I return to writing after a brief hiatus. Sometimes, to be truly present, one must stop documenting life and instead immerse oneself in every moment. This was a necessity for me over the past few weeks, but now, as things have resumed their normal pace, I find myself once again in front of a fire on a quiet evening, with time to write.

One of the most peculiar experiences of parenthood is how swiftly everything can slot into place. After the initial shock of realizing you have a small human in your house requiring constant care, it becomes normal. You settle into routines and rhythms that simply become part of your existence — but these routines are in constant flux, and your life becomes discombobulated again and again, though sometimes you can't pinpoint exactly why.

What changed? Nothing significant — except for a hundred little micro-rituals that shifted just enough to destabilize the entire ecosystem. The bedtime that was once 7 is now 7:15, dinner takes 20 minutes longer, wake windows have widened, and your child's expanding curiosity means you now spend a much longer chunk of your evening with her, teaching her sounds that animals make.

This destabilization, as jarring as it is, isn't negative. In fact, it's one of the most remarkable aspects of parenthood I've encountered. Each shift brings something new, different, and unexpected, constantly reshaping our daily lives.

Recently, Kristine bought Luna a new set of toys: Tiny plastic barns, each with a little roof, containing a small animal. Luna noticed them immediately, gasped with excitement, and we opened them together. She explored each barn briefly before moving on, her curiosity momentarily satisfied.

Hours later, as Kristine put Luna to bed, I performed the task of cleaning up her toys. As I put each little animal back into each little barn, I thought about how annoying the toys were — requiring a decent amount of work to reset them back to the way they were.

These weren't magnetic tiles that stuck to one another, or cubes that could be flung into a chest. They all took up their own space, had their own animal, and required me to patiently put them all back together, one at a time.

The next morning, Luna's gasp of delight upon seeing the reassembled farms made the tedium worth it. 'Help me?' she asked, her little hands already busy opening each barn. I added a new ritual to the nightly cleanup, finding the animals, the houses, the roofs, and putting them all back together.

The joy made the tedium worth it, and I added a new ritual to the nightly cleanup, finding the animals, the houses, the roofs, and putting them all back together.

That was two weeks ago. Now, the barns are mostly forgotten. Luna has moved on to toys that interact. She has a little book that makes sounds and says words aloud, and a box that makes music when she places toys on top. She's making up her own games and making trains propel themselves across the living room floor while yelling "choo choo" as loud as she can.

This is the bittersweet reality of parenthood: each stage, each new skill learned, is simultaneously eternal and ephemeral. In the moment, it feels like it will last forever. The things she does feel so important and so sacred that it's hard to imagine them no longer being a part of her. But then, almost in the blink of an eye, they're gone.

So I stay in the present, and I enjoy these moments, and I do my best to hold them tightly.

I’ll return to my regular schedule next week, and come back with a list of the books I've read since I last wrote.

That’s all for now.

From the present moment.

Luna // 14 Months // On Suburbs

I never thought I'd be the kind of person who'd consider leaving the city for the suburbs.

I love the energy of LA, but something shifts when you become a parent. Our home is beginning to feel cramped, stretched to its limits by Luna's constant movement and exploration. As she wanders from room to room and toy to toy, Kristine and I find ourselves grappling with a question that has taken on new urgency: Where do we see ourselves putting down longterm roots?

Before Luna, location didn't matter much to me. Living in South Central meant we weren't within close proximity of much, but a thirty-minute trip across town felt effortless. Now, even a ten-minute drive requires careful preparation and planning. I find myself increasingly aware of the time spent in transit, time spent getting to neighborhoods instead of being in them, time spent going to a restaurant and driving right back home. All of this time spent driving back and forth, when instead, if I lived elsewhere, I could feel situated.

I want Luna to grow up with the freedom to explore her surroundings, to walk to a nearby park or a friend's house, to feel a deep connection to the places around her. I want her to experience the richness of neighborhood life, the serendipitous encounters and impromptu playdates that come from being part of a tight-knit community. I've always wished I lived in a walkable neighborhood, with a coffee shop nearby to pop into whenever I want. Now, it feels more important than ever.

This is the time in most people's lives where they move to the suburbs, and I have to admit, I see the appeal. It's not only about school districts and square footage, it's about the quality of connections, the depth of community ties, the sense of belonging.

In Florida and Northern California, I built many of my friendships by sitting at coffee shops and striking up conversations with strangers. In LA, over the course of four years, this has never happened once.

Thinking about it, striking up a conversation with a stranger at a coffee shop in LA feels odd. Everyone is so focused on their own pursuits, busy with their own conversations and projects. There is little time for idle chatter. The frenetic energy of the city, the constant hustle and bustle, seems to discourage the kind of casual, unhurried interactions that are so essential to building a sense of community.

An appeal of suburbs is that the slower pace more readily translates to chance encounters and impromptu interactions. They’re woven into the fabric of daily life because strangers are no longer strangers, they’re neighbors.

This weekend we drove out to Whittier, a suburb on the east side of Los Angeles. As we explored, I was struck by how much easier it felt to connect with people in a city like this compared to those in the heart of LA. In Whittier, I suspect that problem of starting conversations would evaporate. Spending a few days at a local coffee shop chatting with regulars would likely yield an entirely new social circle.

Yet as appealing as that sounds, Kristine and I aren't sure we're ready to leave the heart of LA just yet. Perhaps instead, we can carve out pockets of intimacy and belonging in a more central area. Maybe it's about being the ones to create those spaces, forging our own little village amidst the sprawl of the city.

So uh…do you happen to be reading this, AND live in Los Angeles, AND have small children? If so, please write back! Let’s hang ☻

Dune Messiah is a weirdly quiet sequel to Dune, chronicling Paul Atreides' journey to becoming emperor.

At its core, the book is about the limits of knowledge and the burdens of leadership. As ruler of a galaxy, Paul finds himself ensnared in a web of political machinations and conspiracies, with the Bene Gesserit, Spacing Guild, Tleilaxu, and others vying to shape the future to their own ends. Despite his godlike status, he’s unable to escape the same petty power struggles that have echoed through history.

Paul's visions of the future are fragmented and ever-shifting, a burden as much as a gift. The weight of foreknowledge isolates him, taking him out of the present moment and into the future. In one point he laments:

I've had a bellyful of the god and priest business! You think I don't see my own mythos? Consult your data once more, Hayt. I've insinuated my rites into the most elementary human acts. The people eat in the name of Muad'dib! They make love in my name, are born in my name — cross the street in my name. A roof beam cannot be raised in the lowliest hovel of far Gangishree without invoking the blessing of Muad'dib!

Is it truly possible for a single individual, no matter how well-intentioned, to bend the path of history and impose their will without unleashing suffering? Is it truly possible to rise above plots to destroy you and take your place? Is it possible to no longer be king?

This book offers no tidy resolutions, but rather a poignant portrait of someone grappling with their own myth and the currents of destiny.

Stand Up Solutions, Conner O'Malley’s new special (available for free on YouTube), is performed with the aura of a Middle America corporate motivational speaker.

O’Malley constantly uses long-winded hyper-capitalist terms to describe new technological innovations, like one that ‘uses the power of 5G’ to ‘pull data directly from the audience’ to create new ‘data sets of comedy’.

He introduces an AI robot named KENN (Kinetic Emotional Neural Network) to do standup tailored to a single audience members, talks about how amazing his children’s algorithms will be because of how much data corporations will be able to track them by since birth, and pridefully boasts on the success McDonald’s will have once robots fully automize every franchise in the nation.

The jokes land because they are only a shade removed from reality. Everything that he describes carries an undercurrent of inevitability, a sense that this is simply the logical endpoint of the path we are already a good ways down. He's also just really funny. Worth watching!

That’s all for now.

From the present moment.

Luna // 14 Months

Luna is now fourteen months old, an interesting age that exists in the space between babyhood and toddlerhood. She is old enough to want to wander the playground, but too young to navigate its equipment. Old enough to climb on couches and stairwells, but too young to do so without constant supervision and support.

Luna's communication skills are also in transition. Her limited vocabulary is struggling to keep pace with her mind. One recent morning, she walked over to me with purpose, her small feet padding against the floor. "More!" she declared, her eyes wide and insistent. But more of what? More milk? More water? More toys? I offered all of these to her, none seeming to be the solution she was seeking. The question hung in the air, unanswerable. She couldn't find the words to articulate her needs, and I couldn’t decipher her limited toddler code.

In so many ways, fourteen months is an age of almosts and not-quites. She is almost a toddler, but not quite finished being a baby. Sometimes, I catch glimpses of the person she's becoming. A certain tilt of the head, a fleeting expression, a burst of laughter that seems to come from some secret place inside her. These are the tender shoots of selfhood taking form, fragile and miraculous.

I know there is so much more to come.

The Soul of a New Machine is a compelling snapshot of the early 1980s computing scene, but in hindsight it feels like a prelude to the real revolution that was about to arrive.

Reading it today, there's a sense that the author was chronicling the last gasp of an old order, not the birth of a new one. The engineers at Data General were pushing the limits of minicomputer design, but their machine was still a bulky, expensive piece of hardware aimed at businesses and institutions. The truly transformative shift was happening elsewhere, in the garages and homebrew clubs where tinkerers were experimenting with cheap, accessible microprocessors.

In a way, the book's focus on the minicomputer feels like a missed opportunity. The real soul of the new machine was being forged in the personal computer revolution, which would soon make computing a mass-market phenomenon and change the world in ways that few could have predicted.

Of course, it's unfair to fault the author for not being prescient. He captured the drama and human stakes of a specific moment in tech history with great skill and sensitivity. But from our vantage point, it's clear that the minicomputer was a doomed transitional technology, not the future of computing.

Perhaps that's the curse of writing about technology: no matter how insightful or well-observed, any account is bound to feel incomplete in hindsight. Innovation moves so quickly that even the most astute observer can only capture a fleeting moment in an ongoing story.

Which is why I found myself also underwhelmed by Evil Robots, Killer Computers, and Other Myths, written in 2021 just before the LLM race kicked off. The author’s core argument — that the real threat comes from authoritarian misuse of technology, not the technology itself — is certainly valid, but he seems to underestimate the potential for these tools to fundamentally reshape our relationship with information, creativity, and even our own cognition.

The sheer speed and magnitude of recent breakthroughs makes the future of AI harder to anticipate or control. Like The Soul of a New Machine, this book captured a specific moment in the evolution of AI when the ultimate trajectory was hard to discern. But we now know that language models weren't a dead-end like minicomputers turned out to be — they are rapidly maturing into a transformative technology that may be every bit as disruptive as the microprocessor.

Of course, it's possible that the LLM hype will fizzle out like so many tech trends before it. Perhaps AI will hit a wall, and our current crop of chatbots will come to seem as quaint as Data General's Eagle. But something tells me we've crossed a significant threshold. So while Evil Robots offers a helpful rebuttal to the crudest forms of AI doomerism, it may be too quick to dismiss the scale of the challenge ahead.

Having watched the first two of the three Planet of the Apes trilogy awhile ago, and with a fourth installment now out in theaters, I thought it was time for me to finally watch War for the Planet of the Apes. The movie, about Caesar and his tribe engaged in conflict with humans over misunderstandings that have gone too far to ever be repaired, is a fascinating blockbuster.

