a culture of sameness
You need to fund the strange stuff and serve it to people to make things materially less stagnant.
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a blog about the internet
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Us and them
A confession: I cry at movies now. It's a new thing for me; over the last couple years it happened enough that I finally had to admit to myself that yes, I am this kind of person now. The emotional climax happens, the strings swell in the background,
What does it mean to make something?
Last night I did something unusual: I went to a comedy show to see a friend's friend do standup. I know, right? Thing is, it was delightful. (This is a rare thing.) And it got me thinking again about a question I've been rotating in my
An old post about Streets of Rage II
Perhaps the best idiosyncrasy of electronic music is how, more than anything, it manages to convey moral clarity. A synth can tell you who you are, or, more accurately, who you’re not.
turns out comics are pretty cool
Hello! I disappeared for another week — sorry about that. I should be back to regularity soon, I think. It's been busy over here at Bijan, Inc. You know how it is when you're a freelancer: can't look a gift job in the payment
i'm back!
Hello! Sorry for the brief, unscheduled break in newsletters — I was at the Game Developers Conference out in San Francisco, and things were a bit chaotic. The weather was beautiful, though, and I learned to love the city's municipal transit. This time around, GDC drew in nearly
whither the vibecession?
I saw this TikTok the other day — which I didn't think to save and now, naturally, can't find again — where this guy showed a screenshot of his TikTok payout for the month, incensed at a potential ban. He said something like: where
goodnight, king
By now you've probably heard that Akira Toriyama is dead. If you haven't, well, I'm sorry that this is how you're finding out. But the fact remains: on March 1st, at 68, the most famous manga artist of his generation left this
a few scattered thoughts on tiktok
I published a video this week, which you can watch here if you feel like it: I wanted to write a little about how it all came together. The story is both more and less interesting than you'd think: it was, in fact, commissioned by an organization. (Yes,
rip vice
You know, it looks like the era of blogging for money is definitively over. VICE died ignominiously , killed by the same ravening capital that's destroying America's fourth estate — and, of course, its ability to understand itself. I idolized the site much longer than I
the internet is local
Every day I wake up and the first thing I do is check my phone. I know I'm not unique in this. I do it because it's where my friends are; I do it because I'm still waiting for the email that I know
social media is entertainment now
A few years ago I had this podcast idea I posted about on Twitter. And it went something like this: What if there were a show that talked to the creator middle class about how they made their money? Pretty simple, imo. The idea was we'd talk to
the apple vision pro, the tyranny of the retrofuture
The new Apple headset — the clunkily named Vision Pro — has begun to roll out to the public. You can preorder it now, even. Tech journalists have been getting stage-managed experiences with it; it is the latest gizmo that purports to change at least something about
lateral thinking with withered technology
I've been thinking about Gunpei Yokoi a lot lately. Before his tragic death in 1997, Yokoi was a game designer at Nintendo — one of the first, in fact. For them, he created the Game & Watch, the Virtual Boy, and the original Game Boy; over in games,
imagine if ninja got a low taper fade
I have been obsessed with this phrase over the past week or so. It came across my various feeds in that fragmented way I think of as characteristic of TikTok: I was seeing reactions way before I saw the actual event. Which is here: imagine if ninja got a low