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< Archive / 2022

August, 2022

Paying for the web

My opinions on web business models have changed over time. I agree that advertising was one of the web’s original sins, although at this point in its cultural life I’m not sure I’m prepared to say that it was the only original sin. At the same time, I’m not sure if ...
August 29, 2022

Some principles

Rules to build by. ...
August 26, 2022

The baby stack

In the spirit of Uses This, here’s what the baby stack looks like right now, a week or two before birth: Hardware Uppababy Cruz. An adaptable folding stroller. What’s super-cool about it is that it supports a bassinet as well as a seat, and can also support an infant snug-seat for very ...
August 24, 2022

Creeping American fascism

As America becomes more diverse, and as a direct consequence more inclusive, it unfortunately makes sense that more people will come out of the woodwork suggesting that people who aren’t white and male be disenfranchised. This is a racist country, after all. And that’s exactly what’s happening. Take this radio host, name ...
August 23, 2022

Taste

The best part of traveling is the food. You can learn so much from how and what people eat. The way they gather, the smell of the spices, the sizzle of oil in great pans, the delicacies that only come from the sorts of hole-in-the-wall places that locals protect with their ...
August 23, 2022

Farewell, house

We sold our family home. ...
August 23, 2022

A home on the web, revisited

I’ve been thinking a lot about redesigning my website, or even moving platforms. That’s a bit of an emotional decision, because my website runs on Known, a codebase I mostly wrote myself, and started while I was taking care of my mother post-lung-transplant. It’s the reason I’m connected to the ...
August 21, 2022

What is a man?

And why does it matter? ...
August 18, 2022

Neumann Owns

This morning, Andreessen Horowitz announced that it had invested $350M into Adam “WeWork” Neumann’s new startup, Flow. Whereas WeWork revolutionized the commercial real estate business and made ad-hoc office space easier for startups, Flow attempts to do the same for residential real estate. A lot of ink has been spilled on ...
August 16, 2022

Finding ethical eyewear

I ordered new glasses recently. At some point over the last few months, I accidentally slept on my main pair and bent them out of shape; although I tried my best to put them back, they’ve been a little bit crooked ever since. I’ve been a die-hard Zenni Optical customer for ...
August 14, 2022

10 things I'm worrying about on the verge of new parenthood

I'm terrified. This is a subset of my anxiety. ...
August 12, 2022

Equality on the ballot: a free event with Stacey Abrams

This is one of those times I can’t believe I get to work at The 19th. We’re putting on a free event on voter equality with a roster of very smart speakers headlined by Stacey Abrams, in partnership with Live Nation Women and Teen Vogue, live in Atlanta or free ...
August 11, 2022

Newsletter housekeeping

If you’re subscribing via email, heads up that I’m thinking about changing my newsletter engine, possibly to Buttondown. You shouldn’t see anything particularly different - and if you’re subscribing via RSS, nothing will change at all. But, to be honest, I’ll be paying a lot less money for a lot ...
August 8, 2022

Performative productivity and building a culture that matters

I recently heard a story about a company that, when determining who would be laid off in a downsizing event, asked team leads to rank their teams based on who would be most likely to work on the weekend. Mind-blowingly, while it’s obviously (or hopefully obviously) immoral, this practice appears to ...
August 8, 2022

The corpus bride

Adventures with DALL-E 2 and beyond ...
August 4, 2022

Comments are hard

Building a comments system is really hard. I tried to build one for Known, which powers my website, but found that spammers circumvented it surprisingly easily. You can flag spam using Akismet (which was built for WordPress but works across platforms), but this process tends to require you to pre-screen ...
August 2, 2022

Do we really need private schools?

A fully-public education system would benefit everybody. ...
August 2, 2022

Rethinking notable links

I’m thinking about splitting off my notable links into a new newsletter. For the record, you can always follow them from this page on my site (which also has an RSS feed); I’ve also started to post them consistently to my Twitter feed. But I might move the collated bookmarks to ...
August 1, 2022

Building an inclusive, independent, open newsroom

Why working at The 19th is a joy. ...
August 1, 2022