I’m no longer working with Lifehacker, which is disappointing. But I’m grateful I got to spend two years doing one of my favorite things: finding great indie and open source tools and sharing them with readers. I couldn’t be happier that Current, a different sort of RSS reader, is the last app I wrote about over […]
In the short term, being confidently wrong about something feels just as good as actually being correct.
We’re told we live in unprecedented times, and there’s truth to that. It’s worth remembering, though, that it’s all a little less unprecedented than it feels. The last track on Simon and Garfunkel’s 1966 album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme is a little strange. For one thing it’s a Christmas song on an album without […]
Lately I’ve been wanting to write a newsletter and realizing that, for the most part, I don’t feel like I have much to say. I sometimes wonder if it’s depression, but I’m not sure it is. My life is pretty good. I have a great wife, the best cat, and fantastic friends. I’m secure. I […]
Anyone who has ever edited me will tell you I have a few…quirks. My worst habit is leaving unfinished sentences it the end of my …paragraphs. Like that. I regularly do this without noticing, even after I re-read an article multiple times. You could argue that I’m an idiot, and I do argue that to […]
In a recent newsletter I referred to Mark Zuckerberg as a digital narcotics dealer, which readers seemed to enjoy. I briefly wondered if I was overstating the matter until I read about how schools are worried students will skip meals in order to use their phones. Some context: Oregon, like many states, is prohibiting students […]
Last week we talked about how mediums—like film and novels—have their own built-in rules, and how those rules necessarily shape the way you can tell stories and express ideas. We made this point, naturally, by talking about Tom Bombadil. This week we’re going to see how the same principles apply online. A social media network […]
One of the most profound lessons you can learn about media literacy is that it isn’t enough to talk about the content—you need to talk about the medium. People far smarter than me have written books and dissertations about this, but let’s start with an example that’s easy to grasp: the differences between the Lord […]
Last week YouTube officially announced that the trending page is going away, to be replaced with separate trending pages just for music, podcasts, and movie trailers. It’s the end of “internet culture”. Let’s back up. In the early days of YouTube—two decades ago—the homepage had a “Featured Videos” box that was curated by YouTube staff. […]
I hate running. I used to believe that, over time, this would change. I thought, over time, that I would grow to love running out of sheer repetition. This has not happened. I used to think that if I could write for a living I’d never have to work—my hobby would be my job. This also […]