Category: Personal (Page 1 of 26)

The Year in Cities 2025

December 30, 2025 /

Many of the newsletters I read are publishing “best of 2025” wrap-ups where they rattle off the posts that either got the most attention or made their authors most proud. Which is nice and all, but I saw that content already. I guess the digital cadence means it’s better to do the newsletter version of a clip show than just not hit send for a week?

Here at the Ideapad, where there’s never been a post schedule, one thing that hits like clockwork is the Year in Cities recap. Herewith, the twenty-first edition. All the places I went and spent the night. A procession of weddings and ballparks, pretty much.

As with last year, the commitment to sleeping over eliminates some of the nuance: we went from Pittsburgh back to New York by way of Baltimore, because baseball. And that Kentucky stay was over the river from Cincinnati, a pedestrian bridge away from a Reds game, which was the point of our visit. But we’ll stick with the system, which allowed us spend a night in Kentucky, after all.

Repeat visits are noted with an asterisk.

New York *
Coral Gables, FL
Chicago, IL *
Palm Beach Gardens, FL *
Cleveland, OH *
Detroit, MI
Newport, KY
Pittsburgh, PA
Edgartown, MA *
Montecito, CA

On economics

December 8, 2025 /

I took a microeconomics class my first semester of college as an undergraduate. It was part of the core curriculum requirements. I found it incredibly boring. My distaste for it was part of the motivation for me to declare a major in English instead of something pre-business.

More than a decade later, I took a macroeconomics class, midway through my graduate coursework in business school. I found it fascinating and took to it easily. I enjoyed it so much that I went to my professor and asked him if it was too late to switch careers.

My professor leveled with me, and said that most professional economists pursue master’s and doctorate degrees straight out of undergrad, and my desire to pivot after nearly a decade in digital media was probably not the best course of action. So I stuck with the internet, but I never lost my taste for macroeconomics. I’ve kept up with the sector over the years, and I still think about whether I’d be good as an economist, or in a similar field, where I am trying to understand broader trends and figure out the near future (not unlike my many years in UX).

So when I discovered the Narcissist Forecasting Contest a few years ago, I was an instant yes. Adam Braff, who owns a data consultancy, runs a fun annual game that poses 25 probabilistic questions about the year ahead, predicted by 150 or so professional and armchair analysts. It’s equal parts macroeconomics, social science, political science and gut feelings.

This is the tenth year of the contest and the fourth year I’ve played. My first year, I was in over my head, but my second year I improbably finished in eleventh place. That was enough to make me a participant for life, and also a little confused—who was I to be any good at this?

I fell back to the middle of the pack in 2024, but in 2025 I combined research, contemplation, existing knowledge, and (mostly) my gut. Unexpectedly, I began seeing my name in the top ten of the standings every time Braff wrote about the contest. I had a near spit-take when my name showed up in his August update because I was in the lead—and then I held on to win the forecast as of late last night.

I have had fun morning reflecting on winning. I am irrationally proud of my victory. I’m also wondering again if I can do anything with the latent observational and predictive skills the forecast has awakened. Should I try my hand on Polymarket? Check in with my macro professor?

I actually took the time to talk to Braff about forecasting as a career angle; he works in big data, so it’s a parallel pursuit for him, too. I’ll probably stay the course with my professional life for now. But it’s fun to consider that my hunch in 2004 was a pretty good one.

Some of my best-evers

October 31, 2025 /

I recently pulled out my old Helly Hansen all-weather coat. My wife bought it for me on a trip to Norway back in 2007. It developed a small tear in the nylon on the chest, so I moved onto other jackets, including two more Helly Hansens. But I never let go of the first one, for a reason: it’s easily the best jacket I’ve ever owned.

I can list some of the reasons why. It’s warm but not too warm. It’s comfortable, with a soft interior and good movement. It has great practical features, including zipper pockets, a spacious exterior breast pocket, and a good hood. And it’s seriously weatherproof: I’ve coached soccer games in 43-degree pelting rain and strong winds and kept reasonably warm and dry. I wore it for yesterday’s storm, nylon tear and all, and will pull it out the next time the weather requires it.

