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#5 — September 2025

\n Interviewing people for my book has been a lot of fun.\n

\n One startup COO I interviewed took two <24 hour round-trip flights\n to Italy during peak COVID to persuade a Swedish company to sell their\n domain for six figures, only to have the money go missing for a couple\n months after the seller sent the wrong banking wire instructions. That\n story and interview will likely end up in an email newsletter, which\n you can sign up for at{\" \"}\n \n dotcom.press\n .\n

Writing

\n I started doing some work for{\" \"}\n Val Town, helping out with their docs\n and blog. I published my first blog post yesterday:{\" \"}\n \n In, Val, Out\n \n

\n Earlier this week I wrote about{\" \"}\n \n how to find a domain for your startup\n , which is essentially the blog post version of a talk I’m giving\n next week at a local startup conference.\n

\n A couple weeks ago I wrote about{\" \"}\n \n Google’s confusing involvement in the domains world\n {\" \"}\n while working out of the NYC Google office. The more I research the\n more I realize how many books could be written on single subtopics\n within the wider world of domains. There’s an amusing contrast when\n people ask what my book is about, depending on who’s asking. Most\n people say (or at least think) something like, “...a whole book?”\n Domains experts—brokers, investors, registrars, ICANN, etc.—say\n something like, “you need to narrow your scope.”\n

\n I also wrote about{\" \"}\n \n the et al of dot com et al\n , that is to say the 1,591 top-level domains other than{\" \"}\n .com. That number will continue to explode with a new\n round of domain extensions coming next year. You can even apply for\n your own .whatever if you have $227k lying around.\n

Conferences

\n On Monday the 6th I’ll be demo’ing some of the Dot Com Press tech\n stack at{\" \"}\n \n StartupCincy Week\n ’s “Best of Demo Night.” Then on Wednesday I’m giving a talk on\n how to find the right domain for your startup. Whether or not you\n really do need a dot com has been at the top of my list of burning\n questions while writing the book (and it’ll continue to burn because\n it’s subjective, of course). Reply if you have anecdotes or opinions\n to share from your experience.\n

\n From October 25th to 30th I’ll be in Dublin, Ireland for ICANN84, the\n first of my back-to-back capital J Journalism trips. I’m reading\n Milton Mueller’s book, Declaring Independence in Cyberspace\n {\" \"}\n right now to prepare. I’m quite excited to build a holistic impression\n of ICANN by attending the six-day annual meeting IRL. I don’t think\n I’d be able to replicate that just by reading, attending webinars, and\n talking to current and former ICANN employees (although I am doing\n those things, too!).\n

\n My second research trip (I have actual “media passes” for these\n events) will be in Miami on November 5th and 6th for{\" \"}\n \n NamesCon\n . The conference has an investing angle, but the crowd will\n include registries, registrars, brokers, ICANN, ISPs, and IP lawyers.\n There’s even a live domain auction and literal{\" \"}\n \n server throwing competition\n .\n

Reading, watching

\n I finished reading{\" \"}\n \n The Anxious Generation\n {\" \"}\n by Jonathan Haidt. Like I wrote in{\" \"}\n August, it’s a\n book I plan to pick back up down the road as a parent with young kids.\n

\n I read{\" \"}\n \n Tabula Rasa\n {\" \"}\n by John McPhee. I really like the form factor of the book, which\n roughly matches what I think I want for my own: paperback, ~250 pages,\n simple but tasteful cover art. I like McPhee so far. I’m sort of\n studying his writing to learn about great nonfiction, but it’s also\n just pleasant. I checked out The Control of Nature and{\" \"}\n Draft No. 4 from the library.\n

\n I read{\" \"}\n \n Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore\n {\" \"}\n by Robin Sloan. I get why people who work in tech read him. It’s page\n turning like a fantasy novel but you feel like something of an insider\n with all the startup references.\n

\n I read{\" \"}\n \n The Byline Bible\n {\" \"}\n by Susan Shapiro. The point is that you can be somewhat formulaic\n about submitting short nonfiction to publications, and eventually\n it’ll work. It’s something I’ve considered while working toward a full\n book.\n

\n Btw, I’m an affiliate of{\" \"}\n bookshop.org, so if you buy a book\n I link to I’ll make a 10% commision on the profit. Even if you don’t\n click my links, I recommend Bookshop.org over Amazon to support\n independent bookstores.\n

