Taking the shine off the Apple (and FB and Google)

June 6, 2020

Vicki’s Note: We’re really circling the drain of what’s left of America in 2020, aren’t we? I have nothing smart or relevant to contribute to the dialogue...

Trusting the robots in your life

May 30, 2020

A couple days ago, I was taking the kids to the park. Usually we try to go outside at least once a day during quarantine. To figure out what we need to wear,...

It's time to maintain

May 27, 2020

Art: Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Tamakatzura Tamatori attacked by the octopusI’ve been trying to write this post about how difficult life has become now that all...

Can I pay you to forget this?

May 22, 2020

Art: The Lawyers, Honore Daumier, 1854This is going to be a quick one because I have to go watch the second season of Succession, but I’ve been watching the...

A year in Normland

May 21, 2020

Art: Woman Writing a Letter, Frans Van Mieris, 1680Last time this year, seven months pregnant, but still somehow exhibiting less outward signs of physical...

Send help, I am watching Frozen 2

May 16, 2020

Art: Sisters, Mary Cassatt, 1885I am normally normcoreishly against passive screentime for kids, but all rules have gone out the window during quarantine,...

We are all Gaga now

May 13, 2020

Art: The Martyrdom of St. Lucy, Domenico Veneziano, 1445In 2019, Lady Gaga, who has 81 million followers, tweeted randomly, “Fame is prison.” The responses...

On watching Succession

May 8, 2020

Art: Family of the Businessman B. H. Strousberg, Ludwig Knaus (1870) The first weekend of The Plague, when I thought I actually had The Plague, I was...

Your mattress as a service

May 6, 2020

Artwork: Paul Cezanne, The Card Players, 1890I wouldn’t wish having a newborn on my worst enemy. However, one of the really nice benefits is that you get to...

Instacart on my mind

May 1, 2020

Art: Flower Store and Dairy Store, Childe Hassam, 1888Since we are trying to avoid public places as much as possible, Instacart is how we get our food. As a...

Google Drive is production

April 28, 2020

Art: Composition with Grid IX, Piet Mondrian, 1919A couple weeks ago, Jack Dorsey tweeted that he was donating money to fighting COVID. A whole lot of money....

What I'm doing differently online

April 24, 2020

This is going to be a quick post because I’m catching up on what I missed since I was WFF most of the week (if you’ve emailed me and haven’t gotten an...

It's time to build - if you have the bucks

April 21, 2020

Art: The Builders, Fernand Leger, 1955Over the weekend, while I was watering a terrarium with my daughter, cutting up bananas for my son, trying to clean up...

An empty Google doc of my own

April 8, 2020

Art: Figure at a Window, Salvador Dali, 1925Vicki’s Note: Normcore is taking a break for Passover, and will be back the week of 4/20. One of the things I’m...

Re-entering the bardo

April 3, 2020

Art: Ocean Waves, Katsushika HokusaiA couple months ago, I went back to work after maternity leave, and described the mood of maternity leave as being in the...

Congrats, you're the CEO now

March 31, 2020

Art: Portrait of General Thomas Gage, John Singleton Copley, 1768Reality sucks right now, so let’s play pretend. Let’s make believe that you’re the CEO of a...

The eye of the new norm

March 27, 2020

I am writing this post sitting on a couch completely surrounded by blocks, teething toys, wipes, pages slapped together with glitter glue, and an iPad that...

Any port in a storm, as long as it has facemasks

March 24, 2020

Art: Georges Braques, Ships at Le Havre, 1905Last week, a woman posted in my local Nextdoor group, asking people to please, please donate PPE - personal...

Is this a STEM lesson?

March 20, 2020

Art: Needlepoint in a Russian Village, Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky, 1936It seems like, with the situation lately, everyone is trying to homeschool their kids....

We need tests, we're getting geotracking

March 17, 2020

Art: Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880, before he started socially distancing Ok, if we’re at the end of the world, we might as well examine the...

Normcore is coming to you from a social distance

March 13, 2020

Art: DIN, Vladimir Bonacic, 1969Sorry if this is one of a million coronavirus newsletters you’re getting, but it’s hard to think about anything else given...

All numbers are made up, some are useful

March 9, 2020

Art: Number 1, Jackson Pollock, 1949There was a fantastic American game show in the 2000s, “Whose Line is it Anyway”, where the participants were given an...

The sound of music

March 6, 2020

Art: The San Giobbe Altarpiece Detail of Music Making Angels, Giovani Bellini, 1480Stuff is really stressful right now. It’s usually stressful, but with the...

Data centers are the new oil

March 3, 2020

Art: Desert Journey, Maynard Dixon, 1935A few months ago, a friend sent me a link about Matthew McConaughey coming to Utah to speak at a tech conference,...

Doctor, sponsor thyself

February 28, 2020

Art: The Patient and the Doctor, Gabriel Metsu, 1660Normcore is all about not reading the news and not panicking, but I have to admit the threat of...

