BEEW
BEEW
David
BEEW is growing. More essays, more series, more recos—and soon, a newsletter, some fun collaborations, and new ways thrive together as a community.
Latest Posts
We encounter charts, graphics, and statistics, and rather than interrogating them, we fold them into what we already believe, rarely stopping to ask what's actually being measured, or whether the official interpretation is the only one....
Just hours before Game 1 of the 2026 NBA Finals, I was feeling a little confused and a lot exasperated. In Decentralized Disrespect I ranted about the apparent cluelessness of Polymarket's sentiment machine, which somehow had the...
There’s been a recent, fundamental cultural shift in how we process sports narratives. For a long time we relied on loud talking heads on tv to manufacture bombastic outrage or frenzied hysteria, or face-painted fan warriors to fuel deep...
Parents have been raising children since the beginning of time. They learned from watching their parents and grandparents, from friends and neighbors and the accumulated wisdom of a trusted whisper network that had already figured out...
Parents have been raising children since the beginning of time. They learned from watching their parents and grandparents, from friends and neighbors and the accumulated wisdom of a trusted whisper network that had already figured out...
I opened my news app this morning. By the fourth headline my mind stopped reading and started mapping. The map it made was one of contagion, a fire spreading without any formal announcement or congressional declaration or any of the...
Download PDF There is a man named Plinko who used to work as a clown on kids' night at a Ground Round restaurant in Jackson, Michigan. He was in his late forties or early fifties. His mother died of cancer, and somewhere in his grief...
Download PDF In 1953, Samuel Beckett wrote a play where two men wait for someone who does not come. They insist he will, they reorganize their entire day around his imminent arrival, and then, when he doesn't come, they calmly agree to...
Download PDF The place is half-full, and I’m half-working, half-staring at a wall when the opening synth line threads through the room. That pulsing, driving riff. Kate Bush's “Running Up That Hill.” I feel it before I recognize it....
Tolstoy’s Calendar of Wisdom — March 25 During our lives we help each other: sometimes we help other people, sometimes we are helped by others. But the world is formed so that usually some people mostly help others, and some mostly...
Growing up, there was a short pile of books sitting out on the cocktail table in the den of my childhood home, the kind of decorative arrangement that had been there so long they stopped being objects and became part of the air. One was...
This essay was originally published on March 24th as "Three Generations of Men, One Unsettled Question." It's already one of the most widely read pieces on this blog, but several readers who wanted to share it told me the title wasn't...
Sprezzatura. Say it out loud. Spreh-za-TOO-rah. Let it sit in your mouth for a second. Sounds like something you'd want to eat, or drink, or steal. By the time you get to that last syllable your hand is already moving on its own, thumb...
On the theft of original thought and my fury at those who caused it. There are many times throughout the week when I purposely leave my phone at home or in the car, and certain situations where I simply refuse to take it out of my...
I quote others only in order the better to express myself. —Michel de Montaigne In 1571, a French nobleman bought a château in Bordeaux with a round stone tower attached to it. He was thirty-eight, newly retired from public life, gutted...