\n We’ve been watching Hacks{\" \"}\n on HBO Max, and I’m surprised I haven’t heard more people talk about\n it. I also watched the first few episodes of The Paper{\" \"}\n (successor to The Office), and it’s pretty funny.\n

On New York City

\n I was in New York City for a week in September. I like to ask people\n who’ve lived in New York whether they feel like a New Yorker, which I\n think generally equates to being proud of the city and feeling\n confident you can live well in it, tradeoffs and all. I started to\n feel like a New Yorker in my second stint there (the first one\n interrupted by a Really Good year and change living with my brother\n {\" \"}\n Martin{\" \"}\n in Richmond), and I’ve held onto some residual New Yorker identity\n over the past couple years with Sloane in Cincinnati (which also\n qualify as Really Good, I’d say). We’re starting to think about moving\n back to NYC, which I bet would resurrect and deepen whatever latent\n New Yorker pride I have left (in an I-chose-this-so-I-must-like-it\n sort of way).\n

April 2026

\n Unlike previous{\" \"}\n \n clippings\n , this one is organized{\" \"}\n \n Robin Sloan newsletter\n -style: instead of neatly partitioned sections of what I’ve written\n and what I’ve read, it’s a stream of discrete vignettes from the past\n couple months.\n

\n I read the phrase epistemic vigilance{\" \"}\n in Jane Friedman’s piece on{\" \"}\n \n AI and Libraries: Why Librarians May Become Arbiters of Reality\n . It’s a fancy but perfectly precise way to describe something I’ve\n been thinking about for a while: AI hallucinations and slop introduce a\n tax on our learning—before believing what we read, we must judge where\n that knowledge came from and whether it’s credible, accurate, true.\n

Jane’s usage:

\n
\n ...what’s needed isn’t more instruction but something closer to a\n wellness intervention: relief from constant epistemic vigilance.\n
\n

\n I read Extremely Online{\" \"}\n by Taylor Lorenz. The book, content-wise, was super Up My Alley and so I\n made my way through pretty quickly. It’s a factually dense,\n chronological retelling of how people get famous on the internet over\n the last two decades, whereas I would’ve liked a narrower story with\n more of Lorenz’s editorial opinion on things like who are the good eggs\n and who are the baddies. But I get that she covers these people and\n platforms and it might come back to bite her reporting if she threw more\n punches. It reminded me of Brian McCullough’s{\" \"}\n How the Internet Happened, structurally. I was most interested\n in the chapter on blogging, and in particular this:\n

\n
\n It’s hard to remember how novel this was. Before the blog era, if you\n wanted to share your ideas with the public, you had to make it past\n layers upon layers of legacy gatekeepers. Letters to the editor,\n call-ins to the radio, article or book submissions—all had to be\n approved by a faceless authority at a moated institution.\n
\n

\n I’ve already quoted that in a riff I wrote the other day,{\" \"}\n \n Dickens was a blogger\n .\n

\n I read The Stranger{\" \"}\n by Albert Camus. The book itself was just ok (for me—one reader, at one\n moment in time), but our discussion at the Mercantile library’s\n Zillennial book club was quite interesting. Some days after that I\n re-read James Somers’s brief blog post,{\" \"}\n \n Most book clubs are doing it wrong\n . His argument—that it’s silly to only discuss the book{\" \"}\n after{\" \"}\n you’ve read it and will probably never touch it again—makes a lot of\n sense in the context of my experience with The Stranger.\n

\n I read The Untold Story of Books{\" \"}\n by Michael Castleman. There were some interesting things in there, like\n that self-publishing preceded “traditional” publishing, or that\n independent booksellers getting squeezed by The Big Guys is nothing new\n (first book fairs, then department stores, then Barnes & Noble, now\n Amazon). I learned some things, but I found it a bit disorganized, and\n also—this is a nit—I’m not sure the story of books is really{\" \"}\n untold (see: The Book-Makers by Adam Smyth,{\" \"}\n The Book by Keith Houston, etc.).\n

