Addresses

I moved recently. When I did so, I filled out a form on the postal service website informing that I had changed addresses and asking them to forward all mail intended for me to the new mailbox. Normal enough. But if you think about it, this service is a privacy nightmare! They asked for little to no verification that I am who I say I am. They asked for no verification of my old address or new address. I could go on their website with anyone’s name and address and get all their mail forwarded to me! A great prank…

Why we will all become historians

In college, I studied Classics. I studied the languages, literature, cultures, and governments of Ancient Rome and Greece (super practical, I know). But I loved it. The joy of this study, for me, was the never ending quest for the truth, for the reality of what life looked like in a time we can no longer access. It was a puzzle that demanded piecing together fragmented texts, images on coins, bits of poetry, ancient forms of graffiti left on walls, and other bits of evidence to reconstruct what this time and place may have looked like.

But this evidence-gathering and…

I started my career on the chaos of a trading desk. Every day was a hectic sprint of executing buys and sells, managing risk, and keeping up with headlines to reach market close every day. One of the joys of being a junior trader was that, at the end of each day, I got to spend a few hours reconciling trades, chatting with our middle- and back-office teams, and making sure that everything was on its way to being properly cleared and settled.

I got to learn the ins and outs of Wall Street’s backend, along with all of its…

Oh doctor, doctor

People are seeking health and wellness education, solutions, and care increasingly outside of the doctor’s office. There are a lot of dynamics contributing to this.

At the time that I posted this, there were a lot of dynamics and trends on my mind. Some of these are causes of the trend. Some are effects. Some are both.

• The kafkaesque nature of navigating healthcare
• Uncertain and high costs of doctors’ visits and healthcare
• Erosion of trust in doctors and western medicine
• Average doctors’ visits lasting only 8–15 minutes
• Impersonal nature of doctor’s visits in the age of One Medical
• Millennials…

Self-fulfilling prophecies

Over the weekend, my friend Emily Parker published a piece of short fiction in Slate about a hellish utopia in which everything is verifiable on “the blockchain” — or at least that’s what the inhabitants of her world are led to believe. Highly recommend.

Emily (and the good people at Slate) invited me to write a response. Given the story Emily had crafted, this was not difficult. I have been writing about how the branding of blockchains as “truth machines” is problematic for a while.

In Emily’s story, blockchains are not just truth machines, though. …

Is that true?

Yesterday was MLK day. I spent the day mostly working, but also made time to go on a hike with some friends and — of course — reflect on the meaning of the day as I scrolled through social media posts about MLK’s legacy.

And then I came across this article: Read the Letter the FBI Sent MLK to Try to Convince Him to Kill Himself

As someone who is generally skeptical of government, I couldn’t not click. I skimmed the article. The FBI bullying and threatening an activist. I’m enough of a realist that this did not faze me…

1. To everything (churn, churn, churn)

In particular, I’ve been thinking about why I churn off of some apps and not others (and why many of you do too). I’m not going to be saying anything new here, but what it often comes down to crystallized for me as I was thinking about my relationship with Strava versus my relationship with Calm.

Both apps are there to inspire me to be better, to pay attention to my wellbeing, to offer me challenges, and to nudge me to take care of myself.

I started using both apps around 3.5 years ago.

Calm, I used consistently for a…

1. The IRL Social Experience —

The Wing. Soho House. Ethel’s Club. Chief.

What’s old is new again. As our social lives have migrated online over the last decade, it seems increasingly novel to create a dedicated, physical place to meet — and meet up with — others . A confluence of factors (disillusionment with FB, the “loneliness epidemic”, and the success of the early leaders named above) is spurring a new explosion of activity in creating social spaces and experiences. Hell, even my brother’s menswear line has its own clubhouse!

There are a lot of different ways to think about this trend.

What I’ve listed…