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The other despair period
February 17, 2023
Years ago, I wrote about the despair period, my term for the very beginning of a creative project where I spend about an hour staring at the wall, processing...
All clothes every year
February 15, 2023
It gives me no pleasure to report that I have been baited again. We saw this coming. It could not be helped. This is the nature of bait.
The bar, the space
February 13, 2023
I saw a hateread recently that I will not be linking, but I will describe it. A young couple, probably somewhere in their 20s, moves from San Francisco to a...
Who is it for?
$ · February 9, 2023
I am bad at most things in life, but I’m good at writing marketing pages. I can take a thing that I know you probably want but are a little afraid to invest...
There is only one bakery in all of France
February 7, 2023
In order to get a sense of the bakery, you should look at what is missing. In my neighborhood, within a quarter-mile radius of where I am presently sitting,...
The non-secret punk operation
February 3, 2023
I found a good clothing brand the other day, and like all good clothing brands, it’s literally one person doing everything. It’s called Never Cursed, and I...
The secret punk operation
February 1, 2023
Fat Tire is not a good beer. I’m sorry if you think it’s a good beer. I’m sorry if your first taste of American craft beer was Fat Tire, and I’m sorry if it...
The parrot
January 30, 2023
Before I was born, my parents had the great idea to get me a parrot, and so they did.
What your brand of bag tells me
January 27, 2023
The bag is a signifier. The bag teaches others how to see you. On trip, your bag is more for others than for you. Here, in brief, is what your bag says about...
The possibility space
January 25, 2023
You need a few stories before I get to the main story, so we’re going to hop around a bit. This story is about coffee, but really it’s about opinions.
Rusted ding
January 23, 2023
It doesn’t look as durable as it is at first glance. Wafer thin, white, hollow thunk if you flick it, blue or red rim as a treat. Enamelware will stack into...
Carbonated pickle brine
January 19, 2023
Geuze is what happens when you let perfectly innocent beer go bad creatively. It’s a wild beer, made in one region of northwest Belgium where the free-...
A full list of the durable objects I bought while on the ground here in Marseille, so far
January 17, 2023
There is never enough in the space. This is, I think, how they want it. You must buy, schlep, and leave behind. Two wastebaskets I throw stuff away next to...
Notes on images
January 12, 2023
Since I’m out more, I’m also taking more photos. The camera sat dormant for a minute. The skies were gray, I didn’t go out, I worked too much, I didn’t post...
Grinding at work
January 10, 2023
Grinding is an unsolved problem. The goal is to take some oblong-shaped beans and turn them into something that looks consistently like sand, if you’re doing...
Lessons from deep rest
January 5, 2023
I took two weeks off because it was the holidays, because I was really tremendously tired, because I did 70% of my business’s annual sales in the final three...
Define an area as “safe” and use it as an anchor
December 22, 2022
Growing up, my father had a little black box on his bookshelf that had OBLIQUE STRATEGIES in gold lettering on the side. Inside was a deck of around 100...
Rewriting the rules
December 20, 2022
In 2019, a couple of incidents happened in my local community that prompted me to devise a slapdash code of conduct with several friends. This would come to...
Take notes
December 16, 2022
I am absentminded and hang out with lots of different people, and I think through writing. So I do a thing that everybody thinks is weird & unusual, but...
Blue tote parrot
December 14, 2022
I’m sitting next to a blue canvas tote. I’m going to try and describe it now.
Chaos
December 12, 2022
In the absence of justice, in the absence of a team you’re rooting for, there is only chaos. There is the chaos of an underdog ruining everything, the chaos...
The primarying Eschaton
December 9, 2022
Okay. In 2005, which was still a very post-9/11 world, Congress passed an act that told all of the states to ask for more verification before issuing their...
You can have a little collectivism, as a treat
December 6, 2022
A couple of weeks before I started writing text, I was in Lisbon at a natural wine bar. I’d show up alone with my journal, find myself in the middle of...
More assorted questions I’ve had lately
December 2, 2022
Why can’t I figure out the battery capacity of my AirPods Pro? Batteries degrade over time, and for other Apple devices like your laptop or phone, you can...
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
Sorry about the formatting of the previous email, folks. Resending, this time with line breaks.
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.
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.
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,...
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