I'm sleep-deprived because I had to evacuate my parents from their home last night, but adrenaline is keeping me awake. We drove away as the fiery glow appeared over the hill, and a stream of fire engines, sirens blazing, sped in the other direction. The Safeway at the corner where ...
September 29, 2020
We evacuated on Sunday night.
I had a whole other blog post drafted, about what I've been doing lately. Perhaps I should have known it was tempting fate, because just as I was getting it ready to publish, we realized the fire was going to come over the hill and into ...
September 28, 2020
I appreciated Fred Wilson's post today about USV's thesis on expanding access to knowledge, wellness, and capital. He also talks about universal basic income as a way to get there. It's a useful lens to think about the future, although perhaps inevitably, I see it a slightly different way.
Despite being ...
September 24, 2020
Email newsletters are only succeeding because RSS failed.
I just subscribed to Casey Newton's new tech journalism newsletter, Platformer. I appreciate his journalism, and I'm sure it'll become a regular must-read for me in the same way that Ben Thompson's Stratechery is. The tech industry needs more analytical journalism, and I'm ...
September 23, 2020
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a force for good who transformed America for the better. She fought for justice, and particularly the rights of women, for her entire life. She was inspiring and impactful; dedicated and fiercely intelligent; a genuinely good person who single-handed lay became one of the cornerstones ...
September 19, 2020
I'm pretty conflicted about The Social Dilemma.
On one hand, anything that contributes to the discourse around the harms knowingly committed in the name of engagement should be applauded. My friend David Jay works at the Center for Humane Technology as their Head of Mobilization, and was involved in this film; ...
September 19, 2020
Being a founder is hard! There are so many things you need to stay on top of. Here are 10 things that every founder, investor, and startup employee needs to know in 2020.
ICE is mass-sterilizing women. "When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was ...
September 16, 2020
Every startup goes through the trough of sorrow. I've found it to be a useful way to describe the period that comes after initial enthusiasm and before things start to work out. It turns out it's quite a useful metaphor for non-startup life, too.
There are lots of drawings of it ...
September 15, 2020
I use Range every day with my team - so I was delighted to chat with them about resilience at work.
Culture is the most important thing in any team. By a mile. Your collective norms, beliefs, and practices will define how everyone acts and reacts, how safe they feel to ...
September 9, 2020
Happy Labor Day. While the rest of the world celebrates its labor movements on May Day, America chose its date to disassociate with a massacre of labor protesters by police in 1886. A further protest in Chicago's Haymarket Square devolved two days later: a bomb was exploded by an unknown ...
September 7, 2020
On her podcast, Miranda Pacchiana has opened up about the aftermath of her lawsuit against her brother Adam Savage for sexual abuse.
Miranda is my cousin, and I believe her. I think her statement is an act of bravery; the impact on her has been significant, which she discusses in the ...
September 4, 2020
I've noticed more blog posts on my feeds talking about mental health, and more tweets talking about anxiety in the face of this year's challenges. I'm certainly feeling it too. This week I've been building a contingency plan for what happens if I have to take a leave of absence ...
September 3, 2020
This is my monthly roundup of the tech and media I consumed and found interesting. Here's my list for August.
Books
Educated, by Tara Westover. I realized about halfway through that the abuse that seems to ahave punctuated Westover's life were not going to stop. This is a brave story, although her ...
September 1, 2020