I love waking up on Saturday, making a pot of coffee, and watching the EPL while the eloquent British announcers wax poetic about the best teams in the world. But, I’m an American, and I have no real allegiance to any one club. This makes my mornings relaxing, because I am just there to watch […]
Restaurant Hotspots: Neighborhood Mentions in the New York Times’ Food Section

I find myself going to the same neighborhoods again and again and a lot of it is driven by the restaurant reviews my friends read. I was curious to see how well the data reflects my sense of neighborhood popularity and how they have changed over time. I have lived in New York for two […]
Where Students from Each College Move After Graduation

When I lived in San Francisco I was chatting with a venture capitalist who invested in consumer brands. I mentioned that Peloton had set up a display in an upscale mall in suburban Cincinnati, where I grew up. He was shocked, and said “Wow — that shows you how hard growth is to come by […]
Text Analysis of Howard Lindzon’s Blog

After analyzing Fred Wilson’s blog posts, I got connected with Howard Lindzon and did the same thing for his blog. I wasn’t as familiar with Lindzon’s writing and it’s been fun to dig into it — where Wilson is measured and understated, Lindzon shoots from the hip and is irreverent. I most enjoyed reading some […]
What We Talk About When We Talk About Dating

Several months ago, I heard about the West Elm Caleb saga, and read that women on TikTok alleged that he was love bombing them while seeing many other women. I found this disturbing, because I had never heard the term “love bombing” and it’s important to me that I remain culturally aware for as long […]
A Text Analysis of Fred Wilson’s AVC

I’ve been reading Fred Wilson’s blog AVC most days for 4 or 5 years now. I admire the way he writes: simple sentences that have a clear point of view. He doesn’t hide behind complexity or jargon, and he doesn’t hedge every opinion for fear of being wrong. I’ve tried with mixed success to incorporate […]
How the Spotify Deal Changed Joe Rogan’s Reach

Spotify bought the rights to Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2020 for $100 million, and full episodes became exclusively available on Spotify on September 1, 2020. I don’t listen to the podcast but have had the feeling that I hear about Rogan and his show less than I used to, and I wanted to know what […]
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What People Talk About When They Talk About Sally Rooney Books

I recently finished Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You. One of the characters in the book is a novelist who is adjusting to life in the public eye and can’t understand why strangers on the internet feel the need to analyze and comment on her life. It’s easy to imagine that Rooney herself shares […]
Quantifying what Republicans and Democrats talked about at the DNC and the RNC

We took the toughest, boldest, strongest, and hardest hitting action against China in American history by far. President Trump, RNC Night 4 Donald Trump has had a love fest with dictators, including China and Russia. He hasn’t been standing up to them at all. Rose G, DNC Night 3 I didn’t watch much of either […]
My Email Open Rate Data and 4 Things I learned about Copywriting

I am sharing data on my email open rates because 1) I always appreciate seeing data from other blogs and websites; the desire to benchmark oneself is hard to suppress and 2) if you are reading this, there is a decent chance you contributed to the data! I have been reading a book about copywriting, […]