Where the Fear Has Gone There Will Be Nothing

Hi! The news is all bad. This year started off badly and it quickly got much worse. I expect there’s more awfulness to come. I don’t have much to say about any of this except one thing: It’s important to remember that the Trump administration isn’t doing all of this—the kidnapping of other nations’ leaders, […]

The Art I’m Taking with Me from 2025

Hi! Like many people, I like to reflect on the art and culture that most made an impact on me over the year. Because I take in so much art in the course of an average year, I don’t think in terms of “favorites.” (One of my crankiest opinions is that nobody over the age […]

You Have Nothing in Common with Elon Musk

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about polarization and the us-versus-them mindset that started developing during President Obama’s first term and really ran wild under the iPhone and algorithmic social media. It worked out very well for the very rich people who pay to develop those algorithms that we have been forcefully divided along party […]

AI Is Coming Home for the Holidays

Hi! Right before Halloween, I was at a family member’s house and children were getting their faces painted for some festivity or another. I noticed that the picture on the packaging for the face paints was not a real photograph of a real human. Instead, the model was clearly created by AI. She had the […]

Green Shoots in Autumn

Hi! It’s already been a roller coaster of a month, with the election turning decisively toward the Democrats followed almost immediately by eight centrist Democrats blowing that capital and folding on the shutdown with basically nothing to show for it. But generally, I’m still feeling pretty good about the results of the election. Any off-year […]

The Longest Little Vacation

In which I share my thoughts on Bellingham, the movie Halloween, and two of November’s hottest tickets. Hi! Since the last newsletter, I’ve been out of commission with a pretty bad cold that might have been the flu. If you haven’t gotten your flu or Covid shot yet, please consider making an appointment to do […]

One Organizational Challenge After Another

Hi! Thanks so much to all the folks who wrote back with opinions about the cadence of this newsletter. Two of you wrote to say you prefer one big edition at the end of the month, the vast majority of you said you would be happy with two editions per month, and a couple of […]

What I’ve Been Reading and Writing: September 2025

Hi! Slightly different format this month, starting with three random points: I’ve Been Reading Seattle author G. Willow Wilson’s latest comic with artist M.K. Perker, The Stoneshore Register, is a quiet little masterpiece. It’s about a young journalist who gets a job writing at a tiny newspaper in a coastal Washington state town where weird things […]

What I’ve Been Reading and Writing: August 2025

We’ve hit the portion of the summer that’s best described as “overripe.” People are annoyed and aggressive, drivers are even more unhinged than usual, and it feels like every trash bin is overflowing into the streets. I don’t know how other cities do it, but in Seattle, at least, we need a good chilly rain […]

What I’ve Been Reading and Writing: July 2025

Hi! When I was younger (groan,) summer was the season of pop culture. All the catchiest pop songs tumbled out of the windows of passing cars, all the expensive blockbusters popped off in movie theaters like a months-long fireworks show, and all the grabbiest books by the biggest-name authors weighed down the new arrival tables […]