Okay, I'm starting a coffee shop
In the last FtPM, I wrote about a proposal I was working on to purchase a coffee shop, and said to check back next week. Well, it passed! I'm in the coffee business once more.
The moment I put my idea out into the world, the reaction was astonishingly positive. Our initial announcement was met with an overwhelming show of support on Twitter (or X, whatever) and Warpcast. Then, when we formally published the proposal, the support continued to pour in, this time onchain. The warmth and enthusiasm, including from people outside of Nouns, was truly special.
Now, Derek and I are in the nitty-gritty of actually taking over the shop. I'm brainstorming what the rebrand will look like, he's reviewing balance sheets and financials, and both of us are thinking about how the open and collaborative ethos of the Nouns brand can resonate with the creative minds in LA who drop by for their coffee
In the months ahead, expect to hear more about all of this as the transformation begins.
Luna // Eight Months, Four Weeks // On Leaving
For the first time since Luna's birth, the sun rose on different horizons for the two of us. I took a trip across the country to Miami at be a part of the (excellent and extremely fun) Base House, marking the first occasion I'd been away from her in her young life.
It was a short trip, just a few days on the calendar, but in the life of a baby, days are packed with change. I couldn't help but think about the milestones I might miss. More than that, I missed our daily routine — the mornings we spend together, where I'm the first to greet her, lift her from her crib, and witness the lively energy of a well-rested baby.
For the first time in almost nine months, instead of starting my morning by picking up my daughter, I woke up in a hotel room, alone.
Thankfully, technology kept us connected, letting me watch her crawl and play during FaceTime calls. It also made it better knowing she doesn't yet grasp the concept of me being away. At eight months, her understanding of the very concept of 'absence' is notably limited.
I'm back home now, and Luna didn't learn any new skills while I was gone, instead choosing to hone the ones she was already developing. She's now quicker in her crawl, more confident in her attempts to stand. Her growth is continuous and steady, evident even in the short time I was away.
I hope it'll be awhile before I have to leave her side again. For now, I'll cherish our mornings together, appreciating these moments even more deeply than before.
What I Read:
Extremely Online by Taylor Lorenz makes a compelling case for how the internet has evolved. Challenging the conventional notion of a web shaped predominantly by venture capitalists and social media gurus, Lorenz argues that the true architects of internet culture are the often-overlooked figures: mommy bloggers, savvy teens, and ordinary individuals who mastered the art of seizing the zeitgeist.
It's a retrospective of the last two decades of internet history, chronicling not only the ascension of now-ubiquitous platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, but also the decline of former giants like MySpace and Vine.
The book has an emphatic focus on creators. What would the essence of any social platform be without the people uploading to them? The platforms are important, but it's the collective creativity, ingenuity, and spontaneity of the people using those tools that breathes life into the digital world we all now inhabit.
Speaking of social platforms, I saw a post from Jack Dorsey on nostr and…I completely agree with him?? Here's what he said:
if there's one thing to focus on (for the social media use case) it's search. both for people, but more importantly, topics. Twitter won because of search. it wasn't a social network. it was an information network, and it excelled at real-time because of real-time search. that's a base requirement now.
I always viewed Twitter as equal parts social network and search engine. For years, my go-to method for sourcing information has been using filter:follows queries. Whether it was deciding which products to purchase, figuring out which apps to download, or seeking answers to various questions, Twitter's search function was more valuable to me than Google.
Which is why it's all the more frustrating to see search on X degrade. It's becoming challenging to find older posts, and impossible to understand if the results you get back are the full picture.
I'm not really paying attention to whatever they're doing over there on nostr, but I'm all for a decentralized 'information network' that stands the test of time.
What I Watched:
Not too much time for movies this week with a trip to Miami on my calendar. As far as in-flight entertainment goes, I've always skewed towards books or compact, binge-worthy TV shows rather than films. For my latest cross-country travel, I spent some time revisiting the first season of Community, a show I hadn't watched since its release over a decade ago. It held up!
It's a love letter to the very concept of sitcoms and a show that knows it's a show, which somehow only makes it more comforting to watch. At its core, it's a show about people from different walks of life coming together, finding common ground, and forming an unlikely family. That's cozy television!
Okay, I had time for one movie. The Breakdown is a quintessential 90s thriller, starring Kurt Russell as an out-of-his-element suburbanite stuck in a desolate, forgotten corner of the country where the rules of civilization seem distorted, if not entirely absent.
The movie begins with a near-miss collision with a beat-up truck, an altercation at a gas station, and a breakdown in the middle of nowhere. The film's narrative structure weirdly reminded me of the branching paths of a video game. Each decision Jeff makes, each interaction he has, feels like it's altering the course of his journey and getting him further or closer to a potential ending. A simple plot, well executed.
That's all for now.
From the present moment,
~ Drew
