I love my Peloton bike. I know people rag on it, but about five years after I got mine I can say that it’s more than earned its keep. I love real bikes too, but the Peloton has a lot of advantages: it’s always there, weather-resistant, can be adjusted to any member of the family, and requires very little from me to get going. Daily rides absolutely kept me sane during the pandemic, and while […]
After two years, I’ve wrapped up my time with the Steve Jobs Archive. I’m extremely proud of the crew and the work we’ve put out there… and it’s also time for something new. Honestly I don’t know exactly what’s next, so I’m taking a little time off to think about where I want to put my energy. But here are some things I am looking for right now: —Conversations around consulting projects, particularly if you’re looking […]
Hayes Valley is one of the neighborhoods that’s gentrified most since I first moved to San Francisco. What was a collapsed freeway encircled by shabby Victorians and empty lots is now a bougie strip of bars and glossy retail. Strapping young people fill the plaza. Dives have turned into destinations. The main street, meanwhile, is stacked with retail outlets for stores you probably heard about first on the internet. Allbirds, Away, Warby Parker. You know the […]
The first thing I noticed when opening up Good Tape, a new print magazine for the audio industry put together by my friend Alana Levinson and crew, was how BIG it is. Broadsheet format. Newsprint. This is how we used to read the news! But there’s a lot you can do with those huge spreads, and they have a lot of fun with it. There’s not a lot of information online about its contents, so […]
Humans do. It’s how we operate; a fundamental part of what makes us. We shape the world around us. We observe. We try to be interesting. We act. Every action is a protest against what was there before. Every creation is a moment of optimism. Doing is how we are built. Sometimes we do with our bodies. Remember covid lockdowns? Remember when a new and potentially deadly disease stalked the planet, when nobody was even […]
Great series on Threads from a small publisher on the destruction of Twitter and what it means for them. I am not currently using Twitter or any diaspora service, although you may see me parked on them as either @bobbie or @bobbiejohnson. I don’t trust the ones set up by people who have gotten it wrong before (see Threads, Bluesky) while federated services like Mastodon just aren’t there yet and I don’t want to invest […]
Startup world has plenty of hustle guys: people who admit that Silicon Valley’s appeal to them is essentially get rich quick. It also has a lot of true believers—people who are deeply attached to a vision or a feeling or driven by sheer possibility—even if only a handful actually turn out to be able to deliver what they believe. What it also has in abundance is people present as the second group but are, in […]
I’ve been a fan of The Open Notebook for a long time—a great resource for science writers specifically, but full of useful, practical advice for anyone who is trying to share complex information with non-academic audiences. They recently ran a roundtable conversation as “A writer’s guide to being edited”, which is stuffed with information and wisdom. Things I absolutely agree with: talk it through up front, don’t be defensive, think of editing as a conversation—not […]
From a piece on the French organization trying to create urban forests at high speed: Previously on the blog: Tree aesthetics
I haven’t read Going Infinite, the new Michael Lewis book on Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX. I’ve enjoyed some of his past work. Clearly there have been some major questions raised about previous stories, and I do wonder about the speed at which these semi-biographical tomes are being turned out across the industry: for example Lewis’s pandemic book, The Premonition, came out in May 2021… which feels a little early to be declaring […]
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