Recommendations, or not

Decentralizing Social Media

From the very beginning of the internet we’ve wanted to talk to our friends. Or to talk to people who might become our friends. At first this was easy because there weren’t many people online so you could know everyone who found their way into an IRC channel or MUD or various other chatroom but as more people got online staying in touch with your friends became harder and it wasn’t long before our online social networks evolved into and were enabled by social networking sites (SNS). In my memory this starts with SixDegrees, for others it might be Friendster, Xing, MySpace or any number of other sites where you could subdivide everyone into a smaller group of people you wanted to connect directly with long before most of the world found their way onto Facebook. And everyone who has every used one of these sites has faced the same dilemma – leaving.

Not that it’s hard to walk away from any particular site but it is hard to walk away from the friends you made there, and in a very real way this became one of the tools used by these sites to keep you there. If you leave the site you are leaving your friends and you wouldn’t want to do that right? They used guilt along with various technical lock ins to make it very hard for you to recreate your social network on some other site. You might think of these people as friends but these sites look at your friends as valuable proprietary data. Of course this isn’t a good thing, they actually are your friends after all, but business models as they are with these sites want you to think you only have friends because they allow you to. So almost since there were social networking sites people have been trying to find ways to export their list of friends (or their social graph if you want to get fancy) and bring it into another site.

But just getting the information isn’t enough, if your friends aren’t using a new site then trying to connect with them there is going to be hard even if you somehow were able to bring over your friend list from another site. This is a problem with centralization, you need people to go to the specific place. There’s other privacy invasive options like uploading your entire address book but maybe you don’t want to show this company everyone you know, or maybe you don’t want to leak your friends private info, or maybe just because someone is in your address book doesn’t mean you want to connect with them on every social media site. Are they actually your friends or work colleague or ex-roommate or a million other potential classifications that makes this problematic? Anyway, this isn’t a new problem and smart people have been trying to solve it for a long time.

I first remember Ryan King talking about it in 2005 though he even notes then that this was a frequent conversation at the time. We were in the beginning of Web 2.0 but already imagining what Web 3.0 might be, and calling it The Semantic Web. (This is not to be confused with Web3 – the distinction between Web3 and Web 3.0 is still lost on a lot of people, and sadly a lot of the people who dreamed about Web 3.0 are missing Web3 because if silly biases, but that’s a different story for another time). Projects and proposals like Microformats and IndieWeb imagined an internet where an individuals personal data was owned by and controlled by themselves rather than by for profit companies. Rather than a website allowing you to see who your friends are you could choose to allow a website to see your friends. It was a revolutionary idea at the time, as Ryan notes, and unfortunately it didn’t catch on in the scale that any of us hoped it would. And as a result of that lack of adoption my Twitter feed right now is full of friends worrying about how they will stay in touch with each other if Twitter suddenly disappears. It’s got people talking about Mastodon again, which while open source is really many of the same problems in a different uniform. And so the dreams of 2005 have gone largely unrealized in the last 17 years.

Until now…

If you have been paying attention to whats going on in Web3 then this description of “own your own stuff” probably sounds familiar. And this is where things start getting really, really exciting. (Well, I mean if you are a nerd about this stuff it’s exciting, and I clearly am, and if you are still reading I’ll assume you are as well.) There are two new blockchain based protocols I’ve been playing with, Farcaster & Lens, which are super promising and already delivering on some of these dreams and I wanted to share them here.

Farcaster is a “sufficiently decentralized social network” which combines on-chain (ethereum) with off-chain to create something where people own their own information, their usernames, social graphs and posts, and decentralized enough that anyone can build something on top of those profiles – and enables people to switch between services without needing permission from a company. A quick look at the growing ecosystem shows how people are already putting this to work. For example right now the primary Farcaster application (which is not yet publicly released) doesn’t show public profiles, but Discove.xyz is built on the protocol so you can see my profile here.

(Farcaster as seen in the desktop app)

Lens Protocol is a decentralized social graph built on Polygon which takes the interesting approach of making your username an NFT and then minting NFTs of your connections, which then allows any application using the Lens protocol to just look at your wallet and then immediately build out your profile. For example here is my profile on Lenster which is currently the primary SNS using the protocol, and when I signed into Orb (another currently mobile only option) it instantly populated my profile, posts, and followers/following with everything I’d set up on Lenster.

