Having been robot-wrangling for a solid year now, I continue to feel like they give me superpowers. However, like all of us, I have a front-row seat to increasingly attractive garbage the robots are capable of generating at scale. I like to think that I am human enough to detect the slop, but the rate… more
I was sitting at dinner with dear friends, and we made a list of questions we love to ask.
Back in 2013, Alex King and I redesigned the Rands in Repose. Thirteen years — still happy with the design. It’s readable, clean, and prominently features typography I love. What you look at this moment is 90% Alex’s original design. But there was one more thing we never finished. Over the years, Esquire featured a… more
There’s a lot of content hiding in the Rands archives from the past three decades. Over the years, some of that content keeps showing up. I keep forwarding the same links to the same articles; I get asked the same questions at Q&A. I’ve decided to synthesize the advice into a single artifact. My writing… more
One of the more interesting robot-assisted tools I’ve built in the last few months is tracking the various metrics for Rands-related properties. Think social like Mastodon, BlueSky, and Threads. Think blog analytics like new users, session duration, and popular articles. I’ve been plopping this data into a spreadsheet every month for the last two years.… more
I had a dog, his name was Marleau. He was a Boston Terrier, and he just wasn’t that smart. His nickname was “Derpity Doo” because he was was that derpy. We all loved him a lot. One day, we visited my parents, and we brought the Derp along. We got in the house, let him… more
I started this piece in late November. It’s a piece I usually write Christmas as a kick-off to the new year. The precise process by which this yearly piece arrives is a mystery. Probably the mental reset that comes with the New Year. So, what’s with the first draft showing up before Thanksgiving? As I… more
I’m in the midst of a media cleanse. This started before the election when I canceled my Washington Post subscription. Jeff Bezos can do whatever he wants with the Washington Post, and he’s 100% correct that I don’t trust large media organizations. After the election, I removed all news sources from Feedly except the Atlantic… more
Hi. I’m stressed, too. Here are random thoughts on this from the beginning of November 5th, 2024 — election day: Today, a convicted felon and failed businessman (six bankruptcies!) slash narcissist slash twice impeached politician who does not believe in democracy, who called for and achieved an armed insurrection, and who lies compulsively is the… more
Good, me too. Over on the Rands Leaders Slack, we are almost thirty-four thousand. Fun fact: in the 2020 Presidential Election, three battleground states, Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, the margin of victory was less than 30,000. In Georgia, President Biden won by just over 12,000 votes. It makes you think. It’s an, uh, interesting time… more
