364 Days Later
I picked a hell of a year to start a newsletter.
On April 14, 2024, I made the bold choice to start off the very first edition of my brand new newsletter, Sunday Bunch, with a story about the death of O.J. Simpson.
The former NFL Hall of Famer turned movie star/sideline commentator/Hertz pitch man turned murderer had just passed the previous day (without ever finding the real killer, adding to the gravity of the situation) and in that moment, it felt as just as good as any representation of the types of stories I wanted in my weekly curation and analysis of the stories both important and absurd, spanning brows high to low.
It may surprise you to learn: I did not start this newsletter with a firm plan of what it was going to be1. Or, perhaps better said: I didn’t have a strong editorial vision so much as a vibe and a mood board filled with brunch-themed iconography. I paired that with a commitment to posting once/week for a year, and off we went.
I set out to reëstablish two things that had gone missing along the way:
A direct, reliable connection to my personal and professional networks, not intermediated by one or more algorithmic corn mazes.
A regular creative practice, one that forces me to make something and put it in front of a public audience–even if it’s just a curated digest and analysis of the week’s news.
In retrospect, the couple hundred words I gave to my fellow USC alumnus probably weren’t the strongest ways to build a creative practice or high-quality connections, part of a very rough-around-the-edges first post. And yet, no one bailed.
Then I took the liberty of opting a few of you in, flaunting GDPR and piling on to what I'm sure was an already-overloaded inbox. And you all stayed.
We had an excess of brunch-themed graphics, an entire edition dedicated to lazy rivers, approximately 520,000 calories (and that was just the Texas State Fair post), way too many couch jokes, and all sorts of other headlines, ideas, trends, and absurdities, and everyone still stuck around2.
Since then, we've added a few (hundred) new friends and while some may no longer be with us, we have people lined up to get in the front door and only a few ghosting out the back. I’m forever grateful to all of you who reading this now.
Status Check
Looking at what I set out to do, this experiment has delivered in ways I didn't fully anticipate:
On the connections front, I will keep saying it: you all have been the best part. Having readers show up week after week, sending thoughtful responses, and reconnecting with folks from various chapters of my life has been genuinely rewarding. After years of algorithms deciding who sees what, there's something beautifully direct about hitting send and knowing most of you will actually receive it—the digital equivalent of someone actually answering when you knock on their door.
This whole Substack ecosystem has recreated that 2000s-era blogging community feel—the camaraderie of blogrolls, Typepad, trackbacks, and Blogebrity—that sense of fraternity that made early social media special before engagement metrics devoured everything worthwhile3.
And I'm writing again! Mission accomplished on that front, even if it sometimes feels like I'm just barely making the Sunday deadline. Perhaps the best news: the top performing posts are the ones featuring the most original writing and artwork, providing encouragement to take the time and publish more of my own creations.
But if I'm being honest...
The weekly curation portion of this takes a lot more work than it might appear from the outside. People like
, , and are so prodigious, covering a lot of the same topics I do, which constantly has me questioning my time-spent-to-value-added calculus. How many different ways can the growing legion of excellent Substack curators compile and rapid-fire analyze the same tech stories and business developments each week?Going deep to craft those original posts is challenging when you’re spreading a wide net across each week’s developments. It's one thing to be curious, it's another to let curiosity turn into consumption at the expense of creation. I've spent more Sundays than I'd like to admit feeling like a glorified RSS feed rather than adding anything truly original to the conversation.
Then there’s the weekly deadline–on a weekend, no less–which is not great. As much as I’d love to just schedule it Friday and walk out the door, me serving you lukewarm links is beneath all of us. So inevitably some portion of a weekend is spent in front of a laptop, usually writing or re-writing 30-90% of what reaches you on Sunday.
The Season Finale
52 weeks later, it’s time for a break.
Sunday Bunch will be going on summer hiatus after this edition, returning in some iteration at some point in the not-too-distant future.
It might come back in more seasonal blocks, e.g. do 8 weeks in a row and then disappear. I might just drop it back to a nice glossy monthly with more longform reading. I might wind up turning it into a weekday newsletter and call it Sunday Bunch ironically. All bets are off except that Sunday Bunch will continue on in some form and while it may not come back right away, it won't be away for long.
You can still expect more writing from me at The Preview, with more of an emphasis on deeper dives and more specific topics, at a less aggressive cadence.