The film is less interested in the mechanics of its genre trappings — the military posturing, the explosive set pieces — than in the existential struggle at its core. It's a summer spectacle that dares to be introspective and deeply sad.

So too was another film I watched: Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. Set in a mythical version of the American frontier, the movie pairs Charles Bronson's nameless protagonist, playing a mournful harmonica before every fateful confrontation, against Henry Fonda's icy-eyed villain.

Like War for the Planet of the Apes, this film is attuned to the human toll of empire-building, to the lives swept aside in the name of progress. Bronson is an avenging specter, less a man than a manifestation of long-delayed justice. Claudia Cardinale's widow becomes the resilient heart of the story, and through her eyes, the promise of the frontier seems tainted, the dream of a better life out of reach.

Both movies are revenge stories, and in the end, they both offer a glimmer of hope, a suggestion that there may be a way to break the cycle of violence and find a measure of peace. For Caesar, it comes in the form of a new home for his people, and for Bronson's character, it comes in the form of a final chance to lay his demons to rest and move on. Very different conclusions, both valid in their own way.

That’s all for now.

From the present moment.

Kristine, Luna, and I were just trying to grab a quick lunch together, a brief respite in the middle of the day to be together as a family. We made it a whole six minutes away from home before the journey ended.

As we sat waiting at a red light, a red sedan came barreling towards us from behind, the driver oblivious to the fact that we were stopped right in front of them. Time seemed to slow down as I glanced up and saw the car filling the rearview mirror, the realization of what was about to happen washing over me like a cold wave. Impact was inevitable.

The collision was jarring, metal crunching and glass shattering, the violent sounds of our cars colliding. Luna immediately started wailing in the backseat, and both Kristine and I had only one thought: get to Luna, hold her, make sure she was alright. Nothing else mattered.

As we stumbled out of the car, people came streaming towards us from all directions, pouring out from the shops and restaurants lining the street. "Is the baby okay?" they asked, their voices laced with concern. "Check on that poor baby! Let me know if you need any help with her." Their kindness was touching, Luna was shaken up but blessedly unharmed. She clung to Kristine as the police arrived and took statements, as a fireman put a little pulse oximeter on her foot to check her vitals. And the whole time, I couldn't stop marveling at how in a split second, everything had changed.

How fragile this life is that we build for ourselves. One moment you're lost in the mundane concerns of the day, and the next you're standing on the side of the road in a sea of shattered glass. I was simply grateful that everyone was still whole.

It's fascinating how quickly you can slip in and out of different lives. I'm writing this from my couch where I'm being stared at by a plastic yellow giraffe sitting amongst half a dozen toys scattered across the ground where Luna left them. In a previous life, having such an assortment of brightly colored playthings underfoot would have been unthinkable, my house clean and spotless every night. But now, it's just part of the landscape of this particular existence I find myself in: The life of a parent.

Life is a series of transitions. We blink and we find ourselves inhabiting a completely different role, a different set of priorities and daily rituals. And then, in a split second, everything can change again.

When that car came barreling towards us, when the sickening crunch of metal meeting metal filled the air, I caught a glimpse of how quickly I could be thrown into yet another life. We're all just one wrong turn, one glance away from the phone, one unexpected diagnosis away from everything changing in an instant. From slipping into a life we never saw coming.

The thing about brushes with disaster is that they remind you of what's real, what endures after you strip everything else away. In those moments after the crash, all the petty worries and manufactured stresses fell away. All that mattered was that we were still breathing, still intact. Everything else was just noise.

But the noise has a way of creeping back in, doesn't it? The further you get from that moment of impact, the more the mundane concerns start to reassert themselves. The plastic toys scattered across the floor become an annoyance again rather than something you’re grateful for.

The truth is, there's no guarantee of tomorrow. No promise that the next time fate comes barreling towards you, you'll be lucky enough to walk away with nothing worse than a renewed sense of perspective. What do you do with that knowledge, that bone-deep understanding of your own fragility? You could drive yourself crazy trying to prepare for every possible contingency, every potential disaster lurking around the corner.

But that's no way to live.

Instead, you take the hit and you keep moving. You hold your loved ones a little tighter and you don't sweat the small stuff quite so much. I'll take my dented car and my daughter's tear-stained face and I'll be grateful that I get to slip back into this beautiful life. I spent my Saturday almost entirely with Luna.

That's all for now.

From the present moment.

FarCon

This week was spent IRL at FarCon, where I was not only an attendee and a participant for Base, but also a vendor. Noun, the passion project born out of Prop 450 in NounsDAO, was finally unveiled to the world. Our coffee pop-up, in partnership with Base and powered by Slice and Coinbase Wallet, was a huge success. With ‘all our powers combined’ we were able to do something really fun. Many bottles of Noun espresso were served, and many onchain payments were taken.

Collect NFT

As I watched people line up to get a coffee, paying right from their onchain wallets, I was struck by how surreal it felt. For months, Noun has existed only as an idea, and now it was a reality, being poured from bottles emblazoned with the Noun logo into paper cups that said Base Cafe.

It's funny how powerful it is to see an idea cross the chasm from abstract to concrete. To hold something in your hands that had previously lived only in your head and your heart.

Beyond coffee, my highlight of FarCon was the serendipitous collisions and meandering conversations that only happen when you manage to gather a thoughtful, multidisciplinary group in one place. There's a special alchemy to those moments, a sense of mutual resonance and inspiration that's hard to capture in words but impossible to forget once you've experienced it.

In many ways, FarCon felt like a physical manifestation of the ethos behind the best parts of the onchain ecosystem. The sense of being in community, of building together, of imagining new possibilities. Of having a shared stake, not just in a project, but in the future writ large.

I left feeling immensely grateful to have found a tribe of brilliant, passionate people to build alongside. Grateful for the opportunity to pour my energy into work that feels meaningful and impactful.

If I talked to you in person, thanks for spending a little bit of your limited time with me, and thanks for building something you love ♡

This week, amidst the fun of FarCon, I found my thoughts often drifting back to Luna. Sorry to all those who were stuck in conversation with me as I talked about being a dad!

Her steady evolution from infant into a toddler is moving at warp speed, so that even a short time away makes me realize how much comes and goes with quickness. In just the last few days, Luna started doing a lot of stuff. She’s doing a stomping dance when she gets excited. She's climbing up onto couches and chairs, though she hasn't yet figured out how to climb back down. When I come into her room in the morning, she looks at me and says a bright, insistent "Up!" And curiously, she seems to have tired of our "What does the animal say?" call-and-response game, bored of telling me what sound a sheep makes.

There's no pause button to savor a particularly cute quirk or funny mispronunciation before it disappears, replaced by some new developmental milestone. As soon as I grow accustomed to something she does, it’s gone. It's a cliché that kids grow up fast, but clichés exist for a reason. Part of the ache of parenthood is accepting the impermanence - that you can't freeze time, can't capture and keep all these incredible little stages and phases. The best you can do is be present for as much of it as you can. To really see it, soak it in, commit it to a corner of your memory.

This entry is short, because I’m going to be spending my Sunday with Luna.

Tony Fadell’s Build could have easily been a phoned in (pun intended) memoir, cranking out 200 pages of breezy anecdotes and aphorisms about his time building the iPod, iPhone, and Nest thermostat.

Instead, with a frankness that feels almost subversive, Fadell recounts the agonies of his time at both Apple and Google, mostly revolving around trying to do ambitious things within organizations that resist change. He distills hard-earned lessons about what it takes to lead people and keep pushing forward when plans shift and companies get acquired.

Fadell's unadorned account of the actual, often unglamorous work of invention is bracingly honest. This is not the typical highlight reel from someone who went out on top, but rather the reflections of someone who was repeatedly pushed out and knows it. That lends the book an introspective authenticity often lacking in leadership memoirs.

While many books by prominent tech leaders paint a rosy picture focused only on their biggest wins, Build stands out for Fadell's willingness to explore his lows as well as his highs. The behind-the-scenes accounts of turmoil at Google and Apple have a rare candor, and the inside story of Google's rocky transition to Alphabet is worth the price of admission alone.

More than just a collection of war stories, the book weaves together Fadell's experiences into a practical philosophy for leading people to build new things. He shares frameworks for setting vision, making decisions, dealing with setbacks, and maintaining motivation. Aspiring leaders struggling to drive change in entrenched organizations will find much to reflect on here.

I finished the Dollars trilogy by watching The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Interestingly, it was by far my least favorite film of the three. A Fistful of Dollars was charming in its scrappiness, a low budget film that was accentuated by the grime of its production quality. A Few Dollars More was that same concept, given more room to breathe and a slightly larger budget. This film, while good, felt like it lost something by growing too large. The plot felt more forgettable, the villain less intimidating, Eastwood’s character less iconic and more fallible.

That being said, the score gave the film an operatic grandeur that perfectly complemented its epic scope, and the Civil War setting provided a fascinating backdrop, lending the characters' personal greed and ruthlessness an even starker moral contrast against the carnage and destruction of the conflict raging around them. The scorched, barren landscapes and crumbling ghost towns served as a stark visual metaphor for the corrosive effects of violence and avarice.

While the film may have lost some of the raw vitality and concision of its predecessors, it still bangs. The deliberate pacing, punctuated by explosive bursts of action, creates an atmosphere of simmering tension that gradually builds to an almost unbearable intensity. It may not be the leanest or meanest of the Dollars films, but it’s unquestionably the most ambitious and operatic.

That’s all for now,

From the present moment,

Luna // 13 Months // On Chinatown

Today the family went on an outing to Chinatown. We've been there many times before, but just for short little jaunts — out of the car and into a restaurant, into a coffee shop or library. Today, we came with no agenda but to explore, unloading Luna’s wagon and meandering through the center plaza.

As we turned down a narrow alley with a ceiling full of lanterns, a flood of memories suddenly washed over me. "Luna, you've been here before!" I exclaimed with a smile. I pulled out my phone and scrolled back through my photos until I landed on it: An image of Kristine almost two years ago, standing in this very same alley, her pregnant belly beginning to fully show beneath her dress. A band-aid marked her arm from a doctor's appointment earlier that day, where an ultrasound and blood test had revealed our baby girl was in good health. It was at that appointment that we allowed cautious hope to take root where worry had lurked. In the photo, Kristine is smiling.

Now, I held up the phone, telescoping past and present and feeling them merge into one. The same red lanterns still hung above, but now that hoped-for future was manifest in the 13-month old in Kristine’s arms. Luna’s presence completed a picture that had only been half-drawn in that earlier photograph.

Parenthood is an exercise in presence and memory, each moment an opportunity to be taken back into the past. The lanterns transported me, throwing the passage of time into sharp relief. We trace and retrace the paths of our past, adding layers of meaning with each visit. The red lacquered shop windows and festive ceiling become a palimpsest, the faded-but-still-legible versions of our past selves mingling with the fresh ink of today. Perhaps we’ll take another photo here, in two years, or five years, or ten, of fifty. Maybe, decades from now, the hallway will ignite some spark in Luna’s mind, awakening a memory of her childhood.

I opened my camera to snap a new picture, capturing Kristine and Luna in front of the lanterns. In doing so I created yet another portal for my future self to step through, back to this perfect ordinary day, when the gift of an unhurried afternoon allowed us to amble and remember and imagine.

One day I will use this talisman to transport me back again, but for now, I put away the phone and return to the only moment that matters: The present.

