My new job. Sorta.

My 30th birthday cake made by my beautiful and talented fiance! Like most good things in this world, the cake is a Drake reference.

Personal updates:

So, probably the biggest personal update I could possibly share: Last week, I turned 30. On Friday, I stepped down from 99U. And next week I'm getting married (!!!). And then on October 9th, I board a plane with my soon-to-be-wife for a five month trip across the the Southern Hemisphere — one I've been thinking about since I've been in high school. 

What will I be doing after that? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. In March I'll be back in NYC and likely looking to work on or for another awesome publication. Communities built around editorial are still my favorite thing to think about. In the meantime, I hope to dabble in some side projects like Well, Actually, do some consulting, and lots of writing. I also still think a bunch about careers and career advice and hope to write more there. Don't worry, I will not start a travel blog and this newsletter will keep on coming. 

Updates here as they come!

The links:

TFD's Chelsea Fagan setting us all straight: It's not cute to take pride in not knowing how to do basic adult things. Competency is cool. "Adulting" is lame. Fagan: "It should not be a source of Zooey Deschanel-esque pride to be wobbling through life with an oversized lollipop in one hand and an iPhone in the other, unsure of how to open a checking account." I'd add that all of those awful Instagram memes about being "flawed" (ahem) normalize this ignorance. Also, get off my lawn.

🚨🚨🚨 White guy writing about identity politics alert.🚨🚨🚨  The alert is back! Specifically, I've thinking about how embracing identity politics affects the way we talk (or don't) about certain issues. A few essays I've been stewing over: 

Asad Haider on Medium on how a group's embrace of identity politics derailed a tuition protest at University of California Santa Cruz. " We are all Rachel Dolezal; the infinite regress of 'checking your privilege' will eventually unmask everyone as inauthentic."

 

Rachel Lu at the Federalist asks why is white pride creepy? And of course, how can intersectionality and Trump supporters coexist? If they do at all. Lu: "Privilege theory is indeed a real problem. It helped re-awaken tribal loyalties that would have been better left shifting in their shallow graves."

 

Does this internalization of policy affect how we debate? Charles Cooke on the danger of seeing every policy decision as an attack on you.

Lionel Shriver makes the case that even if you consider yourself a faithful lefty, the current state of identity politics should be alarming. "As a lifelong Democratic voter, I’m dismayed by the radical left’s ever-growing list of dos and don’ts — by its impulse to control, to instill self-censorship as well as to promote real censorship, and to deploy sensitivity as an excuse to be brutally insensitive to any perceived enemy... The shrill tyranny of the left helps to push [people] toward Donald Trump."

Thing I'm thinking about: how partisan identity is a huge blocker to coming to agreement with "Other Side." Can we ever compromise if we see our politics as forever intertwined with our identity?
 

Continuing my crusade against Neil deGrasse Tyson (first strike here): Science is not the unassailable institution you think it is. 

Joshua Topolsky, founder of the Verge and former editor at Bloomberg, offers more insights into his latest project "The Outline." In sum, Topolsky isnt going for scale. He'll be less focused on ads and won't rule out subscriptions and wants to leverage new ways of telling stories. A few thoughts here: If you aren't going to scale you need a defined target audience. The best Topolsky offers is "millennials." Inviting new forms of telling stories sounds good. But ask Vox about their card stacks, you usually default to the normal stuff. It's early and I root for all indy media. But this is... looking suspiciously like other high profile launches....      

Black Swan author Nassim Taleb on the danger of "intellectuals" with no "skin in the game" opining about things whose consequences ultimately won't affect them. Whenever you see pundits or writers treat politics as a horserace or a game, think of this essay please. This stuff matters dearly to lots and lots of people. And not all of those people are on TV / have a column in a magazine. 

- Related: Trump voters are not complete idiots. 

Official Newsletter Flag (for now):

 

This is the flag of Mongolia, since 1992. We've seen tricolor flags before but that symbol on the left is what makes this flag instantly recognizable and damn cool. That arrangement of symbols is called the "Soyombo" which was used to mark the beginning and end of text in the Soyombo script, no longer in use. Part of the symbol is also on the Buryatia (part of Russia) flag. Last cool fact from the wiki: The two rectangles "represent unity and strength, relating to a Mongolian proverb: 'The friendship of two is stronger than stone walls.'"

Dear reader, I consider our friendship stronger than any wall, 
- Sean