On October 7th and the overwhelming shadow of death
Like so many of us, I’ve been watching in horror since October 7th. I’ve felt paralyzed by not knowing what to do or say or how to understand how…
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Thinking Fast and Slow with the Brain Modules You’ve Got
Over and Under thinking On my walk this morning I was talking to my friend and linguist, Luke Wakefield, and I had an insight. For most of my life…
Remembering Katie
Yesterday my friend Katie DiSimone died. I met Katie in an unsolicited direct message. She reached out to me after I had asked some questions in a facebook group she…
Emotions as Interface to the Sub-conscious
Or, how remote work can trick you into feeling more stressed than you need to There is no trash can or recycling bin in your computer, just different ways…
Bubble Lights
When I was a boy, we used to visit my grandma Jodie’s house. Grandma Jodie was a short, quiet woman when I knew her. I only knew her after…
Cameras Recs for Kids (or adults)
Every once in a while, friends whose kids are into photography ask for recommendations on what cameras they might buy for their developing photographers who want to move beyond…
Reading Balaji Srinivasan In This Gutenberg Moment
I discovered Balaji Srinivasan last march. He was on Tim Ferris’ podcast. He’s a biochemist by training and a serial entrepreneur most recently with Coinbase. I was struck by…
On Fading Photos and Surviving Memories
An orange shoebox of drugstore prints I remember discovering a glossy orange box of drug-store color prints, jammed overfull, stuffed with the condensed photos of my father’s life. They…
Book Chapter
I wrote a thing that’s going to be in this book. “What Job is a Conspiracy Theory Doing? Why American Christians are Particularly Vulnerable to the Narratives of the…
What Job is a Conspiracy Theory Doing?
Saturday morning, I saw a post from my friend, Brandon, who lives in Manhattan, the early epicenter of the pandemic in the US. It showed a scrawled subway wall note…
Do Americans need to see videos of COVID killing us before we take collective action?
Last week in California a 51 year old man died of COVID the day after expressing regret for attending a barbeque with friends. One person went who wasn’t showing symptoms and…
Learning Design Principles From the First Cyborgs: People with Diabetes
My daughter has type 1 diabetes. To keep her alive we use a few wearable devices embedded in her body to sense her blood glucose and add the insulin…
How to Start Building Your App Idea Today
People regularly approach me to share ideas they have for new apps. This is great because I love to talk to people who are excited about some new thing…
What Kinds of Emotions Arise from the Internet’s Body?
I recently attended a design conference where several presenters confidently asserted that since emotions are an inherently embodied experience they are thus not possible for artificial intelligences to experience…
Design, Science & Adaptation
If technology is the stand-in for biology in the evolutionary process (once it becomes managed by conscious minds Kelly, 2011), then design is the stand-in for adaptation, and an…
Use the Scraps; or 9 ways to make art when you’re busy as hell
There's a fantasy floating around that if we could just get enough free time, we could do anything. If it weren't for work or school or family or any…