This week
- During my last vibe check the kids were still in school. Time has flown by. Work-life balance disrupted. Camps attended. Vacations were had. Bank accounts drained. A normal summer routine. Inbound and outbound travels Since the last vibe check I’ve been on a handful of airplanes...
- I’m Robin Sloan, a writer, printer, & manufacturer. The best thing to do here is sign up for my email newsletter: This website doesn’t collect any information about you or your reading. It aspires to the speed and privacy of the printed page. Don’t miss the colophon. Hony...
- This will be kind of an unusual post. I got a recent email about my writing that I thought was such a good articulation of one common criticism that I’d like to share it (and my response) in full.
Last week
- It was not part of their blood, It came to them very late With long arrears to make good, When the English began to hate. They were not easily moved, They were icy-willing to wait Till every count should be proved, Ere the English began to hate. Their voices were even and low,...
- 05 Aug, 2026 There's a quote from the book City of Thieves by David Benioff where a character laments the fickleness of talent: Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She's beautiful; when you're with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and...
Two weeks ago
- TL;DR I have ideas. I haven’t been writing them. That’s about to change. I promise… myself. I’ve been thinking a lot about talent. Actually, I’ve been thinking a lot about thinking. And writing. Or more specifically, not writing. This really hit me earlier this year at the...
About a month ago
- Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and former president of Disney Animation, was on the David Senra podcast and I quite enjoyed the interview. (If you like the interview, you should read his book.) Ed talks about what he considered his job to be: get the dynamics right for groups...
- Blog About Moonbound This is a post from Robin Sloan’s lab blog & notebook. You can visit the blog’s homepage, or learn more about me. July 22, 2026 What a SENTENCE from the gnomic Fringe Report: A nervous system is a good place to keep a word warm. !!! The short post...
- The lofi girl was right Sometimes, fighting for a change isn’t worth it. You try. Again and again. And as hard as you can. So you speak up. Naively, you assume others will care. that people value integrity. That a company thrives when its employees do....
- Here’s the big idea in Keith Johnstone’s book Impro: Children are naturally creative, but are violently formed into repressed adults by Western culture and education The process of becoming more creative and expressive is largely a process of unlearning these habits of...
- I wish I could remember how this podcast came across my radar so I could give credit where it’s due. But alas, I cannot. It’s episode 217 with Dr. Iain McGilchrist. At one point, he shares his perspective about how science and reason can only take you so far: [science and...
about 1 month ago
- There are, I think two reactions to the title of this post. One is to scoff at how short a time 24 hours really is; something barely worth mentioning. But another, perhaps less voiced reaction is to think "wow, I can't remember when I last did that..." When I last did this it...
- “You are not your grand plans. You are your daily patterns.” I love this quote from James Clear because it hurts me in all the right ways. At my worst, I feel like my daily patterns are at war with my grand plans. When I’m fighting a daily battle and willpower is slipping, I...
- Every post I publish represents at least two things I’ve learned: the thing that prompted me to write the post, and the thing I learned in the course of writing it. If I don’t learn anything new while I’m writing, it’s not interesting enough to publish.
- Every time I have given up on America, it has been a mistake. And yet, America has never, ever given up on me....
- The story has no relation with software engineering today. This is the story of a building company CEO named Matthew. Matthew is a simple person: he likes to build buildings, and he likes it when people appreciate its buildings. Compared to other construction companies, Matthew...
about 2 months ago
- I quite enjoyed this talk from Bryan Cantrill where he discusses the difficult engineering problems they overcame while working on their company Oxide. Some of the problems they ran into were bugs. But these weren’t any ordinary bugs, they were company-destroying bugs: bugs...
- If you have’t heard, Om Malik passed away. People are sharing stories of their graceful encounters with him. This one is mine. Back at the beginning of 2021, I set a goal to write 72 blog posts. I was puttering along, publishing whatever came to mind, mostly figuring that nobody...
- John Gruber writes about those annoying popups every website seems to have now and while he does a great job tearing into these ubiquitous, user-hostile patterns, one of the things that stood out to me about his piece was this meta commentary on blogging. Here’s John: If you...
- Blog About Moonbound Shop This is a post from Robin Sloan’s lab blog & notebook. You can visit the blog’s homepage, or learn more about me. June 19, 2026 I absolutely LOVE the premise of this upcoming conference at Georgetown Law: Life After Data, the conference on...
- You’ve probably heard the term. It’s meant to convey how difficult it can be to start something. “Blank page paralysis”. But for my money, beginning is easy. Finishing is the hard part. In software, they call it “the last 90%”. In logistics, they call it “the last mile”. It’s...
- I play Clues by Sam nearly every single day. I wrote about it before, but solving a little crime puzzle adds a micro-thrill to my day. A little blast of logic, misdirection, and wordplay. It’s a frequent topic of conversation in the ShopTalkShow Discord where people share their...
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