Sea of Tranquility is one of the best works of fiction I’ve read in a long while, and I think it helped tremendously that I went in completely blind. I was recommended it by a friend, downloaded it, and started reading, knowing absolutely nothing. I just now read the book synopsis, and I think I would have been worse off for knowing it before I picked the book up. So, I’ll tell you no details. I’ll just pass the recommendation along to you, and hope that you experience it in the same way that I did. PS: This makes for a great audiobook.

I've always been drawn to a diversity of fields and interests rather than diving deep into one area of specialization, but this approach can often feel at odds with the prevailing wisdom that becoming an expert in a single domain is the key to success. Range validated my own meandering path, arguing persuasively that in a complex and unpredictable world, generalists are uniquely positioned to thrive. Drawing on examples from sports, art, music, science, and business, the author shows how cultivating range (both in knowledge and experience) powers innovation and creative breakthroughs.

I first read Range a few years ago, and at the time was struck at the power of drawing connections between disparate fields and ideas, cross-pollinating insights to solve thorny problems. This is one of my favorite things to do, and I had recently discovered tools-for-thought which were directly able to link disparate ideas together, on the screen. I decided to re-read it this year in a new phase of my life, as I’m deeply immersed in the task of building an onchain future. This time I was struck by how the book champions experimentation, positing that people who are able to make connections between unconsidered areas makes them good disruptors. Consider the story of Claude Shannon who developed the concept of Boolean gates:

Claude Shannon, who launched the Information Age thanks to a philosophy course he took to fulfill a requirement at the University of Michigan. In it, he was exposed to the work of self-taught nineteenth-century English logician George Boole, who assigned a value of 1 to true statements and 0 to false statements and showed that logic problems could be solved like math equations. It resulted in absolutely nothing of practical importance until seventy years after Boole passed away, when Shannon did a summer internship at AT&T’s Bell Labs research facility. There he recognized that he could combine telephone call-routing technology with Boole’s logic system to encode and transmit any type of information electronically. It was the fundamental insight on which computers rely. “It just happened that no one else was familiar with both those fields at the same time.”

The book suggests that following your curiosity and collecting diverse experiences is not indulgent dilettantism but in fact an astute strategy in an uncertain world. Breadth is not the enemy of depth, it is a compliment. If you've ever felt anxious about not specializing fast enough or guilty for being a "jack of all trades," this book offers a compelling counterpoint.

After catching Monkey Man in theaters last week, I ventured back out to experience Dune: Part Two in IMAX before it left the big screen. This was my first trip to CityWalk, which boasts one of the largest screens in the city, and it was there that I found myself transported once more to the sands of Arrakis. What a journey it was.

At its core, Dune is a story about prophecy, and I find myself captivated by the way it invites us to question Paul's role as the Lisan al-Gaib. Is he truly the savior, a messiah destined to lead the Fremen to glory? Or is he merely a pawn, a tool wielded by those in power to further their own agendas through the insidious machinations of galactic propaganda? Perhaps, in a twist of fate, both could be true—the prophecy genuine, and the propaganda simply the galaxy's way of ensuring its fulfillment. Each character grapples with this conundrum in their own way, and as a viewer, I find myself drawn into their internal struggles, pondering the same questions that haunt them.

Part One of Dune moved at a relentless pace, propelling Paul from the comforts of his ancestral home to the unforgiving deserts of Arrakis, transforming him into the leader of a guerrilla house, running and hunted. In Part Two, we are granted a brief reprieve, a chance to luxuriate in the story ever so slightly more and witness Fremen society. Yet, even as I reveled in these moments of exploration and discovery, a part of me couldn't help but yearn for more. I found myself wishing that this adaptation had been conceived as a trilogy, allowing us even more time to fully immerse ourselves in the world.

Like its predecessor, Dune: Part Two traverses its dense source material with remarkable efficiency, its plot moving at a breakneck pace, delivering a visual feast with every frame. When a Fremen warrior rode atop a sandworm, the banner of House Atreides fluttering in the wind behind them…I felt that.

With the film fresh in my mind, it’s time to crack open the pages of Dune Messiah and continue the story.

That’s all for now,

From the present moment,

Luna // 13 Months // On silence

Luna is making me reconsider silence.

Most of the time when Luna and I are together, I'm a whirlwind of chatter, asking questions, narrating our days, and filling every quiet moment with sounds and games.

The day begins and I ask if she wants to get up from her crib. The day continues and I explain to her what we’re doing, what toys she can play with, what food she’ll be eating. The day ends and I tell her it’s time to wind down, and every step of the bedtime ritual.

Recently, as she toddled around the living room, I watched her with tired eyes, too exhausted to keep up my usual conversational patter.

She caught my gaze and smiled. I smiled back. We held this for a long time, and the silence we shared wasn't empty. It was brimming with a subtle understanding, a deep okayness, a sense of togetherness. Luna felt no need to disrupt it with needless noise. She was entirely at ease dwelling in the quiet spaces between words.

In that wordless moment, a realization clicked into place like a key turning in a rusty lock. For Luna, silence is natural. Comfortable. A space to inhabit rather than a void to fill. And I hadn’t truly experienced this with her for a full year.

When did I unlearn the skill of silence? At what point did I absorb the notion that quiet in the presence of others is a faux pas to be smoothed over with compulsive chatter? When did I start believing that a lull in conversation is something to fear rather than savor?

As adults, we work so hard to sidestep these moments. We launch into nervous monologues, we ask banal questions, we whip out our phones, anything to avoid the discomfort of wordlessness, and I was doing that to Luna without realizing it. In my twitchy evasion, I was missing out on the silence with Luna — and silence is an underrated gift.

Luna is becoming a talker herself. As I write this, she’s sitting with some toys muttering ‘oh-pen’ over and over as she connects and disconnects a plastic egg that splits in two. As Luna grows more verbose, which she undoubtedly will, I want to help preserve her capacity for contented quiet.

My job is not to fill her silences, but to honor them. So when I find myself automatically launching into adult chatter, I will try to pause and take a cue from Luna instead. Breathe into the quiet. Appreciate its nuance. Smile at my daughter and let my eyes communicate what my voice cannot.

I want to give silence back its voice, knowing that those moments can bring us closer than a thousand words ever could.

Last month, I reached for a book in a category that’s a departure from my usual fare, picking up The Flame by Leonard Cohen, a collection of poetry published after the artist's death. This was a literal example of judging a book by its cover; I’ve never really listened to Cohen's music and rarely dive into poetry — but there was something about the book, and in learning that it was Cohen's final work, that compelled me to pick it up.

The poems span over half a century, from the 1950s up until his final years, and Cohen's inimitable voice (which even I as a non-listener can recognize) comes through clearly. In one poem he's talking casually of having an affair and losing his marriage, in the next he's grappling with existential questions and profound depths.

The unfiltered bluntness is jarring at first. But the more I sat with the poems, the more I appreciated the strange solace of their unflinching candor. Cohen's willingness to lay bare life's beauty and brutality in equal measure had a steadying effect, like a friend who always tells you the hardest truths you need to hear.

Stripped of melody, these ideas feel distilled to their essence. I put the book away weeks ago, but I've thought of it often. I think it's going to be a work I return to again and again, for the bittersweet comfort of keeping company with a voice capable of examining life with searing honesty. Cohen's words don't flinch away from the void, but they also don't forget to look for the light.

It had been ages since I ventured out to a movie theater.

The last film I caught was Barbie, a cultural phenomenon so steeped in references to Los Angeles that it felt almost mandatory to experience it on the big screen in LA. Since then, my movie-watching had been confined to the living room, until this week when I escaped the house to watch Monkey Man.

Last year I went on a binge of action films, devouring all four chapters of John Wick as well as 80s classics like Demolition Man and Robocop. Dev Patel's directorial debut fits right in with that crowd, and I'm glad I witnessed it before it inevitably gets chopped up into gifs and memes upon its digital release.

This is a revenge tale, but it's also a commentary on societal inequality, and it’s also an ode to outcasts and misfits finding their place, and it’s also a meditation on the hollowness of vengeance in the face of true purpose. For a movie that's mostly an unrelenting sequence of people getting beat up, it has surprising thematic heft.

Patel’s protagonist reminded me of Swayze's turn as Dalton in Road House. Both are men living by strict personal codes, unbound by society's rules and mores, so utterly committed to their beliefs as to become unstoppable forces. The best action films aren't just empty calories, instead they smuggle in social critiques, philosophical musings, and explorations of weighty themes under the guise of mayhem. They understand that even as we delight in spectacle, it can act in service of a story about forging identity and battling oppression.

Watch it on the biggest screen you can.

That’s all for now,

From the present moment,

Luna // 12 Months // On Bottles

This week, I put Luna's bottles away and experienced a sadness entirely new to me.

The ritual of feeding my baby a bottle is one of the earliest and most cherished memories I have of being a parent. The darkness of the room, the gentle recline of the rocking chair, the warmth of her against my chest — it's a moment etched into my heart with a profound and indelible power.

But now, that chapter has closed. Luna, in all her joyful curiosity, has moved on to sippy cups. straws, and solid foods.

As I placed the bottles into a plastic bag, I felt a pang of almost existential hurt, sharper than any I’ve felt before. Previous losses, while poignant, were always balanced by a sense of gain - the reclamation of my bedroom from Luna's bassinet, the heart-bursting delight of her first toothy grin in absence of her infant toothless smile.

This felt different. The bottles, once so vital to her growth and nourishment, were now useless — maybe even detrimental to the bright, babbling baby who no longer needed them — and there was no shiny new phase to balance out their loss.

Like so many bittersweet "lasts" of early parenthood, the end of Luna's bottles blindsided me with its suddenness. There was no pomp or circumstance to our final bottle, no sentimental sense of occasion. Just the quiet reality of moving on to what comes next.

There’s a finality to seeing the bottles sitting inert in a plastic bag. Will they be passed on to a friend, donated, or stored for a potential next baby? I'm not ready to decide yet. Packing them away was difficult enough, an acknowledgment that this chapter is definitively over.

Now that’s it’s over, I’m recognizing that the endless cycle of filling and washing and filling again was never really about the milk. It was a tangible representation of my most elemental purpose as her parent: To feed her, to hold her, to love her.

Parenthood is agreeing to break your own heart, over and over. It is constantly allowing your love to take new forms as you surrender to your child's changing needs. It is being tethered and set adrift, all at once.

These changes, these little losses, are the cost of bearing witness to her unfolding. So I'll put away the bottles and feel the ache of what's been lost. But the love? The love remains.

Two books this week, both about the digital world we live in:

Co-Intelligence advocates for AI in a very straightforward way…perhaps too straightforward. I fear this book may be outdated within months as it's so rooted in the AI systems of this present moment. It likely won't age well as they continue to rapidly evolve.

This isn't written for those already using AI, but for the skeptics and confused. For that audience, it does a great job painting a future where AI makes the world better instead of worse. I think that's a worthwhile perspective to put out there amidst the fear and negativity.

Using a similar structure, Filterworld attempts to explain the algorithms that rule our digital lives today, controlling everything from social feeds to music platforms, influencing how we communicate, create, and connect.

The author worries the lack of human curation in algorithms robs us of true connection. He points to the Criterion Channel as the best of what the internet could be: Unparalleled access combined with world-class human curation.

There was much I appreciated in Filterworld's analysis, but one issue nagged at me. The author often admits he's bad at social media, "tweeting into the void" and comparing posting to playing a pointless game on his phone. With all due respect, that's a skill issue.

