Applied Cartography
Everybody Wants Some!!
The single most pleasurable movie of all time is Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven, and it achieves that...
2 weeks ago
The single most pleasurable movie of all time is Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven, and it achieves that status in order to try to convey what makes filmmaking uniquely magical: a sense of shared enchantment between the audience and the director, and the ecstasy of the latter pulling a...
Applied Cartography
Best of Enemies
Last year, I watched The War Room, the documentary following Bill Clinton's first campaign — a film...
1st Aug 2026
Last year, I watched The War Room, the documentary following Bill Clinton's first campaign — a film I am remiss for having never written about, because it was captivating, satisfying, and illuminating. And whether for good reasons or bad, it punctured most of my belief that the...
Applied Cartography
June, 2026
June, like any month in which I neither write very much nor read very much, feels already...
1st Jul 2026
June, like any month in which I neither write very much nor read very much, feels already cryptographic in retrospect.
Applied Cartography
May, 2026
There are two mental models about work and fatigue which, like my brief dalliance with Roshe Runs, I...
1st Jun 2026
There are two mental models about work and fatigue which, like my brief dalliance with Roshe Runs, I have loved and outgrown:
Applied Cartography
April, 2026
I had hoped and expected that the chaos which had marked the start of the year — floors, termites,...
1st May 2026
I had hoped and expected that the chaos which had marked the start of the year — floors, termites, sickness, fires, ACL surgery — was largely behind us, and that I would be freed to find some sort of rhythm or backbeat with which to tether a new normalcy. And of course, this has...
Applied Cartography
Mindwalk
Let us know how the water rises.
1st Apr 2026
Let us know how the water rises.
Applied Cartography
February, 2026
Last month's Wednesday update, I recorded from a train headed to Middelburg. This month I write...
1st Mar 2026
Last month's Wednesday update, I recorded from a train headed to Middelburg. This month I write closer to home temporally and otherwise. I am en route to the office on a very early Friday morning. We are still eight days from being able to return home with a new set of floors and...
Applied Cartography
Recent forays into developer productivity
I've written before about my posture around LLMs being mostly summarizable as design your systems...
1st Feb 2026
I've written before about my posture around LLMs being mostly summarizable as design your systems and abstractions to accommodate an infinite number of junior engineers.
Applied Cartography
Cameraperson
Read review: Cameraperson
1st Jan 2026
Read review: Cameraperson
Applied Cartography
Challengers
One of the things that may be apocryphal—because I’ve never bothered to actually look it up, just...
6th Dec 2025
One of the things that may be apocryphal—because I’ve never bothered to actually look it up, just kept it kicking around in my head—is David Foster Wallace’s justification for the emphasis on footnotes in Infinite Jest: that they’re meant to be a physical metaphor for the...
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