Recently updated blogs

San Francisco is a good town for bookshops. This is a route I’ve done a few times. It’s like a bar crawl, but with fewer alcoholics. Start at Stout Architectural Books. This is a great shop for flipping through pretty picture books – think Phaidon, Taschen, etc. Most of what they carry is foreign to me, and not the type of book I am likely to come across elsewhere. I …

I listen to a lot of game development-flavored podcasts, and one thing that has really stood out to me for a long time was how basically none of the podcasts were actually about development. There are plenty dedicated to creator interviews that discuss inspiration, design, etc., but practically none about the actual specifics of programming games. Beyond that, I’ve had my own pet interest in the concept of data tooling …

Among the most sought after and valuable coins in the world are a handful struck for the Cincinnati Mining & Trading Company during the California Gold Rush of 1849.Despite the exorbitant value of these rare coins, we know next to nothing about the company that minted them or the men who organized the Cincinnati company. We don’t know where these coins were minted or why. Perhaps because of the mystery, …

Season after season, Cavour of Oslo is putting in the work of delivering the real deal quality tailored clothing that stylish men worldwide can invest in, at a price point they could only dream of. In no small part, that’s due to their easy and hassle-free super-fast shipping and returns policy. Cross-border shipping can be a real pain, but Cavour takes 99% of the sting out in both directions (100% …

ANDREW GABBARD’s ‘Magic Taxi’ (taken from his forthcoming Karma Chief / Colemine album Ramble & Rave On!) finds him answering the question a Beatles mega-fan like himself has doubtlessly asked: “What would they have sounded like if they didn’t break up?” The answer is a bit like John singing in Wings with Ringo on drums and George decorating the song with swirls of tangy guitars Ramble & Rave On!, Andrew’s …

ULA conducted a second launch of its Vulcan Centaur rocket last week, which the company declared a success despite an issue with one of its solid rocket boosters. Jeff Foust reports on that launch as well as efforts to get it, and two other new rockets, flying more frequently.

Was able to get some time this week to catchup with Bryan Boyer. We talked about some of the work he was doing with his students, particularly challenging them to think about design interventions and prototyping those across the ‘pace layers’ as famously depicted by Stewart Brand in his book “How buildings learn” The image is totemic for design practitioners and theorists of a certain vintage (although I’m not sure …

Sometimes things need to end so we can create something new. Essentially, what's ending is Minimalissimo, and what's beginning is a creative lab I’ve named FFF. I feel like I've done my part in curating beautiful minimalism on the web over the past 12+ years. Now, I’m ready to shift gears — from curating to creating minimalist products of my own. These will be both digital and physical, made in …

What kind of parent are you? Tough question, to be sure. Parents want to raise physically and mentally healthy children to become mature adults ready to deal with the complexities of life. Not an easy job to accomplish well at any time in history. Russell Shaw, the head of school at Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C. offers his view on parenting in this piece that appeared September 25, 2024 …

Amazon Prime Big Deal Day is here. Think of it like Black Friday for online shopping at Amazon, but it lasts two full days this October. We also know that historically, the EDC deals—to put it mildly—haven’t been great. But we’re here to help. While there will be tons of deals to sort through in the general sale, we’ll do the hard work of scoping the site (and your other …

A cloud somewhere near Tucumcari, NM

Saturday we participated in a home barista training session at the headquarters of Lucifer Coffee Roasters, here in Eindhoven. That’s also where they roast their beans. I was quite looking forward to it and I’m very glad I joined. It gave us the opportunity to learn more about the world of espresso, and do our first ☕️ cupping. After moving to our current apartment, we invested in an espresso coffee …

Cultural conflict is fine (how we do things), but conflict on strategic goals is not (what we are building).

 It’s that time of year again, for the first round of sales going into the holidays. While I still expect we’ll see bigger deals as we get closer to Black Friday, there are some solid deals in here. The list below is constantly updated, especially later in the day as more deals go live (or, I find them buried deep in the caves). Still, below are my favorites thus …

From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children as­s­ociated with Catholic institutions and clerics in several countries started to be the subject of formal investigations. In Ireland, in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish gov­ernment enquir­ies established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children over the decades. Catholic sexual abuse cases in Australia have involved convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of …