#4 — August 2025

\n In July I announced my{\" \"}\n \n book about domains\n , so I’m about two months into full-time independent work (with a\n bit of travel mixed in). It has been quite fun so far—most days I seem\n to look up and it’s already dinnertime. I’ve been telling friends who\n ask how it’s going that maybe I’m still in the honeymoon phase and that\n it’ll feel like Work soon enough, but now I’m not so sure.\n

\n The reading and writing and coding are all good fun, but I probably draw\n the most energy from the frequent conversations I’m having, with both\n old friends and new. Pretty much anyone who has worked in tech or even\n just bought a domain for their business has a story to tell and\n curiosities that I can answer (or add to my research questions). If we\n haven’t talked yet,{\" \"}\n \n reach out\n ! No domain expertise required—I’m curious about your experience\n with domains, what you find interesting, and what you want to know.\n

Writing

\n Most of my writing energy is channeled into the book right now, but I\n did just plant an essay in my garden that I’m calling{\" \"}\n \n the Millspaugh method\n , which is a play on James Somers’ blog post,{\" \"}\n \n the McPhee method\n . It’s about my writing process that emphasizes writing in the act\n of learning, working in public, and experimentation.\n

\n Since I started work on the book, I’ve sent out four email newsletters:\n

\n \n Domains by Wordle\n :{\" \"}\n \n Using Wordle’s original word list to gauge domain availability, use,\n and aftermarket pricing\n \n
\n \n Domains were the new gold\n : Has the golden era of domain investing already passed?\n
\n \n Eminent domains\n :{\" \"}\n \n When domains go dark and countries reclaim their digital land\n \n
\n \n Wholesale domains\n : License and registration of top-level domains\n

\n The middle two, on domain investing and Yugoslavia’s dramatic{\" \"}\n .yu{\" \"}\n story, have been the most popular. You can sign up for future emails at\n {\" \"}\n \n dotcom.press\n {\" \"}\n knowing that I’ll get a dopamine hit when you do.\n

Talking

\n Next month is{\" \"}\n \n Startup Cincy Week\n {\" \"}\n where I’ll be demo’ing tools I’ve built for the book (Monday afternoon\n at the Woodward Theater) and presenting a talk on domain know-how for\n startups (Wednesday afternoon at the Marketer Collaborative). I’ll\n publish my talk materials and recordings afterward.\n

\n Conference talks are something I’d like to do more of, mostly because I\n love the idea of talk-driven development—i.e. having to learn something\n well enough to teach it. I have one project and related talk proposal on\n the Web platform that I’d love an excuse to work on. Lmk if there are\n any conferences or meetups you have on the calendar or have enjoyed in\n the past!\n

Reading, watching, listening

\n I read{\" \"}\n \n Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries\n {\" \"}\n by Kory Stamper, who spent her career as a lexicographer at Merriam\n Webster. It makes all the sense in the world that she’s such a deft\n writer after spending a lifetime reading and defining. Her writing is\n often fun and funny, and I find the subject matter quite interesting.\n The book’s subtitle is what inspired my book’s working subtitle,{\" \"}\n The secret life of internet domains. Which, btw, I wondered if\n there was a word for those common, almost cliché phrases like “The\n secret life of X” or “Uber for X”, and there is! They’re called{\" \"}\n \n snowclones\n .\n

\n I read{\" \"}\n \n How the Internet Happened\n {\" \"}\n by Brian McCullough. It was light research for my book but mostly just\n filling in internet history that I missed while unborn and in\n pre/elementary school. Its title is a bit of a misnomer—it’s more like\n {\" \"}\n How the Web Happened, but I know those two are conflated\n colloquially.\n

\n I’m reading{\" \"}\n \n The Anxious Generation\n {\" \"}\n by Jonathan Haidt. I plan to read it again when I have young kids. I\n already really liked Haidt after reading{\" \"}\n \n The Coddling of the American Mind\n . He is a researcher but also a parent whose kids have lived in the\n smartphone era. He bases observation and theories in empirical fact, and\n he offers actionable, hopeful advice for parents. It’s the kind of book\n that reminds you why we need experts.\n

