I launched Meutch in May! Thanks to friends who told me to stop fiddling with it and get it out into the world.
We ended the month with over a hundred people on Meutch. And 35 people joined a circle and took an action, which means I donated $35 dollars to a local sharing-oriented organization. This month it’s MakerWorks, where people share space, tools, and skills. As a reminder, I will donate to charity for every user who is active in a given month through all of 2026, so continue to borrow, loan, request, or giveaway!
It seems like anecdotally the platform is working. My garden now is full of plants that I got in response to my Meutch request – the tomatoes came from a friend while the green onions were especially magical as I got them from someone I didn’t already know!
Yesterday I borrowed a Sawzall via Meutch and used it to chop up some long scrap boards that were too big to fit in my garbage can. It was nice to use a high-quality tool without having to pay for it and store it – or even decide what model I wanted to buy.
The fruits of my labor and the tool I borrowed: this stack plus a bunch more in a garbage can.
And I heard from friends who borrowed a Pack N Play crib to host visiting family and a folding table and chairs for a party. Plus I lent a ton of camping gear to a work colleague who is trying backpacking for the first time.
Growth areas: I heard complaints and suggestions from users directly and also learned from how people use Meutch, leading to improvements (here’s everything that changed in Meutch in May). For instance, 96 people logged into Meutch in May, but two-third of them then took no further action. I’m now nudging new users to join a circle so they see activity in their feed immediately of what’s going on near them.
On the technical side, I completed the foundation for a mobile app, moving things around on the backend to get ready. Meutch is not a slam dunk case for a mobile app, given that it works fine in your web browser. But I think a lot of people expect a mobile app and I want to meet people wherever they are. That said, in June I want to prioritize the core web app experience.
Thanks to everyone who signed up and especially those of you who made a circle and told your friends about Meutch! I’m hopeful that we can sustain a foundation of activity among early adopters who are passionate about sharing and keep growing the user base.
Here’s to sharing in June! On my summer bucket list is to go tubing on the Huron River … I plan to borrow the tubes on Meutch.
I enjoy borrowing things from friends. And I love lending to them even more. We all have stuff sitting on a shelf that could be out there helping people! When I lend out my darning supplies, or borrow a board game to try it out, it warms my heart.
My sharing activity is limited by my worry that I’d be spamming my group texts, Slack chats, and neighborhood email list. But I know some people in those groups likely have the item I need and would eagerly lend it.
Surely, I thought, there must be some app for this? I looked for a community lending site for years and couldn’t find one that met my needs. There’s the local Buy Nothing group on Facebook but that’s not what I want – it’s massive, unorganized, and I have to go on Facebook.
In 2024 I found myself with free time as I recovered from surgery and began bringing my vision to life. It started off as a proof-of-concept, then took shape with a name, website, and serious functionality. I’ve been using it with friends and it’s finally ready for the world.
Meet Meutch!
I’m excited to unveil Meutch! The name is short for “mutual aid”.
Meutch provides a set of features that don’t exist together anywhere else:
It accommodates both temporary loans and permanent giveaways.
You share through circles to people you are socially connected with: your neighborhood, faith community, workplace, etc.
It’s uncommercialized. No ads, no data tracking, no fees, you don’t need a social media account – just an email address. To my nerds: the code is open-source.
Meutch benefits its users, who save money, avoid storing more things in their homes, and feel good from strengthening ties with people in the communities.
It also has big potential upsides for the world, as it can reduce consumerism (I’ve gotten items faster than I could on Amazon Prime) and build trust and connections at a time when we are atomized.
Let’s take a peek inside
Here’s the home feed of actual real-world sharing activity:
Beyond watching the home feed, you can browse & search items that people in your circles have posted.
The blue boxes show how far away an item is from you
Here’s my current Meutch lending activity (blacking out my friends’ names):
You connect with others by joining circles. These can be public, private (requires approval to join), or even unlisted. This screenshot was taken from my phone; there’s no native app yet, but it works well on a mobile browser.
It has been a delight to use so far. For instance, I wanted to try the boardgame Forbidden Sky; I posted a request and my friend Aaron saw it and lent me his copy. I played it twice and didn’t like it. I won’t buy it. Success!
Since the loan was tracked on Meutch, we got reminders to return it. Those would have been nice for everything I’ve lent over the years and then lost track of.
Here are some things I’ve lent so far:
Hammer drill and drill bits
Stockpot for making maple syrup
Sashiko clothes mending kit
Azul board game
Kintsugi ceramics repair kit
Project Hail Mary book
Pair of sawhorses
Balance bike
Calico board game
Tarp
Backpacking equipment
And borrowed:
Dungeon Crawler Carl Book
A black cape for Halloween
Forbidden Sky board game
A cat costume for my 2nd grader’s “dress up as a book character” day at school
Tools to perform a hydraulic brake bleed on my bike
I’ve also given away a bunch of objects, ranging from native trees that had reseeded in my garden to a roll of chickenwire.