So many people understand the internet, but still don't grasp how to effectively use it. The author falls into this camp. Social media and online spaces are akin to any social environment, requiring emotional intelligence, nuance, and finesse to navigate well. Dismissing it because you’re bad at using it feels incorrect.

Both books spotlight critical issues as we hurtle into an AI-powered, algorithm-driven world. How do we preserve human agency and connection? What role should AI play? These are key questions as technology reshapes society, and while imperfect, these books are earnest attempts to grapple with our new reality.

Hooked into a western mood from watching Roadhouse and A Fistful of Dollars a couple of weeks ago, I returned to the world of the man with no name to watch A Few Dollars More.

Taking the themes of the first film, A Few Dollars More expands in scope and ambition. No longer confined to a single town, the film traverses a broader landscape of the American West, painting on a wider canvas of moral ambiguity and uneasy alliances.

In this tale, two bounty hunters initially at odds must join forces to take down a shared enemy — the ruthless, psychopathic outlaw El Indio and his gang. Eastwood reprises his role, paired with Lee Van Cleef as an older, wiser rival bounty hunter.

The dynamic between Eastwood and Van Cleef's characters forms the heart of the film, a tenuous partnership born of necessity and mutual distrust. Both men are loners by nature, hardened by tragedy, driven by their own unspoken codes of justice.

Their quarry, El Indio, is played with manic intensity. Ruthless, sadistic, yet possessed of a certain warped charisma. It could be argued that Indio is the central figure of the movie. It is his scheme that forms the backbone of the plot: A heist targeting the seemingly impregnable Bank of El Paso. As Mortimer and Manco trail the outlaws, infiltrating their ranks, the game of cat-and-mouse escalates across an unforgiving terrain of canyons, deserts and dusty border towns.

Westerns rock.

That’s all for now,

From the present moment,

Luna // On traveling // 12 Months

Traveling with a one-year-old can feel daunting. Kristine and I have taken trips with Luna before - a weekend in Mexico when she was just a few months old, a week in Guatemala at eight months - but this recent journey felt different, more substantial. It was a multi-leg odyssey, shuttling us from Los Angeles to visit my relatives in North Carolina, then on to Florida to see Kristine's family, before circling back home.

Leaving behind the comforting routines we'd established was painful. Luna's room and crib, her high chair and well-stocked fridge, the toy chest and neighborhood walks that anchored our days. Knowing those would be inaccessible, I was unmoored. Those cherished rituals were replaced by the unfamiliar: A pack-and-play which Luna seemed hesitant to embrace, meals eaten on floors and laps, a sparse selection of travel-sized toys packed away in a little bag within a suitcase. Our usually predictable life, which in recent months had calcified into a reassuring rhythm, was suddenly syncopated and offbeat.

All that being said, babies are adaptable. I was surprised by how readily Luna adjusted to this new existence far more quickly than I did — and at a year old, she was now an active, babbling being, absorbing the shifting scenery around her with bright, curious eyes. It all felt so different from our previous trips, when she was just a swaddled infant lump accompanying us passively.

This time, Luna engaged. In North Carolina, she delighted in being with my family, playing with toys and party balloons and singing songs. Reaching Florida, she took to the pool with glee, splashing the water from within her miniature float. And everywhere we stopped, as soon as we set her down, she was off - toddling across airport lounges, tearing down hallways, exploring every new open space with infinite energy.

Watching her, I realized travel for Luna was pure wonder, each new vista and room and face a revelation. Her world was expanding by the minute, by the mile, and her enthusiasm, her simple joy in exploration, was contagious. When I was with her, I felt my homesickness dissolve, replaced by the thrill of seeing the world through her eyes.

One afternoon near the end of our trip as we walked along a nature trail in the Tampa Bay, we spotted baby alligators. I reached out and pointed my finger, and watched her follow the invisible line I made and spot the creature floating in the water, camouflaged among the reeds. Just a few weeks earlier, this gesture would have been meaningless to her, but now, she grasps the significance of pointing, the concept of joint attention. "Look at that," I said, and this time, she understood. Her mind was making new connections by the second.

Travel with a baby is work, no doubt about it. Routines are disrupted, nerves are frayed, sleep is often scarce. It's an exercise in improvisation and patience. But it's also an invitation to embrace a beginner's mind, to experience the unfolding of awareness - your child's and your own.

As much as I've grown to love the comforts of home, I also appreciate the beauty in introducing my daughter to new places. By venturing out into the world together and exploring the unfamiliar, I get to share in her wonder and discovery. No matter where her path may lead in the future, I hope that it will feel a little less daunting, a little more familiar, because she will have traversed spaces first with us by her side, her eyes wide open to the unexplored.

The two categories of media this week were taken up by the same piece of fiction: Dune.

Somehow I made it to the year 2024 without knowing much about Dune. I never read the book, I never watched so much as a trailer for the film. I had, of course, heard bits and pieces of the story. The desert planet, the worms, the messianic protagonist.

I had been stopped from engaging for a few reasons: intimidation of the books length, the impenetrable language of the first chapter which I had picked up and put down several times, and also, perhaps, the fear of disappointment that comes with approaching any cultural monolith.

Regardless, I decided it was finally time to take the leap. To read Dune is to be dropped into a world of richness and strangeness - cinnamon smell of spice in a vast desert holding secrets beneath its shifting sands. Frank Herbert's worldbuilding enveloped me.

Reading Dune, I was struck by how effortlessly it seemed to bridge the gap between the intimate and the epic. On one hand, it was a deeply personal story of a person grappling with their destiny. On the other, it was a sweeping saga of empire, rebellion, and the tides of history. Herbert seemed to be saying that the two are not so different - that in the crucible of human experience, the personal and the political are always inextricably intertwined.

I finished the book and almost immediately watched the film. There’s a hypnotic quality to the movie’s imagery. The undulant movements of the sandworms, the play of light across the dunes, the eerie beauty of the spice. Watching it within the Vision Pro felt like having my field of vision swallowed whole.

There's always a risk, of course, in consuming a source material and its adaptation in such close proximity. Would the film overwrite what I had envisioned within my mind’s eye? Would it feel like a betrayal of the world I had just constructed in my head? But rather than compete, the two experiences felt complementary. Where Herbert's prose had left room for imagination, Villeneuve's visuals rushed in to fill the gaps. And where the film necessarily truncated Herbert's sprawling narrative, my memory of the book provided connective tissue, adding depth and resonance to each scene.

It was a dialogue between mediums, each enriching the other. The book and the film were not adversaries, but allies, co-conspirators bringing Dune to life.

In the days that followed, I found myself returning to both experiences, toggling between them in my mind. A line from the book would surface, and suddenly a scene from the film would gain new significance. A visual from the movie would linger, and a passage from the novel would seem to shimmer with added meaning. Fundamentally, the two works were speaking to each other, enriching one another, forming a kind of stereoscopic vision.

Great fiction creates a universe that is not just immersive, but porous. It seeps into your thoughts, colors your perceptions, becomes a lens through which you view your own reality.

Now I have to find time to watch Part Two.

That's all for now,

From the present moment,

With Luna turning one, Kristine went all out for her birthday party. The theme was strawberries, Luna's current favorite food, and every detail was berry-themed, from the ice cream to the cake to the decorations. I ate more strawberries that day than I had in a very long time.

Before the guests arrived, the three of us went out to the front yard to play in the little baby gym Kristine had set up. It had big stackable foam blocks, a ball pit, and a slide. Looking back, it was my favorite moment of the entire day.

As I watched Luna play, I was struck by the pure, unadulterated joy and wonder she found in the simplest things. I watched her as she made up her own game, grabbing balls from the pit and dropping them through a little hole in the slide's steps, watching them bounce their way down. To an adult, a ball pit and slide are only one thing, but to a one-year-old, they represent something different entirely. Luna didn't care that she was using the slide in a way contrary to its intended purpose. She didn’t even really grasp what that purpose was. Instead, she was fully immersed in the simple delights of cause-and-effect, object permanence, and gravity.

As the day went on and the birthday festivities ramped up, I found myself continually drawn back to that moment of pure, unstructured play. There's something so special about the way young children engage with the world, finding entertainment and learning opportunities in the most mundane things. A cardboard box can become a fort. A pair of wooden spoons can become a pair of drumsticks. A plastic cup can become a home for cherished toys.

As Luna smashed her little hands into her strawberry cake and tasted frosting for the first time, I knew this was a day I would cherish forever — and when the memories have faded and the berry-themed decorations have long since been packed away, I’ll always remember Luna's game in the ball pit, basking in the Los Angeles sun.

Soul Boom by Rainn Wilson (yes, Dwight from the Office — he also ran a longterm online media project called Soul Pancake) delivers a charming and insightful exploration of spiritual practice.

While the book delves into some heavy existential territory, it never feels preachy or ponderous. Wilson approaches spirituality with an open, inquisitive mind, more interested in asking big questions than claiming to have all the answers. He draws upon an eclectic mix of influences, from the Baha'i faith of his upbringing to Buddhist and Transcendentalist ideas, but avoids dogma in favor of encouraging readers to seek their own truths. Ultimately, Soul Boom is a reminder to approach life with humility, compassion, and a sense of wonder. A favorite quote:

When in conversation with an atheist, I always ask about the God they don’t believe in, and they usually, to a T, describe a God that I also don’t believe in. I’ll then get to respond with one of my favorite sentences: ‘I don’t believe in the God that you don’t believe in.’

This week I watched two westerns, in a way.

On the surface, Road House might seem like just another '80s action flick, replete with bar fights, romance, and a villain straight out of central casting — but beneath its neon-lit veneer lies a film that taps into the spirit of the American West, transplanting its archetypes and themes into the decade it was filmed.

Patrick Swayze's Dalton is the quintessential western hero: a mysterious outsider with a dark past, riding into town to confront the corrupt forces that hold sway. In this case, the town is a small Missouri hamlet, and the corrupt force is Brad Wesley, a local businessman with a chokehold on the community. Surprisingly to me, the film isn’t satisfied to be a simple good-vs-evil tale — it's a meditation on the nature of violence and the toll it takes on those who wield it.

Like the lone gunslingers of the Old West, Dalton is a man with a reputation and a code. He's the best at what he does - which in this case is cleaning up rough roadside bars rather than frontier towns. As a "cooler", his very role is to be a restrained keeper of the peace, using force only as an absolute last resort. Yet violence remains his most potent tool, and the one Wesley and his goons repeatedly force him to employ.

The film shows us a man who has grown weary of the very skills that define him. Dalton's attempts to forge a new life, to find peace and perhaps even love, are constantly thwarted by the specter of his violent past and the demands of the present.

It was surprising to me to watch Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and see many of the same story beats, told two decades earlier. Clint Eastwood's "Man with No Name" is a gunfighter who speaks softly but carries a big stick, a far cry from the square-jawed, morally upright heroes of traditional westerns.

This too is a story about the corrupting influence of power and the thin line between civilization and savagery. The town of San Miguel is a powder keg waiting to explode, with two rival families vying for control and the innocent caught in the crossfire. Into this chaos rides Eastwood's gunfighter, a wild card who upsets the balance of power and sets in motion a chain of events that can only end in bloodshed — and hopefully peace.