\n We’ve been watching the{\" \"}\n \n Tour de France documentary\n {\" \"}\n on Netflix. I think it’s fascinating how cycling is both an individual\n sport and a team sport at once. I didn’t realize that before watching.\n Tour de France podium hopefuls cannot get there without support from\n their teammates, but in the end they stand alone on the podium. The team\n is there to support its leader. They even call the supporting riders\n {\" \"}\n domestiques, which literally means servant in French. The\n resulting intra-team friction seems much more present in cycling than in\n other sports (where it does still exist, like an NFL wide receiver\n demanding more targets in a contract year). I really like the\n documentary. There are three seasons out so far, following the tours of\n ’22, ’23, and ’24.\n

\n I listened to the first part of{\" \"}\n \n Acquired’s podcast on Google\n , and I’m eager to listen to part two when I find four hours to\n spare (or maybe 2-3 at ~1.5x). They dug up all sorts of neat tidbits,\n like how Google crammed cheap commodity servers into (at the time)\n pay-by-square-footage-not-by-electricity-usage data centers with a\n shockingly high failure rate (around 10%) while competitors used sleek,\n expensive ones. And how PageRank borrowed a backlinks-based method from\n scientific papers to rank website relevance in search results. And how\n there wasn’t an obvious winning business model for search until Adwords.\n And how Bezos was on Google’s original cap table as a meaningful\n investor. I’m hoping they explore in part two why Google has killed so\n many popular products (like Google Reader and Google Domains).\n

NYC in September

\n NYC friends: I’ll be in town the week of September 15! I’m planning to\n drop by{\" \"}\n \n Cafe Compute\n {\" \"}\n and{\" \"}\n \n Side Project Saturdays\n , so come join me for one of both of those. I’m hoping to catch up\n over coffee/lunch/etc. with as many friends as the constraint of the\n subway system allows.\n

#1 — January 2024

\n\n

Hello!

\n\n

\n This is the first clipping from my digital garden. I’m still thinking through what I want these to be, but my\n rough idea is an email newsletter that I send every month or two (ish) with a selection of stuff I’ve written\n since the last clipping. I planted a note riffing on{\" \"}\n what I want clippings to be, and I’m also writing about\n {\" \"}\n \n my custom email setup using Val Town\n , if you’re curious.\n

\n\n

\n There are relatively few of you subscribed, so thanks for being an early reader! Please do{\" \"}\n reply if you feel like it to lmk what you think.\n

\n\n

Planting my digital garden

\n\n

\n This clipping will be a bit longer than most because I’m rounding up January 2024 and also looking back on what\n I planted in 2023.\n

\n\n

\n In the fall I redesigned my personal website as a digital garden. I cover this on my{\" \"}\n about{\" \"}\n page, so I’ll save words here. To learn about digital gardening generally, you can skip right to{\" \"}\n Maggie Appleton’s wonderful essay{\" \"}\n on the ethos and history of digital gardens.\n

\n\n

\n I wrote about all sorts of stuff last year. Most of it relates to the Web in some way, but there are some bits\n about effective learning and career ambitions mixed in. It’s the first time I’ve consistently written in public,\n which feels good. I still write plenty for myself—the ratio of private to public writing I do is probably like 4\n to 1. Here are some of my personal favorites from 2023:\n