It’s Go Time
So please: join Meutch! Register, join circles, then post requests and respond to others. Subscribe to the digest emails, ideally daily. Then you can see what people are posting and asking for and engage when you want, instead of needing to regularly visit the site to see activity.
I’ll keep improving Meutch, but it’s time to move from “build the software” to “grow the user base.” This is the hardest part! I need help from everyone I know in Ann Arbor to get to an activity level where people find the platform useful. Once we achieve critical mass, the sky’s the limit.
Yes, “in Ann Arbor” – for now. Meutch works everywhere else, but you’d have to bring your own group to lend with. A board game collective in Seattle could create a circle and start sharing today. I would love to see it happen! And I hope someday to help with outreach in other cities. But for now I’m focused on Ann Arbor, since that’s where my local ties are (I hope an Ypsilanti resident will create a circle for Ypsi).
One tip: I’ve added “share” buttons to circles and public giveaways and requests to spread the word about Meutch. These generate links that render pretty previews to people viewing the links from outside of Meutch.
These links are the best way to share Meutch resources on other social networks. For instance, you could share your request to Nextdoor, create a circle for your neighborhood and send it to the group’s email list, or post a giveaway link to Facebook. You get the attention on your post from those other networks while managing the activity on Meutch.
You can even share temporary links to your own items with people not yet on Meutch. So when someone posted to the Common Cycle email list, “does anyone have a bike repair stand I can borrow?” I was able to send them a link to my bike stand:
I’ve prioritized privacy in designing Meutch and you would have no way to tell that I have this item listed for loan unless we belonged to a shared circle. This share-link mechanism gives me a way to bypass that briefly for a single item when I want to.
That’s enough of me showing it. Go try Meutch yourself!
I’ll even bribe you! Kind of.
How else can I boost user engagement now? The most common strategies used by new tech companies are off-limits to me. I’m not going to create fake users and upload dummy items, the way Reddit founders populated their site using pseudonyms at its launch. And I can’t offer cash bonuses to active users, the way a startup with millions in venture capital backing can.
Here’s my incentive idea for Meutch: at the start of every month in 2026 I’ll make a donation to a local mutual-aid-type charity of $1 for every user active on Meutch in the prior month, up to $500. “Active” means you:
Belonged to at least one circle with other people
Took at least one action: posted a request, added an item, borrowed an item, or responded to someone else’s request or giveaway
This incentive isn’t restricted to people in Ann Arbor. Folks elsewhere might need to recruit a local circle to start sharing with, but I’ll count anyone active, anywhere.
I piloted Meutch in April with some friends from my co-working space. They told others and we got to 17 users who took actions last month. I’ve just donated that much to Common Cycle, Ann Arbor’s community bike repair nonprofit.
Seventeen bucks is measly, I know. I can put Common Cycle back onto the list later. Help me grow that number in the meantime!
My deep gratitude to those of you who share Meutch with your friends and neighbors at this critical early stage. I will be self-promoting Meutch now that it’s officially launched, but your word-of-mouth is much more effective and less awkward. If this project takes root, it’ll be because of you.
I didn’t ask for a fireplace in my bedroom. We hardly use it. And it means that when a loud clanging noise emits from said fireplace at six in the morning on a Saturday, it jolts me awake.
The first time I bolted upright. It sounded like there was an animal trapped in my chimney. I warily opened the flue, expecting a sooty bird to flutter out, but it was empty.
Eventually I realized the sound was percolating down the chimney, so I went outside to get a look. There I spotted a Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) drumming away on top of my chimney cap. Is it a cap or a cowl? I don’t know my chimney parts but it’s a metal thing on top that keeps the rain and animals out.
I wonder if this behavior is unique to the species, at least around me. I once observed a Northern Flicker drumming on a metal streetlight at Ann Arbor’s County Farm Park. I had thought woodpeckers peck into wood for food, but Wikipedia says they also use drumming to communicate:
Like most woodpeckers, northern flickers drum on objects as a form of communication and territory defense. In such cases, the purpose is to make as loud a noise as possible, so woodpeckers sometimes drum on metal objects.
I’ve experienced this early wake-up call several times in recent years. And I recently saw a Flicker – the same one that had just been waking me up? – drumming on my neighbor’s chimney cap across the street. When I texted them about it, they were inside trying to figure out what was causing the noise.
Last month I saw this bird feather around the corner from my house:
iNaturalist suggested the feather belonged to a Northern Flicker and several community members confirmed it. I hadn’t noticed the bird’s gold feathers (that’s where the name auratus comes from) from observing it perched so was surprised at this ID but the photos on Wikipedia show its golden underbelly. Maybe my wake up friend dropped this.