But that’s not exactly the point. What I find interesting is that it’s lodged in my memory (past and present) as the categorical best, something I knew in the moment was as good for me as that thing would ever be.

Since grabbing the Helly Hansen yesterday, I’ve been thinking about other categorical bests from my past. Sometimes this is impossible; I couldn’t pick a vacation, I’d have three, or seven. But when you know, you know. I’m sure there are many (and I will update this post if I think of more) but here are a few:

Sneakers: Bo Jackson Nike Air SC3s, circa 1991. Man, I was still a teenager, but I was unequivocal back then: these were the best sneakers ever. I still remember them well: great looks, great support, comfortable, long-lasting. I still wear Nikes and some of them are great. But none of them were these.
Lobster: Roy Moore Lobster Company, Bearskin Neck, Rockport, Mass. I didn’t like lobster until I was an adult, and Roy Moore is what got me going. Nothing beats their straight-from-the-lobster-boat, boiled-in-seawater freshness and sweetness. It can be emulated—Jordan Lobster Farms on Long Island cooks the same way, and I once watched my buddy Rob walk down to the beach with a lobster pot, with equal results—but Roy Moore, sitting alongside some of the country’s most venerable lobstermen, stands above.
Stargazing: I’ve had a lot of special moments, from the 2024 total eclipse to the three (!) comets I’ve seen with my family the past few years. But the 2002 Leonid meteor storm tops the list. I woke up my wife and parents well past midnight and we all laid on a soccer field at the local elementary school on a frigid night, huddled under wool blankets and watching. What we got were hundreds of meteors, a barrage of flares and dreams and inspiration.
Computing: as I wrote here previously, while I’ve used many computers for countless hours dating back to 1981, the only one I’ve really loved wasn’t even mine. It was the well-loved Mac SE/30 in the editor’s office at the college newspaper. Friendly, fast and with clarity of purpose, I was never happier at a monitor. Repeating myself: “I had on it Eudora, Microsoft Word 5.1a, and a Klondike solitaire app, and it was just about perfect.”

What have you experienced as the absolute best?

Back to school

September 2, 2025 /

The end of summer brings reflection, so here are a few of my thoughts as we head back into the workaday.

➸ Sunday marked 100 days since I hit my target weight, and I checked in two pounds lower than I was in May. The embarrassing pile of sweets my family brought home from Martha’s Vineyard is making this week a bit of a challenge, but I have proved to myself that I can not only lose weight, I can maintain it.

➸ The beach club wrapped its season on Monday, and I am happy to report that everyone had a delightful summer, and we plan on doing it again next year. Who knew I’d want to spend time on Long Island?

➸ This week marks the start of senior year for our oldest son, which is thrilling, terrifying and saddening all at once, as he and we prepare for the next stage of life. Our younger son ascends to high school, too, so it’s a big academic year all around.

➸ We had so much else go on in a rather eventful summer—Eli and I went on an amazing baseball road trip; Nate got his first paying job; Amy went to Budapest; the dog learned how to open our kitchen cabinets and steal our cereal—and, well, most of it has been wonderful. On June 1 we had many open questions about the season, and we really made the most of it. More like this, please.

Interview

June 27, 2025 /

I was delighted to be contacted by Manuel Moreale for his long-running People and Blogs interview series, which went live today. If you didn’t come here from there, here’s our conversation. The archives are full of interesting people and worth poking through. Thanks, Manuel!

Willpower vs. attention

June 23, 2025 /

Noah Smith wrote about his weight loss journey, and came to an interesting conclusion: that for him, the issue was noticing whether or not he was full:

I started paying attention to how much I ate. If it was “time to eat”, but I wasn’t hungry, I wouldn’t eat anything. And when I did eat, as soon as I felt like I wasn’t hungry anymore, I would stop eating. …
I realized, as I was doing it, that the difference between losing weight and not losing weight was just attention.
When I didn’t pay attention, I didn’t lose weight, because I kept eating after the point where I was no longer hungry. When I paid attention, I was able to control when I stopped eating.