\n\n

\n \n Edison bulb night mode\n . My coworker Danny linked this in a{\" \"}\n post{\" \"}\n on Hacker News, which generated some helpful feedback and sent me over the Vercel analytics free tier (feeding\n my vanity, ofc)\n
\n \n Silly TLDs\n . This is a short, fun one. It’s the thing I’ve written that friends outside of tech seem most interested\n in / leads to the most fun conversations\n
\n \n My next, next, next job\n . I initially wrote this as a private thought exercise then published it after a nudge from some friends\n who I’d shared it with\n
\n \n Weeks of your life\n . I built{\" \"}\n weeksofyour.life—an interactive visualization of your life in\n weeks—during a couple free days over the holidays. I posted it on{\" \"}\n Show HN, which spurred some heady philosophical\n discussions about the meaning of life and also handy tips around performance (and again—vanity food)\n
\n \n Downloading a 30MB map in the woods\n . This was my first stab at a format I came up with called \"Brainstorms\" where I scribble down a thought\n stream of questions on a topic I’m curious about (sans Internet), then return later to research\n
\n \n Add search to your Next.js static site with Pagefind\n . This project was type 2 fun, and I’m really glad I stuck with it. The Pagefind creator{\" \"}\n added{\" \"}\n my show ’n tell to the Pagefind docs, which felt good\n
\n \n Think small\n . Of all the things I’ve written, this is what pops into my head most day to day, probably because it’s so\n widely applicable\n

\n\n

January

\n\n

\n (Here’s where a typical clipping would start.)\n

\n\n

\n There are six hours left in January as I’m writing this, which leaves enough time to finish writing, cook\n dinner, watch an episode of Chopped, read, and sleep.\n

\n\n

\n So far this year I’ve planted at least one essay, brainstorm, note, TIL, show ’n tell, and now clipping. That\n wasn’t intentional, and I expect my pace of writing to vary quite a bit throughout the year. Here’s a sampling\n from January:\n

\n\n

\n I finished reading The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming and{\" \"}\n wrote about it\n
\n I also read and wrote about{\" \"}\n Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham\n
\n I learned about blogrolls and{\" \"}\n added mine\n
\n I also planted an art page and a{\" \"}\n tour of my garden\n
\n I planted{\" \"}\n a brainstorm about how you’d build a terminal in the browser but haven’t finished the research yet to answer\n my questions\n
\n I wrote about my Anki habit, six months in\n
\n I’m still working on my email-course creation tool and the POC first course on the science of learning. I’m\n {\" \"}\n writing about it, and you can{\" \"}\n sign up{\" \"}\n for a very incomplete version of the course if you want to get a feel for the structure\n

\n\n

\n Thanks for reading! Any feedback is welcome.\n

\n\n

– Pete

\n As of this month, petemillspaugh.com{\" \"}\n is no longer a space for only web dev and adjacent topics. I decided to open it up to all of my writing and\n projects. I’d originally planned to create a separate blog for such things, but an eventual merge felt\n inevitable. You can find links to dozens of new, varied notes and essays down below.\n

This month also marks a new, energizing career direction for me.

\n\n

Leaving Membrane

\n I decided to leave Membrane to write a book. More on the book in a moment.\n

\n I joined Membrane{\" \"}\n in June of last year. It was a good year! Much of what I wrote about in{\" \"}\n My next, next, next job{\" \"}\n came true, namely learning a lot from a supportive, engaged team with a shared love for programming.\n

\n I had the chance to learn a bit of Rust working on the Membrane IDE and backend. I enjoyed learning Rust and\n making my first real code contributions in a programming language other than JavaScript. I also learned that\n what I really crave and love is the Web platform, i.e. investing fully in JS, HTML, CSS, and Web APIs, which I\n plan to do more of.\n

\n I met many smart people through user interviews and candidate interviews when we were hiring. I got to make some\n neat Membrane programs for dogfooding and demos. I learned a lot about UX while iterating on our onboarding,\n documentation, and website. I kept up our weekly(ish) changelog and wrote a handful of blog posts and recorded\n tutorial videos, like{\" \"}\n \n Testing email verification\n ,{\" \"}\n \n Stripe subscriptions\n ,{\" \"}\n \n Slack signup alerts\n , Hono API sans db,{\" \"}\n Public roadmap,{\" \"}\n \n Automating changelogs\n ,{\" \"}\n \n GitHub issue watcher\n {\" \"}\n and{\" \"}\n \n PostgreSQL admin dashboard\n .\n

\n It was a worthwhile year, and it wasn’t easy leaving a team that I really liked spending time with. If you’re\n interested in internal tools, Rust, or graph-based UIs, give Membrane a try and tell{\" \"}\n Juan what you think.\n

\n\n

A book!