Like Dalton, the Man with No Name is a master of violence who nonetheless adheres to his own moral code, one that compels him to stand up for the weak and the oppressed, even as he profits from the conflict he creates. At their core, both films are explorations of the violence that lurks beneath the surface of civilization, and the men who are both masters and slaves to that violence. They're tales of lone heroes who stand up to corruption and injustice, even as they grapple with their own demons.

In the end, both Dalton and the Man with No Name ride off into the sunset, their work of bringing justice to a lawless frontier complete — but they very nature keeps them from ever truly be a part of the society they protect.

That's all for now,

From the present moment,

This week, Luna turned one year old. As dawn broke and she began to stir, Kristine and I walked into Luna's room and greeted her with a single birthday candle flickering atop her favorite breakfast: An English muffin. She hasn't quite mastered the art of blowing out candles yet, so we happily did the honors, and then we ventured into the living room, where a constellation of gifts awaited her: a pint-sized toddler scooter, a cuddly teddy bear, and one of those ubiquitous plastic "cruiser" cars that seems to exist in every family's home (this particular one a generous gift from a neighbor!).

To our delight, Luna navigated from one present to the next, exploring each with curiosity. She investigated the scooter, hugged the teddy bear, played with some balloons, and finally went over to the car and began to gleefully push it around. I gently placed her inside the vehicle and guided her on a cruise around the living room, watching her take in the ride.

Later, as I was putting Luna down for her nap, Kristine sent me a video she had taken during those moments. With my daughter nestled on my chest, drifting off to sleep, I watched the video and found myself overcome with emotion. In the video, I caught a glimpse of the toddler Luna is becoming, a realization that I was no longer gazing at the baby I've grown so accustomed to having by my side every day. Throughout this year, I've made a concerted effort to be present, but it still doesn't feel like enough. This first year has come and gone, taking with it this phase of Luna, and it seems like only yesterday that it all began.

Over the past 12 months, I've consciously tried to immerse myself in every moment, to absorb every smile, every giggle, every new discovery. I've attempted to memorize the sensation of her tiny hand wrapped around my finger, the softness of her skin brushing against my cheek, the way her eyes light up when she sees me enter the room. I've tried to etch these precious moments into my memory, understanding their ephemeral nature and the impossibility of reliving them.

I want to remember every detail, every milestone, every precious second of this incredible journey, but I know that's not possible. Time will continue to move forward, and Luna will continue to grow and change. All I can do is continue to be present, to cherish every moment we have together, and to trust that even as she becomes the toddler, the child, the teenager, and the woman I glimpsed in that video, she will always be my baby girl.

What I Read

Unreasonable Hospitality is a manifesto for a new kind of hospitality, one that's less about following the rules and more about breaking them in the name of creating unforgettable experiences.

As a restaurateur and hospitality entrepreneur, Eleven Madison Park' Guidara has seen firsthand the magic that can happen when you prioritize the needs and desires of your guests above all else. He's witnessed the transformative power of small gestures, like paying the meter for a guest who’s street parking is about to run out, and he’s also orchestrated grand, over-the-top moments that have become the stuff of legend, like researching guests so their wedding music can be played during their dinner.

One of my favorite quotes from the book is a pretty provocative one: "Cult is what you call an organization where everyone enjoys working there." In a world where so many people feel disconnected, disengaged, and unfulfilled in their jobs, Guidara argues that the key to success lies not in chasing profits or cutting costs, but in cultivating a culture of joy, passion, and purpose. This comes from the person who understands that it’s better to find roles for each person that makes them excited to wake up and come into work. If you’re passionate about beer, you become the beer expert. By putting people first (both guests and staff) and daring to be unreasonable in your pursuit of excellence, you can create something truly special – not just for patrons, but for yourself and everyone around you.

What I Watched

The Late Show is an excellent 1970s neo-noir film that follows an aging private eye as he investigates the murder of his ex-partner. I loved the version of 1970s Los Angeles it captures, with its dive bars, shady characters, and pervasive sense of disillusionment. A spiritual successor to Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (who produced this as well), both movies focus on detectives who are weary and weathered, but each inhabits a distinctly different world.

In The Long Goodbye, Elliott Gould's Philip Marlowe is a man out of time, a 1950s gumshoe adrift in the hazy, morally ambiguous landscape of the 1970s. The Late Show's Ira Wells, played with gruff charm by Art Carney, feels like a man who has always understood his place, and as such the mystery unfolds at a more conventional pace, with Wells doggedly pursuing leads and trading barbs with a colorful array of suspects and informants.

What sets The Long Goodbye apart is how it immerses the viewer in the texture and atmosphere of Los Angeles - the hazy sunlight, the winding hillside roads, the crashing waves of the Pacific. It feels like a real place, not just a backdrop for a mystery. And in Marlowe, Altman and Gould have created one of the greatest protagonists in all of cinema - a wisecracking, world-weary knight errant who remains true to his own moral code even as the world crumbles around him.

The Late Show may not subvert the genre to the same degree as The Long Goodbye, but it still manages to put its own spin on familiar tropes, creating a world that feels both comfortably recognizable and slightly off-kilter. In the end, both films serve as love letters to a bygone era of detective fiction, even as they acknowledge the impossibility of ever truly going back.

That's all for now,

From the present moment,

As I settled into the dentist's chair, a sense of unease washed over me. It had been far too long since my last visit, a fact made glaringly obvious by the dull ache in my jaw and the sharp twinge of pain whenever I bit down. I had been putting off the dentist for months, telling myself I'd schedule an appointment when things settled down, but as any new parent can attest, there's always something else on the horizon.


That constant cycle of ‘something else’ led to a skipped cleaning here, a canceled checkup there - small lapses, but they add up. So here I was, getting a root canal.

Immobilized and reclined in the chair, surrounded by the sights, sounds, and smells of the clinical environment, my mind couldn't help but drift back to the hospital room where Luna entered this world almost one year ago. It's nearly impossible to reconcile that tiny, helpless newborn with the fearless, personality-packed toddler she is becoming - scrambling across rooms, filling the air with squeals of laughter, and developing her own unique sense of humor.

As I did my best to distract myself from the procedure happening inside my open mouth, I found myself tracing back through the incredible developmental leaps Luna has made over the course of the year. The first few months already feel like a distant, hazy memory; that version of Luna who existed primarily to sleep, eat, and cry is difficult to recall with any clarity. After that, I more clearly remember the time I began to see real depth and recognition in her eyes as she started to track objects and movements around her. I can picture her so vividly, sitting beside the window in her rocker, watching the leaves dance in the breeze outside. The rocker is now in storage, uninteresting to a baby that’s always on the move.

As I continued thinking through the year, the leaps came faster and more pronounced. The first time she rolled over, an adorable array of indecipherable babbles followed rapidly by her first "dada" and "mama." Her attempts to stand, and then the way she would wiggle and dance whenever music played. So many of these milestones seemed to arrive all at once in just a few short months, it’s hard to remember exactly when they happened. Was she babbling in October, when we went to Guatemala? Was she standing during Christmas?

If it’s hard for me to remember one month ago, it makes me wonder what it’s like from Luna’s perspective. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for her to experience the world anew with each developmental leap, her brain working overtime to map and make sense of a constant stream of input, to formulate increasingly sophisticated ways of engaging with and responding to her environment. As I sat in the dentist’s chair I thought about how I was witnessing one tiny piece of the vast evolutionary code that makes us human booting up in real-time, millions of years of finely-tuned survival instincts and algorithms sparking to life inside my daughter.

When the dentist finally finished and sent me on my way, I stepped out into the bright sunlight feeling dazed. Pulling out my phone to check the time, I was greeted by my lock screen photo: Luna at 8 months old, so different from the little person she's become now at nearly a year. The discomfort and inconvenience of the root canal felt insignificant. The pain, the challenges, all the little sacrifices of this first year of parenthood, they all telescoped down to mere blips when measured against the immense, life-altering joy and awe of nurturing a brand new human life into being. Later, I called the dentist’s office to schedule an appointment to receive a crown and then a cleaning in six months time. As I mark my calendar, I'm reminded that it's not just a date with my dentist. It's a marker of time, a reminder of how quickly life moves forward, and a promise to myself to savor every moment with my daughter, to be present and grateful for each and every day.

What I Read

I recently picked up two books by authors I deeply admire, but had markedly different reactions to each.

Some Remarks, an anthology of Neal Stephenson's essays and interviews from across his long career, proved to be a bit of a letdown. While there are glimmers of insight into the celebrated author's creative process and enduring obsessions, too much of the material felt lightweight or haphazardly thrown together. Kicking things off with a piece about the perils of sitting at desks is an odd choice to say the least.

This doesn’t change the fact that Stephenson is one of the defining writers of our time whose best novels fizz with big ideas about technology, history, and human progress. It’s just that little of that brilliance comes across here. Readers new to Stephenson would be better off starting with one of his novels; for long-time fans, this is likely to be a curiosity at best.

In Butcher's Crossing, John Edward Williams serves up a gripping Western about a jaded Harvard dropout seeking something "authentic" on the 1870s frontier. Falling in with a band of buffalo hunters captained by the charismatic but singular-minded Miller, they set out to find an untouched herd sequestered in the Colorado wilds.

Williams' terse, muscular prose is impeccably matched to the story and its inhabitants. His other novel, Stoner, an all-time personal favorite, charts the outwardly unremarkable life of an English professor in much more muted tones. What unites these two very different books is prose capable of conveying both the blood and muck of a buffalo slaughter and the quiet desperation of a man caught in midlife struggles. Both novels refuse the consolations of easy resolution; their power lies in their unblinking gaze into the human experience in all its messy, painful, and sometimes beautiful complexity

What I Watched

During my year of movies, I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes and liked it just fine. This week, I carved out time for the sequel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Set ten years later, the film finds Caesar presiding over a growing simian civilization thriving in Muir Woods while a group human survivors emerge from a deadly pandemic's wreckage in nearby San Francisco.

The resonance of the film stems from its thoughtful exploration of the tenuous bonds between both societies. Caesar, having gained wisdom and experience since we last saw him, strives to maintain peace and guide his community of intelligent apes. However, the scars of past human cruelty still run deep, embodied most fiercely in Caesar's lieutenant Koba.

As the two factions warily broker an uneasy truce, it portrays both as capable of reason and emotion, kindness and violence. When the truce inevitably unravels, it feels tragically unavoidable - the result of understandable fear, mistrust, and simple failures to communicate.

While the movie succumbs to some of the usual pitfalls of the summer blockbuster (a few too many explosive set-pieces and sometimes plodding pacing issues) it manages to balance spectacle with a thoughtful allegory about the challenges of building and maintaining peace in the face of distrust and tribalism.

Now I have to watch the final film in the trilogy.

That's all for now,

From the present moment,

Luna's first birthday is just around the corner, and it's incredible how much she’s grown and developed in her short life so far. Looking back just a month or two, she was an entirely different baby—unable to walk or grasp objects with intention. Now at nearly one year old, Luna is beginning to learn how to play.

In the past week, I've noticed her eyes light up and her little hands reach out when she spots colorful objects like blocks or stuffed animals; and one toy I'm particularly excited about is her set of magnetic building tiles. These colorful plastic squares and triangles stick together, allowing them to be assembled into an endless variety of structures. For the first time, I find myself just as absorbed in playing as Luna is when we're on the floor together.

