Lots of little gems in John Seabrook’s 1994 New Yorker profile of Bill Gates, but this note stuck with me particularly. The story itself is an interesting case in how you write about something new. The article still stands up, more or less, but so many of the ideas that are revelatory to Seabrook at this specific moment in history—email, the internet, even computers and software—became so normal so soon after. How can you capture […]
• Brocken spectres are the terrifying ghosts that appear when you cast a shadow on a cloud that has a light source behind it. • Marcin Wichary is getting ready to launch his many–years-in-the-making book about keyboards, Shift Happens. The effort and dedication to making this thing is visible in every element of how he has put it together, including the book’s delightful website. • Did you know the CIA has a museum?
There are many ways to become invisible. If you’re a person you can try to go underground, take yourself off the grid. If you are a new US military bomber, you can use the laws of physics and materials science to stay off the radar. And if you are a glass frog, you can simply turn your blood transparent. We’re transfixed by invisibility, the art of disappearance. It’s magical. Sometimes that absence is a problem: […]
A few years on a visit to Seoul, I found myself stuck. It was my first trip to east Asia, and I was riding around on public transport to meet with a friend when I hit the trifecta of travel panic: I tried to use my bank cards and they got blocked; my European phone didn’t work on Korea’s networks; and I couldn’t read hangul. My resources were zero and there was little way to […]
Thanksgiving is my favorite American holiday. It’s not pure, exactly—name me a celebration that doesn’t carry some baggage—but it is simple. Get together with people you care about, take a moment to reflect on what you’re thankful for, eat until your eyes roll around in your head. It’s very direct. No country is as in love with itself as the US is, and nothing reflects that love as much as the Thanksgiving plate. It swoons over […]
I spotted Seakor for the first time when we were shopping for furniture a few weeks ago; it’s an unassuming Polish deli on a corner of the Richmond opposite a gas station, graced by a sign that says “& SAUSAGE FACTORY.” Who wouldn’t be intrigued? It was always easy to get Polish food in the UK, one flat we had in Brighton was slapped next to a Polish corner shop (or perhaps the shop was […]
German food gets a surprisingly easy ride. We all know the jokes about English cuisine, or the wincing references to Scandinavia’s pickled herrings, or the apparently endless parade of cabbage-based dishes that represent an Eastern European dinner table. And yet somehow German grub—which essentially combines all of those into a single menu—doesn’t come in for the same skepticism. At least, that’s what I figure given the number of German food spots around the Bay. Sausage […]
It was a weird day to start this project. Qatar kicked off the World Cup—Qatar, where being gay is illegal and potentially punishable by death. Here in the US, today is the trans day of remembrance; the night before, some mouthbreather in Colorado shot up and killed a bunch of people at a gay bar. These abhorrences are not unconnected. So yeah, weird day. But the World Cup is so compromised that I knew it […]
• Laura Hazard Owen’s Nieman Lab piece on what journalism will lose if Twitter goes away brought many of the costs of the current drama together in one place. I’ve downloaded my data and mothballed my account. • Sorrow compounded when I finished reading Lincoln in the Bardo. I’d picked it up after hearing George Saunders interviewed by Alexis Madrigal on KQED radio, having enjoyed A Swim in the Pond in the Rain last year […]
I love the World Cup. Football all day for weeks on end, players from all over the planet—the greats, the unknowns—thrown in together, each one hoping to get their moment in the spotlight. Amazing victories, drama, tragedy, high stakes games, athletic prowess on full display? It’s amazing. At the same time… I hate the World Cup. Or, more specifically, I hate this World Cup. I wasn’t too keen on the last one in Russia, either, […]
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