“An Ode to Hotel Rooms” — Terrific studied riff by James Parker for The Atlantic, in which he explores that “sense of your self-in-waiting”:
The old gravity asserts itself, the old you-ness; you spread out your things, you build your shrines, you start making your little traditional messes. You arrive, and then you arrive.
“Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid” — Jonathan Haidt’s bleak, incisive essay in The Atlantic about social media and society. (Interestingly, the print piece I read in my issue this evening has the less clickbaity headline “After Babel.” Was that replaced because it would have performed less well on social?)
Favorite recent podcast find: The Rebooting show from Brian Morrison, who was president and EIC at Digiday Media. Informed, in-depth conversations about media and publishing, from start-ups to the HBRs of the world.
BxW
Continue to be highly impressed with Puck. In such a short time, they’ve established an upper-tier, intelligent, vibrant brand, one where the sum and the parts (elite writers heading up the various sections) coexist so nicely. Seems likely I’ll be another one of the readers willing to pony up $100 a year.
Still impressed with this luxury mattress company’s choice of positioning: Let’s not lead with sleep — let’s lead with what it leads to.
Saturday, March 26, 2022
I was very impressed with “The Lost Daughter,” based on the Elena Ferrante novel, streaming on Netflix. An absorbing, assured, sensitive directorial debut from Maggie Gyllenhaal. Incisive comments here from her about how the material’s meant to expand the spectrum of the parental behavior we see and judge. Parents aren’t just ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ We have our moments. (Relatedly, it was … interesting to hear two non-parent critics refer to one of the film’s kids as “a terror” and “a brat,” respectively.
I was knocked out by Teju Cole’s Blind Spot in 2017. Just finished Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time, and it’ll surely be a highlight of 2022. Sensitive, probing essays about humanity and the humanities. Such a privilege to be in his close-looking company. 📚
Friday, December 31, 2021
Since 2000, I’ve had a year-end tradition of sharing my cultural highlights of the past 12 months. For this year’s post, I’ll first note the major life change I had in 2021. After eight years leading comms and marketing for the nonprofit conservancy Forest Park Forever, I re-entered the agency world this summer by joining The Stoke Group, a fully distributed digital marketing and content studio that focuses on the B2B tech sector.
Wednesday, December 29, 2021 →
Enjoyable read — indie design studio heads talking shop in “Studio Culture Now”. A few common themes: There’s freedom in staying small; having a nice workspace is a plus, but too much overhead’s a crusher; your design output matters, but so do process, leadership & owning your POV; social posts and basic PDFs can aid biz development more than a high-maintenance, glacially updated website; you can find success based anywhere, but be engaged w/ the field and your community. 📚
From my Christmas wish list to under the tree: Self-Reliance. That “I” is just perfection. Designed by Jessica Helfand and Jarrett Fuller. 📚
Finished The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Did not hit the heights for me of My Struggle, bit there’s always something special about being inside his sentences. I found myself losing some interest 70% of the way through, then was absorbed completely in that final section. 📚
Smart thoughts here from Benedict Evans: “Notes on newsletters.”
Compelling reading this holiday: A Civic Thanksgiving - by James Fallows.
Enjoyed The Chancellor by Kati Marton. Qualities vital to Merkel’s rise and 16-year tenure: endurance, humility, steeliness, patience, calm. (She once described herself, as she stood next to the high-energy, publicity-seeking Sarkozy, as an “energy-conserving lamp.”) 📚
How to write an engaging, smart e-newsletter opener, by the editorial team at Massive Science:
For the past few years at Massive, we’ve tried to avoid a gee-whiz attitude towards scientific discovery. It’s a little * flips open dictionary * reductive, shrinking complex stories into neat boxes, making what are often small nibbles at progress into big kabooming breakthroughs. We know our readers are savvy enough to see through that kind of framing. But sometimes, it’s fun to indulge, and let the wonder of the world wash over you a bit. This Weekend’s Reading is on, well, discoveries and their thrills.
Learned of comedic writer Simon Rich on Conan O’Brien’s terrific podcast and picked up his new book, New Teeth. The opening story, about two pirates coming to care for a stowaway baby, was just perfect. Here’s a version on The New Yorker’s website. 📚
Nice line from Kelefa Sanneh’s “Major Labels”:
Unlike many virtuosos, Eddie Van Halen had a knack for making virtuosity seem like a good time, and all the early Van Halen albums sound as if they were recorded at house parties, with the party noise somehow edited out.
Saturday, September 11, 2021
This phrase and passage from Cullen Murphy’s April Atlantic essay, “No, Really, Are We Rome?”, have stuck with me: But resilience does not prevent calamity. And being blindsided in slow motion is the hardest fate to avoid. The historian Ramsay MacMullen once distilled the long arc of the Roman Empire into three words — ‘fewer have more’ — but only the time-lapse perspective of a millennium and a half allows us to understand such a thing with brutal clarity.
“Invisible does not mean uninterested.” — Jim McKelvy in his smart, highly readable book “The Innovation Stack," on finding previously ignored markets (as he and Jack Dorsey did with Square)