tangentialism is David Yee!

Things I've written

It occurred to me as I rebuilt this site that I've been writing on the internet for over twenty years. Most of that writing is lost to time, which is probably for the best. Here's what remains.

Recent writing

Lara Hogan's Resilient Management and the Foundation of Humane Management Practices: “What Lara does here is offer that there is nothing particularly unique to the challenge of engineering management: understanding people and how they react to the world around them.” —Jun 9 2019
The Jobs That Starve Cities: “We’ve seen this before.” —Feb 14 2019
Where were we?: “Looking up to see eighty people totally happy for you is a really great and unusual feeling.” —Oct 11 2018
What she made: “She, my father, and my aunts speak in Chinese while my brother and I sit on the floor and eat all the oranges.” —Oct 10 2016
Twenty positive things that happened on the internet: “Dark days come and go, but Friday should be sacrosanct.” —May 23 2014
The jade, or: Unsavory Histories of a Horticultural Subamateur: —May 14 2014

The dothatthing years

Posts from a Tumblr blog that lived at do.tthatthing.org from 2007 to 2013, when that domain was stolen by an SEO domain squatter jerk.

Now making: Editorially: “I was raised to be an editor, but I always wanted to be a writer.” —Feb 11 2013
Jump: “The culture of startups is overflowing with mythical personae of pirates and ninjas, but I’m not a pirate—I’m an evangelist and a plumber.” —Jun 29 2012
Saturday: “That was the last moment in my life that I did not know her.” —Jun 8 2012
Mixel, Flickr, and playful creation: Why amateurs have all the fun: “The craft of celebrating amateurism is one of the most fruitful community acts there is—in no small part because there are so many of us.” —Nov 28 2011
Three years ago today: “Cake, drinking, dancing, amazing—best wedding ever, swear to god.” —Oct 11 2011
The puppeteer and the CEO: “To have Jobs as a role model is, at its essence, to take on the challenge of continually trying the impossible.” —Oct 6 2011
Milestones: “In 2001, I was twenty-seven. I am thirty-seven today.” —Sep 11 2011
The digital magazine industry: “The hard step for magazine publishers has always been jumping in that cold pool of ‘here’s my entire magazine, no mailbox required.’” —Mar 19 2010
Vote: “He has to fall on one side or another of that fence, but what would that have meant to his grandmother?” —Nov 4 2008
Four Things That Happened in the New York City Metropolitan Area on April 4, 1876: “Charles Gilbert, an Orange newsdealer, stole $500 from his wife’s trunk yesterday, and, it is supposed, has gone to Europe.” —May 27 2008

The classic years

Posts from the original blog.

Computers are eating my brain and replacing it with Flickr: “I think the connected life is reprogramming my brain to better serve my devices, games, and the Internet, and my memories of life as I once knew it are just the first victims.” —Jul 19 2005
Shake Shack, beyond the call of duty: “I really should have called a second time.” —Jun 14 2005
4' 33", revisited: “The week I started college at Bard was the week John Cage died.” —Mar 23 2005

The wiki years

Early posts from a personal wiki.

Halcyon: “I cannot think of a more relaxing way to pencil out one-seventh of one‘s nightlife than by sitting next to a subwoofer and eating cupcakes in Brooklyn’s communal living room.” —Mar 31 2004
Winter: “You wake up with winter, and there‘s nothing to distract you until Valentine’s Day.” —Feb 20 2004
The Music Industry: “Peer-to-peer file sharing is a knife in the gut of the corporate dance music industry, but it’s not the killer—the industry is killing itself.” —Mar 31 2003
Grandparent Project: “The river of conversation is only the sum of its tributaries.” —Mar 1 2003
My first night living in New York: “It was nine p.m.; I realized that I would spend my first night in New York alone, in the dark.” —Feb 14 2003
Brooklyn: “Brooklyn is long stretches of quiet street, proud distance, and hopeful sacrifice.” —Feb 1 2003
Audio Galaxy: “Entire catalogs of small labels and under-appreciated musicians were enshrined on Audio Galaxy, distributed to a new generation of listeners whose encyclopedic knowledge of 1960’s African Funk could challenge Fela Kuti himself.” —Jan 1 2003