Radio, SF, and cultural stopgaps

Growing up, I remember “Save Public Radio” stickers all over the place. Beanie-wearing hipsters would sip lattes and bemoan the iPod’s war on radio. There were petitions for grants to keep WBHM’s lights on. But radio is a tiny blip in the history of music. Ancient Rome had lyres … | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Can I smell as well as a bloodhound?

Bloodhounds can smell whether or not a human has merely touched a Coke bottle. When Richard Feynman discovered this fact in a Science article, he | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Can I smell as well as a bloodhound?

Bloodhounds can smell whether or not a human has merely touched a Coke bottle. When Richard Feynman discovered this fact in a Science article, he decided to try it himself. He handed his wife a six-pack and told her to handle one of the bottles for a couple minutes while he was o … | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Tailwind saved me from a coding ice age

I started programming a decade ago. I’ve gone through four distinct coding phases. Spoiler: this saga ends with Tailwind saving my life. In high | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Tailwind saved me from a coding ice age

I started programming a decade ago. I’ve gone through four distinct coding phases. PHP: the Jurassic beginning In high school, I had an idea for a group texting app. I wanted to assign phone numbers to groups of friends, and then whenever anybody in the group texted the number, e … | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Bierstadt and breakfast

Mt. Bierstadt is the closest 14’er to Denver. It’s also one of the easiest to climb. The parking lot was full at 9am. Cars were spilling out, parked | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Bierstadt and breakfast

Mt. Bierstadt is the closest 14’er to Denver. It’s also one of the easiest to climb. The parking lot was full at 9am. Cars were spilling out, parked on both sides of the road for a quarter mile in each direction. The trailhead sits at 11,600 feet. From there, it’s four miles and … | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Big vision, little start

Elon gets credit for creating huge, new markets. But all of his companies have started with existing markets. SpaceX Start: Put satellites in orbit | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Big vision, little start

Elon gets credit for creating huge, new markets. But all of his companies started with existing markets. SpaceX Start: Put satellites in orbit Someday: Colonize Mars Tesla Start: Make an electric McLaren for people with private jets Someday: Electrify transportation | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Avoiding a bad day

If I do any of these things, I have a bad day: Hit snooze Scroll Twitter before getting out of bed Fail to chug water in the morning Do 0 push-ups | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

2020 > 1924

Munger often says that, for a white guy with a math brain, there wasn’t a better time or place to be born than in 1920’s Nebraska. I strongly | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

The Needles, Canyonlands

The West still feels wild. America’s interior has only recently been fully explored. The canyons of the Colorado River were unmapped until John | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

To the next chapter

Yesterday, the movers showed up at 9:15am. Our apartment was empty by 1pm. We loaded up the Subaru and started driving up I-80. Goodbye, San | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Unlearning school

It’s taken me years to unlearn things I learned in school. I used to write introduction paragraphs first. I used to reference the thesaurus. I used | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Surprises generate smiles.

Catchy music is catchy because it’s predictable. We tap our feet to the beat as our brains guess upcoming notes. Then, we click Next. If the song | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Shared Lyft to Dunkin’ Donuts

I left Andy’s house at 4:30am to catch the first leg of my ATL-LAX-CAN-PNH journey. I ordered a shared Lyft in hopes that somebody else would be | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Pascal’s Scam

Bertrand Russell imagined what he’d say if he found himself on the wrong side of Pascal’s Wager: “But Lord, you did not give us enough evidence!”1 | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

New one-mile PR

There’s a homeless tent encampment surrounding the SF DMV at the far east end of the Panhandle. It’s where I started my run yesterday. Through the | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Antibodies for Losing Subscribers

Every month, David Dobrik loses 40k YouTube subscribers. He also adds 200k a month. But the number of people who unsubscribe still stings him.1 It’s | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Personality is the force majeure of the internet.

