THIS IS ME.

I remember Professor Julia Mahoney's Property class during my first year of law school, like it was yesterday. It was early enough that I was still locked in, like my enthusiasm was going to somehow help me unearth some novel insight from the centuries-old case law. I've never been short on earnest enthusiasm. A bit cringe in hindsight. A particular idea that's managed to cling to my consciousness all these years, is the notion of property rights as a bundle of sticks, with e

Me on graduation day from law school in 2014, with shades on to hide the evidence of late-night celebrating. When I was graduating from law school over a decade ago, I don't think I ever imagined myself going through nearly ten jobs in as many years. There's something about ingesting the entrepreneurial bug that seems to make one fundamentally unemployable. I haven't managed to escape that pesky symptom along my journey. It's been an odyssey packed with learnings, each one no

One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot while building HadtobeHere is that technology rarely creates community from nothing. At its best, technology strengthens the relationships, rituals, institutions, and gathering places that already give a city its social life. That is especially true in a city like Baltimore. Baltimore’s strongest civic and business coalitions have always understood something important: cities are not just collections of buildings, businesses, r

The iconic Lake Kittamaqundi in Columbia, MD - the fertile ground from which so much of my personal writing has sprung. I've been reading my old journal entries from 2023. I laughed years ago when Lil Wayne explained that he exclusively listens to his own music. It sounded heretical to my untrained ear. The subtle wisdom in his words rings through more clearly for me today. It's not arrogance, as much as it's a reflective search for genuine self-understanding, from which

For much of the last decade, the technology industry has celebrated the idea of IRL—in real life. The phrase emerged as a welcome corrective to an increasingly digital existence, reminding us that some of life's most meaningful experiences still happen face-to-face rather than through a screen. It became shorthand for putting our phones down, spending more time with one another, and recognizing that physical presence still matters in a world increasingly mediated by technolog

This month, two seemingly unrelated stories appeared in the news. The first was that lawmakers are proposing new federal investments to combat America's growing loneliness crisis. The second was that AI companionship has quietly become mainstream. Recent research found that 72% of American teenagers have already used AI companions, while more than half report using them regularly. I think they're the same story. The rise of AI companions may be the clearest signal yet that so

For years, social products have relied on who you know. Friends. Followers. Contacts. But, some of the most meaningful human connections begin with what you love. Music is one of the strongest affinity signals we have. It reflects identity, culture, emotion, memory, and community. Yet most social platforms treat it as a profile decoration rather than a mechanism for connection. What's up with that? At HadtobeHere, we're experimenting with a different approach. Our new

the collection of cigarette butts that have begun to accumulate outside of my apartment, as i've regrettably taken to smoking over the past several months building my new company Is this thing on? It's been a while. Matthew 18:20 says, "For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them." I've been wondering as of late, which one is it? Two or three? Similarly, I've been wondering, at which cigarette does one become a "chain smoker?" Is it the 2nd in the sequ

i learn by observing behavior, synthesizing lessons, and then applying those lessons in low-stakes, real-world contexts. it's a tried...

know the power of LOVE. i'm filled with overflowing, uncontainable love every time I think about each of the people who have offered me...

i sometimes wonder about what keeps it all together. i'm curious about the invisible hand threading the needle that binds the fibers of...

being on the outside feels so natural to me. it's not lost on me that the insider-outsider dichotomy is only a distinction of...

i love Black music, especially rap and hip-hop. as i do most weekday mornings, yesterday i spent the first couple hours of my day...

if you know, you know. it all seems, in one way or another, to flow back to this simple truth - at least for me. for as long as i can...

Oh my God, think it's the greatest day of my life So glad you arrived But the only way to survive is to go crazy Yeah, the only way to...

i used to spend most of many days trying to avoid truly being seen. not as a preoccupation, or an activity for its own sake, but more as...

my mind keeps returning to this idea lately. what's the meaning of "society" anyway? distill it down to its core essence. here's a...

what mystifies me most in life is the magic of varied perception. each moment is an infinitely-sided polygon, rotating with each of its...

in the past it hasn't taken me very long, or very much, to begin identifying closely with my ambitions, as though they somehow held the...

i used to complain to my wife about what i called, "the simulation" - my lazy shorthand for describing what to me felt like the...