What I'm up to - August 2026

My monthly newsletter about what I am up to, which I send in place of social media:

What I did in July

• Concluded my trip to Japan and posted more photos to the Tsundoku pop-up newsletter. I am having a lot of fun exploring photography as a hobby.
• Visited Cleveland, including a stop by William Frederick clothing - an emerging designer.
• Added SMS subscriptions to this site - which has gotten surprisingly positive feedback. (Text SUBSCRIBE to +1 212-347-3190).
• I started an ongoing photography journal called tidbits and posted eight photos there.
• I open-sourced Booklet.
• Moved my personal email from Google Workspace to iCloud, since iCloud+ includes custom-domain email. Unfortunately, importing my Google calendar triggered invitations for old events (sorry).
• I moved out of San Francisco and am returning to New York. Hanya Yanagihara captures my thoughts: "The reason you stay here is for the thrill of constantly encountering people who are smarter and more interesting than you. But almost everything else about the city – the weather, the poor infrastructure, the overpriced and mediocre food scene, the subway system, the traffic, the idea that what you do is who you are – grates."

Things to share

• Books: I read the first volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle and am continuing the series - learn about it in this New Yorker review. “But the whole point for me of living in a big city was that I could be completely alone in it while still surrounded by people on all sides.” I also read Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World and learned that the USA devotes more space to housing cars than to housing people.
• Articles: Erling Haaland Plays Like a Viking. Cal Newport on why reading matters. ALINEA. AGAIN. - "To arrive at the moment where the body of work is complete, the identity fully formed, the impact proven, and then have to ask the question that most never get to ask: do you become a museum of yourself, honoring the past with reverence and precision, or do you start again?" The British Post Office Horizon scandal. "Better Than Free" on how to build a business in the AI era. Ashish's Supercritical, about what happens when generation accelerates faster than coordination and validation.
• Music: Login.jp archives everyday Japanese culture through filmed DJ sets in neighborhood shops. I have also been listening to Thomas Bangalter's Mirage - Ballet for 16 Dancers and Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports.
• Videos: Coffee fermentation.
• Podcasts: Derek Thompson on the antisocial century - especially the path from isolation to sowing chaos.
• Places: HYUNAH Coffee Club is a subscription clubhouse in Greenpoint for brewing coffee.
• Newsletters: Stan started a monthly newsletter, Know This Place, and gave me a shoutout.

Plans for August

• Moving to New York City, probably South Brooklyn.
• Taking a brief trip to Copenhagen.