About Capital

You know what’s worse than the government wasting money? That money not getting spent at all. Private equity firms are sitting on some $1 trillion in “dry powder,” or uninvested capital from previous fundraising rounds. Like cash-heavy companies in the corporate world, the firms are hoarding more cash, partly because they’re having trouble finding worthy investments amid economic uncertainty […]

The Weakerthans & My Cat

I first heard The Weakerthans in 2002, when we were in school in DC for the semester, working on this record — I mean studying. One of Steve’s roommates convinced us to go with him to a show at the Black Cat, and I figured it would be cool to get out and do something […]

When Product Quality is Inherently Optional

Betanews tries to figure out if anyone’s going to be able to compete with the iPad, and comes up with this piece of analysis. But Google, like Microsoft, doesn’t have a reputation for quality that’s required to compete in this space. This unintentionally hilarious quote tells you pretty much everything you need to know about […]

Anti-Social Media

I have a pretty obvious love-hate relationship with social media. For simplicity’s sake, and to start a post with some concrete statements instead of directionless blather (which I will save for the middle and end), here are some things from each of those categories. HATE I hate how important people make social media out to […]

The Case of the Missing Cell Phone

A couple of months ago, a got a new phone for the first time in five years. Given that I work with nerds, and live in a pretty affluent part of the richest country in the world, most people reacted to seeing my new phone with the following statement. “Why didn’t you get an iPhone?” […]

Quarters

(new 2023 editor’s note): I finally scraped this out of an old SQL file. It’s not actually very good, but I’ve been writing schlocky dork prose for 35 years now and ending sentences with prepositions for almost as long, so I’ve just decided to stop being embarrassed and celebrate the late-20s version of myself. (original […]