I’m thinking about formats today. Though, it’s more accurate to say I’m often thinking about them for this newsletter. In the past, it’s been a book publishing dispatch, travelogue, link grab-bag, weekly pieces of first-draft poetry, and other, more shortly lived experiments. Since 2021, I’ve been pretty good about including a photo with every issue, though my cadence has slipped from weekly to monthly since Rufus was born (maybe not surprising to any of you parents reading).
All that’s to say that I’ve let go of the idea that this newsletter will ever have an entirely fixed format or rhythm. But I can feel, in this moment of time, a new one sorting itself out. I don’t know what the new format looks like quite yet, so I’ll do some thinking out loud here, in hopes that charting the ecosystem might help me better understand it.
If this doesn’t interest you, skip it! You’ll find more typical links in the next section. Here goes:
- My new position at Every seems the ideal outlet for my tech essays. Sometimes, these are the same ideas I’ve floated here as first drafts, just with more time for elaboration, background research, and revision (did I already say this last month?)
- My notetaking system has changed a bit recently, through the combination of new Bebop updates (coming soon!) and AI tools that help me review and resurface older notes and journal entries (which I’ve always struggled to do). I end up losing fewer ideas!
- I’d like to develop many of the non-tech ideas too, in ways short and long, and post or publish more elsewhere about books, architecture, photography, or plants and gardening.
- Including a photo in each newsletter has turned it into a bigger production than just sitting down Sunday nights and firing something off. I feel like I should take more photos during the week, and then want to take the extra step of editing them if I do. Another reason it’s become monthly instead of weekly.
- The monthly cadence, though, makes me feel obligated to deliver something substantial than I sometimes have energy for.
- For Dumpling Club members, I write a separate monthly letter that’s typically more personal or in-the-weeds, that I think might only interest the hardcorest of followers. But I haven’t clearly defined that for myself either (this email, for instance, is starting to feel more like something I’d send Dumplings).
- I have newsletter fatigue as a reader. I’m subscribed to too many, and went to the extent of vibecoding a personal RSS/read-later tool that makes me feel a little less guilty about not reading everything.
- I don’t love the term “vibecoding.” In practice it’s more like “painting with code.” But I digress.
- I’d started doing longer write-ups of projects here, but again, these are bigger productions.
- Maybe I should start blogging again? And just write shorter blog posts?
- Or longer social media posts?
- I’d rather not.
- I like the idea of POSSE in theory, but I don’t love the fragmentation. I’ve started experimenting with cross-posts to Patreon, but it all ends feeling like another platform to manage and check (and get sidetracked by).
- Then again, if I could more easily post and participate in those discussions without ever dealing with algorithmic feeds …
- The above doesn’t even get into how/what else I could be writing about my novel-in-progress.
So that’s on my mind. Reading this over, I don’t know if I’m any clearer on formats. It just feels more than ever like being a working writer in 2026 means running one-person media company in your spare time.
My March piece at Every was all about maintenance, Digital Mending Circle, and OpenClaw. One thing that didn’t make it into the piece is that after some of the initial technical maintenance around my weird little AI assistant, the act of maintaining it turned more into like the act of maintaining a relationship with a person, or pet, or plant. I’m hoping to explore this angle for the next essay.
I also found, looking back over my notes, a link to this piece on mesolomania, the obsession with intermediate scales. I don’t remember exactly what I thought it had to do with maintenance (the mention of bridges? a connection to Stewart Brand’s “maintenance layers” idea?) but it’s a fun piece.
Speaking of Digital Mending Circle: Our next one is Tuesday, April 14th at 7:30–9:00pm Eastern! Hit reply if you don’t already have the Zoom link.
Rufus isn’t yet old enough to fully appreciate Bluey, but that didn’t stop Julia and me from watching the televised Bluey stage play or, more accurately, stage puppet show. It’s easy to imagine a version of this show with actors wearing full body character costumes, but it would be nowhere close to as magical as this one. Nor did they have to release an orchestral album, but they did. Despite being massively (and deservedly) successful, the show keeps its idiosyncratic charm. Which continues its success. I think of it as playing to the highest common denominator.
Speaking of highest common denominator: The entity I most associate with this phrase is Apple. You’ve likely seen all the coverage making the rounds for the company’s 50th anniversary, and this oral history on Apple’s early days (I love oral histories!) is one of the standouts.
Speaking of early computing: this Version History episode about the vocoder is 👌.
Before starting my new job, the architecture/urbanism account @wrathofgnon was one of the few reasons I would still check Twitter. Their thread on good urban boundaries as illustrated by the movie Zootopia is a classic in the form.
It is not hard to compare Zootopia (2106) with Thomas Moran's approach to Venice (1887). pic.twitter.com/sMiTLs3Cnv
— Wrath Of Gnon (@wrathofgnon) July 24, 2017
Wrath of Gnon had, however, far more scathing words for Zootopia 2 (which Julia and I also watched without Rufus).
To end: I found myself driving, the other week, behind a van for a catering company called Edibles Rex. It reminded me of the year 2014, when, having just moved back to Detroit, I espied, next to me on the freeway, a service truck belonging to an HVAC company named Desert in Alaska.
Poetry is everywhere,
Jack