Archive • Everything New • Buttondown

February 2025 Update

This is a brief summary of the goals that I accomplished this past month. This is part of a monthly series of such posts so that I can track my progress and...

January 2025 Update

February 17, 2025

I am reviving my blog. As I'm not doing a low-buy year, I have changed my handle to one more apt: Everything New. Everything feels new right now, for me and...

The Supply Chain Crisis is a Global Income Inequality Crisis

October 24, 2021

Things are harder to find. Prices are rising. For a society that believes in consumption (isn't that what the etymology of consumerism really entails),...

Fast Takes on California's Recall

September 15, 2021

A great quote from former Governor Davis Gray Davis was the first and most recent Californian Governor to have his recall reach the ballot, and dubiously the...

Consumption Diary #37

September 8, 2021

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

Consumption Diary #36

August 18, 2021

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

How Bad Did I Let My Old Phone Get?

August 16, 2021

In front of me now is my new OnePlus 8 smartphone. My much beloved Moto Z2, by Motorola, shall soon serve as something between a paperweight, an emergency...

Consumption Diary #35

August 11, 2021

Due to my travels, this diary is abbreviated to just Monday and Tuesday. A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both...

Coming Down the Home Stretch

If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been largely absent from this blog for the last two months. I haven’t written my weekly consumption diary in a few weeks, and my...

Consumption Diary #34

I've been traveling the last week, and so didn't have the chance to post my consumption diary on Tuesday. To make sure I properly keep track of my...

Consumption Diary #33.5

I've been traveling the last week, and so didn't have the chance to post my consumption diary on Tuesday. To make sure I properly keep track of my...

Consumption Diary #32

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

Consumption Diary #31

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

Consumption Diary #30

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

I Was Wrong About Meme Stocks, NFTs, and Dogecoin

The less clickbait title: Learning to Love The Bubble. The thing about bubbles–be they meme stocks, NFTs, or Dogecoin–is that, up until they burst, they can...

Consumption Diary #29

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

Who is Medicine?

This article is part of Faith in Medicine week. Okay, who are we actually trusting, or distrusting, when we put our faith in medicine? Medicine is a vast...

Biden Sends Vaccine Clinics to Black Barber Shops. Good!

I don’t have a sophisticated take here, especially about the topics I’ll be discussing today, which is vaccine hesitancy and distrust of medicine in Black...

Unbelievable, and Inevitable

This one turned into a bit of a sermon. It’s part of Faith in Medicine week. I’ve watched this documentary sixteen times since it was released on 5/26/2021,...

When is Prime Day? (HUGE UPDATE; WE'VE BLOWN IT WIDE OPEN)

An update to our reporting from 4/16/2021 Prime Day is June 21st and 22nd, 2021.

Consumption Diary #27

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

Faith in Medicine

Just due to all of this, all that’s happened in 2020, I’ve been thinking a lot about our faith in medicine. With the COVID-19 vaccines, the medical and...

Bad Buys: I Thought I Had The Cancer Sunscreen

Valisure is a pharmaceutical lab that does quality control for medications, analyzing their chemical composition for potential contamination or toxins, and...

It's The Video Clip, Stupid (A John Oliver Take)

In John Oliver’s most recent blend of prank, gonzo journalism, and comedy sketch, the HBO host successfully bought three “integrated advertising spots” on...

Consumption Diary #27

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

Software as a Serf: Duolingo and Freemium Software

Freemium A particular niche in software-as-a-service (SaaS) is Freemium software. Freemium, a portmanteau of free and premium, denotes a software that users...

What is Lifehacker? What are Lifehacks?

I'm impressionable, young, driven, find productivity an adulatory end in itself, want to be more present for my friends and more excited by my life and work,...

Proposition 65 Is, Politely, Full of Shit

This one goes out to my Californian consumers. Who here ignores, wholesale, every single piece of signage related to Proposition 65 (which, for non-...

A Brief Have Done List

"But what have you been up to this year?" I have found it easy to get lost in these matters, in the exhaustion of this year, the exhaustion of quarantine,...

The Nothing New Challenge: 6-Month Review

This week, I released my 26th weekly consumption diary, meaning I have been writing this blog and doing my “nothing new” challenge for 26 weeks, half of the...

The Aesthetics of Credibility

Something I've been dancing around when thinking about affiliate marketers is the lengths they go to make their recommendations feel credible. I wanted to do...

Consumption Diary #26

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

A Neat Old Timey Soap Ad

It’s a little soap ad from the 1930s, and its considered somewhat an important modernist experiment in graphic design and animation. You can watch it on...

Software as a Serf: The Duolingo Case Study

Software as a Serf, in Review The first part of this series covered how I will conduct my analysis of software-as-a-service, or SaaS. I will focus on a...

Software as a Serf: The WoW and Flash Case Studies

Software as a Serf, in Review The first part of this series covered how I will conduct my analysis of software-as-a-service, or SaaS. I will focus on a...

Consumption Diary #25

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

Software as a Serf: The Prologue

Introductory Remarks Initially, today’s post was to be part of my series called The Good Products, where I review products that have served me well....

Consumption Diary #24

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

Personal Window Shopper

I think one of the reasons I am so drawn to large affiliate marketing platforms is because, even though my Nothing New Challenge precludes me from purchasing...

How WordPress Secretly Turned Bloggers Into Affiliate Marketers

When discussing affiliate marketing, I noted that some of my chagrin with the practice is that affiliate marketers often posture as objective reviewers, but...

Happy May Day, And Its Cursed Alternative

Happy May Day (or International Worker’s Day)! I’m a worker, and I celebrate workers. May Day is an excellent day to remember the sacrifices the labor...

Consumption Diary #23

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

Two Readings Against Blockchain

It’s nice to have a simple point-of-view. Some complex cultural phenomena like the narrowing of the middle class require detailed explanations,...

Consumption Diary #21

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

When is Prime Day?

The answer is, we don't know! Amazon's seasonal sales event doesn't have a fixed date. It used to be held in July, was held in November last year, and this...

Consumption Diary #20

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

Everyday Life (Seeing Like An Affiliate Marketer Part 10)

In the 1950s, Henri Lefebvre proposed that romance novels so shaped our collective understanding of love that an anthropologist could exactingly study our...

Three Analyses of the Deal Round-Up (Seeing Like An Affiliater Marketer Part 9)

Rhythmanalysis Prelude on the Rhythmanalysis Henri Lefebvre proposed the existence of two types of rhythms in modern life, the cyclical and the linear. Every...

Consumption Diary #19

A key part of this challenge is to record a weekly consumption diary. This will both hold me accountable to readers of this blog, and will allow me to think...

Meets An Immovable Object (Seeing Like An Affiliate Marketer Part 8)

Product reviews constitute the most popular mode of cultural criticism. Susan Sontag suggests as such: film reviews, she alleges in "Notes on Camp," serve as...