He goes on to say that willpower is a conceit (my word, not his), and that the typical approach—”you have to be tough enough to fight through constant hunger, and motivated enough to want weight loss even more than food”—is wrong.

I fundamentally agree with the first part of Smith’s argument: attention is important. My weight loss this year has been predicated entirely on knowing how much I’m eating (along multiple vectors) and stopping myself from eating too much. My daily food spreadsheet was a key part of my success.

But I disagree with the hand-waving about willpower. People who are overweight have been told for their entire lives to stop eating when they’re full, slow down between courses, wait twenty minutes before taking seconds, and so forth. Knowing that generally doesn’t do much, because a person needs the willpower to acknowledge and recognize those guardrails.

When it comes to weight loss, as with any aspect of personal well-being, motivation is attention’s partner. Last winter, I was scared and desperate; that gave me the motivation to create the spreadsheet, and the willpower to pay attention to everything I ate every day for five months to reach David-minus-forty. I don’t know that I succeed with just one of those factors. And I’d guess that’s true for most people trying to lose weight.

I’m happy for Noah Smith and his successful and relatively low-key strategy. Whatever works for you! Achieving a healthy weight goal is a win, regardless of the path one takes to get there.

The beach cabana

June 21, 2025 /

I haven’t really been a paying member of anything since my college fraternity. (The gym does not count.) My wife and I find it mildly amusing that we live in Manhattan with children who play golf and tennis; if we were in the suburbs, it’s likely that we’d have joined a country club a long time ago. But that did not come to pass, and nothing clubby really came up.

Nothing, that is, until earlier this month, when friends of ours suggested we join their beach club for the season. With said children now in their teens and home for the summer, we furrowed our brows at the open dates in their schedules. Why not? Amy and I took a ride out on a rainy Sunday, picked a cabana, and joined the club.

Beach clubs still exist, plentifully, on the Long Beach barrier island, just east of the Rockaways on the south shore of Long Island. (I counted 21 of them on a quick flip through Google Maps.) We have visited a few of them over the years. They’re not quite The Flamingo Kid, but the spirit and general intention is still there.

Each one sticks to the formula: an expanse of beach with chairs and umbrellas; a restaurant; some games; a pool; scheduled events; no shortage of clichés (in our club’s case, there are cabana boys, a sports-desk attendee who doesn’t know what a ping pong ball is, and two charismatic blonde women who run the show). And, of course, cabanas.

The cabanas are the big selling point. Spacious and reasonably equipped with shelving, changing rooms, a shower and electrical power, they become home base for the summer. Ours is in a courtyard, like most cabanas at this club, but there are beachfront cabanas and smaller pool lockers, too. Regulars kit out their cabanas with signage and decor, like the one down the row from ours with string lights and a patio lounge chair, and the one around the corner from there with “Copa” permanently affixed above the door (Get it?).

We went for the first time Thursday—late for beach cabana season; it opens on Memorial Day—and again Saturday. The trip to the island takes us on the Van Wyck and its unique misery, but once there, having a cabana at a club is a delight. Our stuff is waiting for us! A cabana boy dropped off some ice! The restaurant is good! We spent time with friends both days and our new neighbors are friendly and welcoming. And, of course, there’s the beach, fully 300 feet deep even in this erosional era, with soft sand and the vast Atlantic Ocean beyond. Dolphins even surfaced in front of us at one point.

I took some time Saturday to run to Target and stock up the cabana. “You should sit and enjoy yourself,” Amy said to me. “But if I’m getting the cabana kitted out, I am enjoying myself,” I replied. So we now have sealed storage for our snacks and a new outdoor speaker, with a folding table and chairs on the way. The club is open seven days a week, and an oceanside twist on remote work is not far behind.

