2026-06-26 11:02:51
Yesterday, my best friend and brother from another mother, Om Malik, passed away.
They say that blood is thicker than water, and what we had was way thicker than blood. — Bob Weir
Om’s request was for a small family prayer ceremony. In mourning, that will be all there is. In celebration and tribute, I love that everyone is sharing their Om stories online, like the writing and photography Christopher Michel shared, which very much embody the OG spirit of blogging that Om pioneered.
I knew Om contained multitudes, but sitting by his side these last few weeks, I’ve been amazed to learn how many deep and completely separate communities he was part of. He meant so much to so many, in so many different ways.
Om loved putting on a good conference, and I’d like to celebrate his life with an awesome event on September 29, 2026 (his 60th) in San Francisco, like an OmFest. I’ll find a space where every community from the many facets of Om can come together. In the spirit of Open Source and co-creation, we can have some booths, flash talks, a gallery of his photography, pen showcase, and whatever other fun ideas people want to contribute. I can’t wait for the beautiful collision of his tech / journalism / Indian party planner / pen / coffee / shoes / photography circles, and probably some niches I couldn’t even imagine.
I have so much to say about Om, but right now I’m working on moderating comments and keeping his website tip-top, so here are a few snippets:
Fundamentally, Om was a lover of humanity. He became a fast “regular” everywhere he went. He wouldn’t just buy coffee, he would also learn the name and story of every barista, the dogs and people in South Park. His deep curiosity and respect weren’t just for the fine and famous. It extended to every soul that crossed his path. His encyclopedic knowledge and photographic memory created connections not just in San Francisco, but all around the world wherever we traveled. (I need to pull the stats, but we went to five continents together, including Antarctica.)
He loved people and their stories.
Om and I were an odd couple. We met online through forums and email because Om was one of the earliest adopters of WordPress. We finally met in person in 2004 when I was 20 and he was 38. He connected me to the first investors I ever spoke to, Phil Black, who formed True Ventures, and Tony Conrad, and introduced me to Toni Schneider, my business soul mate, who became like a co-founder as the CEO of Automattic in our first 8 years.
And of course on the internet. I don’t know how we would count, but I would guess Om read at least 1 or 2% of the whole thing.
Om was a voracious learner. I was there when he first used chopsticks, and only a few months later, he knew every sushi restaurant in San Francisco and exactly what he liked at each.
Om is probably in the top ten in the world for finding things incredibly early. That’s why he has the best usernames! How does one guy get the @om username on WordPress.com in 2005 (user ID 719), Twitter in 2006, Instagram in 2010? The first WordPress meetup was at Chaat Cafe (now Corner) in 2005, 8 people showed up, and Om was one of them.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from Om is the deep appreciation of craft. When he took an interest in photography or pens, he would somehow find his way to the most obscure, highest-quality expression of that form. “What Would Om Want?” is a question I will always ponder. I want to craft products that would make Om proud.
Om’s last word was “love.”
2026-06-24 14:57:52
A throwback from 2007: a local Bay Area a cappella group called The Richter Scales made a Webby Award-winning viral video about how that bubble felt. Hat tip: Toni.
2026-06-22 14:58:38
In honor of Father’s Day, I wanted to add to the two quotes from my Dad’s obituary, “Seven days without chicken made one weak.” and “If you fail at raising your children, nothing else mattered.” with another saying he had.
Ain’t no hill for a stepper.
If you’d like to learn more about this, check out this part of the A Way with Words podcast, and apparently, it might have come from the musician John Gaar.
2026-06-21 14:03:40
PowerPoint makes us stupid.
— Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander
Classic 2010 NYT We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint.
2026-06-20 21:51:14
A typography savant on staff had spent a month designing link underlines (literally just lines) that were more visually pleasing than Chrome or Safari’s defaults. On Tuesdays, engineers stayed late at the office, fixing design imperfections over dinner. One of them began a 2,500-word post about Medium’s CSS code with a quote attributed to Lil Wayne: “I believe that to be the best, you have to smell like the best, dress like the best, act like the best. When you throw your trash in the garbage can, it has to be better than anybody else who ever threw their trash in the garbage can.”
From Harris Sockel’s essay What Happened to Medium, which I think is meant to be a dunk? But I think it’s awesome. Medium’s design and typography has always been really impeccable. I love when people obsess like this.
2026-06-20 12:09:58
I’m sorry I couldn’t be there in person, but I was so excited to watch the Midjourney Medical launch from afar. This is a really big deal. David Holz, one of the most underrated pioneers in AI, has taken money from making cat pictures to build a full-body ultrasound scanner that can give you incredible visibility in 60 seconds.
You can re-watch the livestream here, which I recommend. You might remember David from Leap Motion, which I blogged back in 2012. It’s so cool to a small but mighty independent company innovate and apply learnings across seemingly disparate sectors.
I wish all my friends in jazz and the arts who are despondent about tech could meet David:
“We’re going to be a little confusing for the next six months as we announce all the things, but I’m hoping as they all are out there, they form a picture which I hope feels cohesive. Most of them are around creativity, but some of them, like this, are just around positive human futures that we actually want to be a part of. And I think this is an important thing for AI companies to do—for all humans to do.” — David Holz
If you understand imaging, you know the tradeoffs between X-ray, CT (computed tomography), MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), and ultrasound, and Midjourney’s approach doesn’t cover everything, but what’s incredible is the speed, amount of data, and using AI to process and get something useful out of it. Ultrasonics will be an incredibly exciting area over the next few years, first for imaging and later for intervention. I can imagine a future where you dip into one of these once a month just to keep an eye on things, not just to find bad stuff but to see the impact of exercise or dietary changes.
We’re fairly new to scanning healthy people, and I always advise friends getting their first whole-body MRI with Biograph or Prenuvo that it’s very common to hear something scary at first, only to find it’s benign. Also, I’ve now heard many examples of things that were caught and treated early, years before they might otherwise have been noticed.