In addition to getting weekends back and spending more time on original writing, the big redistribution of energy that I’m excited about is putting more time into creating apps and products, not just newsletters. After spending years building and designing in previous lives, the new wave of AI “vibecoding” tools are helping me get back out to the edge, learning by building. I have a couple of prototypes in progress for projects that have been on the back burner while I've been keeping up with the weekly cadence. It's time to bring those to life and see what sticks. I will share them with all of you as soon as they’re ready for an early sneak peek.
More from The Preview
While Sunday Bunch is on hiatus, you may see other, non-Sunday Bunch emails from me and The Preview on occasion.
I have two humble requests:
Give them a try. Don’t worry about high volumes, these will all be more “as new content is available” things, not an overwhelming daily or weekly cadence that keeps pounding your inbox.
Click manage your settings and turn off the ones you don’t like, instead of unsubscribing from all and missing the next season of Sunday Bunch:
Toggle those various newsletters on and off at your leisure. I get it, I’d mute some of the voices in my head too if I could flip that switch.
SUNDAY BUNCH
🦞🥞 April 13, 2025
Crashing the Car of Pax Americana
Putting a pin in this one for later. 4
🇺🇸
Elsewhere
Why AI Will Improve Content Quality, Not Degrade It
If quality content more effectively influences AI, and AI increasingly influences consumers, then publicly available quality content becomes more valuable, not less. 5
The Business of Influence
On the democratization of fame and the impact on the established cultural and consumer power structure. 6
Berckmans Place: Inside the Masters’ premier hospitality offering
See also: Inside the Cultish Dreamworld of Augusta National by Nick Paumgarten.7
LOVB CEO Katlyn Gao Wants to Build the NBA of Volleyball
League One Volleyball (LOVB) trying to become the top pro league in the country’s most-played girls sport.8
N.B.A. Star Ja Morant Switches to Grenade Celebration After Fine for Finger Guns
If ever someone’s been Shaqtin’ a fool. 9
Bon Iver’s album listening events include a basketball tournament
Bring back Rock & Jock. 10
Rams’ new headquarters to be centerpiece of ambitious Warner Center development project
Watch out, here comes Woodland Hills. 11
How the Bolivian Capital of La Paz Successfully Implemented an Aerial Gondola Public Transit System (VIDEO) 12
C’mon Austin, let’s do this.
There’s nothing wrong with a thong made out of a keyboard
Gen Z is on Etsy buying Tamagotchi necklaces, turning circuit boards and microchips into earrings, and crocheting old floppy disks into purses. 13
Is Reacher Too Big Now? A Roundtable Discussion
What if I told you he was holding an iPhone here? 14
Liam Neeson’s ‘Naked Gun’ Reboot Reveals First Trailer — With an O.J. Simpson Joke
Sunday Bunch started with a joke about the Juice, what more fitting way to celebrate the one year anniversary?
R.I.P. Ted Kotcheff, director of First Blood and Weekend At Bernie's
I know you’re thinking it too.15
***
That’s all for this week, and for year one of Sunday Bunch. Thank you all for subscribing, and not jumping out of the plane mid-air as I continue to build while flying.
Stick around, there’s much more to come.
Cheers,
BUNCH
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Public Announcement | OffBall | | Billy ChuckAt some point we’ll figure that out.
Technically it was 97%. But 100% of you reading this stayed so fuck those guys.
This is all fleeting, mind you. I wouldn’t trust that Substack isn’t headed in the same direction. Any time you’re renting digital property from someone who is losing money and is partially owned by A16Z, you can rest assured the landlords won’t stay so benevolent forever.
Ben Hunt, Epsilon Theory
Noah Brier, Alephic
Casey Lewis, Day One Perspective
Josh Carpenter, Sports Business Journal
Shlomo Sprung, Boardroom
Lauren Merola, The Athletic
Jordan Darville, The Fader
Sam Farmer, L.A. Times
Lori Dorn, Laughing Squid
Jasmine Ting, The Verge
Tom Ley and David Roth, Defector
William Hughes, A.V. Club
I cannot WAIT to see The Naked Gun reboot. This clip from Life's Too Short makes Liam Neeson's role in it even more funny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvVFvqd3lqA #FrankDrebinForever!
You'll be missed but I'm happy for you to enjoy more weekend time.