(my profile on Lenster)
(My profile on Orb)

I didn’t need to export anything from Lenster, I didn’t need to import anything to Orb. Didn’t need permission or anything. When I updated my header image on Orb, the change was immediately reflected on Lenster. I looked at a few other Lens based sites and it was the same everywhere. Possibly even more exciting is that not only the posts were mirrored, so were the reactions. Hearts, replies, shares, etc.. all the same everywhere. It was mind blowing. Of course there are ways to syndicate out a post from a Web 2.0 SNS to others, using IFTTT for example you can write a script to send your Tweets to your Tumblr, or you can connect Twitter to Instagram so that a photo you post on Instagram is announced on Twitter, but the result is that these are still separate sites with individual comment threads and ultimately disconnected. With Lens it’s all the same, because they are decentralized and I as the owner of the post and the profile let each site access it from the blockchain. However we haven’t moved entirely from Web 2.0 to Web3 yet, so luckily there’s a way to send things back as well. I tested it out and it worked brilliantly – this post originated on Orb, was cross posted to Twitter and reflected on Lenster. Obviously any replies on Twitter stay on Twitter, but a reply on Lenster is seen on Orb. It’s magic.

(as seen on Twitter)
(as seen on Lenster)

Looking through the ecosystem lists on both projects I don’t see any option to sync the two yet, however I can’t imagine that is going to be too far away. Similar problems being solved in both and a lot of overlapping ideas. I’m really so excited to see this and to realize we don’t need to have the “____ sucks now because [policy/management] change, I’m deleting this app, where is everyone going next so we can connect there?” conversations every few years any longer. Obviously this is early days, these are beta applications on beta protocols but I can see where it’s heading and it’s so much of what I’ve been dreaming about for almost 20 years. I’m sure it’ll take a little while for this to click with everyone, and a lot of people are going to need to get past their crypto biases, but this really is the empowered user world we’ve been hoping for. If we’re friends, if we’re connected on one of any number of current social networks, I do hope you’ll check this out sooner rather than later. I don’t think mass adoption is an if, it’s a when.

Wallets + Exchanges

I set up my first cryptocurrency wallet about a decade ago. I’ve done it a dozen times or more since then and it’s still confusing. Since about half of those wallet setups have happened in the last 6 months and the number of people asking me how to do it is growing every day I thought it would be helpful to document and explain some of what I’ve learned along the way and hopefully help smooth out some of the learning curve speed bumps. I’ll be talking about Ethereum Wallets and Mac/iOS apps though much of what I’m saying should apply elsewhere too as a lot of it is browser based as well.

The first and most important thing to understand is that Wallets and Exchanges do different things. Though since some exchanges offer wallet services and some wallets now have built in exchange options it gets messy quick. So while there is overlap, I try to think of (and encourage others to think of) them as separate things. Hopefully the following will de-mess-ify things a bit.

Public/Private key: This is what everything is built on when we’re talking about cryptography and cryptocurrency. Very simply: Your public key is your address that you give people so they can send things to you, your private key is the secret thing you keep which allows you to receive what is sent to you. If you loose your private key, you loose access to your assets.

Wallet: As the name suggests a wallet holds your assets, however this gets immediately confusing as your assets are not actually inside your wallet, rather your wallet keeps your private keys so that you can access your assets which are on the blockchain. Remember that with public ledgers/blockchains the ongoing updates just document who holds/owns what but there’s no asset actually traveling to you (like an email) rather the assets are being allocated to different wallets all the time on the blockchain, and if you have the private key to a wallet with an asset then you can choose what to do with that asset – such as send it somewhere else. This is why if someone gets ahold of your private keys they can steal everything from you, and why a wallet that protects your private keys is so important.

Wallets are either custodial or non-custodial, which means either you hold your own private keys or a company holds them for you. This is where the the saying “Not your keys, not your coins” comes into play as technically any assets you have in a custodial wallet could be seized, frozen, stolen, lost, etc and there’s nothing you could do about it, and there’s also risk of policy change at any given moment so the operator of the custodial wallet could decide that you have a 10 day waiting period on any withdraws or impost a limit on how much you can move around per day and since you don’t have your own keys you are 100% at the mercy of the people running that software. As a benefit though if you don’t have your own keys you cant lose or forget them. With a non-custodial wallet you manage your own keys and make your own decisions. Of course if you are sloppy with your security and someone else gets ahold of your keys you can still lose everything, but for a lot of people the risk of losing things because they made a mistake themselves is much easier to accept than the risk of losing everything because of legal or business decisions happening outside of their control.

