Rough Drafts

Trail panorama showing mountains, a distant village, and the "crystal" sculpture on the left.

Rough Drafts

What I learned in college

I was one of those students who did very well in high school and college, and then, once I graduated, immediately regretted all that diligence. I knew right away that I should have maybe taken it easier, taken myself less seriously, and been more open to things outside my immediate field of vision.

Dylan Tweney Aug 8, 2016 4 min read

Rough Drafts

Altamont

Driving down from the Altamont Pass, the highway curves through a long, shallow, descending valley on its way down to the flats of the San Joaquin Valley. Wind turbines on either side, and the occasional cow. Karen noticed the hills rising up from us on the left side were covered in dark green trees

Dylan Tweney Aug 6, 2016 1 min read

Rough Drafts

Downriver

Floating on the American River with the 15 year old and the 9 year old.

Dylan Tweney Aug 5, 2016 2 min read

Rough Drafts

Motivation and inspiration

It’s been almost exactly a year since I left a salaried job and went independent. This is now the third time I’ve been an independent entrepreneur (not counting the times I’ve launched publications or products within existing corporations), and each time I’ve taken a different approach: 1999: seed-f

Dylan Tweney Aug 4, 2016 2 min read

Rough Drafts

Slot machines, magicians, and app designers

Around the turn of the century, people started talking about the “attention economy.” A natural outgrowth of the ad-supported Web, this stemmed from the idea that people’s time and attention would soon be valuable commodities, because of their scarcity. The phrase has dwindled in popularity but the

Dylan Tweney Aug 3, 2016 3 min read

Rough Drafts

My brain was begging me for relief from social media

Taking control of your social media use may be the most rewarding life hacking technique I know of, given its ratio of benefit to effort. I like social media. Networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat have a powerful ability to keep us connected with other humans. For me, Twitter has functioned

Dylan Tweney Aug 2, 2016 3 min read

Rough Drafts

31 days of writing

Like many people, my attention is fragmented and my concentration broken. I’m going to try working my way through this with the skills I know best: Writing and editing.

Dylan Tweney Aug 1, 2016 1 min read

Rough Drafts

The people who believe themselves to be white

Ta-Nehisi Coates, in Between the World and Me, repeatedly refers to “the people who believe themselves to be white.” This curious phrasing opens up the possibility of hope in what for me, as the father of two black children, is otherwise a terrifying and disturbing book.

Dylan Tweney Jul 26, 2016 5 min read

Rough Drafts

A future we may not want.

Kevin Kelly paints a disturbing vision of the next 30 years: A world governed by alien AIs, with screens on every surface, crowdsourced advertisements and influencer marketing campaigns assaulting us from all directions, and overwhelming flows of ephemeral data and “facts” making it impossible to ju

Dylan Tweney Jul 20, 2016 4 min read

Rough Drafts

Narrative specificity.

Narrative specificity means avoiding generalizations and using details to make your story come to life. Leave it out, and your words will be hollow and dead, like empty snail shells strewn across the dirt. It’s not surprising that many writers miss this point, particularly in politics and business.

Dylan Tweney Jul 19, 2016 2 min read

Rough Drafts

Alcatraz.

Yesterday I realized a dream I’ve had ever since I started open water swimming around 2010. I swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco. It’s about 1.25 miles though we covered a bit more water than that due to fighting the current a little. In all, it took me one hour and 13 minutes in pretty […]

Dylan Tweney Jul 14, 2016 4 min read

Rough Drafts

Bay Parade Swim Report

Today’s Bay Parade swim went super well. It was a beautiful day on the Bay, the water wasn’t too cold (maybe 58 degrees near the Gate, 62-plus in McCovey Cove), and we had a fun bunch of swimmers aboard our boat, comprising two teams: “Flood Tide” (my team) and “Frijoles Frios.” There was some initi

Dylan Tweney May 22, 2016 1 min read

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