\n I am writing a book about Internet domains: dot com et al. The book has its own home on the Web at{\" \"}\n dotcom.press. It will cover the history, economics, and artistry of domains.\n

\n My why for the book splits roughly into four whys:\n

I love to write, more so over time
I’m fascinated by domain names
I’m curious about the creative process of self-publishing
I’m eager to meet Internet people and hear their domain stories

\n This is not some lifelong dream realized—it snuck up on me over a couple months until I was too excited not to\n do it. Back on April 8, I went to an event on a whim at the wonderful{\" \"}\n Mercantile Library for Jane Friedman’s book,{\" \"}\n \n The Business of Being a Writer\n . Hundreds of published and aspiring authors (which did not include me at the time) were in the audience.\n Jane’s talk was fascinating, covering topics like the staying power of print, traditional publishing deals\n versus self-publishing, and building your platform in walled gardens like Twitter and Substack versus your own\n website/newsletter. After the event I started reading my freshly signed copy of Jane’s book, sometimes applying\n her lessons to my own experience as a blogger, but mostly reading out of detached curiosity.{\" \"}\n This is super interesting, but I’m not going to write a book. What would I even write about?{\" \"}\n That is, until it clicked. Domains!\n

\n Domains is the subject I kept coming back to. I’ve written a few wandering, wondering notes in my garden:{\" \"}\n dot com et al (where I borrowed the working title of the book),\n {\" \"}\n Silly TLDs, and{\" \"}\n Serious TLDs. I own nearly two dozen domains, many of\n which were gifts to friends and family. I want everyone to have their own corner of the Internet, and that\n starts with a domain. I’m interested in topics like how registrars work, creating new gTLDs, geopolitic risk\n around ccTLDs, customer trust w/r/t unusual TLDs, investing in domains, pricing domains, legal battles, and\n branding centered around a domain name. The book won’t be technical, but I anticipate that it will naturally\n appeal more to programmers and other Web-interested people.\n

\n I’m also quite excited for what a book entails outside of the writing itself. The barrier to self-publishing is\n low these days, and I see it as a deeply creative process. There may even be a timeline where I extend my newly\n established publishing company,{\" \"}\n Dot Com Press, LLC, to publish books for others. I plan to build interactive\n elements on the book’s website and publish across many formats: the expected ones like print, ebook, and\n audiobook, but also serialized as a podcast and email newsletter with one chapter per week.\n

\n Probably the most fun I’ll have along the way will be interviewing people. Pretty much anyone who’s worked\n around the Web has some story to tell or article to share about a domain. On that note,{\" \"}\n reply to this email!{\" \"}\n Interviews can be as informal as you’d like, from casually brainstorming to recording a story that ends up as\n its own book chapter.\n

\n This isn’t a transition away from web development, either. I want to code more, if anything. I don’t know if\n I’ll write another book after this, but I do expect to keep coding as my Main Thing, and that excites me.\n

\n\n

What I’m reading

\n I’ve read some great books in 2025 (and some just-ok ones). For each I’ve included a Bookshop.org affiliate\n link, a rating, who might like it, and notes if I wrote any. Many of these can be found on my brand new{\" \"}\n bookshelf.\n