Metamask is the most popular non-custodial wallet largely because it’s just a browser plugin so it’s really simple to set up and use. If the idea of having a wallet in your browser doesn’t sit right with you, Rainbow is my favorite non-custodial iOS software wallet (which will require you to do some pairing / QR Code scanning to sync with websites). If you want a totally separate air gapped hardware wallet then the best bet is really to buy a Ledger. Though if you are just getting started that might be overkill depending on how much crypto you plan to buy and/or hold. All three of these options have partnerships with exchanges that allow you to buy crypto assets from inside the wallet. Here’s where it gets a little confusing, Coinbase Wallet is also a non-custodial iOS software wallet, which is a different thing than Coinbase which is an exchange that offers a custodial wallet service, similar to Binance or Blockfi or Crypto.com. Coinbase and Coinbase Wallet are owned by the same company and can be set up to work together, but can also be used separately or independently.

Exchange: The primary function of an exchange is, again as the name suggests, to exchange your crypto assets for other crypto assets. Centralized exchanges require you to move assets from your own wallet to theirs first (or buy them directly through their system) while de-centralized exchanges (also called a DEX) will just connect to your own existing wallet to authorize the transaction on the fly.

Coinbase, which I already mentioned, is an example of a centralized exchange. To use Coinbase you need an account, and you likely have to go through some KYC (Know Your Customer) verifications like uploading your ID and proving you are who you say you are and you live where you say you live. You’ll need to either buy crypto assets through Coinbase (and depending on your level of verification you may only be able to buy a small amount each day) or send assets you already have to Coinbase before you can do any kind of exchanges on Coinbase. Uniswap is an example of a DEX. To use Uniswap you just connect your wallet and make your transaction – Uniswap doesn’t need to know anything about you. Coinbase only lets you exchange some assets and offers some level of protection, while Uniswap lets you exchange anything and you are on your own. There are different reasons why either option might be better for you for any given situation but that’s a different article and for the moment let’s just recognize that most people will likely end up using both options at different times for different things.

That was a lot, I know. But you now understand this better than probably 99% of the population.

There’s a few more things. While Metamask is fast and easy, you really don’t want it to be your only wallet. You’ll want to keep enough in it for transactions and impulse buys, but for anything more significant it’s probably better to put it somewhere else. That’s why I like the Metamask + Rainbow combo (or + Ledger if you are getting serious). But here’s some things to note:

When starting any of these apps you will be given the choice to add a wallet or create a wallet. If you have a wallet already and want to use the same one then you will choose “add” and then you’ll need to put in your seed phrase. Wait, what’s a seed phrase? When you create a wallet you will be given a seed phrase (a list of 12-24 words). THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT. Write it down. Protect it. That seed phrase will allow you to rebuild your wallet should you lose access to it. It will also allow anyone else to rebuild your wallet if they are trying to hack you – so don’t put it anywhere someone else might get it. Don’t put it online, don’t put it in a shared note app, don’t put it on a post it note on your monitor. Lock it away somewhere safe. Treat it like a secret password to all of your money, because that’s what it is.

Rainbow will let you add or create several wallets which you can switch between easily for different purposes. Metamask will only give you one wallet, though it will allow you to create different “accounts” which are subsets of the one main wallet. That’s super confusing, I know. Let me draw you a picture:

Don’t ask me why it’s like this, companies just do weird shit ok?

It’s likely that you’ll want a wallet that is accessible from Metamask AND Rainbow, so create it first with Metamask and then using the seed phrase add that to Rainbow. If you do that in the other direction, Rainbow first and then add to Metamask it will replace anything you previously had in Metamask. Trust me here, it’ll save you a bunch of headaches later. Metamask first, then add it to Rainbow. I know more than one person who accidentally wiped their Metamask wallet because they tried to add another wallet later and couldn’t remember where they wrote down their Metamask seed phrase. Just to keep adding more layers of confusion there’s also a Metamask iOS app which you can use to import your Metamask wallet from you browser and that will allow you to authorize various websites from it’s built in mobile browser as well. That might be too much for right now, but just know it’s possible.

That was also a lot, I know. And there’s so much more, but that’s enough to get you going and allow you to start using Web3 websites which use a wallet instead of a login for your account management. Also, having a wallet does not automatically mean having crypto, so you’ll still have to get some, but that’s a whole other thing that I’m not going to walk you through, though Coinbase is probably the thing most people use at least at first. So if you are just starting, you can start there.