We’re still getting our seashore legs, but so far, this seems like a great way to while away the summer.

Assorted thoughts on being thin

May 21, 2025 /

Because it’s really all I think about in my spare time lately, and I need to get it out of my system.

I’m still losing weight. I am way below the target I mentioned in this space last month. I did some homework, and realized that broader measurements of “ideal weight” and “healthy BMI” were less than my doctor’s goal for me. So I set my sights lower and lost another 11 pounds. I’d like to lose two more pounds from here and maintain from that point, although if this is as thin as I get, I’m great.

I saw my doctor last week and he was borderline giddy with my progress. He even thought I was on a GLP, which is probably the best compliment I’m going to get.

Plateauing has been satisfying. Last week I touched my all time low, and since then, I’ve let myself go, relatively speaking: looser on the calorie count, occasional sweets instead of never. That has been a delight. Still no French fries since December, though.

Fewer people than expected say anything to me about how thin I’ve gotten. Amy thinks it’s the Ozempic effect: you don’t know how or why someone is losing weight, especially after age 50, and a person could be embarrassed at taking the GLP-1, or unwell. So it’s not a topic to bring up lightly.

Honestly, I miss the before times, when I’d lose 10-15 pounds and everyone would say, “Did you lose weight?” Because it’s hard work and part of the reward is looking great. But I get it, and I’m not thin to garner compliments, I’m gearing up for a healthy half-century. If you see me, though, feel free.

When people do broach the subject, it’s often to share their own stories and commiserate. Last night I had an extended conversation with my doorman about heart health, as he’s working on managing his blood pressure. We ate a lot of watermelon while chatting. (“Did you know watermelon has more lycopene than any other fresh fruit or vegetable?”)

Everyone says, “You must feel great!” when they do bring it up. And the truth is, I guess? I haven’t noticed a major change in my energy or overall well-being. In comparison, I really got a lot out of resuming regular yoga practice last August, which has been great for my musculature, my emotional state, and my mindset around fitness (which probably preconditioned me to take on the diet change successfully). I’m also taking more Citibikes, which is a great endorphin kick compared to the subway.

I really am feeling good this week, but it’s because we got a supportive new mattress last Thursday, and it’s doing wonders for my back.

Where I do feel great is every time I get dressed. My pants are baggy, shirts way too wide. I keep finding excuses to try on piles of stuff and cull what’s never going to fit right again. I’m starting to shop for new clothes with a smile. The other day I wandered into a fancy denim shop in the Village.

“Tell me about your jeans now,” said the salesman, pointing at my drooping 3x1s held up by a cinched belt. “What is and is not working?”

“Well,” I said, “these are a 36, and I’m a 34.”

The habits I’m forming are the win. Not bumming those fries off another plate. Ignoring the sliders and fried foods at a party. Measuring my portions. Even when I’m done losing weight, I want to keep these habits long term, because they are making and keeping me healthy by keeping me aware.

In an amusing-to-my-wife development, now that I’m thin, I’m not happy that I have a gut.

My sweet tooth is largely unchanged, lest you or I worry that I could be developing an eating disorder. In April, we got a seven layer cake for a holiday dinner, and when everyone forgot about the half we had left, over the course of a week I ate the whole damn thing. No regrets. I still lost weight that week, thanks to my spreadsheet, which let me pick the days I could get away with the burst of sugar. I can’t go back to gorging on cake on a random Tuesday, but I’m still me.

New foods I’ve discovered: PB2 (pure peanut powder for healthier smoothies); Oikos Triple Zero vanilla yogurt (I generally can’t stand fresh yogurt); Alyssa’s Healthy Chocobites and Mint Chip Trubars (dessert-like snacks loaded with fiber); raspberries (which I never loved, but they’re filling, and also loaded with fiber); Heritage Flakes (loaded with.. well, you know).