\n I’m reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities{\" \"}\n by Jane Jacobs. Well, I got over halfway through and sort of paused for\n now. I’m interested, but honestly it’s a bit of a slog. Part of the\n problem is that the neighborhood examples are over half a century old,\n so maybe what I need is a condensed, updated “Jacobs, 50 Years Later”\n version. I’m not quite reading it just to have said that I’ve read it,\n but close: I want to understand all the Jacobs references and reactions\n in urbanism chatter. Like this{\" \"}\n \n Bluesky post by Ingrid\n , “the death and life of great american web pages.”\n

\n I enjoyed Dan Greene’s New Yorker feature,{\" \"}\n \n The Mystery and Mass Appeal of the N.F.L. Draft\n . I submitted a letter to the editor, which I’ve never done before\n (a friend gave me the idea—hello, Jack!), with my brief reaction. I was\n interested to learn that “All letters become the property of{\" \"}\n \n The New Yorker\n ,” per{\" \"}\n \n their guidelines\n . So I suppose I can’t even tell you what I wrote here as that would\n be publishing something I gave up the rights to. In any case, I already\n like letters to the editor as a writing exercise. It’s a well-scoped bit\n of writing practice, without much pressure but still with the\n possibility of a credible reader on the other end. And it reinforces\n whatever you’ve learned or found interesting in the piece, increasing\n the likelihood that I’ll remember something from a piece that I enjoyed\n engaging with.\n

\n I’ve been binging the{\" \"}\n \n Longform\n {\" \"}\n podcast a bit. I’ve learned many things about storytelling and\n journalism from many interviewees (and the interviewers—Evan Ratliff,\n Aaron Lammer, and Max Linsky). In one episode Stephen Dubner made a\n point that validated (one reason) why I think podcasts are a useful\n medium: you get a good sense of someone hearing them talk. He said:\n

\n
\n I feel you can really tell the character of a person through their\n voice incredibly well. I think it’s easier to deceive in writing.\n
\n

\n I wrote an essay for the Val Town blog, “Code is inert. Val Town makes\n it ert” which is a play on a Paul Ford line from his novella-length 2015\n essay in Bloomberg Businessweek, “What is Code.” Paul’s one of my\n favorite programmer-writers, and so it was something of a personal\n milestone when he followed me back on Bluesky. He only follows me and a\n couple thousand others, so yeah, pretty special huh. I’ve since wiped\n the grin off my face, but in the unlikely chance that you subscribed to\n my RSS feed and are reading this, Paul—hello! Do you still plan to\n publish The Secret Life of Webpages? I hope so!\n

\n One more Val Town essay I’ll indulge in sharing here.{\" \"}\n \n Slow Mode: the Salt Fat Acid Heat of vibe coding\n . All the fatigue and eye-rolling re AI makes me hesitant to write\n about it, sometimes, but Robin Sloan counters that in his wonderful{\" \"}\n \n popup newsletter\n :\n

\n
\n I’ll add one more thing. I think we are in a period so interesting\n that basically everybody ought to be writing about it: reporting,\n reflecting, resisting, re-everything — in a blog, a newsletter, an\n email to friends, whatever.\n
\n

\n
\n I said this in my first edition: AI language models are a\n particularly, maybe even uniquely, human technology. They are\n paradoxical and poetic, like something out of myth: the uncanny\n double, the magic mirror. Psychological intuitions have proven as\n useful as technical insights.\n
\n

\n
\n You have a stake in this, simply by virtue of being a talking animal.\n Might as well jot a few notes for posterity, and for the rest of us,\n here and now.\n
\n

\n Speaking of, my coworker Tom has written quite a few things that\n influence how I think about AI. Most recently:{\" \"}\n \n Accidental anonymity\n . It’s really good. You should read it.\n

\n I registered a .com domain name for our wedding website. If anyone’s\n going to register a .wedding or .rsvp it’s probably me, and yet! When I\n judge my actions and not my words, or wishful thinking about top-level\n domains, I remember that dot com is still king, as many investors with\n skin in that game like to say. Other endings are great, but when you\n want to prioritize legibility for everyone, including grandparents, you\n settle on ole’ reliable.\n

I think “abottom” would be a useful word.