For NFTs, Twitter Is The Marketplace

Last month NiftyTable published stats showing that more than half of the traffic going to the major NFT sites was coming from Twitter. At face value, that means more than half of the traffic across several sites for essentially an entire industry coming from one site… that’s insanity! But we need to consider a few things to put that into context. Traffic stats mean people are very regularly clicking links on one site and being taken to another. Not just once, but all the time. This would primarily be driven by discovery, new people finding new artists they are interested in learning more about. Now there are unquestionably lots of Discord servers filled with NFT discussions, but those are largely contained groups who follow each other on the NFT platforms as well, so there’s not a lot of discovery going on beyond the first introductions. (Some of you will note that discoverability is the number one thing I’ve been saying NFT platforms need to work on.) Facebook as well has some chatter, but again it’s not really a place people are discovering new work so much as seeing work from people they are already following or connected to.

Conversely, sites (or apps) like Clubhouse, Instagram and Twitter are more outwardly focused – that is, unless you have a private account, one of the features of these platforms is that they potentially act as a megaphone and can show you off to a much larger audience than you might have on your own. One might think that Instagram, being a primarily visual platform might be the most useful here when it comes to new artist discovery. Similarly the sheer number of Clubhouse rooms dedicated to giving new artists space to talk about or “shill” (I hate that term) their own work would suggest that a lot of discovery is happening there. That said, Instagram and Clubhouse are similar in that they don’t allow linking to other sites. You simply can’t post a clickable link. This means even if you do post (or talk about) a link someone needs to either retype it or copy and paste it into another browser tab, in which case traffic statistics would not know the origin of the that click. So I suspect it’s highly likely that traffic being driven by both Instagram and Clubhouse is being significantly underreported. To what extent it’s impossible to say, but the assumption that no real traffic is coming from those sites is probably incorrect.

But it’s not just technical luck either. No matter how that gets refactored there’s no getting around the fact that a lot of traffic is coming from Twitter, and there’s a reason for that. Clubhouse is fleeting – if you aren’t in the room you miss it. Instagram is more portfolio-ish, comment threads are silo’d and sharing work that you find and like is difficult. Instagram is also afraid of female nipples, among others things, which results in a lot of self censorship and a lot of posts being taken down for violating “community guidelines.” While not all art has nipples, some art does and if a platform is restricting what some artists can do other artists are going to be cautious about using it, even unintentionally. Twitter is non of those things. Sure it’s ephemeral to a degree, but you can easily search and find older posts and connecting different people and disparate conversations is a snap. And showing off artwork, your own or others, is really easy. And it’s also now, in that when there’s a hot topic of the moment, whatever that moment is, everyone knows they can go to Twitter and talk to people about it.

And it’s not insignificant that none of the NFT platforms really have a way to connect with people. Sure you can follow artists you like, sure they will shuffle you along to their Discord servers, and sure some are promising that they have a social component in the works, but right now onsite, there’s nothing social happening. So people go to Twitter, because that’s where all the social is happening.

I was one of the first 140 people to join Twitter in 2006 and a quick look at my archives shows that as much as I’ve loved it, I’ve been critical of the platform for a very long time now. I’ve come close to leaving several times. But I’m still there and I still use it because as annoying as it is for somethings, it’s incredibly valuable for others. Being able to engage with a community is one of those valuable things. As you can imagine after being on a site for 15 years, people ask me all the time if they should be on Twitter. These days, and for quite some time now, I most often tell them no. In general with social media I think it’s better to not do something than to do it poorly, and to do Twitter correctly you need to invest time in it. This is something most people are not willing to do. They want to create an account, post something once or twice a month and then suddenly have thousands of millions of followers. That’s simply not how it works. You have to be engaged, invested, and understand the social norms of the place. So I’ve told people that if they’ve already been on Twitter and have a community there then they should use that, but if they don’t not to bother trying to start at this point.

However.

I think my position on that has evolved in the recent weeks. It’s becoming more and more clear that the vast majority of the discovery, commentary, meta-commentary, community engagement and (barf)networking is happening on Twitter. Not just randomly, this is where people are asking for recommendations, where introductions are being made, where friendships are forming and where connections are being made. Which, oddly, is what Twitter used to be really good at before it got distracted by trying to be “where breaking news happens” or whatever crap marketing line they were using was. Now, my earlier position still holds true – if you aren’t willing or able to commit several hours a week at the very least to interacting with people on Twitter, that is not just posting, but actually engaging, then I still don’t think you should use the site. But if you have an account already which you just aren’t using, or you are willing to put in the work to build up a new one, there’s really no better place right now for interacting with other artists, collectors, and various people of similar interests. It’s not make or break, but it’s noteworthy enough and a shift in what I’ve been vocal about so I thought it should be mentioned. Hope that’s helpful.

And of course if you are on Twitter feel free to follow me, and if you are interested in NFTs of my photography you can check them out here.