I follow @shl on Twitter, but not @gumroad; @elonmusk, but not @Tesla; @sm, but not @Winnie. I pointed this out to Sahil. He said, “funny because I | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

“All You Need To Know”

Last night, as we waited outside for the table ahead of us to finish dessert and pay, the hostess walked out with two glasses of champagne. “I’m | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Birds, Planes, And COVID’s Chokepoint

On January 22, 2020, a Pan Am Boeing 747 touched down at Heathrow for the first time. It was the 747’s first commercial flight. At the time, British | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Don’t Judge a Substack By Its Cover

Medium was beautiful when it first launched. The WYSIWYG editor blew my mind. Ads didn’t cover the first three paragraphs. It’s where all the cool | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Timezones, power-ranked: Mountain, Central, Pacific, Eastern

I’ve now lived in all four continental US time zones. Where I wake up impacts my routine. Central Time has been contributing enormously to this | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Restaurant Revenue and Goodhart’s Law

When we moved to Ketchum two winters ago, Elizabeth got a job waitressing at a little eight-table local restaurant. The walls were still blank on | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Long email signatures

I was wrong to think I needed to appear buttoned-up online. When I was a teenager, I had a personal website with an About Me page. It read like I’d | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

The High-Frequency-Trading Of News

If Bush had given his famous bullhorn speech in 2020, I’m not sure I’d have seen it. I’d have likely seen a little clip of end, when he puts his arm | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Google blew a ten-year lead.

Back when there were rumors of Google building an operating system, I thought “Lol.” Then I watched then-PM Sundar Pichai announce Chrome OS. My | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Picky Eaters, Philanderers, and Hamlet

Yesterday on Twitter, Andrew Wilkinson asked why anyone would optimize for something other than personal and family happiness.1 Leah Culver | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Birmingham’s Original Sin

Last Monday, I wrote down a bunch of potential blog topics: Deleting Twitter off my phone. How meritocracy is like free will: better to believe it | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

The coffee doesn’t taste any good

Back in February, I had a routine. My light alarm would turn on. I’d chug some water, put on my shoes, and head outside. There wouldn’t be cars on | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

I Am Nothing and Also Something

Most of my friends growing up had the same hair style: long bangs, swiped across the forehead. The style is often paired with boat shoes, Costa Del | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Stay, leave, or create a hacker house?

We moved to SF in October. After 18 months of lugging my Osprey around, I wanted an office to walk into and a coffee shop to meet new friends in. | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Late

I feel like I’ve been late to everything in life. I was late to learn to talk. Late to walk. Late to start kindergarten. Late to learn phonics. | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

What if I run out of things to say?

Michael Arndt wrote the script for Little Miss Sunshine in three days in May of 2000. He didn’t think the movie would get made. “Just too small and | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

@mmcgrana: Patio11’s Law: The software economy is bigger than you think, even when you take into account Patio11’s Law.1 A few years ago, I woke | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Narrow Band of Intelligence

There’s a meme in society that geniuses exist, popping out brilliant and ruminating about patterns from birth. Society generally believes there’s | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

The “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t” Fallacy

Is there a term for a problem that is exacerbated by its solution? A couple years ago, I got into an argument with a friend about a carpooling | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

I was tricked into thinking I had “grit”

I was tricked into thinking I had tons of grit as a student. I worked hard in school. I put in long hours. I stayed up all night reading and | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Shaving and being human

In Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy is captured during the Battle Of The Bulge. Billy is a worthless soldier. He doesn’t like war and refuses to fight. | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 3 years ago

Seatbelts and falling out of a Ford station wagon

My great-uncle (and middle-name-sake) lived on a farm in Virginia. He was a dairy farmer. He also collected cars. 240 trucks and 60 cars to be | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 4 years ago

Charlie Munger is slowly warming up to Elon Musk

2016 Berkshire Shareholder Meeting: Audience: “Charlie, one of my favorite quotes by you, is you want to hire the guy with an IQ of 130 who thinks | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 4 years ago

Running, one year apart

On April 4th of last year, we drove down to the St. Luke’s Outpatient Clinic in Hailey and the doctor sawed my cast off. I had my arm back! I could | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 4 years ago

Fruit flies and climate change

I tried to make Water Kefir a few months ago. It was meh. There weren’t so many bubbles. It tasted like vinegary water. I spilled sugar over the | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 4 years ago

Bill’s Guide To Bread

A couple years ago, Elizabeth gave me a copy of Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast. I ordered the recommended 12 quart Cambro tub, kitchen scale, and | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 4 years ago

Learning to love (monitors) again

In July of 2018, I sold everything in my apartment. “Goodbye, Things” to the Ikea desk, bed, and dresser. Goodbye to the lounge chairs, kitchen | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 4 years ago

“Hey Alexa, Pause The Economy”

Elizabeth and I were FaceTiming with Jane. She asked how we were doing. We’re fine. We came to Whistler at the beginning of last week. Instead of | Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 4 years ago

Whistler

Continue reading


@secondbreakfast.co | 4 years ago