What Now?

Well, this project is complete. With the Grain is now closed, and so is The Stream.

It’s been a while since I’ve produced anything of value here, and leaving things unresolved has been a mental tax on everything since. So, I’m going offline.

Since I like some of what I wrote here, I may someday make a good landing page for this site, and curate it in some way. If something particularly resonated with you, let me know.

I may sometimes feel the need to say something, in order to get it out of my head, and I do want to keep working on the bigger picture, fitting together what I’ve learned. For those times, and if I ever have a new project to share, I will send it out to my email list.

Be well.

Episode 17: Fred Ehrsam | Cryptocurrency’s Past, Present & Future

Best thing I’ve listened to on cryptocurrencies.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, addiction, and being “all in” 

Even though I’d spent the five years since moving to New York designing costumes for Off-Broadway plays and had just been hired by Saturday Night Live, I was nervous, because I was in awe of his talent. I’d seen him in Boogie Nights and Happiness, and he blew me out of the water with his willingness to make himself so vulnerable and to play fucked-up characters with such honesty and heart.

There is way too much tragedy bound up in genius. My theory about this is that a genius has no off switch. They are always on another level, and this is not sustainable. I suspect drugs approximate an off switch and that is why so many artists struggle with addiction.

Facts about uh and um - Marginal REVOLUTION 

There is more to saying “uh” and “um” than you think. To be fair, most of you probably never think about these conversational mitigations at all, so that’s not saying much.

My favorite bit is that an “uh” causes no excess delay, and the actual delay is only due to “processing problems.”

I find myself having processing problems on a continual basis. Now I know my brain’s pinwheeling has a sound.

When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy 

“People were sending me emails like I was dying of cancer,” Cuddy says. “It was like, ‘We send our condolences,’ ‘Holy crap, this is terrible’ and ‘God bless you; we wish we could do something, but obviously we can’t.’ ” She also knew what was coming, a series of events that did, in fact, transpire over time: subsequent scrutiny of other studies she had published, insulting commentary about her work on the field’s Facebook groups, disdainful headlines about the flimsiness of her research.

Very interesting (if long) article that discusses behavioral psychology, the replication crisis, and sexism. There’s a zero percent chance a white male scientist in the same situation with the same background would have been treated the same way as Amy Cuddy was. These themes warrant a longer post, but I’ll have to save further exploration for another day.

The top 25 films of 2017 

Nothing makes me want to quit my job and just watch movies all day than David Ehrlich’s annual video countdowns of the year’s best movies.

I’m with Jason. Erlich’s video is a work of art in its own right. I am super-out of touch with the film world,1 but I am still embarrassed to have only heard of 5½ of the 25. I have seen precisely zero of them.2


  1. I think this means serious movies. Ones involving auteurs, probably. 

  2. I’ve seen six movies this year, I think. All were either superhero or kids’ movies. The former watched while traveling, and the latter (appropriately) with my children.  

Correctives | Dan John 

Safety is part of performance. Over time, putting a weight correctly back on the ground is going to do more for your back health than all of the correctives I can teach you after you haphazardly lower the load and hurt your lower back.1

Charlie Munger famously2 said, “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”

I’m okay just being a little less-dumb today.


  1. Mobility work (or correctives) has taken over much of the online fitness mindspace, but it feels like a fad to me. 

  2. Famously in the circles I read in, at least. You may have a more well-adjusted mental life. 

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