Every Day, A Little Better [CW: mental illness, self-harm] When my depression was at its worst, it felt almost like a constant, physical pain. Getting away from that crushing weight felt as urgent as pulling my hand away from a hot stove, but I couldn’
Eighteen is History There are kids now who are old enough to go fight in wars that were justified back when they still had their umbilical cords attached. For them, the attacks are only history; that's all they ever were. I can sort
Best Of 20 Years of Blogging: What I’ve Learned This week marks the 20th anniversary of this blog. I thought the best way to observe the milestone, and to try to pass along some of the benefits I’ve gained from keeping a presence online all these years, would
Can You Trust A Company In 2019? Being trusted is a huge advantage for any company that can pull it off. But is it even possible for people to trust a tech company right now?Union Square Ventures is one of the best-known and most respected venture
Putting the Soul in Console Playdate, the upcoming indie handheld gaming console from venerable software publisher Panic, is really important. But if you don't know the history of where the little company behind this little device comes from, it might be hard to understand why
I Should Have Written a JOMO Book. About seven years ago, inspired by Caterina Fake's seminal essay about fear of missing out, I wrote a bit about the Joy of Missing Out, and for a little while, JOMO became a thing. It showed up in those "100
After the Rhythm Nation With Janet Jackson's (woefully belated) acceptance into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it's well past time for a broader reckoning with her place in popular culture, and especially the way she's challenged narratives in pop music. To me,
Every Single Video Prince Ever Made Prince was an astoundingly prolific artist, releasing nearly 40 albums under his own name(s), and thousands of songs for himself and others. His concerts were legendary, spellbinding from arenas to intimate clubs, flooring audiences around the world. But videos?
We’re (still) not being alarmist enough about climate change What if we had another 9/11, and nothing happened? Living in New York City, the one fantasy sport that everybody plays is real estate; we all like to imagine what it would be like to be able to afford
The price of relevance is fluency “You can’t say anything anymore! You can’t even make jokes!” There’s a constant complaint from people in positions of power, mostly men, who keep making the ridiculous assertion that they’re not able to speak in public.
Seventeen is (Almost) Just Another Day For the first decade after the attacks, I basically didn’t go anywhere near that part of downtown. A business meeting would take me a few blocks away, and I’d feel that tightness in my chest, that presence, and
iphone A Much Faster Way to Charge your iPhone Forgive me, for I am about to commit gadget blogging. I've been using an iPhone X since they came out, and almost from the start my battery has charged between two and three time the default speed of most people's
Unfollowing Everybody At this point, there's nothing novel about noticing that social media is often toxic and stressful. But even aside from those concerns, our social networks are not things we generally think of as requiring maintenance or upkeep, even though we
cartoons The Cartoon Kit Anything worth doing is worth doing meta. And Tom and Jerry is no exception. I've been trying to learn a bit more about the various eras of the Tom and Jerry cartoon, from the mega-racist Hanna-Barbera originals to the extremely
music It's like Shazam — for your face! Today's most fun new Glitch app is Record Player, which lets you upload a photo, then uses Google Cloud's Vision API to recognize the image and play it on Spotify. It works really well, but the real fun starts when
tech 12 Things Everyone Should Understand About Tech Tech is more important than ever, deeply affecting culture, politics and society. Given all the time we spend with our gadgets and apps, it’s essential to understand the principles that determine how tech affects our lives. Understanding technology today
tech The Missing Building Blocks of the Web At a time when millions are losing trust in the the web’s biggest sites, it’s worth revisiting the idea that the web was supposed to be made out of countless little sites. Here’s a look at the
Digital Culture, Pop Culture, and New York On Being An American I was born and raised outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A few weeks ago, an editor of The Patriot-News, the local paper, asked me for my thoughts regarding the anniversary of the attacks. To put things in context, I was always
music Have the Hip Hop BBQ I keep having to explain a principle I arrived at a few years ago when I realized the modern conservative movement is grounded almost entirely in a contrived sense of grievance, predicated on a false victimhood of its supporters. (That’
tech Masters in Business A few months ago, I got the wonderful opportunity to talk to Barry Ritholtz, who’s best known as a Bloomberg View columnist and for his excellent “Masters in Business” podcast, but whom I’ve known online for many years.
film Every Last Jedi This is a spoiler-filled first set of reactions to Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The ultimate courage of what Rian Johnson has done here, is that he fully embraced what it is to be a director who obviously grew up
web Underscores, Optimization & Arms Races A dozen years ago, the web started to reshape itself around major companies like Google. We can understand the genesis of today’s algorithmic arms race against the tech titans just by looking at a single character. This is all
Star Wars Minute! In advance of the upcoming release of The Last Jedi, excitement is building for all things Star Wars, so I’m thrilled to share that I got to be a guest on the inestimable Star Wars Minute podcast. The show
4th Day of November... I struggled for a long time when the nice folks at the Heat Rocks podcast asked me which Prince album I’d want to talk about on their show. Oliver Wang and Morgan Rhodes run an amazing podcast, where every