Many of our mornings now start by dumping the magnetic tiles onto the living room rug. I'll build a tower, and Luna will gleefully knock it down. Then I'll use the fallen pieces to construct a makeshift garage for her toy car. She’ll work to free the car from being within the transparent tiles, grasping each and experimenting with how they connect. She's not yet figured out what it means to connect the pieces together, but there's something mesmerizing about watching a baby discover that each object has meaning.

Even more magical than playing together is that we now share in laughter. I'll do something silly that makes Luna laugh, which in turn makes me laugh, and before I know it we’re both laughing together. We’ve gone from one-way laughter (I play peekaboo, she giggles) to laughter being a shared experience. I have no words to describe how special that is.

I have a feeling that these magnetic building blocks are going to be a staple of our home for years to come, and I can only imagine what structures will one day emerge as Luna builds alongside me. For now, I celebrate each structure I make, and the experience of spending time in play and laughter with my daughter.

What I Read

Awhile back I started watching the film Cosmopolis, and was so baffled by its wooden dialogue that I gave up on it. Recently I learned that the movie is actually an adaptation of a book. I decided to give it a read, and I’, glad I did, as it helped me better appreciate what the story is trying to do.

On the surface, Cosmopolis is about a young billionaire asset manager who impulsively decides to get in his stretch limo and get a haircut across town, all while the city descends into chaos around him. But the book made me realize the characters are not meant to be fully realized, they are instead archetypes representing different capitalist mindsets and ideologies. Once I understood them as avatars rather than people, I was able to appreciate the hypnotic, philosophical dialogue of DeLillo’s work.

The book isn’t about getting a haircut, of course. It’s about commerce and capitalism and economies. It’s an almost anthropological dissection of the financial ruling class — and now that I better comprehend DeLillo's intent, I'm eager to revisit the film adaptation and see how it translates to the screen, armed with the context I was lacking on first viewing. 

What I Played

Reader, let me tell you about Balatro. It's a roguelike game centered around poker, but puts a clever twist on the standard formula. Each game, you're dealt a fresh deck and given a selection of special joker cards that modify the rules. One joker might let you play a straight with just four cards instead of five, another might give bonus points for playing spades, and another might smear the ink of the card, letting it go from an ace of spades to an ace of whatever suite you’d like it to be.

Because you encounter different jokers with each game you play, you have to adapt your strategy every time. It becomes a puzzle of figuring out how best to utilize your jokers to maximize your score. It's immensely satisfying to piece together a high scoring hand, and since each playthrough is so different, it feels endlessly replayable.

I’m utterly hooked, so much so that I had to pull myself away to write this very letter. It's the most absorbed I've been in a game for quite some time, and I don’t even particularly like playing poker. Highly recommended.

That's all for now,

From the present moment,

The rains have come hard this month, the fourth-wettest February on record. We’ve been trapped inside our house as the waters descend, scouring the streets and flooding the gutters. Then, just as quickly, the clouds part and the sun blazes forth.

These are the moments we live for. Out comes the wagon, into the wagon goes Luna, and off we go on a walk through our neighborhood. As always, Luna stands at the front, surveying her domain. She waves her scepter (today, a wool mushroom) and we glide down the sidewalk, past palm trees and stucco houses glowing in the late afternoon southern California sun.

As we’ve gone on more and more walks, more and more toys have ended up in her wagon like precious cargo. Here is the latest inventory:

One knitted mushroom of dull red yarn.

One rubber whale, hijacked from the bathtub.

One plastic dog, with movable arms stretched outward in permanent surprise.

One candy hamburger still wrapped in its crinkling plastic, bestowed by a nice vendor at the farmer's market.

One rubber giraffe, rendered with surprisingly lifelike detail.

The rains have made everything lush and green. Lawns that are normally scrubby and brown are blanketed in grass, palm trees drip with moisture, and flowers burst forth from gardens.

Luna is now a constant babbler, offering a running commentary as if she’s narrating the changing scenery. She points with her scepter at lavender blossoms and yapping dogs, some of which defer to her authority, sensing she’s the tiny captain of this ship.

The walks are now a ritual, a way to mark the passage of days. Months ago I walked with her strapped to my chest in a baby carrier. Then she moved to a stroller. Now, the wagon. What will be next?

Perhaps a bicycle? I imagine us pedaling these neighborhood streets, Luna, ringing the bell. The wagon may be too small someday.

But these thoughts are not, so to speak, of the present moment. For now, the wagon suits her perfectly. Looking at the forecast, it’s slated to rain again soon. Afterwards, when the sun is once again high in the sky, we will keep walking.

The route may change and the cargo may shift, but the ritual will continue. Keeping time, watching her grow.

What I Read

I’ve enjoyed reading behind-the-scenes accounts lately, and Creative Selection offers such a look into Apple’s software design process. Author Ken Kocienda, a former Apple engineer who helped build early iPhone software, details the constant interplay between inspiration, iteration, and thoughtful restraint required to produce Apple’s celebrated user experiences.

Kocienda uses his own experiences designing the iPhone and iPad keyboards to showcase how transformative design emerges not from a singular flash of genius, but rather a constant winnowing down of viable options to find the approach that feels just right. While the book at times veers into hagiography of Apple’s design culture under Jobs, it captures the clever compromises required to make the new feel natural.

A short but excellent read: The White Darkness. Writer David Grann tells the captivating true story of Henry Worsley, a decorated British special forces officer drawn to adventure and the frozen continent of the Antarctic.

Through parallel narratives of Worsley’s expeditions and the larger history of polar exploration, Grann explores what drives Antarctic obsessives. A fascinating psychological portrait of a man utterly captivated by romantic notions of heroism and destiny.

What I Watched

Nothing! This is likely my first week in many months in which I didn’t watch a single film. Life has been full and busy, and I can feel the once-nightly routine of watching a movie slipping away.

But that’s completely alright with me. I embrace each phase of this era equally.

That's all for now,

From the present moment,

Luna // 11 Months // On Transitions

Luna is now 11 months old, only a few weeks from her birthday, and I'm astonished by how rapidly she seems to acquire new skills and reach new milestones on the journey from baby to toddler.

She understands what play is now. She mimics my actions and sounds, hunts me down when I turn a corner to play peekaboo, and staggers over to me on the couch, delighted when I acknowledge her with a wide smile.

Sometimes I say a word, and she says it right back.

She is eating meals with us now. She has tasted Korean barbecue, smash burgers, fish with guacamole. She no longer requires her own special food prepared for her, but can instead just eat what we eat.

Sometimes I go to feed her a piece of something, and she takes it right from my hands.

She is starting to recognize that her toys are just that: her toys. She is beginning to grasp that blocks are for stacking, magnets are for connecting, water is for splashing.

Sometimes I try to pick up a toy, and it's already in her little hands.

She is eager to explore the world, and is taking steps on her own. She likes to walk from the coffee table to the couch, the dining table to the piano. Each day the gaps between these objects widen as she grows bolder in the steps she takes.

Sometimes I hold her hand to steady her, and feel her let go completely.

She is changing so fast, growing and learning at a dizzying pace.

Sometimes I look at her and no longer see a baby, but instead, a toddler looking back at me — and I know that this is still only the beginning.

What I Read


At the beginning of the year I resolved to read fiction, but January saw little.

A friend's suggestion led me to The Midnight Library - a much needed course correction. The book follows an aimless young woman who feels she has somehow reached a definitive dead end in life, and finds herself transported to a liminal space containing countless shelves stacked with books, each representing an entirely alternate life she potentially could have lived if she had just made a few different pivotal choices at critical junctures along the way.

In living them, she rethinks regret. An imaginative and emotionally resonant exploration of the roads not taken, and what meaning and fulfillment really mean to us. Would recommend.

What I Watched

I decided to fully utilize the immersive capabilities of the Vision Pro by watching the spectacle that is Rogue One. Viewing the film's epic space battles and sweeping star-studded vistas within the 'spatial environment' of the moon was incredible - whenever the camera pulled back to reveal a wide shot of the galaxy in all its grandeur, I saw stars stretching across my entire field of vision, surrounding me completely.

It was a literally breathtaking experience at times, though the first half of the film failed to really captivate me. It wasn't bad by any means, it just seemed more focused on methodically introducing a multitude of characters and problems without weaving them into a compelling narrative. But the second half? Top notch. Each frenetically paced battle sequence and heart-pounding ground confrontation was portrayed with a riveting sense of high stakes and urgency, really making you feel the human cost of every downed fighter pilot or trooper lost on the battlefield. This is the type of emotionally impactful galactic war that I've always wanted from Star Wars but rarely gotten.

Gareth Edwards has crafted a number of films over the years that I've greatly enjoyed, and watching this has made me place The Creator very high on my watchlist.

That's all for now,

From the present moment,

The moonlit desert glows, sparse Joshua trees cast twisted shadows that silently point upwards. I sit atop a weathered boulder, gazing up at the blue-black horizon above the barren desert and a low hanging moon. As I look out, I notice something floating out in space. It’s a giant Discord window, approximately 100 feet tall and covering a gigantic chunk of sky.

I am, of course, not actually in the desert. I’m seated comfortably on my living room couch with an Apple Vision Pro obscuring the upper half of my face, and I’m writing these very words.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so immersed in the act of writing. At my desk, distraction is ever-present, with social platforms and websites ready to take my attention with just one little tap of my finger. Out in the world, the environment around me competes with my focus. If I was actually at Joshua Tree, I would be both fighting the bitter cold and wary of any wildlife which might be sharing the desert landscape alongside me.

The Vision Pro is a technical wonder, easily surpassing anything Meta has engineered to date, but it is also decidedly a first generation device. Bugs abound in these early days, and a lack of apps tailored for spatial computing makes for a disjointed experience. I’m typing these thoughts into a third-party text app, as Apple's own Notes app lacks a dark theme and almost blinded me when I booted it up in the dark of Joshua Tree’s night.

Of course, many issues will be quickly rectified. The bugs will be scrubbed away and the App Store will fill up with interesting apps. A larger question: Will the paradigms this technology presents actually prove appealing?

Surprisingly, I find little to actually do within the Vision Pro — but that turns out to be a feature. The Discord window floating in the sky exerts a gentle presence; to engage with it, I must literally crane my neck upwards, a motion that reinforces the apps place on the periphery.

On my Mac, apps like Discord tempt constantly, threatening to steal precious minutes with a slight trackpad nudge. My phone, too, delivers an IV drip of TikTok and mindless feeds. But here in the sweeping desert vista, such time-wasting seems hollow.

The Vision Pro’s virtual scenes demand activities of equal resonance. And so I write, I read, I leave frivolous apps out of sight. At least for now, there’s freedom in the absence of compulsion.

As I finished writing this, I gazed skyward. Above me the clouds floated by (they actually move!), and for a minute I just watched them pass, glimpsing the stars beyond, dimly twinkling.

Much like those clouds, this new technology remains in constant flux. Will it dissipate or swell to blanket the horizon? Its shape is still amorphous, its course still unclear.

But immersed this unformed space, I’m hopeful for the future.

Luna // 10 Months // On Capturing the Moment

The morning sun filters through gauzy curtains as Luna's little feet patter across our home, propelled by insatiable curiosity. Her latest obsession is pulling objects off shelves and out of drawers to inspect them up close. In the kitchen, she empties utensils from a drawer, examining each intently before moving on to the next. At Kristine’s nightstand, she removes bottle after bottle of nail polish, captivated by their glossy colors and iridescent shimmers. At my record console, she pulls out every album, allowing them to slip through her tiny fingers and clatter noisily to the floor.

