Five years on
According to LinkedIn, the cockroach of social media networks, we started Three Point Four Media five years ago in November 2017. We didn’t have any intention of doing anything until the beginning of the next year, but we wanted to be able to say that we’d been around for a bit when we did start pitching ourselves to potential clients in early 2018. No wants wants to hire the new guy. Fake it til you make it. Etc.
Half a decade later, we’re still here. Thriving? Perhaps. Surviving? Definitely. We have bigger and better clients than previous years. Our revenue continues to climb at a sustainable rate. We’re in a good enough place to start contributing to a retirement plan and as of yet we have not had to transfer money from our investment account to cover any costs. We never got around to launching an @ThreePointFourMedia Twitter account and now we won’t have to.
So a lot of wins out there. Happy birthday to us. And, no, we still can’t describe what we do.
An Article
A Murder Roils the Cycling World
What a dek on this story: "In gravel racing—the sport’s hottest category—the killing has exposed a lot of dirt." Get it? This was quite long and confusing at points, although that might say more about my inability to concentrate for more than 15 seconds at a time recently than the story itself. But damn there were a lot of names and characters and timelines. Game of Thrones with bikes instead of dragons. Same amount of dirt. I covered a cyclocross race one time and it was raining and cold, and the entire ordeal was pretty miserable. No murders though.
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A Book
David Quammen recently published the most comprehensive account of the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s exhaustively detailed, charitable, and expansive. Good stuff, although not for everyone. My big takeaway is that we’re pretty lucky SARS didn't kill 10 percent of the population in 2003.
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A Show
Andor is exceptional, not just for a Star Wars show but for TV in general. (Here are many, many more words on this topic.) Rogue One is pretty clearly the best of the new Star Wars stuff, probably because it’s the most un-Star Wars-y, and the prequel is even better. It looks cool and futuristic without being cheesy, is paced well, and introduces characters you actually want to care about. If you liked Squid Game, this is for you.
Unpopular opinion: Solo is also wonderful.
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A Project
How Sloane Stephens Is Making Tennis More Equitable and Accessible for All
We played a small role in getting this piece into the world. It involved a lot of emails.
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A Run
Citi Bike has a system that rewards users for taking bikes out of popular docking locations and returning them to less popular ones. Because I’m a totally normal and well-adjusted person, I decided to see how many Citi Bike Angel Points I could earn in 45 minutes. This required running to a station, taking out a bike, riding to a different station, docking it, running to another station, etc. etc. etc. Ultimately, I ran about four miles, biked about five, and earned 42 points, good enough for 10 free ebike minutes and a one-week Citi Bike membership extension. I think I can do a lot better next time.
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In two weeks, Bill will return to talk about roller skiing.