You Just Lost The Game(stop)

This is an excerpt my most recent newsletter which you should go subscribe to right now. It’s free.

Now let me just preface this next bit by clarifying that I don’t have any idea what I’m talking really. I’m not an investor and I don’t understand the stock market beyond generally that it’s there to make rich people richer and fuck over poor people. Now I must admit that my hands aren’t entirely clean in that – I do own 2 full shares of Disney stock that my mother bought for me when I turned 10 and I think they are worth exactly the same today as they were then and I have no idea how to sell them even if I wanted to cash out and buy a coffee, but that’s my disclosure. Maybe some of you are in the same boat. Besides that noteworthy asset my understanding of stocks comes entirely from watching Billions.

That said I have an ace in the hole that most people don’t have access to. My son Ripley, who turns 11 this year, is a math genius. No really, he won some kind of math contest at his school in Tokyo and everyone was really impressed. Ask anyone. So he and I were talking about what’s going on with GameStop (he’s been actively interested in the Bitcoin news) and when I tried to explain sort of what I thought was happening he corrected me and explained it better, so I thought I’d relay that here for all of your benefit.

A: Buying stock: This is basic 101 stuff that probably everyone already knows. If a stock costs $10 and you buy 10 shares for $100, then the stock goes up to $15 dollars and you sell all 10 shares for $150 bucks, you just made $50 bucks. Similarly if the stock goes down to $8 and you sell all 10 shares for $80 then you just lost $20. Easy math here.

B: Shorting stock: This one always confused the fuck out of me but I think I have a handle on it now. If you think a stock is going to go down relatively quickly buying it would be a bad idea due to the reasons we just discussed in (A). BUT! There’s a way to bet against the stock, which is called shorting it. The way that works is this: Let’s say Jack owns stock in a company called Hills Inc and Jill thinks that Hills Inc is about to fall down and break it’s crown, so to speak. So what Jill does is “borrow” shares from Jack when they cost $10, then she waits some agreed upon time for the stock price to drop, buys them back at a lower price and returns them to Jack keeping the profit. So – using the same math as above, if the stock cost $10 when Jill “borrowed” 10 shares from Jack and sold it at that price she then has $100 in hand, and over the next few days it drops to $5, so she buys 10 shares back for $50 and then returns those 10 shares to Jack, keeping the extra $50 profit for herself. Jill successfully shorted the stock.

Now the trick is, that’s assuming it goes the way Jill wants it to. If instead the price climbs, Jill is in trouble. So, if she borrows 10 shares at $10 and sells them for $100, but over the following days the stock price doesn’t drop but instead rises, Jill still has to return 10 shares to Jack. So if the stock price rose to $12, Jill has to spend $120 to buy those same 10 shares, which ends up causing her to lose $20 in the deal.

Basically shorting a stock is a way to make money off a stock you don’t even own by betting against it. That said, in order to short a stock, you have to have some collateral being held incase things don’t go your way. Which is important for this next part.

Keep reading over on my newsletter archives, or better yet subscribe and have these emailed directly to you in the future!

Party Mode

Bradenton, Florida. A shit-hole ghetto town about an hour south of Tampa. I think it was the summer of 1990. I remember it being really, really hot. I was in high school and my friend Chris suggested starting a band. He played guitar already and told me I should get a bass. I took that week’s paycheck from the grocery store I worked at and went to a local used music equipment shop and asked what that could get me, I bought whatever it was they suggested. In my memory it was a sunburst Fender but I honestly can’t remember. I didn’t know I needed an amplifier for it to work, and had trouble figuring out how to play it at home. The following week we got together in another friends garage for “band practice” which was a serious lesson in humility. I showed up without an amp, but luckily (or unluckily) someone there had a guitar amp I could plug into. This was the first time I’d ever heard what the bass even sounded like.

Chris proposed that we start off playing “New Direction.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. Chris pointed out that I was wearing a Gorilla Biscuits t-shirt at the time, New Direction of course was the first song on their recently released album Start Today. I didn’t actually have the album yet, I had a dubbed cassette copy that my neighbor Max had made for me which I listened to all the time – so once Chris started playing it I knew what he was talking about, but Max hadn’t written the names of any of the songs so didn’t know what any of them were called. Max would later sell me his blue and white swirled vinyl copy of that album, which has remained one of my prized possessions even to this day. Anyway, I knew the song but I had no idea how to play it, given that I had no idea how to play bass. I stood there in the garage all afternoon while my friends jammed one song after another that I knew but I had no idea how to play. That was the only band practice I ever went to, and I wasn’t ever invited to be any of their bands ever again, rightly so.