Easy as A, B, Chromebook

February 25, 2020

Art: The Country School, Winslow Homer, 1871With my daughter quickly approaching school age, I’ve been doing some research on the current state of the...

Don't cry over dropshipped formula

February 21, 2020

Art: Bottle, Georges Braque, 1914When my son was 4.5 months old, he pulled the ultimate baby power move and decided to stop nursing, so we switched to...

What I know about running a paid newsletter for 9 months

February 18, 2020

Art: Writing Desk, Olga Rozanova, 1914It’s been about nine months since I started Normcore Tech, and four months since the last time I talked about revenue....

The market for memes

February 14, 2020

Art: Pope Leo After Raphael, Fernando Botero, 1964On one of my weekly visits to Facebook (which I’ve mostly disengaged from since I wrote this post in 2017...

Why don't we get the news we need?

February 11, 2020

Art: The Mirror of Venus, Edward Burne-Jones, 1875 Last month, New York Times technology journalist Kashmir Hill wrote a shocking piece about a US-based...

What's ours is not ours

February 6, 2020

Art: The Aircraft in the Sky, Fernand LegerMany moons ago, I kept all my music on an iPod. The winter of 2005 was not easy. I was a sophomore in college,...

One very bad Apple

February 4, 2020

Art: Apple Gatherers, Camille Pissaro, 1891My fifth grade teacher, Mr. Stains, had a big energy about him. He imparted two American cultural norms upon me....

Apple's Memoji and the uncanny valley

January 30, 2020

Art: The Mask, Frida Kahlo, 1945“Our bodies are a big part of the way we communicate,” writes Gretchen McCulloch in “Because Internet”, a book about living...

You'll love our sponsored content

January 28, 2020

Art: Oroubouros, Lucas Jennis, 1625The online media landscape is looking really bleak these days. Countless layoffs, downsizing, and news outlets closing....

Devices that delight

January 23, 2020

Art: Drunk woman is tired, Pablo Picasso, 1902I can count on one hand the number of recent(ish) tech purchases or experiences that have brought me joy. The...

When you write a web server but you get served

January 21, 2020

Art: Unexpected Visitors, Ilya Repin, 1888ServedIf you go to Nginx.com, the company behind one of the world’s most popular web servers, you’ll find the most...

Leaving the Bardo

January 16, 2020

Art: Open Door in a Garden, Konstantin Somov, 1934Over maternity leave, late at night, I purchased a best-selling book called “Lincoln in the Bardo” by...

Good Rings don't scale

January 14, 2020

Art: Ring around the Rosy, Maurice Prendergast, 1903The thing that sticks out the most about the Philadelphia office of Ring — the Amazon-owned digital...

Normcore stickers are for sale!

January 13, 2020

The TL, DR:Buy: Stickers. Mug. Notepad. The long version: Happy 2020, Normcore readers! This post is just a bit of housekeeping that’s accumulated and that I...

Nextdoor, a social network I don't hate

January 9, 2020

Art: Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Neighborhoods Khvalynsk, 1909 A couple months ago, I got an overly enthusiastic flyer in the mail saying that my town had...

Open thread: How would you spend Google's healthcare ca$h?

January 8, 2020

I had a ton of feedback after publishing AI Won’t Save Healthcare earlier this week. Thank you for replying! The main counterargument to the article has...

AI won't save healthcare

January 6, 2020

Art: Jan Steen, Doctor’s Visit, 1661Several years ago, when my firstborn was very young, I thought I was having a heart attack. I was watching my seven-...

Thank you paid Normcore subscribers!

January 2, 2020

Happy 2020, Normcore paid subscribers! I’m launching an experiment tomorrow selling Normcore laptop stickers. As a thank-you for subscribing and supporting...

Thanks for all the tech in 2019

December 23, 2019

As we get to the end of the year, the days get short and dark, and the post-Christmas kipple offer emails start flooding my inbox, I get to reflecting. This...

Jack and I prove that humans are not web scale

December 18, 2019

(Vicki’s Note: I’m going to do one more post after this one for 2019 ( fingers crossed), and then Normcore is on vacation for the rest of the year. I’ll be...

Venture capital will now ruin coffee

December 13, 2019

Most mornings, fresh after a night of waking up anywhere between three and five million times to feed and change the baby, and then getting the preschooler...

Weird Government Twitter versus Zuck

December 10, 2019

(Vicki’s note: I had so much fun writing the Elon Musk post and we’ve had so many Serious Normcore posts lately, that I made an executive decision that it’s...

Sidewalks for the internet

$ · December 6, 2019

Since having a second kid, my husband and I realized that we are rapidly out-kippling our ability to stay in our current house, and we’ve been on the hunt...

Open thread: Keybase's next steps

December 5, 2019

About a day after I published the post on Keybase and their inaction against spammers on their platform, Keybase put out this blog post, “Dealing with Spam...

Keybase and the chaos of crypto

December 3, 2019

Today, it’s nearly impossible to have a truly private conversation online. Someone is always listening: either the company providing the chat service, or...