New Bon Iver

Each Bon Iver album has seemed to arrive at very distinct moments in my life. The sound always found a way to meet me where I was.

That's probably the case with all art, but for me, Bon Iver has been a profoundly meaningful backdrop to so much of my life, through many changes. We've seen him 3 times in concert. Steph walked down the aisle to Beach Baby. Sonny was listening to Beth/Rest while he was still in the womb.

All that to say, we are long-time Bon Iver fans. So I've been very excited for the new album.

First listen through, and I think there are some reeeeeeeaaaalllly good songs – some that take you back to the early Bon Iver (reminding everyone how and why he became so insanely famous). Songs like SPEYSIDE – VERY GOOD. Sounds like For Emma Forever Ago era Bon Iver – super minimal, acoustic, with hauntingly sad lyrics (what a waste of wood). 

But there is one track that really stands out. AWARDS SEASON. This song, for me, is maybe the most touching song he's ever written. Feels like a letter from God or a prayer I said to myself in some past season of life.

‘I can handle. Way more than I can handle. So I keep reaching for the handle. To flood my heart.…

Oh how everything can change. In such a small timeframe. You can be remade. You can live again.

What was pain now is gain. A new path gets laid.

And you know what is great.

And nothing stays the same.’

🎶 Listen to AWARDS SEASON

Build a Pirate Ship

A bunch of random thoughts on startups and marketing:

1. Don't let the process get in the way

Great ideas don’t come from processes – they come from people. Most marketing orgs are built to manage – not to imagine. Too much process and management can get in the way of creative thinking. Efficiency is great. But in my experience, I would rather focus on originality and creativity than optimization.

2. The best people require autonomy 

Creative people are allergic to control. They don't want to be told what to do or how to do it. And this is the challenge when it comes to business... because business is all about control, growth, and predictability. Organizations like organization. Creative people like chaos. Business wants conformity. But conformity and tightly controlled environments REPEL the people you need most. The most talented people want freedom. And so it's super important when you are building a team to figure out how to balance all of this. This is why hiring the right people and creating the right culture may be the most challenging parts of building a startup.

3. "It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy." 
—Steve Jobs, 1982

Big companies are boring and slow. Successful startups require people who can move fast. You need to create a pirate culture that celebrates dissent against bureaucracy/process and unconventional thinking. Most importantly, avoid hierarchies at all cost! Small teams that move fast are the way you win. Speed over structure! Creativity over control!

Links!

"I ain't no cowboy, but I can ride."

🎶 Jason Isbell – Bury Me

Google buys Wiz for $32B.
Wild to think that Wiz did not exist 5 years ago. Israeli cyber is a great game to be in.

Apple Is Losing Over $1 Billion per Year on Streaming Service, Has 45 Million Apple TV+ Subscribers
Exhibit A: The Gorge (woof)

Also...

Hot take: Severance is boring.  

Tesla is a dumpster fire
Feels like the perfect time for a new EV carmaker to step in. Apple shouldn't have ditched their EV.

Bob Iger Says AI May Be “Most Powerful Technology That Our Company Has Ever Seen”
Bob knows everything in film making is about to change.

Happy Gilmore 2 sort of feels like the one thing the world needs most right now. Can't wait.

Nintendo Nostalgia

There’s something deeply satisfying about clicking an old Nintendo cartridge into place – it's like ASMR for kids who grew up before the internet. Sadly, that  tactile ka-chunk has been lost when gaming moved online. Today, like everything, gaming is digital, online, and endless. There are no cartridges, manual inserts, or downloads and microtransactions. It's cool to buy a game instantly, but we lost some magic in the convenience. 

Lately, I’ve been chasing that old console feeling—a specific kind of nostalgia wrapped in chunky plastic shells, from the SNES to the N64.

Neighborhood or microchip? 

I've been having some truly bizarre dreams. To be fair, the whole house is sick, and my go-to survival strategy involves unhealthy doses of NyQuil (If I ever drop a mix-tape my rapper name would be Lil' Quil). But let me tell you—whatever sorcery Dextromethorphan (DXM) is working, it’s cranking out the kind of hyper-real dreams that linger.

 

The most vivid one yet... In this dream, someone was explaining to me—very matter-of-factly—that theatres exist because they create the ideal conditions for transporting people to other dimensions via sound and visual stimuli.

Then, I'm sitting in this dark theatre and hear a male narrator introduce "the process" before these binaural sounds begin playing over the speakers. The screen is completely black, but I become transfixed, staring blankly into this black void as these tones play. Suddenly, the exact point I’m fixated on stretches, like it's being pulled away from me, and the whole room starts expanding at warp speed. I sit in this state for 10-20 minutes, almost as if I recognize some meditative benefit to it all. I then get up, walk out of this theatre setting, and into a long hallway where I encounter a staff member of whatever building I am in – they are clearly surprised that I was in the theatre – I walk down the hall further and exit through a museum and wake up completely confused.

That's it. Just needed to document this weird dream.

Three Nights at the St. Regis Punta Mita: A Study in Leisure and Decadence

There’s a point in every well-executed vacation when you start believing you might have "made it." For me, that moment happened roughly 15 minutes after stepping onto the St. Regis Punta Mita property. Someone placed a chilled margarita in my hand. Another person took my bag. A third welcomed me with a warm, but not overbearing, “Señor Jeter, welcome home.” Home? If this is home, then Denver must be Arrakis — where water is a rumor, warmth is a memory, and survival is the only goal.

I deleted Twitter (I refuse to call it X) from my phone. I found myself spending too much time going down rabbit holes. Now, I'm blissfully in the dark about most stuff. I am no longer the first to know that there is a rare bird flu outbreak in some remote jungle. I just hear about it when I hear about it. I have found that it's a good way to filter the noise – if it matters, I'll hear about it. Until then, whoooooo cares? It's like my approach with email. I don't check it. If someone needs to get ahold of me, they'll find a way (typically WhatsApp or text). It's been about a month, and I don't see myself ever reinstalling it. I think the constant connectivity to bad news takes it toll. There is something really nice about unplugging – I watched the entire Super Bowl without seeing all the Kendrick Lamar dorks rave about his boring ass performance – "NO BRO, YOU DON'T GET IT... IT WAS ALL SYMBOLISM!"

After spending a week in Spain, I have never been more excited to get home and have a proper meal. Tapas, or simply, small snacks on toothpicks, are NOT a substitute for dinner. And yet, every dinner, I found myself holding a stick instead of a fork. It felt like I walked around a really exotic Costco for a week, getting handed samples of jamón. When it wasn't ham, it was pork liver pâté, WOOF. When I touched down back in the motherland after a 20+ hour travel day, I drove straight to Chic Filet and chanted USA USA USA all the way home.

A Week in Madrid