I kept that bass and every once and a while I’d pick it up and hope I’d magically learned how to play something. I never did. When I’d fantasize about being in a band I always pictured myself singing, so just never got motivated enough to try and learn it. Besides, my favorite band in town at the time, Tired From Now On, already had a bass player and a singer and I wasn’t going to even try to start a Tired From Now On copycat band. I think I sold it to my friend from Canada Kyle for $50 when one of his bands was passing through Gainesville a few years later. At least I’d spray painted it black so it looked much cooler than that crappy sunburst. I wonder if he still has it?

A few years later when I was working at Victory Records my co-worker Chuck told me he wanted to start a band and asked if I’d be interested in singing. Of course I said yes, instantly. He said he was getting the rest of the band together and we’d have a proper rehearsal in a few weeks. At that time I was often the last person to leave the office, which was in a 3 story condo in an industrial part of Chicago. My office was on the 3rd floor, and when everyone else would leave I’d often turn up my stereo as loud as it would go and jump around screaming along like an idiot to the loudest, angriest thing I had. It was excellent therapy. I highly recommend everyone try it sometime. My private karaoke included many bands, but vocalist Tim Singer’s bands – No Escape, Deadguy and the recently released (at the time) Kiss It Goodbye were in heavy rotation. I guess I always kind of related to his “I tried, but everything is fucked anyway” lyrical narrative. In my mind, that’s how I’d sing in a band.

Eventually Chuck would rope in the rest of a band and we’d all get together one evening after work in the basement of Bulldog Records, Victory’s record store in Wicker Park where bands like Blood For Blood and Murphy’s Law had recently played some already legendary shows. Drums set up, amps plugged in and blasting. I knew enough lyrics to enough songs that I figured there wouldn’t be a repeat of the New Direction situation and I was ready to go with whatever song they pulled out of the hardcore repertoire. Except the songs they’d written themselves and had already been practicing that I’d never heard before. Chuck handed me the mic and said “let’s go!” and I just stood there. I didn’t know what to sing, or what to say. I’d never written lyrics before, and certainly hadn’t anticipated doing it on the spot. I’d been daydreaming about doing this for years, and now when given the chance I froze. I convinced myself that anything I’d come up with would be so stupid the band would stop playing and I’d be laughed out of the basement. Of course, just standing there like an idiot had a similar effect. 

Decades later I of course recognize how letting my insecurity keep me from doing the thing I was dreaming of doing, when I directly had the opportunity to do it, was just about the stupidest thing I could have ever done. I’m not really big on regret, we all do things that if given another chance we might do differently or applying hindsight realize our errors, but pushing past that fear and doing actually band with my friends sometime in the 90’s when I had countless opportunities is something that I’d totally should have done. If life had do overs, that’s where I’d use mine.

I mention this because totally out of the blue this week there’s a new EP out by Tim’s new band Bitter Branches and it’s incredible. It’s the last thing I was expecting in 2020, and after listening to it on repeat essentially since buying it I can attest it’s exactly what I needed. If anything I’ve mentioned in this sounds familiar to you, maybe it’s what you need as well. If nothing else, it’s a good reminder to take the chances we have, when we have them. They won’t always be there and even trying and failing is way better than not trying at all.

Experiments in Notebooking

In efforts to deal with old age forgetfulness and a lingering case of screen aversion I’ve been trying to get in the habit of using my physical notebook. I wrote about this a bit before on my mailing list, moving from a small pocket sized moleskine to a larger journal type thing and using a modified bullet journal method for daily planning and notes and general keeping on top of things. I also like that, even though it’s purely functional for me, I feel like I’m making something.

While I’ve been enjoying the pen and paper aspect of using a pen and paper I’ve also found myself wanting a little more of a creative visual experience but I’m not fetishistic enough about this journal thing to spend endless hours doodling and and drawing on the pages like a damn pinterest board. A little while ago Warren (I think) mentioned getting one of these little pocket printers that allowed him to quickly snap a photo of something interesting and print it out and then slap it in his notebook for future reference. This notion has kind of stuck with me and last week I decided to pull the trigger. Twice actually.

