Now that my /now page has some entries in it, I’m starting to see some patterns emerge on how I like to structure these sorts of things.

Navel-gazy, yes. But also practical.

I don’t want this to feel like a blog, but some blog-like features are becoming emergent. After all, the idea of a /now page is to record:

“… what you’d tell a friend you hadn’t seen in a year”
— nownownow.com/about

And I’m getting to the age where not seeing some friends for at least a year is, in fact, a regular occurrence.

There are things I’m thinking about (like the below note on Congestion Pricing) that might one day warrant a dispatch essay; but, that’s a place I prefer to leave mostly-complete thoughts and not active, in-flight observations. (“Hot takes” one might say.) Alas, I have enough spinning plates on my, uh, plate and an ever-growing bucket list of more plates worthy of spinning.

So anyway: /now now has a table of contents so the content reads more like an indexed data update rather than a slowly morphing narrative; and because the industrial complex has conditioned us and our LLMs to think and read in bulleted lists for maximum comprehension, why fight it?

Up top I’ll probably continue to include a note just like this. Less meta-note, and more note-note, which at least for this update you can find under Sundry Notes.

Next time may look different, but today (and in the /now) I’m liking this structure.

– Michael E. Gruen

The Usuals

• Upcoming Travel
• Vocational Notes
• Avocational Notes
• Sundry Notes
• Content Consumption (Abbreviated)
  • Television
  • Books
  • Games

Upcoming Travel

• Block Island - my guide now has updated information!
• UK (late Spring)
• Portugal (late Spring)
• Berkshires (late Summer)

Vocational Notes

• Fractional work seems to suit me well; have about ~10hours/week capacity remaining. Current foci:
  • Environmental Impact and Sustainability
  • AI-enabled Workflows
  • Anti-social networking
• Team, Assemble! launched!
  • demo and write-up
  • Still looking for product/technical lead to take myself out of the loop. (Maybe this is you?)
  • Active TODO: write up a dispatch on this process. Many learnings.
• Actively looking to partner with and hire some full-time folks to help build against projects not listed here.

Avocational Notes

• Lifting 3-4 times per week.
• Electric Go-Karting continues to be a fun hobby.
• Stalled work again on a small project; will be picking this back up once I get some key hires done for the other revenue-generating projects, hopefully by mid-summer.

Sundry Notes

In this household, we live an evidence-based lifestyle: congestion pricing in NYC is clearly working.

• Reduced Travel Times
• Reduced Accidents and Injuries
• Increased Public Transit Ridership – justifies increased spending
• Consumer Spending (in Congestion Zone) increased – note: despite international tourism being down

Also, I wonder if there’s any value in structuring this /now a bit more formally and federating it into a distributed, open-source social network that operates outside of the commercial ones you may have heard about. The nownownow.com page kinda does that, but lacks any guiding format. Maybe I can help there.

Content Consumption (Abbreviated)

Television

• Severance - The Work Is Mysterious and Important
• Mythic Quest - The best part of this show are the one-offs
• Formula 1 - The 2025 season is shaping up to be great
• All Creatures Great & Small - 2020 remake of a classic; cozy, summer viewing.

AppleTV+ is still killing it.

Books

• The Death and Life of August Sweeney - Samuel Ashworth (n.b., I know the author, so I’m hardly impartial.)
• Careless People - Sarah Wynn-Williams (n.b., If you work in tech leadership this should be required reading.)

Games

• Chess
  • Elo ~1150 (Daily). Write me if you want my chess.com username.
  • I’m steadily getting better, but lack the will (and talent) to become a GM.
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Aviassembly - A cozy KSP
• Kubb - Getting lawn game season-ready

Hat tip to nownownow.com.