Oh, those Heritage Flakes. I ditched my alternating morning routines of bagels and big bowls of Corn Flakes in favor of a carefully portioned bowl of Heritage Flakes five or six mornings a week, on the recommendation of my dietitian. They’re filling and flavorful, if ridiculously thick and crunchy. Coupled with unsweetened oat or almond milk, they have become a fixture in my diet, and within a month I went from “fine, I’ll eat the healthy stuff” to looking forward to them. (I now follow half a serving of them with half a serving of a more traditional cereal, like Cheerios or Wheaties.)

My wife describes my diet program to others as, “He eats Heritage Flakes every day, and he lost 30 pounds.” Which, true.

Last month I mentioned to some friends that I’m near peak insufferable with my weight loss. This blog post—the third in a row related to dieting—suggests that I’m still there. At some point I’ll shut up about it but for now I’m still fixated (reveling?). No regrets.

Finally, a quiet aside to a friend who I saw for the first time in a year on Saturday, and who noticed my weight loss immediately. He then told me he’d done almost the exact same thing: the same amount of weight loss, from the same starting point, in the same timeframe. I don’t know if he’ll see this post, but I am proud of him, as he is of me, and sharing our stories in real time was a treat. Keep it up.

The Line Diet, an update

April 4, 2025 /

On December 6, 2024, my dear friend Rob Koretz passed away from heart complications. He was just 51 years old.

Three weeks later, I went in for a calcium score test. It’s a medical diagnostic that uses CT imaging to see if plaque is building up in one’s arteries. The results of my test showed up on my phone before I even got home. In one of the greatest understatements of my life, they scared me straight.

Once I got over the shock, I tried to process it. On the scoring scale, my number was “moderate” and not “high risk,” but that, to me, was nuance. Calcium score progression and its related symptoms are largely genetic, too, and straightforward to overcome. I didn’t know any of that on December 26, though, and the news forced me into a reckoning.

I had been in a roughly two-year slide with my food intake. My weight was high: not egregiously so, as I’d been even heavier in the past, but persistently. I had developed bad habits, like walking the dog to the pizza parlor for lunch, and not paying attention to my snacking.

My reaction to the test was simple—I had to eat better, immediately and permanently. That afternoon, I did extensive homework on how to eat heart-healthy. My diet was already well-rounded, with plenty of fruits, vegetables, nuts and fish, but also loaded with starches and sweets. Those were abruptly put off-limits, along with a lot of other suspect foods. We went grocery shopping and I was a sad mess looking at everything I wanted but wouldn’t buy, convinced that the majority of the stock was going to kill me.

Eating right is not hard if you know what you’re doing. I, obviously, did not. So I booked an appointment with a dietitian associated with my doctor’s office. She was able to look at my calcium score as well as recent bloodwork and give me guidelines on calorie, fat and sugar intake. I also peppered her with dozens of questions about “bad” food, so I knew what I could get away with, as it were: how many eggs in a week, how frequently I can grab that slice of pizza, etc.

With that, I got going. I have been meticulously tracking my food, an exercise that I will drop at some point, but which has done a great job of keeping me honest and feeling empowered. I utilize Google Sheets and literally chronicle my day: I ate this much of that food which has these calories, saturated fat, added sugar and fiber totals. It’s fussy, but it’s also been fascinating. There are notes in there on the aforementioned egg and pizza frequencies as well as other tips. With it, I rarely exceed any of my daily targets.

And, of course, there’s the line diet.

I’ve written about line dieting before; I was doing it before I knew it was a thing, in a simple Excel file, on and off as I saw fit. Somehow, even when I wasn’t dieting, I’ve kept it going for 19 years. (I’m not sure what that says about me, but I think I like it.) The spreadsheet starts in 2006 and now has 14 tabs and an extremely long view on my weight. It was a natural complement to my new focus on dietary health.

My doctor gave me a weight loss goal: 28 pounds lower than where I was before my calcium scoring test. I hadn’t weighed that little since shortly after my wedding. According to my two decades of data, I’d only even gotten within seven pounds of my goal once. I began weighing myself every morning (on the world’s most reliable scale) out of curiosity and to reliably track my progress.