I ordered and received two different mini printers, that function a bit differently with different desired outcomes. This is what I got:

Paperang
This is a super tiny thermal printer (which means it never needs ink), b&w only with questionable archival qualities (the basic paper is guaranteed to keep an image for a full year) but it’s fast and cheap and fun. While I got in with the intent to print little photos, the Paperang app also has a number of text and todo list templates and options that I can see myself playing with sometime in the not terribly distant future. I’ve been scotch taping a few quick prints with the default paper in to the notebook here and there and it’s added a very cool new layer to the look and feel of it. I also ordered some upgraded paper spools of sticker backed paper that is supposed to hold an image for 10 years so I won’t have to tape the prints in each time. Knowing that the image will eventually fade is interesting too because it keeps me from thinking anything is too precious, and also forces me to write a little something next to it explaining what it is.

Instax print from the SHARE, photo taken on a Leica M10D

Instax SHARE
It’s no secret I like instant photos and that I have a softspot for Instax. I’ve got a few Instax cameras in various formats (I especially like the Instax WIDE monochrome film, though the camera for it is huge) but this requires planning ahead and carrying the camera around, and the film is kind of expensive for quick memory jogging notes to self. That said, being able to take any photo that I have on my phone and make a Polaroid style print anytime I want is kind of appealing. Between my regular carry around every day camera (currently a Leica M10D) and my iPhone (currently an XSMax) I have some pretty nice digital photos. So I picked up the new SP-3 which uses the Instax SQUARE film as I like that format (though I wish they offered a monochrome version) and have used to make a few prints of things I shot with these other devices. This is nice if I want to give a photo to someone, or include something I know will more long lasting (and thus, more thoughtful and artistic I guess). This also allows me to play more with this format, I really liked the Instax MINI print series Clayton did a few years ago and being able to physically riff on ideas is kind of fun.

Both of these printers are small enough to carry around in a hip/shoulder bag without much trouble and then always be available, though the SHARE is a bit bigger and heavier than the Paperang so in actual practice I don’t know how often I’ll really carry both around. Likely one or the other. Guess we’ll see. In the meantime I’m happy with the ability to hold in my hands something that was only in my head previously.

Personal Uniform Update 2019

I’ve been writing about personal uniforms for a long time now [2015, 2010] and adhering to them for even longer.  While the major themes have remained the same over the years some of the specifics have gotten more specific and as I’m often asked for recommendations I find it useful to take stock once and a while so I have something for people to reference. The last time I did this I was living in Los Angeles, and traveling 100k+ miles a year, today I’m living in Tokyo and still traveling 100k+ miles a year. Tokyo gets colder than Los Angeles and has snow, but it also gets more humid. I previously tried to have things that worked in all weather, but I’m now more a fan of fabrics and cuts that are optimized for seasons.

Generally I still stick to all black or dark grey and avoid anything with logos or visible branding of any kind.

The specifics:

T-Shirt

  • Basic. 100% Cotton. I’m still a fan of American Apparel’s Fine Jersey which I find to be the perfect cut, thickness and softness. These were the only things I wore for years and I’d buy them a dozen at a time every 12-18 months though honestly they hold up much longer than that and at less than $10 on Amazon it’s effortless. This is my goto shirt for training at the dojo because I know it’s strong enough to hold up under abuse and I’m not worried about ruining them. Cotton rules for structure, but it’s less optimal for most other things.
  • Hot weather: 100% Bamboo. The best ones I’ve found are made by Onno and are almost 3x the cost of the AA Cotton shirts at about $30. Bamboo is the perfect material for t-shirts, it wicks moisture away from you and is soft and anti-bacterial.
  • Humid: 100% Ramie. A recent find for me, Ramie is a really interesting natural fiber and in Tokyo’s super humid summers this has become my goto option. Outlier’s Ramielust shirt is the best shirt for hot and humid weather. It’s $125, but it takes one day if walking around in 90% humidity to understand why. I found some cheaper Ramie blend shirts on amazon but they don’t feel the same. As a fabric it’s a bit stiffer than Cotton or Bamboo, but it’s also light and airy like nothing else.
  • Cool: 100% Wool. This is going to be my most controversial recommendation ever but Outlier’s Gostwyck Single Origin Wool is really interesting. Wool is an amazing fabric, but it’s almost always ethically bad news, so a company working with a single farm with the specific intention of creating ethically produced wool is something I thought was worth supporting and looking further into. I know some people love wool and if they are going to buy it I’d prefer they put the money towards a more sustainable and ethical option like this. These shirts are also $125, but they might be the nicest shirts you’ve ever touched. A secret some people don’t know is that Wool shirts can be worn for several days in a row before they need washing, so you need fewer of them  for a wardrobe and end up doing wash less often, so they have other environmental benefits to weigh out.