\n \n The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman\n : 5/5. For writers, bloggers, and anyone curious about publishing.{\" \"}\n My notes.\n
\n \n The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron\n : 5/5. For (aspiring) artists. My notes.\n
\n \n The Creative Act by Rick Rubin\n : 5/5. For creatives, artists. My notes.\n
\n \n Born to Run by Christopher McDougall\n : 5/5. For runners. My notes.\n
\n \n How Not to Die by Dr. Michael Greger\n : 4/5. For the vegan-interested. My notes.\n
\n \n Eat & Run by Scott Jurek\n : 3/5. For runners and the vegan-interested.{\" \"}\n My notes.\n
\n \n North by Scott Jurek\n : 3/5. For runners and (AT) hikers. My notes.\n
\n \n Kitchen Confidential\n : 2/5. For foodies. My notes.\n
\n \n Breath\n : 2/5. For anyone, I guess. My notes.\n
\n \n Word By Word by Kory Stamper\n : 5/5. For word nerds. If you like Authority and American Usage{\" \"}\n by David Foster Wallace, I bet you’ll like this. Whimsically written, and full of new words (unsurprisingly).\n
\n \n Where You’ll Find Me by Ty Gagne\n : 5/5. For hikers, skiers, White Mountaineers. I also recommend{\" \"}\n \n The Last Traverse\n , which I listened to.\n
\n \n Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver\n : 5/5. For Dickens readers. Sad but well done, like many of my favorite books and movies.\n
\n \n Rise of the Ultra Runners by Adharanand Finn\n : 4/5. For runners. An intro and who’s who of ultra running, and a natural follow-up to{\" \"}\n Born to Run and Scott Jurek’s books.\n
\n \n Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus\n : 3/5. For (allies of) women in STEM. I liked the premise, story, and messaging, but I wasn’t as much a\n fan of the prose.\n
\n \n My Brilliant Friend\n : 3/5. For fiction readers. I read the translation, and I think it was both well written and had a good\n narrative, yet for whatever reason it wasn’t the right book at the right time for me.\n
\n \n Marathon\n : 2/5. For marathoners. A fairly dry and somewhat outdated practical guide, but still worthwhile if you’re\n into marathon running.\n

\n \n I just signed up as a Bookshop.org affiliate, which means I earn a 10% commission on profit if you buy one.\n {\" \"}\n I expect to earn no more than a burrito’s worth every few months, but regardless of my affiliation I think\n Bookshop.org is a terrific Amazon alternative and way to support independent book stores.\n

\n\n

What I’m writing

\n Outside of books I’m reading and the book I’m writing, I’ve planted notes here and there in my garden.\n Embarrassingly, it’s been a full year since I’ve sent this “monthly-ish” clippings{\" \"}\n newsletter, but I suppose that’s the nature of gardening. So I’ll end this already-long clipping with an\n incomplete list of things I wrote since last June:\n

\n A malleable garden\n
\n I’ve been to 37 US states\n
\n \n What should I know about JavaScript engines and runtimes?\n \n
\n Reading begets reading\n
\n Reading, like running\n
\n On weather\n
\n \n When you’re already in a bad mood\n \n
\n Yang MATH is good but impossible\n
\n Present you\n
\n Orderly maximalist design\n
\n Number two, unplugged\n
\n \n Trading ambition for presence\n \n
\n On David Foster Wallace\n
\n \n Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson\n \n
\n \n Your mileage may vary: Training for a marathon on a vegan diet\n \n
\n \n The Flying Pig Marathon 2025: Race notes\n \n
\n Words & shwords\n
\n Record broken; Broken record\n

\n\n

\n Thanks for reading. If you have any domain tales or resources to share,{\" \"}\n reach out.\n

\n A lot has happened since{\" \"}\n January. In no particular order...\n

\n\n

Joining Membrane

\n Earlier this year I started exploring{\" \"}\n Membrane, building small programs like the{\" \"}\n feedback form in my garden and a{\" \"}\n solar eclipse countdown. Then a couple\n months later I joined Membrane!\n

\n I ended up here thanks in no small part to{\" \"}\n writing in public{\" \"}\n about what I’m looking for in my next, next-next, and next-next-\n next\n {\" \"}\n jobs. +1 point for blogging.\n

\n The episode with Juan{\" \"}\n on devtools.fm is where I first heard about Membrane—worth a listen if you’re interested in the architecture\n (persisted QuickJS runtime, Rust+WASM, etc). Juan worked on it as a personal project for several years before\n pairing up with Justin as co-founders and transitioning from project to product{\" \"}\n (startup). Our aim is to create a really nice experience writing internal tools with TypeScript.\n

