Straight to the point

Or: Death to throat clearing

Back when I was a so-called journalist in the pre-Three Point Four Media days, I would write long features with a decent frequency. There was always a fun little dance where I’d do the reporting, write a long first draft, and then delete 95 percent of the opening movement. There’s a throat clearing aspect to this experience, the realization that I wasn’t getting to the point. So you write it, knowing you’ll delete it, but also that it needs to be written so it can be destroyed. Cathartic, perhaps.

Now that my job consists primarily of writing short emails, there’s not a ton of space for writing and deleting long portions of text. But I am in a post-New Year’s resolutions phase of trying to tighten our communications and proposals. Less “I think [whatever]” and “we feel [something]” and more “[whatever]” and “[something].” Extra words don’t soften the ask; they just take more time to read. 2025 is for getting to the point.

(I wrote this intro after the rest of this newsletter and no I will not be going back through the body to take my own advice. Please consider any and all tics, extraneous words, and throat clearing to be intentional rhetorical devices, and not laziness.)

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An article

TPF friend and Jared Leto correspondent—you don’t want to blame the ills of the world on Mr. My So-Called Life but there has been a pretty sharp downturn in, um, everything since he won an Oscar—Megan Angelo wrote a wonderful reported meditation on what’s next. It has a little bit of everything: harsh truths, Obama jokes, tears, joy, witches. Worth a few minutes of your time.

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A project

Thanks Cato Institute graphic designers.

Last Wednesday, we got an email (read: Bill. No one emails me.) from someone we (again, read: Bill) had chatted with previously about working with/for. Those conversations went nowhere, as so many of those types of conversations do, but he was wondering if we could help on a quick turn op-ed regarding the maybe or maybe not Tik Tok ban.

As per company policy, we jumped into action, got on a call later that day, helped concept the piece, drafted it, re-worked it the next day, and had something to send to the principals within 48 hours. The former journalist in me wonders what took so long; the comms professional knows how fast this was.

More or less. Things got bogged down—not our fault!—and now I’m writing this newsletter instead of working on the third draft. But the point stands.

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A coffee shop

It was not this full.

There we were in that perfect space with an hour to kill between Shake Shack lunch and a movie at Regal Essex Crossing. It was raining and cold, and we were desperate for shelter. The Cafe at the ICP provided it aplenty. A hidden gem of tranquility in the insanity of the Lower East Side (or, I don’t know, maybe everyone knows about it and didn’t tell me?). It’s increasingly rare in New York City to walk into a space, wonder if you are allowed to be there, and have the answer be “yes come chill” and “not no sorry your bank account needs more commas.”

Two men were having a quiet conversation about cameras with the intensity of negotiating the Warsaw Pact. Two baristas made a grand total of six drinks the entire time we were there, mostly by pushing a single button on the espresso-making machine. They seemed to be having a grand time behind the counter. A good balance of benches and chairs for sitting purposes. Go, page through photo books or don’t, sit, relax, enjoy.

B- for the coffee; A+ for the space.

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A show

That boy from White Lotus season 2 asks what if Will Hunting was an international security threat because of something something prime numbers? Sign. Me. Up.

I love this trailer. Not only is he a brilliant mathematician pursued by many men with knives and guns, but he also rows. How do you like them oarlocks?

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A swim

A totally normal swim workout, thoughtfully designed.

The pool at Bill DeBlasio’s YMCA used to have five different lane speeds: slow, slow-medium, medium, medium-fast, and fast. This, I thought, was overly specific and silly. What defines a slow-medium swimming speed from a medium one? Must we select ourselves into such specific, yet undefined, categories? What is this world?

Now, however, the old signs are gone, replaced by slow, medium, and fast. And let me tell you, it’s a disaster! (Disaster used loosely here.) Now you have the slowest swimmers in the slow lane, the fastest swimmers in the fast lane, and everyone from the 20th to 80th percentile crammed into the medium lanes. I miss the artificial and arbitrary cutoffs. You don’t know what you got til it’s gone, I suppose.

Over the weekend, the medium lanes were slammed so I boldly went where no Noah had gone before (sorry): the fast lane. It was very intimidating. People are unfathomably (for me) good at swimming. I mostly stayed out of their way. Then I noticed a slow lane had been completely empty for five or 10 minutes, so I moved over and finished out the swim. Much more relaxing. As we always say at Three Point Four Media, if you can’t be part of the solution, be part of the problem. Or something along those lines.

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Thanks, as always, for reading this far. Another interview next week. A newsletter the week after. What is this world?