Sep 08, 2023 from Michael Lynch Aardvark'd: The Fog Creek Documentary, 18 Years Later In 2005, Joel Spolsky’s software company, Fog Creek, filmed a documentary about their summer internship program. The film is called Aardvark’d: 12 Weeks with Geeks, and it follows four college inte...
Jul 07, 2023 from Remains of the Day How to Blow Up a Timeline NOTE: I’d been working on this piece on and off for a few weeks while trying to move to NYC and settle into my new apartment, and just as I was about to publish it, Elon rate-limited Twitter and so...
Mar 01, 2022 from Remains of the Day My Favorite Movies of 2021 A second year of the pandemic passed in which I didn’t attend any film festivals in person. I miss it. My viewing output of is lower than usual but still much much higher than that of the median fi...
Oct 10, 2021 from Remains of the Day And You Will Know Us by the Company We Keep It feels as if we're at the tail end of the first era of social media in the West. Looking back at the companies that have survived, certain application architectural choices are ubiquitous. By now...
Feb 22, 2021 from Remains of the Day American Idle I promised one final piece on TikTok, focused primarily on the network effects of creativity. And this is that, in part. But it discusses a bunch of other topics, some only tangentially related to ...
Sep 21, 2020 from Remains of the Day Seeing Like an Algorithm In my previous post on TikTok I discussed why its For You Page algorithm is the connective tissue that makes TikTok work. It is the bus on its motherboard that connects and closes all its feedback ...
Aug 04, 2020 from Remains of the Day TikTok and the Sorting Hat I often describe myself as a cultural determinist, more as a way to differentiate myself from people with other dominant worldviews, though I am not a strict adherent. It’s more that in many situat...
Mar 27, 2020 from Remains of the Day My Pandemic Zoom Setup Now that everyone is spending many of their waking hours in Zoom, a lot of people are laughing at, and then asking me about, my Zoom setup. It’s actually not all that elaborate. I know many people ...
Mar 12, 2020 from Remains of the Day Veblen values NOTE: I'm going to start cross-posting individual stories sent out in my newsletter over here on my blog. The versions here may contain additional side notes, and often as I bring them over I'll do...
Jan 08, 2020 from Remains of the Day The John Wick Universe is Cancel Culture “Si vis pacem para bellum”translated “If you want peace, prepare for war” I hadn’t planned on seeing John Wick 3 - Parabellum, but out for a walk in Stockholm in May, I got caught in a sudden downp...
Jan 07, 2020 from Remains of the Day The Uncanny Valley of Interactivity I believe mass entertainment suffers from a bit of format rigidity due to the natural inertia from structural ossification in the music, film, and publishing businesses, to name the most prominent....
Dec 13, 2019 from Remains of the Day Narrative debt HBO’s Watchmen is fantastic, as many have noted. It may be one of the most polished first drafts of fan fiction to ever appear on the silver, errr, OLED screen. DC may lag behind the Marvel Univers...
Nov 14, 2019 from Remains of the Day Smoke and Mirrors “When a judge walks into the room, and everybody stands up, you’re not standing up to that guy, you’re standing up to the robe that he’s wearing and the role that he’s going to play. What makes him...
Nov 13, 2019 from Remains of the Day Status Update, and How Everyone IPO'd in the 21st Century Sorry for the long hiatus. I've been doing some formal advisory work and a bit of angel investing these past months, and so more of my writing has been private.More than that, though, the Internet,...
Feb 26, 2019 from Remains of the Day Status as a Service (StaaS) Editor's Note 1: I have no editor. Editor’s Note 2: I would like to assure new subscribers to this blog that most my posts are not as long as this one. Or as long as my previous one. My long break ...
May 22, 2018 from Remains of the Day Invisible asymptotes "It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if ...
May 15, 2018 from Remains of the Day What I learned from a Taipei alley I was in Taipei the past few weeks working on a documentary with friends. Because of a busy schedule, it wasn't like my usual travels abroad for fun, it felt more like a work trip. Still, even if I...
Apr 15, 2018 from Remains of the Day The inefficiency of large, infrequent transactions In a conversation with Matt Levine, Tyler Cowen asks:COWEN: Like you, I’m mostly an efficient markets guy, but when I look at initial public offerings I’m very baffled because investment banks take...
Mar 20, 2018 from Remains of the Day Catch up It has been some time since I posted here. Outside of lots of meetings around the country and some trips with family and friends, a few creative projects have stolen the lion's share of my free tim...
Jan 21, 2018 from Remains of the Day Revisionist commentary I don't know that I'm aware of enough entries in this category to even consider it one, but I'm a sucker for the union of political and film satire as embodied in alternate film commentaries.I was ...