While she was deeply invested in that last act, I slipped the Vision Pro on and took a new ‘spatial video’. I captured her pulling Anaias Mitchell and Prince and Sufjan Stevens off the shelf. I recorded her turning to notice me behind her. I recorded myself reach out as she crawled into my arms. "Look at the mess you've made," I say, pulling her close. "I love you," I whisper in her ear.

When I play back this memory, those tender words are whispered into my own ear. The immersive video pulls me back into the moment. It feels real once more

I recorded this vignette only yesterday, and it already brings me to tears. I can barely fathom how it might affect me in five, ten, twenty years.

I don’t think I’ll make a habit of wearing the Vision Pro to document Luna's every moment. In this early phase, it's too unwieldy for capturing video on the regular, and I’m trying to be intentional about using technology in front of of her at this early phase of life before she’s fully cognizant of what it means to hold my gaze or lose it.

Even so, I may one day regret not recording more often.

What I Read

Three books this week. Two about video games. One about the Colorado plains.

Sid Meier’s Memoir! is exactly what it says on the tin. The legendary game designer wrote an incredibly charming autobiography, sharing stories about his career from the very beginning to the creation of seminal titles like Civilization.

There’s a particularly interesting chapter about how to make games feel fun without punishing the player by killing them. In ‘Pirates!’ he got around this by making the end goal not to survive, but to live well:

This game was not about life and death, I realized. It was about a lifetime. A pirate’s career would last about forty years between childhood and old age, and his goal was to accomplish as much as he could in that window—to have an adventurous life with no regrets. Rack up the gold, rack up the victories, rack up the wild stories to tell at the tavern. As in real life, success could only be measured as a combination of your exploits, and how much value you put on those particular exploits yourself.

I decided we would let the player choose when to retire, and instead of a numeric score, we would display a tally of successes, and an appropriate seafaring rank. We even factored in the character’s age when it came to fencing skill and ship maneuverability, by slowing the responsiveness of the controls and increasing the probability of a miss. Players could judge for themselves when the risk was too great, and aim to go out on top—or else stubbornly refuse to quit, risking battle after battle as a hunched old seadog until they had handed over their last doubloon. Just like the rest of the game, the decision to end it was theirs alone.

While Sid Meier’s book was full of a lot of optimism, that was counterbalanced by my read through of Press Reset, by Jason Schrier, the author of Blood, Sweat, and Pixels which I read not long ago.

This is less about game development in general and more about the specificity of the industry's tumultuous development cycles, complete with studio closures and mass layoffs. A revealing look at the human toll behind the games we play. Particularly interesting to me was the story of Ken Levine’s studio Irrational Games. They created the critical and commercially successful game BioShock, followed it up with a relatively well-received sequel, and then shuttered, with Levine taking fifteen employees to start a new studio. That was in 2014, and the game they’ve been working on (Judas) is still unreleased. The book truly showed how harrowing the industry is — working long hours with no job security, moving from studio to studio, and often spending years on projects that never see the light of day.

A brutal industry.

On a much lighter note, I also read Eventide, a book about simple life in the American West of Holt, Colorado. Haruf’s prose is sparse and evocative, and the characters he writes are sketched with such care and depth that they breathe, live, and ache right off the page.

There’s no grandiose plot twists in sight here, just a simple meditation on community and the bonds that tether us to one another. This book is a reminder that In the quietest moments and the simplest acts, there’s a profound story to be told.

What I Watched

Ever since I watched The Long Goodbye, I’ve craved movies just like it. The problem is that there are no other movies just like it, but I keep trying anyways. My search led me to Night Moves, a delightfully moody neo-noir film with Gene Hackman playing a private eye trying to find a runaway.

It wasn’t like The Long Goodbye, but that was fine. I’m not sure I’ve ever watched a mystery like this before, where I went from not really caring about the story unfolding before me (and just enjoying the characters on display) to sitting there as the credits rolled, thinking over every scene and each person’s motivations. The seemingly straightforward detective tale is, in reality, about human complexity and moral ambiguity.

That's all for now,

From the present moment,

Since Luna was born, she’s been a free spirit, unhappy to be confined in any way. I remember standing over her hospital crib just hours after her birth, trying in vain to tightly swaddle her newborn body. With unexpected strength she immediately broke free of the swaddle, a cherubic smile spreading across her little face as if she were Houdini escaping a straitjacket in front of an adoring audience.

Now at nearly one year old, Luna still recoils at the slightest restraint. She fusses in her highchair, squirms in her carseat, and strains against the straps of her stroller. For our family's daily neighborhood strolls, this presented a problem. How could we satisfy our little explorer's thirst for freedom while still keeping her safely contained?

We decided to buy her a wagon.

It worked! Happily standing at the front and unconfined by a seat, Luna surveyed the terrain ahead like a proud captain at the ship's bow. But emboldened by her newfound freedom, she began to creep along the wagon's sagging sides, whose walls were far shorter than the front. Tottering to the edge, she lost her footing and tumbled overboard, plunging directly towards the unforgiving concrete below. I grabbed her just in time, but it became clear that this was not quite the solution.

So the wagon was returned and upgraded for one with much higher (and well-reinforced) walls that enclosed Luna in a protective hull. At first she was suspicious of the new wagon, but it took only one ride to win her over. She holds on tight and stands tall (often gripping a little plush lion), drinking in the views of our neighborhood as it glides by.

This week brought some much needed sunshine after a week of gloom, so I hauled the wagon outside and sat it beside my chair as I worked. As I typed away on my laptop, I heard Luna's happy babbling as she played contentedly inside her wagon, carrying on a one-sided conversation while waving a tiny plastic dolphin in the air.

The wagon feels like the perfect mix of protection without confinement, and I imagine this won’t be the last time I try to understand that delicate balance. We all crave the ability to explore and wander as we wish. Yet at the same time, we benefit from barriers and boundaries that provide structure, focus, protection. Too much freedom, and we can end up adrift, uncertain of our path or purpose. Too much rigidity and we feel trapped, confined, stifled. The trick is finding that sacred place in the middle where we have just enough room to stretch and grow.

How might I set boundaries for Luna as she gets older? How might I create opportunities for independence while still keeping her safe from harm? How might I encourage creativity and curiosity without allowing chaos?

I do not know.

Watching Luna stand in her little wagon reminds me that we all need dependable structures to hold us up as we voyage through life. The wagon allows Luna to practice two very different kinds of balance. And from my seat beside her, I'm learning the same delicate dance. Learning when she needs my hand, and when she just needs me to watch. When to rein her in, and when to give her roam.

Someday she will outgrow her wagon, and step out into the world on her own two feet. But for now, she’ll be inside safely.

What I Read

Two great books on the future of the internet came out this week: The Everything Token and Read Write Own.

As I described it to one person on Warpcast, you should read the former if you want to think about the longterm future of crypto and the world, and you should read the latter if you want to think about the immediate future of NFTs and tokens.

They work as two sides of the same coin, and though I initially thought I might be a bit fatigued from reading them back to back, it felt like one narrative told from multiple perspectives. Some of the ideas in The Everything Token made me start thinking more seriously about what the coffee shop needs in terms of onchain loyalty, and Read Write Own sparked so many ideas that I plan on going back through the book and writing up my thoughts more deeply.

Both books are decidedly optimistic about the potential for this technology to reshape industries in a creator-friendly direction, but neither shies away from the reality of the problems that exist today or the long road ahead in order for it to become something that billions of people use every day. There's plenty of valid skepticism to be had about crypto, but cynicism and dismissal are dead ends. The only way forward is open dialogue combined with creative experimentation, and these books strengthened my conviction that despite the ever-present volatility, there’s so much more to do.

What I Watched

I was lost in books this week, but I managed to get in one movie: A Beautiful Mind.

Is it cringe to enjoy an early 2000s biopic that's clearly Oscar bait? Whatever, I liked it!

Based on the real-life story of mathematician John Nash, it starts his story as an ambitious graduate student at Princeton in the 1940s, drawing you into his way of seeing things, complete with the arrogance and social awkwardness typical of iconic thinkers. But as Nash achieves success, signs emerge that all is not right in his world.

I’d place this movie in the same category as Meet Joe Black: 90s epics which somehow manage to feel warm and charming even when dealing with brutal concepts. Do they make movies like this anymore? It feels like there’s a more clear bifurcation between ‘this is a serious movie with a grim tone’ and ‘this can be watched by families together in a living room’.

If you have recommendations for movies that strike this tonal balance (especially ones made more recently) please send them my way.

That's all for now,

From the present moment,

Since Luna’s birth, we’ve made a point to celebrate each month-mark. “You’re one month older” we’ll tell her, and then we’ll do something together as a family to commemorate this small milestone of her childhood.

This month, we forgot. Her 10-month mark came and went, and Kristine and I didn’t even notice.

It’s not surprising that this minor measure slipped our minds. The early months of Luna's life were filled with major developmental leaps—those first smiles, laughs, rolls, sits, crawls. Each new achievement deserved celebration and commemoration, and parenting was so new for us that it felt worth celebrating getting through another 30 days. But as the milestones piled up, it became harder to give each one the same weight. Each day now brings some small but steady sign of progress in the same way that crawling becomes walking. Luna’s life is one of continuous evolution marked more by persistence than sudden success.

So, we find ourselves forgetting, not just the month-marks, but also the small daily details that once seemed so monumental. When was the exact date she said her first real word? What day was it when she took five steps across the living room unassisted? When exactly did she master the art of clapping?

Perhaps this forgetting is simply a necessary byproduct of her growth. Luna is becoming less of a mystery to us, and so the compulsion to analyze and record every moment is diminishing. As her personhood asserts itself, she’s no longer merely a bundle of milestones to log but instead an individual coming into focus.

I welcome this type of forgetting as our family settles into a new normal.Each moment will remain precious, whether celebrated or not.

What I Read

This week was about the two sides of technology: Hardware and software.

The Perfect Thing details the iPod's unassuming yet monumental role in reshaping our digital landscape. Published in 2006, reading this is a bit like stepping into a time capsule, written so early that it barely scratches the surface of the societal impacts of the digital music revolution. It also reminded me that tech writing from this era was…weirdly sexist? There’s lots of fetishization of technology, as well as uncomfortable analogies.

On the subject matter: The book underscores how the iPod emerged in the aftermath of Napster and the early chaotic days of digital music piracy. In contrast to the Wild West of illegal downloads, the combination of iTunes and the iPod offered an appealing legal alternative where consumers could conveniently access music. Apple made carrying one's entire music library a tangible reality, mainstreaming digital music distribution and untethering audio from physical media.

It was interesting reading about an Apple product, now widely noted as a smash success, that was initially met with little excitement and plenty of skepticism. Is the Vision Pro on a similar journey?

Now, software. Blood, Sweat, and Pixels insightfully chronicles the perilous development of hit games, uncovering the Herculean efforts behind some of the industry's biggest titles. Each chapter is dedicated to a different game and the grueling process of bringing it to life. Schreier's background as an investigative reporter means that this book doesn’t shy away from talking about the industry's darker aspects, including crunch time and project cancellations (RIP Star Wars 1313) while maintaining a deep respect for the dedication of everyone involved.

Like The Perfect Thing, this book is also a bit of a time capsule.

