Oz Gultekin

Ahead of a European Cup tie at Molineux in 1959, officials of the East German army club Vorwärts Berlin bought Adidas boots for their players, and then bought a tin of black polish the day before the game.

Three objects were once refused by the people who would come to depend on them.

A message came through the contact form of blogroll.blog, a directory of blogs I run.

It is eleven at night, and the laptop is open on the kitchen table again.

The man had been moving down the line of us for a while before it was my turn.

In the first quarter of 2025, more people died in Canada than were born, and the country grew anyway.

The alarm goes off in the dark, at a number the body never agreed to, and the day begins with a small act of defiance against biology.

You can hide stress from a colleague, a partner, sometimes even from yourself, but the keyboard has been taking notes the whole time.

Somebody orders a flat white, opens a laptop, puts on headphones, and disappears.

AI is the first non-human force capable of breaking our chains.

The slogan asked for three eight-hour blocks.

Moby Dick, retitled for the algorithm, becomes “How One Man’s Obsession with a Whale Destroyed His Crew (and What I Learned)”.

A toddler drags two fingers across a paperback and waits for it to do something.

A soccer club spends a decade building the most expensive analytics department in its history and ends up in a relegation fight with a roster full of sprinters who cannot pass.

A monthly design subscription costs an identical number of dollars whether you’re in San Francisco or Sarajevo.

You slide the contract back across the mahogany.

What do you do with the thing that impresses you when it shouldn’t?

When researchers put drivers in a simulator and had them press the same button at different vibration intensities, they weren’t measuring satisfaction.

Every generation inherits one technology it’s certain will ruin the next one.

When something empties gradually, nobody marks the occasion.

There’s something odd about watching someone stand in front of a human being, staring at a screen to order coffee.

There’s a popular image that arranges existential dread by depth, like layers of ocean water.

Someone figured out how to game the system by refusing to play it.

Product designers arrive at job interviews with case studies bound like dissertations.

In a world where connectivity reaches unprecedented heights, maintaining friendships has paradoxically become more complex.

In an era where authenticity has become its own performance, a fascinating phenomenon emerged at the intersection of gaming and social media.

There’s a peculiar inversion to consider in how we think about living.

The internet transformed human communication from networked computing to smartphones in our pockets.

Employee review platforms tell a consistent story across tech startups.

Facing a blank page creates a particular kind of paralysis.

Street art exists in a strange space between artistic expression and property damage.

Soccer once belonged to neighbourhoods.

A friend clutches betting slips in one hand and worn philosophy books in the other.

Northern European workplaces value directness.

Software teams track everything now.

Therapy promises a safe space to heal, but many clients spend years talking to someone who feels more like a professional wall than a person.

Music streaming promised every artist a global audience.

Every June, corporations discover they care deeply about queer rights.

Modern workplaces promise meaning and flexibility.