Japan Spleen Poppy Appeal

A pleasure in my travels is to see the street people of all the cities in the world, whether in Bruges or Busy Area Tokyo One of the great poems, by Baudelaire, to remember when you are preposterous and forlorn

Happy Nappy Pants Day!

Diaper, Nappy, Pants: A Tiny Global History of a Very Practical Word 🍼🌍 Every civilization has poetry, religion, bread, bureaucracy… and a word for “please contain this mess.” In America, it’s a diaper. In Britain, it’s usually a nappy. In

Startup idea: make fake cheap coffins that ship fast and actually open

Yes, I just emailed you.

For those of geezers watching “avoid phishing scams, seniors!” TV commercials on Fox News…

The More You Ignore Me (Rare) – The Drownout

My friend and I recorded a long time ago, one song. And here it is released.

Overheard: The end of the American era

Scenario, overheard from a friend: “Oops, America starts a war on Iran and loses. Hormuz is locked, the US ‘retreats’ and it’s declared a victory.” But everyone will know that the US can no longer do what it wants. Flashback:

We killed the top leaders…?

Imagine if the other guys had gotten this chart for the US. Is the US defeated? 9/11…

Death to SaaS: clean your iCloud edition

My iCloud was full b/c my iMessage has 20GB of attachments. Pay more? Pay for an app to fix it? Nah, Claude wrote me this script. imessage_cleanup.sh.JPG  (download it, unzip it, rename it to remove the .JPG so it’s just

Cold email? Start here.

If you’re thinking of cold-emailing me or asking to “pick my brain,” start here. I’ve been writing online since 1998. I’ve built companies, invested in others, taught, experimented, and tried to write down what I was learning along the way.

Everything is fine…

Topic Good / Bad (since Jan 2025) Confidence Inflation rate (CPI YoY) 🟢 Slightly lower; gradual downward drift ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Price level (cost of living) 🔴 Higher (prices compound upward) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Unemployment rate 🟢 Near multi-decade lows ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Job growth pace