taste

It’s not just movies and TV, of course — we’re all aghast at how much time we spend on devices, consuming content , whatever that means. Reading and watching and posting and shopping, always shopping for things and ideas and comfort and distraction. Surely this endless marketplace will turn up something that satisfies us at some point! I complained... See more

But the curation was never about financial reward. It was “there's a small unscalable business here about taste, that people rely on and really like, and everyone who works on it doesn't make very much money, but they're very cool.” We just don't live in a world where that's an acceptable way to live. There's a lot of economic pressures and again,... See more

Taste isn't some mysterious gift bestowed at birth—it's simply what happens when you pay close attention to what moves you.

I'm not alone in this experience. I recall discussing with Chris Black of How Long Gone how influential these magazine-driven Borders explorations were for him. It was akin to traveling without the expense of a Virgin Atlantic ticket, building a repository of references by turning pages and tapping into cultural hubs. It involved dedicating time... See more

Philosophy begins in wonder, and the art of it is to keep this wonder with you. Many questions are worth asking, re-asking, revisiting, rethinking. One must seek Knowledge, but be a little wary of finding it. Perhaps excessive, but one could say the idea of possessing knowledge represents a kind of complacency. This is what Socrates meant: Once you... See more

If I sometimes feel like my hard drive is full, then it doesn’t matter if what I’m adding to the drive is, on its face, soothing. It’s just more stuff, more data, more things to process. By adopting my friend’s elevated standard for what’s allowed in, I decreased the number of inputs, the number of demands for thought and work and reaction I was... See more

Collecting is an exercise in creating a framework, the logic of what is in or out. But then there are decisions that seem associative or intuitive.

To be clear, some people are great at making things and simply bad at dressing. But what inspires me about the examples above is the running theme of work and talent making you look better . Too often, when we desperately search for “the perfect jeans” “the perfect tee” or “the perfect haircut,” I think that what we are really looking for doesn’t... See more