As much as I've made of reading this year - and the novels I've read this year have been one of the most rewarding parts of my life over the last twelve months - I love movies. I really love movies.
For some spectacle films, the act of going to the cinema ...
December 24, 2019
As arbitrary as they are, these transitions provide a kind of useful punctuation - a spot to stop and breathe.
For me, I think it might be useful to reflect on where I was at the start of the previous decade, where I am now, and where I'd like to be ...
December 16, 2019
So, that's it, then.
My prediction is that Brexit will happen as planned in 2020, and that later in the year, unless the progressive movement achieves the impossible, Donald Trump will be re-elected as President.
If you work for a company like Facebook, this is on you. If you could have voted ...
December 13, 2019
I'm crossing my fingers, but am not hopeful, that the Conservatives won't have a majority in the UK election today. It's a morally bankrupt party that has strip-mined the country and is steering it to economic ruin, fueled by half-brained jingoism and a nationalistic shame that half the world isn't ...
December 12, 2019
This morning, Jack Dorsey announced that Twitter would be funding an independent group that would develop an open standard for decentralized social networking, with the expectation that the company would use it.
Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop ...
December 11, 2019
In 2013, my mother had a double lung transplant. The rules for recovery post-transplantation are that you can't have a bridge between you and the hospital; they don't want you to be stuck in traffic if you need emergency attention. So we rented an apartment in the Inner Sunset, where ...
December 7, 2019
The Lean Startup has a lot to answer for: a generation of project, startup, and business leaders think they can get the answers they need by running ad experiments, building fake doors, and running A/B tests. Perhaps it's introversion; perhaps it's an over-belief in the power of data. What it ...
December 6, 2019
A personal update:
I'm learning that I'm in the midst of real depression. In a world where I'm watching members of my family die, the country I live in deteriorate into fascism, the country I grew up in deteriorate in every possible way, and some other things that I don't want ...
December 5, 2019
I'm a fan and paid-up member of Medium, the long-form online publishing platform and reader network. I should declare that I'm not unbiased: I worked there in 2016 and know a few of the people who work on it, although the team and product have changed considerably over the last ...
December 5, 2019
I hear a lot of complaints along the lines of: "isn't a startup just a small business?"
The simple answer is: no. Many small businesses will remain small, often by design. In contrast, a startup is an early stage business that is looking for a way to grow. As Steve Blank ...
December 3, 2019
Books
This was another tough month, with three hospital visits for my mother. For this and a few other reasons, my anxiety was through the roof, and I often lay awake in bed with my heart racing. As has been true a few times this year, I found it hard to ...
December 1, 2019