It’s more economical than “at the bottom”
People will quickly get it via its analogue “atop”

\n Per Google’s Ngram View, atop only{\" \"}\n \n sprouted up in the last century\n , and abottom usage is{\" \"}\n \n near-zero but not zero\n {\" \"}\n (seven 0s to the right of the decimal). I’m going to start using it, and\n I invite you to join me. Let’s get this thing (back) in the dictionary.\n

\n I’ve found a pretty nice rhythm, a groove, on my bookwork in the past\n couple months. I moved my manuscript from Obsidian to Scrivener, and so\n far so good. I’m keeping my research notes in Obsidian, but partitioning\n off the manuscript as an independent artifact makes it feel more real.\n The cadence of my work-in-public{\" \"}\n \n book newsletter\n {\" \"}\n has slowed, though, so I have some momentum to recover there.\n

\n I was home in Cincinnati for Memorial Day Weekend, and I was proud to\n see the city at peak vitality. Saturday was the most lively I’ve ever\n seen it, topping some highlights this year like the No Kings march and\n Reds opening day. On Saturday I walked to Findlay Market in OTR for a\n falafel at Dean’s then downtown to return and pick up books at the\n public library. What was special about Saturday is that between the\n Taste of Cincinnati food festival on 5th, the Reds-Cardinals series, the\n sold out FC Cincinnati game, and much more, the city was plurally{\" \"}\n happening,{\" \"}\n not just singularly populated for a one-and-done event. Pretty cool.\n

From Cincinnati,

Pete

\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

\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

#1 — January 2024

\n\n

Hello!

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\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

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\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

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Planting my digital garden

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\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

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\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

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\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

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\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

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January

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

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\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

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\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

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\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

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

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– Pete

December 2025

\n I don’t work nor think in fiscal quarters, but this clipping happens to\n cover what I’ve written and read in Q4 2025. And a new job!\n

Joining Val Town

\n I’ve been working for Val Town{\" \"}\n ~one day per week for the past few months. Starting today, I’m\n officially joining the team as a part-timer—three days a week—while I\n continue to work on my book the other four. I’ve been a Val Town\n customer and fan for as long as I’ve been writing in my garden—just hit\n {\" \"}\n cmd+k{\" \"}\n and search “Val” on petemillspaugh.com for plenty of evidence there.\n This very email will be sent using a system I created in Val Town. My\n excitement for the VT product pretty much boils down to{\" \"}\n \n being into end-user programming\n {\" \"}\n and working on{\" \"}\n \n end-programmer programming\n . That pairs well with my excitement to work with the VT team, whose\n blog posts always seem to be open in my browser tabs. It’s a good chance\n to become a better writer and programmer. And as it turns out, I kind of\n called it in{\" \"}\n \n My next, next, next job\n .\n

Writing

\n I wrote a guest essay for Jane Friedman’s blog:{\" \"}\n \n Write Your Book Like You’d Run a Startup\n . It’s the first time my writing has been published by someone else,\n and I’m honored that the someone else is Jane Friedman. Jane is the\n writers’ writer. As I wrote about in{\" \"}\n July, her talk\n at the Mercantile Library and her book,{\" \"}\n The Business of Being a Writer, planted the idea in my head to\n write a book of my own.\n

Writing from my garden in Q4:

\n \n The nature of the job\n \n
\n A cathartic essay about a programmer’s relationship with AI\n
\n \n Public library holds as your want-to-read book list\n \n
\n Skip the list and walk to your local library\n
\n \n Interpreting Crafting Crafting Interpreters\n \n
\n A blog post about a blog post about a book\n
\n \n The couch problem\n \n
\n On tradeoffs\n
\n \n I’ve been to 39 US states\n \n
\n Green grass and blue skies in Indiana\n
\n \n Programmer-writer\n \n
\n What would you say you do here?\n

Writing for my book in Q4:

\n \n A Brief History of Domains\n \n
\n This year, dot com turned 40\n
\n \n You can’t spell Anguilla without AI\n \n
\n \n AI’s economic impact on Anguilla is second to none, but why should\n we world care?\n \n
\n \n ICANN is not a boring bureaucracy\n \n
\n Internet governance drama buried in acronyms\n
\n r/domains\n
\n Earn an MBA for domains on Reddit\n
\n \n Holiday gift guide: domains for the whole family\n \n
\n \n This holiday season, buy your friends and family their own corner of\n the internet\n \n

Reading

Books I read in Q4, with some links pointing to notes I collected:

\n Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson\n
\n Algospeak by Adam Aleksic\n
\n Declaring Independence in Cyberspace by Milton Mueller\n
\n Bootstrapping Computing by Alexander Obenauer\n
\n \n The World Beyond Your Head\n {\" \"}\n by Matthew B. Crawford\n
\n \n Bibliotech\n {\" \"}\n by John Palfrey\n
\n \n Art Work\n {\" \"}\n by Sally Mann\n
\n \n This Is For Everyone\n {\" \"}\n by Tim Berners-Lee\n

\n Plus two books I read earlier this year and just recently planted notes\n for:\n

\n \n Weaving the Web\n {\" \"}\n by Tim Berners-Lee\n
\n \n On Writing\n {\" \"}\n by Stephen King\n

Why bother?

\n I was re-reading Bob Nystrom’s essay, “Crafting *Crafting\n Interpreters*,” about writing his book,{\" \"}\n Crafting Interpreters, and I decided to turn my notes into my\n own blog post about the blog post: “Interpreting Crafting Crafting\n Interpreters” (linked above). After writing it, I thought to myself, why\n do I bother writing this kind of thing? It felt like I’d wasted my time,\n maybe.\n

\n Part of the reason why I’d write something like that is because{\" \"}\n \n a blog post is a very long and complex search query to find\n fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox\n , as Henrik Karlsson wrote. I want to route fascinating\n people—self-publishing authors—and interesting stuff—books, blogs,\n ideas—to my inbox. I also want to route recursively-titled meta blog\n posts to my inbox because I really like this kind of behind-the-scenes,\n story-of-the-craft writing. Like my friend Danny’s{\" \"}\n \n Making Make a README\n {\" \"}\n and Jason Kehe’s{\" \"}\n \n WIRED profile\n {\" \"}\n about profiling{\" \"}\n Robin Sloan, which he almost but didn’t title “The programmer-writer’s\n programmer-writer.”\n

\n Planting blog posts as long, complex search queries is similar to why\n I’d want a bigger network of friends{\" \"}\n on Twitter{\" \"}\n and Bluesky. Not for vanity or selling books—although of course that’s\n nice—but so that I can ask questions and get useful answers that help me\n find people and their work, like{\" \"}\n \n Steve’s tweet about domain brokers\n {\" \"}\n that led to three (!) great conversations for my book. I’ve been\n thinking a lot about getting other people’s antennae up as I write my\n book. Because I’m writing about domains,{\" \"}\n \n my antenna is up\n {\" \"}\n and ready to notice anything related to domains that I stumble upon. If\n I can get others’ antennae up, that will route more domain stories to my\n inbox. That’s (partially) why I send{\" \"}\n emails for the book{\" \"}\n every couple weeks.\n

\n I’m also a believer that to write better you need to write{\" \"}\n more. It’s all practice, in a sense. And on that note, please\n do reply to this email. I’ll write back.\n

#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

April 2026

\n As April turns to May, I’m sending my seventh clipping from the garden:\n a collection of what I’ve been writing and reading since{\" \"}\n December.\n

\n And before that, if I could quickly break the fourth wall: reply to this\n email if you wouldn’t mind. I’m sending from a new address, and replies\n help build its reputation so that future email won’t be condemned to\n spam. (Or you can of course unsubscribe at the bottom—no hard feelings.)\n

Writing

\n Yesterday, April 30, the application window opened for the 2026\n top-level domain round. That means from now until August 12 companies\n can apply to own and run new .words (the part of a domain to the right\n of the dot). If it’s anything like the first time this happened in 2012,\n we can expect hundreds of applicants competing for thousands of new\n words. In other words:{\" \"}\n domainia. The\n big, public “Reveal Day” will likely be on October 7. All that buzz\n makes this year a fun one to be researching and writing about domains.\n

\n Here’s a selection of writing from the book’s newsletter and a couple\n brief notes from the garden:\n

\n \n Dot meow: the next queer corner of the Internet\n —\n Like selling Subarus to lesbians\n
\n \n Emma Stone still doesn’t really own her domain\n —\n \n Squarespace’s Super Bowl ad is noteworthy for selling personal\n domains, and FOMO\n \n
\n \n Dot org is not not for profit\n —\n \n The nonprofit nearly taken over by private equity, but for the\n California attorney general\n \n
\n \n Your domain is your “internet handle”\n —\n \n Enshittification, credible exit, open social, and your phone number\n \n
\n \n Unhurried ambition\n —\n A phrase borrowed from Alia Hanna Habib\n
\n \n Editorial rigor\n —\n A phrase borrowed from Sally Mann\n

