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mb makes poems, pictures, and programs.

posts, page 17

a large crowd filling a city street beneath transgender pride flags.
🏳️‍⚧️
a crowd inside a spacious room beneath a glowing circular ceiling fixture, in black and white.
🥽
a person in glasses and a white shirt seated at a restaurant table, in black and white.
two people watching a bright sparkler at a dark restaurant table.
a red-lit doorway opening onto a wet city sidewalk at night.
355
a small restaurant entrance washed in red light beside potted plants.
🚨
the Bowery Electric entrance glowing blue and purple above a wet sidewalk.
⚡️
red neon signs at Amsterdam Billiards & Bar reflected on a rain-soaked sidewalk.
🎱

Absolutely Crushed

Absolutely Crushed album art

In more mb-media news: earlier this year I launched a new podcast with my friend Syd Andrerson, called Absolutely Crushed. It’s a bi-weekly comedy interview show in which we gossip with a guest about their biggest celebrity or character crush and hilarity ensues.

Imagine you’re at a sleepover with your closest friends talking about that hot person they have a crush on and lightly teasing them about it while figuring out what makes their crush so attractive. It’s like that, but with interesting guests and crushes you know. This week’s guest is Syd’s girlfriend Quinn Rose, and we cover her crush on Aaron Tveit. It’s a great episode to start with.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded, and let us know what you think on Twitter.

beestung Issue #12

I’ve been a fan of beestung magazine, a quarterly publication publishing poetry by nonbinary writers since I discovered it a few years ago. This week, they published Issue 12 on the theme of trans futures, guest edited by Cavar.

I’m honored that two of my poems are included in the issue alongside fantastically inventive work by other nonbinary poets. It would a lot to me if you gave it a look as it’s the first time any of my poems have been published.

a wet path through Madison Square Park, lined with trees and black iron fencing.
Madison Square Park
a minimalist restaurant corridor with pale walls and an illuminated arched niche, in black and white.
Aburi Hana
a grid of windows across a city building façade above a Union Square sign.

The Travel Focus Mode

Last summer, I visited Toronto to see my wife after being separated by pandemic-related border closures for months. While preparing for the trip, I realized that no matter how much I travel, it’s always a little stressful and now moreso with the addition of necessary safety measures like testing and vaccine checks. Add the difficulties of quickly finding boarding passes, managing delays, and tracking bags while my phone buzzes with irrelevant notifications and my heart rate skyrockets. So, I decided to use the trip as a test of the iOS 15 Focus feature and make travel less anxiety-inducing in the process.

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Stacking the Deck

So it’s no wonder I haven’t seen many slide decks while working on small- to medium-sized software teams. And the ones I do are usually delivered by professional hypesters trying to pitch their startup, eliciting cringes from the software engineers and designers in the room (or the Zoom, as the case may be). But earlier in my career as a builder, I used decks to great effect, and you know what? I miss them. In 2022, I’m bringing back the deck.

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Software Paper Cuts

Running up against a paper cut bug feels a little bit like getting a physical one: not the end of the world, but certainly unpleasant. These types of tiny annoyances accrete over time, especially when no one is paying attention to them.

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a person on a ladder working near the ceiling of a Blue Bottle café.
Blue Bottle

Things You’re Allowed to Do

This is a list of things you’re allowed to do that you thought you couldn’t, or didn’t even know you could.

I haven’t tried everything on this list, mainly due to cost. But you’d be surprised how cheap most of the things on this list are (especially the free ones).

I love this list from Milan Cvitkovic reminding us of the things we’re allowed to do but that we often forget are options. Some favorites that I’ve actually done include: hire a tutor, buy goods/services from your friends, get couples therapy, hire a coach, cold contact people, and fly to people for in-person meetings.

Are You Gonna Finish That?

You don’t have to complete everything. You don’t need to be in it for the long haul. Quitting something doesn’t make a quitter. Instead, it makes you someone who knows their worth and knows what they want. Letting go of one thing can give you space to start something new that will serve you better. And if you regret your decision, it’ll still be there when you’re ready to pick it up again.

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