Published in 2017, it chronicles the story of Bungie while still deep in development of a murky Destiny and before the release of Destiny 2. It captures CD Projekt Red at the height of their acclaim and before the announcement and release of the much maligned Cyberpunk 2077. I loved reading this nuanced account of an under-appreciated art form.

What I Watched

It felt wrong to watch Escape from New York last week and not give time to its sequel based in the city in which I live. Escape from LA was, unfortunately, not exactly my kind of movie about Los Angeles. The over-the-top villains, the ridiculous action sequences, and the excessive (and poorly aged) CGI made the futuristic LA setting feel more cartoonish than chilling. The bigger issue to me is that the movie lacked any coherent statement about the city it portrayed. It aimed to satirize America's obsession with beauty and vanity, yet did so superficially. LA has always been ripe for thoughtful social commentary and stylistic exploration in fiction, and though the film hints at environmental collapse and the dark side of evangelical religion, it never quite commits.

But maybe I shouldn’t be asking that of the film where Snake Plissken paraglides into Disneyland and starts shooting people. Perhaps subtle social commentary isn’t its top priority. The film knows exactly what it is: A vehicle for Kurt Russell to don an eyepatch again and spout one-liners while chaos ensues around him, and on that front, it delivers.

I also watched First Reformed, a movie that’s been on the top of my list for a long time. From the writer of Taxi Driver comes more ‘one weird guy against the world’ storytelling, but this time make it about a clergyman.

I fear that I watched this at the wrong moment in my life. It’s about faith and despair, and I’m in a season where I’m less interested in thinking deeply on the bleakness of the human experience. I’m looking for hope, and trying to capture a bit of it in this newsletter, week by week.

Is this why the ‘dad movie’ genre is just mindless action films where the hero always wins the end of the day?

That's all for now,

From the present moment,

My daughter is learning to love music.

I learned this on a quiet afternoon a few days ago. I had put on an album, muted and low, while I lounged on the couch absorbed in a book. Nearby, Luna busied herself amidst a pile of toys on the living room floor, murmuring contentedly.

Then, "Superstar (Live at Secret Sky)" by AG Cook started playing.

Immediately, Luna stopped what she was doing and sat bolt upright, her attention clearly captured. Before I knew it, she had taken off across the room on her hands and knees, making a beeline for the record console where the music was coming from. She crawled across the rug and around the couch, drawn like a magnet, closer and closer to the source of this new sound. When she arrived at the speaker, she paused and peered through the fabric mesh that concealed it. She seemed utterly transfixed, spellbound by the sound.

I turned the music up.

After a moment, a huge smile spread across her face. She touched the mesh. She bounced a little. Then she raised her little hands and clapped with delight. I recorded it. I've already watched this video dozens of times.

Why did she choose this day to care about music? Did she reach some point in her development where she can now recognize that it isn't just sounds but melody? Was there something special about this song in particular that unlocked her ability to appreciate it?

Later, Kristine put on some merengue as we cleaned the house. Again, Luna halted what she was doing, pushed herself onto two legs, and began bouncing up and down. Now, even if I hum a song, she'll start to dance. The idea of music has been unlocked inside her little brain and body, and she loves it. Her reactions are so pure, and her connection is so instinctual. No one had to teach her to appreciate song or move to it, she simply felt compelled to do so once she heard it. Now music is yet another thing that I get to take pleasure in sharing with Luna in her ever-expanding world.

What I Read

I recently finished two books by two great authors - Susan Orlean and Sarah Bakewell.

Orlean has a talent for diving deep on obscure topics and spinning them into captivating narratives. Her book Rin Tin Tin, on the life and legacy of the first celebrity dog, is one of my all time favorites. Bakewell's work How to Live, which took teachings from Montaigne and transformed them into an engaging handbook for modern living, ignited my appreciation for the essayist and made such an impact on me that I usually have no fewer than three copies scattered around my house.

In Bakewell’s latest book, Humanly Possible, the author traces the resilient history of humanists who have shaped this school of thought over the past several centuries. She distills their key ideas about how to find meaning and purpose, and makes a compelling case for why this worldview has remained so resilient, even in the face of fanaticism and tyranny. A quote she refers back to again and again throughout the course of the book: “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto", or "I am human, and consider nothing human alien to me."

As someone who's designing a physical space right now, I appreciated a section on humanist architecture:

What is humanist architecture, or humanist city planning? It is the sort that does not constantly crush the ability to live a decent, satisfying human life. A humanistic civic designer pays attention to how people use a space and to what makes them comfortable, rather than trying to make a big impression with buildings of gasp-inducing size or a field of stylish obstacles that is frustrating to walk around. For humanistic architects, it is better to start with “the human measure.” Geoffrey Scott, author of the influential 1914 study The Architecture of Humanism, explained this by reminding us of our tendency to talk about buildings in terms of our own bodily experience, saying that they feel top-heavy, or soaring, or well balanced—descriptions derived from our own physical sense of existing in the world. A humanist architect will look for “physical conditions that are related to our own, for movements which are like those we enjoy, for resistances that resemble those that can support us, for a setting where we should be neither lost nor thwarted.”

Orlean’s The Orchid Thief (which was the quasi-basis for the film Adaptation) offers a look into the unusual subculture of rare orchid collecting. Though orchids may seem like unremarkable plants to the average observer (me), Orlean focuses in on the passions that drive certain people to great lengths to obtain them, centering her narrative on one eccentric poacher.

Both authors are masters at zooming in on a specific subject - be it orchids or celebrity dogs or humanism - and using it as a prism through which to better understand ourselves and the world around us. This is the special alchemy of great nonfiction writing - taking something idiosyncratic and transforming it into a mirror in which we recognize ourselves.

What I Watched

Two movies this week.

The Stunt Man centers on a fugitive named Cameron who stumbles onto the set of a World War I epic directed by the megalomaniac Eli Cross, played by the incredible Peter O’Toole. When the film's stunt man dies in an accident, Cameron finds himself conscripted as his replacement. Yet as he gets sucked further into the director’s world, physical danger and existential risk become commonplace. For the director, the ‘picture’ is everything; people are merely props to be toyed with and sacrificed.

Escape from New York, John Carpenter’s dystopian action film, envisions a near-future (if we can still consider 1997 the future) in which Manhattan has been converted into a maximum security prison after a dramatic rise in crime. Kurt Russell stars as Snake Plissken, an eyepatch-wearing criminal tasked with infiltrating the island and rescuing the President of the United States after Air Force One is hijack and crashed within its borders. Carpenter holds up a mirror to the urban anxieties of the era: fear of crime, loss of law and order, social breakdown, and perhaps worse of all, the suggestion that within society's cracks and neglected margins, a new social order might emerge which possesses its own code.

In both films, the autonomy of the protagonists is severely compromised. Cameron must navigate the whims of a director who holds his life in his hands. Snake pushes forward coerced by explosives implanted in his neck. In their distinct ways, they question whether true rebellion is possible or if, in the end, we are all confined by the roles and narratives prescribed to us. Are we, like Cameron and Snake, merely navigating a predetermined course set by others? Or is there room to maneuver, to find our own paths even within the constraints imposed upon us?

That's all for now,

From the present moment (and sent on my birthday ❤) ,

Luna is entering into an inquisitive phase of life and beginning to understand the flow of the world. To get a toy, she has to open her toy chest. To get a parent in another room, she has to crawl across the house. To get food into her mouth, she has to load it onto a fork (or, more often, simply grab it with her fingers).

Luna's newfound curiosity, paired with equally newfound mobility, is ushering in an era of independence. No longer content to simply sit and play, she propels herself across the home by pushing around her own high chair. When she spots something of interest, off she goes, a tiny explorer on a vast expedition across the familiar terrain of our living room.

Her explorations are indiscriminate and wide-ranging. Sometimes, she finds herself among my vinyl records, their glossy covers and intriguing textures drawing her in. Other times, her journey takes her to the kitchen, where the stove's surface offers a glimpse of her own reflection staring back at her. She reaches out, her small hand pressing against the cool, smooth metal, and then claps in perfect unison with her mirrored self.

However, not all her discoveries are met with enthusiasm from my end. Keeping small, potentially dangerous objects out of her reach (and mouth) is a never-ending task. Each speck on the floor, insignificant to the adult eye, becomes a target for her curious fingers. It's a balancing act, allowing her the freedom to explore while ensuring her safety. A dance of letting go and holding on, a parental rite of passage.

Mealtimes have transformed into adventures of their own. The careful, tidy feedings of the past have given way to a new chaotic ritual with Luna now an active participant. Food that makes it into her mouth is considered a success. Food that ends up on her face, her clothes, the floor, or in our dog's stomach is considered collateral damage in the pursuit of 'baby led weaning'.

As she grows and her curiosity leads her outward, Luna is becoming my little explorer – discovering the world while still finding home in my arms. Her blossoming independence is revealing a spirited nature, and I'm so grateful to be learning about her as she learns about the world.

What I Read

As someone who's currently thinking deeply about a physical space, I picked up Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's classic work In Praise of Shadows. I have to say it didn't particularly resonate with me, but it did get me musing about light and darkness, and how we shape spaces to create certain moods.

Tanizaki extols the muted, shadowy aesthetic of traditional Japanese architecture. To him, electric light is garish and destroys mystery. But to me, I can't imagine a world without it. In the morning, give me sunlight through tall windows, bouncing off every surface. In the evening, let discrete pools of light shift the mood to facilitate cozy conversation.

The part of the book that I found most resonant (and most relevant) was his musing on Japanese food requiring the right lighting:

In the cuisine of any country efforts no doubt are made to have the food harmonize with the tableware and the walls; but with Japanese food, a brightly lighted room and shining tableware cut the appetite in half…Above all there is rice. A glistening black lacquer rice cask set off in a dark corner is both beautiful to behold and a powerful stimulus to the appetite. Then the lid is briskly lifted, and this pure white freshly boiled food, heaped in its black container, each and every grain gleaming like a pearl, sends forth billows of warm steam—here is a sight no Japanese can fail to be moved by. Our cooking depends upon shadows and is inseparable from darkness.

It made me think about the lighting in which I find coffee most attractive, and the answer differs based on whether it's a crisp dawn, a sunny afternoon, or a rainy mid-day. I'll be doing some work to think about how to let light and shadow work their magic. As Tanizaki himself quotes Louis Kahn, "The sun never knew how wonderful it was until it fell on the wall of a building."

What I Watched

I'm fully ready for a world of spatial computing as brought to us by the Apple Vision Pro, and as such I've been interested in watching visions (forgive the pun) of virtual reality from the 90s and 2000s. As such, following Strange Days last week, I watched Virtuosity. Unfortunately, an incredible first act — in which police are trained in a virtual world against psychopathic AIs based on dangerous criminals — is almost entirely squandered by a middle act that descends into a by-the-numbers 90s action narrative. Russel Crowe plays SID 6.7 (Sadistic, Intelligent, Dangerous) with gleeful insanity, and every time the movie remembers that it has an intriguing futuristic setting to play with, it shines.

I also watched Dream Scenario, an extremely A24-coded exploration of collective consciousness and the Jungian shadow self — and was surprised to see that this too has some interesting things to say about virtual reality. I don't want to spoil it, as the film is new, but I was pleasantly surprised by what the film had to say about society's memetic gaze, and how it invented technology to reflect the film's internal logic.

That's all for now.

From the present moment,