On the next move

It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note — it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

– Miles Davis

Herbie Hancock shares this anecdote

In music, as in life, a single moment rarely defines anything. What matters is the movement that follows. A step that feels misplaced, a choice that seems off, a hesitation that interrupts the rhythm — none of these are final. Meaning is created in the continuation, in how you choose to respond to what just happened. What we call a “mistake” becomes part of the texture once we treat it as material rather than failure.

Longboard surfing works exactly the same way. You cross-step, but maybe you plant your foot a little too far inside, or the rail catches earlier than expected. The board wobbles. For a split second it feels wrong — but the wave hasn’t judged you yet. What decides everything is what follows: how you adjust, how you shift your weight, how the line evolves. A misstep isn’t the problem; refusing to flow through it is. Good longboarding isn’t about perfection — it’s about recovering with style, using the unexpected to guide the next move.

Life, like a wave, doesn’t freeze on your mistakes. It keeps unfolding, giving you the chance to respond, reinterpret, and turn tension into direction. The art lies in staying open enough to make the next move meaningful. A wrong step only becomes wrong if you stop. If you keep moving, it becomes part of the story, part of the rhythm, part of the line you’re drawing through the world.

So the real skill — whether in music, surfing, or living — is to treat the imperfect moment not as a verdict but as an opening. Everything depends on how you keep moving.

December 7, 2025 · 298 words

The quiet activism of living pleasantly

Because think of the amazing people that you see every day. Think of the quiet activism of living pleasantly. There’s more good than bad. I always will believe that. I always will believe that the odds are in our favor.

Jon Stewart to David Remnick at the New Yorker festival

November 9, 2025 · 54 words

Approachable Concurrency

// In '-default-isolation MainActor' mode

struct Image {
  // The image cache is safe because it's protected
  // by the main actor.
  static var cachedImage: [URL: Image] = [:]

  static func create(from url: URL) async throws -> Image {
    if let image = cachedImage[url] {
      return image
    }

    let image = try await fetchImage(at: url)

    cachedImage[url] = image
    return image
  }

  // Fetch the data from the given URL and decode it.
  // This is performed on the concurrent thread pool to
  // keep the main actor free while decoding large images.
  @concurrent
  static func fetchImage(at url: URL) async throws -> Image {
    let (data, _) = try await URLSession.shared.data(from: url)
    return await decode(data: data)
  }
}

By running async functions in the caller’s execution context concurrency is more approachable now with Swift 6.2

October 9, 2025 · 18 words

When should you use an actor?

You need a) non-Sendable state that requires b) atomic mutations which c) cannot be done on the main thread. If you are missing any one of these qualities you should be looking at other options. And if you cannot tolerate asynchronous accesses, then you must.

– Matt Massicotte on when to use actors

October 5, 2025 · 57 words

Brain Rot Dot Com

Pay attention to The Sirens’ Call by Chris Hayes.

An ambitious analysis of how the trivial amusements offered by online life have degraded not only our selves but also our politics.

— New York Times

October 3, 2025 · 36 words

What drives you nuts?

Clutter, dirt, noise, wasting time, being bored, uncertainty, people standing too close, being looked at, having to do things, sitting still, not knowing when something will end, high noon, meetings, surprises, fascism.

– Liane Finck, who drew the cover of the August 2025 issue of The New York Review of Books

August 21, 2025 · 53 words

Craftsmanship in the 21st Century

Knowledge and execution, science and technique, depend on the skills acquired by hand through the repetition of motions and their assimilation into the mind; the aim is a close connection between art and craft.

– Richard Sennett, The Troubled Craftsman

June 6, 2025 · 43 words