\n I plan to work in public on Membrane with lots of tweets and blog posts. If you’re interested in trying it out,\n I’d love to pair and get your feedback—reply to this email (or DM me on Twitter), and we can set up some time.\n

\n\n

Learning Rust

\n I started{\" \"}\n learning Rust, which I was already interested in and now\n have solid motivation to act on. I plan to{\" \"}\n \n accidentally learn some Computer Science\n {\" \"}\n along the way.\n

\n I’m also starting to dig into WASM, which we’re using for the Membrane Web IDE (egui Rust code compiles to\n WASM).\n

\n\n

Book club, meetup, conference

Future of Coding book club

\n A handful of us started a book club{\" \"}\n in the Future of Coding community. The first book we read was A Small Matter of Programming{\" \"}\n by Bonnie Nardi. I wrote down some{\" \"}\n things I found interesting in the book.\n

\n Initial interest in the book club was good, but to sustain it over time we’ll need new member energy—so come\n join! Or just join the FoC Slack community because all sorts of interesting conversations happen in there.\n

Browsertech NYC in March

\n I also went to and wrote about{\" \"}\n a Browsertech meetup in NYC in March. The browsertech{\" \"}\n newsletter and podcast have become favorites of mine. I hope I can make it to the next NYC edition.\n

ai.engineer World’s Fair

\n Last week I was at the ai.engineer{\" \"}\n World’s Fair in SF. I had the ticket leftover from a generous education budget at my previous job, and I was\n mostly interested in learning about agents.\n

\n To that end, there were interesting talks and workshops from{\" \"}\n Lance Martin,{\" \"}\n Eno Reyes,{\" \"}\n Morgante Pell, and plenty of others. I also\n {\" \"}\n started prototyping{\" \"}\n a simple Membrane agent. Membrane already has a few core building blocks for agents—built-in memory,\n standardized connection to tools (APIs, timers), and really good observability—so that should be a fun area for\n us to continue exploring.\n

\n There were many other engaging talks, like Justine Tunney and Stephen Hood from Mozilla speaking about{\" \"}\n llamafile, which just works{\" \"}\n on almost any hardware completely locally (like, running llama3-8b on my M1 Macbook on-an-airplane locally).\n They also announced funding for{\" \"}\n sqlite-vec, which\n will run vector search on a SQLite db (incl. in WASM).\n

\n\n

Working outside a tech hub

\n I also moved from Brooklyn to Cincinnati for my partner’s work earlier this year. I hadn’t been to Ohio before\n moving here, but Cincy is a legitimately Cool Place. The unsure looks I got at the conference in San Francisco\n last week after answering the “where are you coming from” question reminded me of this DFW quotation from{\" \"}\n Getting Away from Already Pretty Much Being Away from It All:\n

\n \n I’m fresh in from the East Coast to go to the Illinois State Fair for a swanky East-Coast magazine. Why\n exactly a swanky East-Coast magazine is interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me. I suspect\n that every so often editors at these magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90% of the United\n States lies between the Coasts and figure they’ll engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological\n reporting on something rural and heartlandish.\n \n

\n So I’m starting to accrue perspective on working in software while living outside a tech hub. There aren’t\n weekly meetups like you have in NYC and SF, but there are engineers around if you look closely! And you can\n start your own meetups (something I’d like to do soon). I’ll also fly into NYC every couple months to go to a\n meetup and catch up with friends. Plus, I’m just leaning more into making connections online (e.g. FoC book\n club). I’ll also try to attend at least a couple conferences per year.\n

\n\n

Thanks for reading.

- Pete

#4 — August 2025

Writing

Talking

Reading, watching, listening

NYC in September

#1 — January 2024

Planting my digital garden

January

Leaving Membrane

A book!

What I’m reading

What I’m writing

Joining Membrane

Learning Rust

Book club, meetup, conference

Future of Coding book club

Browsertech NYC in March

ai.engineer World’s Fair

Working outside a tech hub

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