It’s a little annoying, but it doesn’t seem worth fighting. So far it’s been infrequent and, I think, only in the spring or early summer. The biggest discomfort came from not understanding the banging noise emanating from my fireplace, which is why I wrote this quick post: just in case anyone else is trying to figure out what’s happening. I hope our roof doesn’t need servicing for many years, but when that happens, maybe they can put an owl statue or some shiny ribbons up there as a deterrent.
P.S. As I went to publish I saw a button in WordPress offering to “generate title options” that would improve my SEO. Curious, I clicked it, and it suggested:
Northern Flickers: The Unexpected Noise in Your Chimney
What to Do About Noisy Birds Drumming on Your Chimney
Understanding Northern Flickers: The Sounds They Make
I hate this! It says these would “position my content as informative” and I agree they would likely get more clicks, but under a deceptive premise. This post does not deliver on any of those titles.
Someone has probably generated posts like those full of AI slop. And that right there is a big piece of what’s wrong with the web and search in particular.
The idea for this post occurred to me on a dog walk. I often write in my head on such walks and rarely do the ideas end up published here, to my chagrin. I played with the idea of dictating my thoughts during the walk and having AI clean up the typos and structure. The theory was that it would get me 90% of the way there and increase the number of posts I actually finish. But it added another editing step of putting the post back into my own words and tone and in the end did not save any time over cleaning up my own dictation.
Enough for now. Just had to let this post drift into another topic, which I can do because I’m a human being and it’s my own dang blog. More posts to come soon, I hope!
In 2021 I helped win a grant from the Washtenaw County Conservation District for planting native trees at Mack School (where my kids attend Ann Arbor Open). We planted the trees in 2022. Some didn’t survive, but the ones that did are looking decent. Here is a row of eastern white pines (pinus strobus) we planted in 2022, seen today in 2024:
Note the spruce at the end of the row…
They are hanging in there! I didn’t water them at all this year and they survived nonetheless. Some are only two feet tall, the biggest is close to five feet. I’ve read that once established they grow quickly and I look forward to that. Eventually the trees should provide a good visual and sound barrier against car traffic on Miller. In the spring I plan to mulch them again and maybe upsize the protective cages they are outgrowing.
Here’s a picture I took in fall 2022, when I noticed the trees – much smaller then! – were shedding yellow needles:
I was concerned at first but learned this is normal behavior. White pines shed their two-year-old needles. These older needles are typically on the inside of the canopy or middle of branches.
I was removing some Glechoma hederacea (“creeping Charlie”) from around one of the little pines at drop-off this morning when a woman approached me and introduced herself as a long-time neighbor of the school. She pointed out the spruce tree at the end of the row of pines and told me that her former neighbor planted it. It had been her neighbor’s Christmas tree that year, I guess with the root ball intact, and she got approval from the school to plant it.
She estimated that her neighbor moved away a dozen years ago and planted the tree four years before that. Now children play in its shade. Look closely at the picture above and you’ll see kids have dragged a variety of sticks and stumps under its canopy to pretend with.
It was a nice reminder as I tended to these saplings of what they may eventually become. Not all of my trees will survive, but some will flourish and be enjoyed by all kinds of creatures. I’m grateful to the former neighbor who gave her Christmas tree another life.
I first met this adorable creature in Ann Arbor in April 2022. It was painted on a post at Packard & Arch at the tiny Forsythe Park. It offered good (albeit saucy) advice:
I’m glad I photographed it because it was soon gone. A week later the creature appeared a few blocks south, on the side of the Argus Farm Stop. This message was purely encouraging:
I didn’t see it again after that. Until this month, when the creature returned to a couple of spots on Madison St.
Here it is beaming on a planter at Madison and Main:
On an electrical box near Washtenaw Dairy, on Madison west of First [painted over as of November 2024]:
Radiant! Does anyone know what it’s saying? The same red and white paint is used in both pieces a block apart, perhaps they were created in the same evening.
[Added October 2024] A dog who is also a spicy life coach on Madison near Main St:
Is that paint? Marker? I know little about street art but I appreciate it when it’s well-done, creatively and technically. I’m glad the creator still calls Ann Arbor home – it’s a pricey place to make it as an artist – and continues to share this creature with us.
This kind of thing is ephemeral and feels worth recognizing and documenting. My dad played poker with a guy who made a hobby out of photographing antique ads painted on sides of brick buildings around Chicago. By the time he published a book with his decades of photos (Fading Ads of Chicago), half of them had faded away or been covered up, painted over, knocked down.