Pants

  • Slacks. I find the materials that Outlier are using for their Slim Dungarees and Futureworks pants to be fantastic, versatile, lightweight and durable. I was initially hesitant to buy $200 pants, but I now have 3 pairs and easily wear them 300 days out of the year. Their shorts are equally fantastic.
  • Jeans. I have an ongoing love/hate with denim that I continue to be unable to resolve. There was a point in the late 2000’s when I realized that not only did I not own a pair of jeans, I hadn’t owned a pair in over a decade, as I’d been wearing almost exclusively Dickies for most of that time. At the same time I had friends working with and lusting over “high end” denim and I wanted to understand it. I’ve since owned and worn many varieties of denim and from high end Japanese brands like Iron Heart & Sugar Cane. They’ve been great in some ways, and horrible in other ways and spending hundreds of dollars on pants that you know the crotch and pockets are going to blow out in, and require additional cost to keep repairing just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me these days. And while there are some minor details here and there, I don’t find them to justify the 5x or 10x cost over something like Shrink To Fit Levi’s 501s or something similar. In the end, I’m going to skip a recommendation on this one and just say individual preference is going to win out.

Socks

  • Darn Tough. Seriously, regardless of what style you like Darn Tough socks will be the best you can get. In addition to being super comfortable and rock solid, they have a life time guarantee so if you somehow find a way to wear a hole in them they will replace them free of charge. Forever. I don’t know how they do it, but they do and do it well.

Underwear

  • Update: I used to religiously recommend ExOfficio Boxer Briefs for many reasons but no longer do, a few years ago the company changed manufacturing practices and both their fabric and build quality went downhill significantly, when I first found them they were upwards of $30 each but now seem to be sub $20 and I’m quite sure they are making more money on each one due to the corners they cut. Avoid.
  • Warmer weather: Bamboo. $30 for a 4 pack of David Archy bamboo boxer briefs seemed too good to be true, but turns out it to be legit. Endorsed.
  • Cooler weather: Wool. Specifically Smartwool who are also publicly committed to ethical and sustainable wool production. They also have a lifetime guarantee which given their $45 price tag, being able to return them once they get worn out for new ones is a bonus.

Shoes and Jackets are much more personal and I can’t imagine recommendations here being worth anything. So look for the styles and cuts that you like and run with them I guess. Though I will say a good hoodie and a good windbreaker are an awesome combo.

Recent Readings

I’ve been actively trying to read more recently. All my life I’ve gone through cycles where I find something super fascinating and tear through it and then I finish and can’t force myself to start something else, or rather just can’t get into whatever I start next and end up abandoning it. So I read nonstop for months, and then it’s several more months before I read anything else. I’m trying to change that habit. I find that I sleep better if I read a bit before going to bed at night–it’s a nice way to wind down after a hectic day–and so I’ve been trying lots of different things and giving up right away if I don’t like something which has helped me get on to the next thing that I do like. I thought I’d share some of what I’ve been enjoying recently. I’ve realized, perhaps far too late in life, that I really enjoy non-fiction. It’s not that I don’t enjoy fiction, I do, but I often find myself second guessing it or just unable to get into the story, where as with non-fiction (assuming the topic is interesting) thinking “I can’t believe this!” makes me want to read more, not less. With that…

Esther The Wonder Pig
A couple who could never say no to adopting a new pet, ended up with a mini piglet that turned out to be a 600 lb commercial pig. Hilarity ensued.

Star.Ships
I’ve just started reading this but I’ve already run screaming to wikipedia thinking “What?? There is no way this is true otherwise I would have heard of it and oh.. there it is, wow…” which is really fascinating and there’s a lot of talk about how new evidence has a hard time getting coverage when people are invested in old theories. I’ve loving it.

Normal
The sole fictional work here and it’s by a friend, but it’s really great and it feels like it could be real because it’s very much about us, people like me and likely people like you, and how our lives and our worlds are driving us crazy.

The Voyeur’s Motel
Totally batshit story about this guy who ran a motel for 30 years that he’d installed a “viewing platform” above the rooms so he could watch his guests, and took very detailed notes of their sex lives and what they did in private. This was 60s, 70’s and 80’s and you (or at least I) balance between being unable to believe he wasn’t caught all that time, and fascinated by what his notes and commentary about people suggested.

Green Is The New Red
I read this a long time ago, and am rereading because everyday it seems like an even more important issue.

New York Is Hell
I just received my copy of this which was published by a friend, but I’ve very much enjoyed other works by the author Benjamin DeCasseres (1873-1945) and I’ve gotten little snipits of this over the last few years and it’s always left me wanting more. It’s described as “a collection of his writing solely focused on New York, but mostly about booze” which, given the tone of his other writing, sounds amazing.