Do what you know
Yes, we are qualified to give Tim Cook advice.
I liked this line from Ben Thompson at Stratechery: “The best innovations are obvious to those who understand what is just becoming possible.” He was writing about Apple in the context of the company’s recent missteps and possible signs of course-correcting, evidenced by Tim Cook and co. making some not-particularly-exciting-but-smart-and-unique-to-Apple product announcements at WWDC.
Apple, over its skis in AI and rightfully eviscerated for it, hard pivoted (the title of Thompson’s article is “Apple Retreats”) and returned to making beautiful products for consumers. Will it work? Who knows. But retrenching is a good reminder of what’s important and what got you where you are in the first place. Now please make AppleTV free.
Anyway, some links and other stray thoughts from one of the minds behind Three Point Four Media.
An article
Jenn Pelly has been writing about Katie Crutchfield since before Katie Crutchfield was the Waxahatchee we now know. The writer-subject trust comes through in this (I have to say very long) piece that’s framed as six days on the road but reads, in a good way, like a career retrospective. There’s an ease and an openness to the conversations that meander and weave in fascinating and unpredictable ways. Less I’m a Golden God; more thoughtful and poignant reflections on Crutchfield’s journey.
When Katie invited me to come on tour, we’d been largely out of touch for about five years—the years she spent getting sober, relocating to the Midwest, logging off, honing her craft, changing her life. I had known a new era of her art was coming. In the fall of 2018, she told me, “I’m not going to put out a new album until I’ve written my Idler Wheel,” referring to Fiona Apple’s 2012 masterpiece. While today Katie laughs that off as “a psycho thing to say,” the comment revealed something undeniable: she was architecting a life to live for the sake of her songs.
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A book
This is the best thing I’ve read about modern China. Peter Hessler spent 2019 to 2021 teaching English at a college in Chengdu, writing about the pre-, during, and post-COVID world as well as reflecting on the changes he’s seen since he worked as Peace Corps volunteer in the 1990s. He kept in touch with many of the students he taught during his first stint, tracking them as they’ve grown up. Other Rivers is a tenderly drawn portrait of people and place, the good, the bad, the astonishing (For a decade starting in 2000, China closed 63 elementary school classrooms a day.)
In other China news, Xi Tightens Leash on Officials’ Boozing and Lavish Living
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A coffee company
With the caveat that paying this much for coffee is absurd, I cannot say enough good things about Brandywine Coffee. We get a monthly subscription, and it’s the best. Always a sad day when we run out of beans and have to subsist on swill (read: expensive coffee from somewhere else) until the next batch of Brandywine arrives.
But don’t just take it from me. Because I am a thoughtful business parter, I got Bill a six-month subscription for his birthday, and he has not stopped raving about how good it is. To be fair, the list of things Bill raves about is long and varied and lovely, but still, the man is a coffee connoisseur.
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A project
We did a bunch of stuff here at TPF HQ this week, but let’s not talk about it right now.
Go outside and enjoy the weather.
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A ride
After two years, I broke down and purchased a power meter for my bike. After not one, not two, but three trips to the bike store, I figured out how to install it and lock into the pedals, so I have been zooming around Prospect Park knowing exactly how fast and hard I’m pedaling. A revelation? Sure, a revelation. So far, I’ve learned that it’s quite hard to maintain a consistent wattage output due to the hills. Gotta learn how to push more power. It’s fun though. Who doesn’t love more numbers?
Definitely unrelated is this article about doctors getting annoyed that people keep coming to them with useless sleep data from their Oura rings.
Next week, we’re bringing you an interview with a lover, not a fighter. Until then: Chris Gayomali.
“Just because you read something doesn't mean you're going to buy a razor subscription.”
Chris Gayomali is a fighter. By day, he’s the deputy editor at SSENSE. By night and in the early mornings he competes in Muay Thai and writes the heady newsletter HEAVIES that covers health and wellness stories you didn’t know you needed, like DIY ear seeds for peaceful sleep