Plus my January “now enjoying” list — I just have to share this insight from Max Read that is equal parts profound, mundane, and depressing: The key lesson, the thing I would impart to any aspiring bloggers, content creators, or newsletter proprietors, is that the cornerstone of internet success is not intelligence or novelty or outrageousness or…

I’m joining the ranks of those voting with their feet — I joined Twitter in January 2011 to gather travel info. I was planning a seven-month round-the-world trip (#RTW) with my new wife, and I’d heard it was a good way to get firsthand intel and chat with travelers. At the time, I didn’t understand how Twitter was different than Facebook…

Reviving my Medium to get the writer juices flowing again — Hi, everyone. This is my first post here in a while. I’m hoping to revive this as a space to, well, to write again. At all. Please forgive me if the muscles are a bit atrophied. I’m not sure exactly what form this will take yet. In all likelihood there…

Straight from the East Bay — We got our own slang But everybody took it — Zion I, “The Bay” If you don’t live in California (or on the West Coast, or maybe west of the Rockies, or even in the U.S. at all), you may not be especially familiar with the slang term “hella.” Hella…

⚠️ Warning: Coffee Nerd Alert ⚠️ — A couple of years ago, my lovely and thoughtful wife gifted me an Aeropress Go. The Go is a slightly smaller Aeropress whose components all nest together in a neat little package — perfect for travel. I started experimenting with it and wound up loving it so much that I…

(For the #WriteHere prompt “A Dark Night”) OMAHA, Nebraska — Another night ends and turns to morning while I’m still at work. …

5 days traversing the Beartooth Plateau north to south — Nearly every year, two of my college friends and I go on an epic backpacking adventure somewhere in the West, always a different destination. I made a list of them this year and thought I’d share: 2009: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming 2010: Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, Colorado 2012: Yosemite National Park…

On Monday, The Guardian published an opinion piece titled: That’s big news. The problem is … President Biden did not say that it’s time to pack the court. You’d be forgiven for interpreting it that way, since colons after names are regularly used for attribution of a quotation. President Biden…

The English language is a melting pot, a mishmash, a beautiful yet frustrating gyre of inconsistency. For those who have learned it as a second (or more) language, I salute you. Unlike the French, we Anglophones don’t have a singular authority for what’s OK (okay?) in English and what’s not…