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FEATURES, BLOGS, & REVIEWS
Been using the beta of Mimestream for iOS over the last couple of weeks and it’s a winner. Just no nonsense but robust and all I really need in an email client.
Day of anniversary releases, huh?
Don’t Worship the Grind
Worshipping the grind is a side effect of status anxiety. If you don’t have credentials, or a network, or a novel idea, then you need to show you’re serious. And what better way than by staying in the office when everyone else goes home and tweeting about it? It’s peacocking: look how hard I’m trying. But effort is not value. Hours are not outcomes. Work is not the same as progress.
If your only edge is effort, you’re replaceable. There is always someone who can work longer. Someone younger, hungrier, more desperate. There is no long-term moat in exhaustion. And if you do somehow win that way, you might not like the prize. You’ll have built a system that only functions when you’re suffering.
This whole piece is great but these two paragraphs? Chef kiss.
Recommendation: PowerBug
I’ve purchased a few things from TwelveSouth over the years (Hannah’s laptop stand, a couple chargers, etc.), so when I saw the new PowerBug pop-up on Instagram I knew I needed to give it a try. It’s a simple idea, executed perfectly. A MagSafe charger built to be minimal and plug into a wall socket. Attach phone, charge phone. No extra cords.
I’ve wanted something like this in our bathroom for a while and after it came I immediately bought a second one for the kitchen.
Read More “Recommendation: PowerBug”
Review: Yellowcard – Better Days
This blank screen terrifies me. The cursor blinks. I search for the words. And in the back of my mind, there’s a cold little voice telling me it’s pointless. That I’ve said everything meaningful I’ll ever say about music. That I’m washed up and irrelevant. That the music I care most about, and the medium by which I communicate my love for that music, has passed me by. The voice whispers. And I hear the soundtrack to my life softly echo through my head like an abandoned radio station hallway. The florescent marquee sputtering, fizzling, and coughing up the bygones of a lost era. My era.
The empty space sits like a verdict — relentless, accusatory.
This is the kind of tension that comes with age. No one ever told me my youthful anxiety of never amounting to anything would morph into being worried I’ll only be remembered for what’s behind me. And it’s a funny kind of cruel, because I’m a little ashamed to admit it. But, honestly, I’ve been thinking about all of this a lot lately. The past, the glory days of the punk and emo scene. Growing up, giving in, the bands that have come and gone. And I’ve been thinking about the pressure that builds over time, how the momentum of not doing becomes intoxicating. By not doing, you never have to worry about failure. You can make up stories in your head about all the reasons it’s not worth trying, and your ego stays nice and protected.
But I’ve also been watching all these artists push against that pressure, lean against that momentum, and emerge bursting with creativity and a newfound sense of purpose. Freed of the shackles of needing to live up to the expectations of being the next big thing, or having to follow up their massive hit records, they’re able to tap into a creative force and deliver music that moves beyond just being a nostalgic feint. And it inspires me. I’ve been spending the past few months immersed in new music from the bands only we knew. Bands with funny names like Motion City Soundtrack, The Format, and The Starting Line. Little gems from our youth that always felt like a shared secret — ours and ours alone.
And that voice in my head? That one that tells me to stop trying, that no one reads anymore? That asks if our past is the best we will ever know? I know the antidote. I’ve known it most of my life. It involves headphones, a volume slider, and a great fucking song.
Read More “Yellowcard – Better Days”Thank You For Being Annoying
I think annoyance, like cholesterol, has a good kind and a bad kind. The bad kind makes you want to flee: backed-up traffic, crying babies on planes, colleagues who say they can use Excel when really they mean they’ve heard of Excel. But the good kind of annoyance draws you in rather than driving you away. It’s that feeling you get when there’s something you can and must make right, the way some people feel when they see a picture frame that’s just a bit askew, except a lot more and all the time.
Whenever I fix the thing that’s annoying me, it does feel “fun”, I guess, but it’s not fun in the way that, say, going down a waterslide is fun. It’s a textured pleasure, the kind of enjoyment I assume that whiskey enthusiasts get from drinking extremely peaty, smoky scotch—on the one hand, it burns, but on the other hand, I kinda like how it burns.
Good annoyance is, I think, the only thing that keeps people coming back for more, indefinitely. There is nothing that a human with a normally-functioning brain can do for eight hours a day, every day, for their whole career, that feels “fun” the whole time, or even a large fraction of the time. We’re just too good at adapting to things. And thank God, because if we never got bored, we never would have survived. Our ancestors would have spent their days staring doe-eyed and slack-jawed at, like, a really pretty leaf or something, and they would have gotten eaten by leopards. Fun fades, but irritation is infinite.
I feel the urge to quote this whole thing.
Optimizing Ourselves to Death
Perell highlights the fatal flaw of optimization—what’s it all for? What’s the point of better health if you have no one to spend it with? What’s the point of being sexy if you aren’t having sex? What’s the point of living forever if you have nothing to live for? We need a push toward “unoptimization” as Tim Denning calls it, to solve this. Because we aren’t machines. We aren’t pins in a pin factory. We are people. And people don’t need optimization. If you’re a manufacturer trying to make millions of products or a search engine trying to answer billions of queries, you need optimization. But if you’re an individual trying to live a good life, you don’t. What you need is purpose, fulfillment, and connection. Yes, you also need good health, a good career, and good prioritization of your time. But these pursuits shouldn’t consume your every waking hour.
I think I needed to read this right now.
Another month comes to an end. And, I suppose it’s fitting that it’s raining. October is here.
September went by in a blur. We celebrated the first year in our new home, we joined a Fantasy Football league with friends, we had good food, good drinks, and I listened to so much good music. This streak of Motion City Soundtrack, to The Starting Line, to Thrice, AFI, and then Yellowcard is pretty ridiculous. We’re spoiled and we deserve it given the state of everything else in the world right now.
September 2025