Reading

\n Last week was National Library Week, and I’m grateful to the Cincinnati\n Public Library for free access to so many books (and free printing,\n among much else). I’ve continued to{\" \"}\n \n check out print books instead of a want-to-read list\n , which means our house is decorated with books stacked and strewn\n about. For a handful of those books I wrote up notes in the garden,\n linked here:\n

\n \n A Gentleman in Moscow\n {\" \"}\n by Amor Towles\n
\n \n Careless People\n {\" \"}\n by Sarah Wynn-Williams\n
\n \n Take It From Me\n {\" \"}\n by Alia Hanna Habib\n
\n \n Evicted\n {\" \"}\n by Matthew Desmond\n
\n \n Draft No. 4\n {\" \"}\n by John McPhee\n

\n For other books I didn’t get around to planting notes, so I’ve written a\n few words on each.\n

\n Mindstorms{\" \"}\n by Seymour Papert, a still-resonant book from the 1980s about computers\n and learning. I nearly doubled the thickness of the book’s top corner\n with dog-ears and took pages and pages of notes, which I hope to write\n up in the garden soon.\n

\n Because Internet{\" \"}\n by Gretchen McCulloch. Another one with a litter of dog-ears in my copy.\n It’s a perfect intersection of two primary interests for me: words, and\n the internet. As the back cover blurb says, “Language is humanity’s most\n spectacular open source project.” In the vector space of my head this\n book neighbors Algospeak by Adam Aleksic and{\" \"}\n Word by Word by Kory Stamper.\n

\n Sourdough{\" \"}\n by Robin Sloan, whose fiction is great but whose nonfiction really\n reverberates in my head, like{\" \"}\n \n Manic technology\n . I also got a copy of Robin’s{\" \"}\n Aspire Zine:\n “Information technology should aspire to the speed & privacy of the\n printed page.” I’m excited to aspire to that model with my own book’s\n digital format(s). If you’d like to borrow my copy of the zine’s e-book,\n ask me—I’m eager to test out Robin’s e-book experiment. And if that last\n sentence was confusing yet intriguing to you, the zine will make things\n quite clear (it’s only a ten minute read)!\n

\n Networks of New York{\" \"}\n by Ingrid Burrington, who’s working on the second edition. If you live\n in New York and consider yourself to be even a little bit of an internet\n or infrastructure nerd, I’d recommend it.\n

\n The Correspondent{\" \"}\n by Virginia Evans. It was sad and beautiful (it made me cry) and\n captured the complexity of family and other relationships. Its premise\n and format—letters sent and received by the protagonist over multiple\n decades of her life—well illustrates that writing by mail (and email) is\n its own form of communication unlike any other. Sometimes the receiver\n isn’t ready or capable of listening, but the words will wait. When\n writing, unlike talking, you can rewrite, rearrange, reconsider,\n reorder. And the receiver can read, reread, reconsider.\n

\n The Oracle’s Daughter{\" \"}\n by Harrison Hill, about a woman growing up in and escaping a cult. The\n book is thoroughly researched and reported nonfiction that reads like\n fiction. Harrison interleaved America’s religious and cult history in\n chapters between the main narrative. My favorite sentence from the book:\n

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\n Change so often happens on a gradient: Blue is still blue until\n somehow it is purple, the shift is hard to pinpoint but irrefutably\n {\" \"}\n there. (58)\n
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Reading about writing

\n Over the past year I’ve been eating up meta books about books and\n writing, like Alia Hanna Habib’s book linked above, searching for\n insider takes as I continue to piece together how the traditional\n publishing world works. Speaking of, I’ve been listening to Planet\n Money’s podcast series on the making of their own book. It’s total\n catnip for me, and I think broadly interesting for anyone who likes\n walking around bookstores.\n

\n And{\" \"}\n \n on Monday\n , I’m leading the first of six discussions of Jane Friedman’s{\" \"}\n \n The Business of Being a Writer\n {\" \"}\n at the Mercantile Library in Cincinnati. That first session is sold out,\n but if you’re interested let me know and I bet we can make room!\n

-Pete

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