On Monday, 95 days after my test, I hit my target weight.

Eating with my mother-in-law a few weeks ago, she marveled at my meticulousness. “I don’t know how you do it,” she said.

“As far as I’m concerned,” I replied, “I have no choice.”

But I did have a choice, and I chose wisely. I’ve reinvented my diet and have a clear path forward to long-term heart health.

And, of course, losing a lot of weight is fun. I can’t really gain it back, so thin me is here to stay. Which means that when our nephew gets married in September, I’ll be dusting off my own wedding tuxedo for the occasion. L’chaim!

My jeans

March 3, 2025 /

For many years, I had a delightful clothes shopping routine: when I needed a new pair of blue jeans, I would go to Barneys Co-op and try on more or less everything in my size until I found one that met both my criteria (lays nice, all cotton, soft) and my wife’s (flat front, nice shape). I’d buy a pair—preferably on sale, because Barneys could get silly—and then immerse myself into the brand for a while, knowing I had found something that worked, and jeans are usually a repeatable purchase.

My process was quite fun, if a little hit-or-miss. I bought a fantastic pair from Citizens of Humanity, then followed up with a pair of their gray (non-denim) jeans, then discovered that Citizens stopped making 100% cotton pants in favor of elastane blends, so I stopped. Barneys once sold me an amazing pair of vintage-cut Levi’s 501s, which I wore sparingly, because I’ve never found a second pair of Levi’s that fit as well.

But when it worked, it worked. Barneys led me to Earnest Sewn, which were handsome and unbelievably comfortable, and I bought several pairs over the years. Earnest Sewn went out of business, and the founder created a new brand called 3×1; Barneys sold me my first pair of those, too, and I soon had more than one.

Then a few things happened, in rather rapid succession.

3×1 went out of business.* This was disappointing but fine—shopping for new jeans is fun. Except a few weeks later…
Barneys closed. This was a long time coming, but especially sad. No more Co-op; no more Warehouse Sales; no more cutting-edge aspirational department store. And, for me especially, no more vast jeans department. Which almost immediately didn’t matter, because within weeks of that…
The pandemic hit, and we all stopped shopping in stores for a good long while.

* Nowadays, of course, brands never die, so both Earnest Sewn and 3×1 are back on the market, with their same logos but not the same products. I’m not interested in them at that level.

By mid-2020, I was in a pants rut: my current jeans were wearing out, my preferred maker was gone, and my preferred store for finding new jeans was gone, too. I poked around online and bought a pair or two of other brands, notably one from Raleigh Denim, which I quite liked until they ripped on me within a year (customer service cited “old fabric” and declined to repair them). Not great.

So, in a fit of desperation and creativity, I started crawling the internet and accumulating 3x1s.

I kept my focus narrow. Two styles, one waist size, new or near-new only. I looked at a bunch of websites (Grailed, Poshmark) and discovered, improbably, that eBay was my best source. In all, I bought eight pairs of jeans between February 2020 and July 2023.

This process was imperfect, by which I mean all sales were final, and not all of them fit. Recall that I used to try on a zillion pairs of jeans at a time. Despite the labeling, not every pair was cut the same way; some were too tight in the waist, others too narrow for my body type. But I was also paying pennies on the dollar for old jeans, so I made my peace with the process, and hoped half of them worked out.

My family laughed at me more than once, but the process paid off more than once, too. Interestingly, the jeans I found were quite different from one another. Two pairs looked just like my old ones, and I wear them all the time. A third was extraordinarily soft, and became my go-to WFH pair, although they wore out in the knee rather quickly. Still a nice find.

And I write this blog post today because I just pulled out my greatest find: a new-with-tags selvedge denim pair, original price still stickered ($365!), which were tight when I bought them but now fit me perfectly. I’m wearing them with pride, as though I found them at the store this weekend.

At some point I am going to exhaust my collection of 3x1s. I hope by the time I do I’ll have found a new store where I can have fun trying on new jeans in person.