, 2022

If it is technology, you must pay money for it. That is the rule. It is an immutable rule of technology. This is the way things go and you have no other...

Shop early

$ · October 25, 2022

Befitting a contemporary ecommerce professional, I have just completed 100% of my holiday shopping. I usually buy stuff for my immediate family, partner, and...

Seven principles of packing

October 21, 2022

This is our hundredth text. A few of you have been here since the beginning. For this I am grateful. Text on text is overdue. For now, though, many of you...

Open house

$ · October 19, 2022

There are many reasons why Chicago is the best, and one of them is Open House Chicago, an annual event held by the Chicago Architecture Foundation to...

May all jackets be visible from space henceforth

October 17, 2022

I haven’t owned a car since 2006, which I guess shocks people. The more shocking statistic is that I live in Chicago, a city where 40% of residents don’t own...

Two notebooks

$ · October 13, 2022

Here, we have two notebooks that look materially the same. They are both black. Their covers are made of thin, rigid cardboard. They are both bound by some...

The gift of burned beans

October 11, 2022

The problem is that some roasters burn their beans. By “burn” I do not mean actually set on fire, but rather they roast the beans until the point where they...

The new dialectic

$ · October 7, 2022

In the on-off saga of a bad person buying Twitter, a noted fascist mouthpiece, as of this writing it appears to be back on. If it actually happens, which it...

One to the next

October 5, 2022

In 2013, I launched Draft Revise as something a great deal smaller & more structured. I would run a few A/B tests for your SaaS business for $650 a month,...

A different feeling (Take 11)

$ · October 3, 2022

To love the Avalanches is apparently to never see them live. It would be one thing if they were the sort of band that never toured, that barely left their...

What goes up

September 28, 2022

The trajectory of brands is hard to reckon with. Nothing stays fixed. Goods that have been around for 500 years are now being munged through the fustigations...

The great deferral, or: I am spoiled

$ · September 26, 2022

I’ve been to Japan three times. In 2015, I went with four friends, one of whom speaks fluent Japanese, and figured out how to do the thing. It was my first...

Talking to people

September 23, 2022

One of the things interviewing teaches you is that everyone is secretly interesting. Boring-seeming people have weird hobbies. You catch a centimeter of a...

Natty

$ · September 21, 2022

A few months ago, I wrote some text about natural processed coffee. In short, coffee is a tropical fruit. You’re drinking some ground-up, roasted seeds that...

No scotch & iPhone

September 19, 2022

I bought an iPhone and feel nothing. I bought an iPhone and don’t know why I did. It had been 3 years? I first wrote about the iPhone when I bought a 3G,...

Have everything

$ · September 16, 2022

When I started shifting from contractor design work to consulting, one of the key things I kept reading, in book after book, was the idea of an abundance...

Shitpost Jubilee

September 14, 2022

I have started & stopped Midjourney text 5 times now, because the contours of the stupid thing keep changing. There is Midjourney, yes, but they keep...

City

September 12, 2022

City is a two-mile strip of land art in the middle of absolute nowhere in central Nevada, a state in the middle of absolute nowhere, that an artist named...

The collection

$ · September 9, 2022

One of my friend group chats was dunking on Funko Pops, a thing that I aggressively have no opinion on, when we got to discussing the drain we circle so...

The walls of the room

September 7, 2022

First, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who wrote in about our latest text, and to everyone who subscribed in response to it. I never plan which text will...

Blank

$ · September 5, 2022

I’m writing this shortly after the end of my workday on August 31, 2022. 45 minutes ago, I deactivated a client’s Slack login and left their Trello board....

Robotext

September 2, 2022

Of all the things that I do to account for my calm & permanent disengagement from the horrifying vagaries of social media, the one thing everyone is most...

Not the sling text we need, the sling text we deserve

$ · August 31, 2022

A sling is a carry object with 1 shoulder strap that exists somewhere between a wallet and a messenger bag. You can put it on a shoulder, carry it like a...

Three uses for Malört

August 29, 2022

Malört is a digestif, derived from Swedish båska, that contains a lot of wormwood & emotional baggage. Its top notes are grapefruit rind and pine. It is...

Bean bardo

$ · August 26, 2022

I own an Instant Pot for one reason: beans. It is too large for the amount of beans any rational being makes at once, but that doesn’t stop me. You throw...

A quiet soba abomination

August 24, 2022

You don’t really know soba, and neither does the rest of America, but we’ll make it work anyway. Soba is a buckwheat noodle that is usually made fresh in...

You will now experience Starbucks text

$ · August 22, 2022

There are few sacred spaces in the city, few areas that draw everybody, few spots that have literal oral histories written about them, but the corner of...

Instrument

August 19, 2022

The rule is this: if I use it once a day, I need to optimize for pleasure, and there is effectively no maximum budget. This becomes complicated when...

Notes on the practice

$ · August 17, 2022

Upon request, someone asked me how I write. I write a lot, and like most writers I have a really specific and picky routine. Writers tend to work themselves...

The banal wonder of Hasami

August 15, 2022

Hasami Porcelain is a Japanese brand that makes stackable mugs, plates, bowls, planters, and pourover drippers. You have absolutely seen it before. It speaks...

🍅

$ · August 12, 2022

I got six tomato plants at the beginning of the season, and did what I normally do, which is plant three of them in the raised bed and three of them in...

A root vegetable for every season

August 10, 2022

I live in Chicago, land of too many root vegetables. A turnip the size of a softball landed on my doorstep the other day, thanks to my farm. It joined,...

Baseball day

$ · August 8, 2022

The most off-brand thing about me is that I am extremely into baseball. I promise to not talk about baseball a whole lot here, unless the Cubs win the World...

Light form

August 5, 2022

We’ve talked about flashlight people, and now we will talk about the flashlight. There is truly a flashlight for every season, but in another, more accurate...

The trial & grim error of our zero waste rumspringa

$ · August 3, 2022

There is a genre of objects that falls under the genre of zero waste. It is made without plastic, reusable, reused, compostable. There are bamboo...

Pete

August 1, 2022

“I really have no idea what it is I sell,” a Chartreuse Diffusion president told The New Yorker in 1984. “I am very scared always. Only three of the brothers...

Want to not want

$ · July 29, 2022

One of the nicer lessons of the Bad Times® is that I don’t really need anything. I lived in Portugal for a month with two bags; I lived in Mexico & Costa...

Notes on the third worst date that I have ever had in my life

July 27, 2022

In 2012, I threw my 30th birthday party, and over 250 people showed up. I say over, of course, because I lost count sometime around when the police first...

Show right

$ · July 25, 2022

I went to a fancy college where, between bits of studying, integenerational wealth likes to show off its materialism and reify structures of power. If you...