If you have seen this creature elsewhere, send in your photos or tip me off to where I can spot it in the wild.
November 2024 update: I was tipped off that the artist is Benjamin Layman. I’m not outing him, he has taken credit for a creation on Reddit under his real name. See his Instagram where you can buy originals or commission new work.
I’ve also updated the post with a new photo and noted that a past work has been painted over.
This post is a tirade against the ever-increasing presence of advertising in my life, prompted by attending a University of Michigan basketball game.
I went to the Crisler Center last night, where Michigan lost an exciting shootout against Long Beach State. It was entertaining. Both teams were very talented and tried hard.
I make it to a couple of Michigan sports events each year and will crown Michigan Athletics the victors and the best… at cramming advertisements into the experience. Always innovating. I’d love to see a photo series showing the interior of the Crisler Center over the decades, documenting the creep of ads.
How many ads would you think can be placed on the basket itself? Let’s count. Here’s the view of the near hoop from my seats:
That’s between four and six ads, depending on how you count: the base pad, the vertical pad (“meijer meijer meijer” lol), the State Farm pad by the rim, and a freaking TV ad mounted up top. Now let’s look to the other hoop and see what’s facing the court:
From this angle we can see there’s also the UMCU ad and the Libman ad. Each basket is adorned with seven corporate logos plus a TV that plays ads for Coke Zero and Jersey Mike’s. I wonder how many ads I saw over the course of the game. Dozens? Hundreds?
Want some good news? Check out this neat article about RIP Medical Debt. A group of Philadelphians raised $17,000 to buy people’s medical debt for the purpose of forgiving it. As such debt can be bought for a penny on the dollar, that $17k purchased (through the coordinating entity RIP Medical Debt) $1.6 million of local medical debt. Seventeen hundred Philadelphians are receiving letters informing them that some or all of their medical debt has been abolished.
Medical debt is an abomination. It shouldn’t exist and doesn’t in most peer countries. This is a high-impact way to do something about this scourge. And RIP Medical Debt makes it easy to organize such a fundraiser. When I read that article a month ago I thought, “maybe I’ll organize a local debt abolition fundraiser for my 40th birthday!” (coming this February).
Unbeknownst to me, some of my wonderful friends on the local Mastodon instance were thinking something similar (minus the birthday part). And they went ahead and made it happen! Which does me a huge favor as it’s one less thing I have to organize. All I had to do was donate and advertise it here. Done and done.
Please consider donating and spread the word! Consider it an early birthday gift to me. And for my non-Michigan friends, you could check RIP Medical Debt to see whether such a fundraiser exists for your region and consider starting one if not.
Last month was House Party week in Ann Arbor. I made it to two of the events and thought I’d blog briefly about them. This post is about Park(ing) Day, a national day in which public parking spaces are taken over and re-imagined as something other than car storage.
I’d briefly engaged with past Park(ing) Days in Ann Arbor. This one hooked me with a serious repurposing of parking: a mini skatepark in the street! The sk8r dad crew (me and Dave-O) skated over from Workantile to check it out.
Since then I moved across the city to Hutchins Avenue. After years of driving, biking, and walking around the neighborhood, I’ve realized it’s an ideal candidate for a protected bike facility.
I’ve meant to write this post for a long time but was burdened by the idea that it had to be as robust as what I’d written before. That changed when I listened to episode 73 of the Ann Arbor AF podcast: Civic Therapy, Transportation edition. It reminded me of the need to simply do what’s right. I might get details wrong here that a transportation planner would fix in implementation – I’m not a pro – but here’s what I’m dreaming of and some of the reasons it would work.
The Vision
I’ll take any piece of this I can get, but at its best, this would be a protected bike facility beginning at the south end of Hutchins, at Stadium Boulevard. It would run north to Davis or Princeton, at which point it would jog one block east and continue north on Fifth St. Then it would run up to Bach Elementary. From there users could pick up the William St Bikeway and head into downtown.
Both Hutchins and Fifth are in need of resurfacing and a bikeway spanning both would connect outlying neighborhoods to the downtown network of protected bike lanes.
Here’s what the full version would look like. It might make more sense to connect Hutchins and Fifth on Davis, given that Davis is wider than Princeton and it’s a four-way stop.
Credit: Google Maps
The Rationale
Location & Connectivity
Schools: this provides a safe route for students and staff to ride to Pioneer High School. A friend of mine who teaches at Pioneer rides to work via Fifth-Princeton-Hutchins. It would also provide a safe route to and from Bach Elementary School.
Parallel to Seventh: for people unwilling to use the narrow bike lanes on Seventh – which is most people – this would be a low-stress alternative just one block over. I see many bike commuters and joy riders on Hutchins and Fifth already.
Connects Neighborhoods to Downtown: on the podcast linked above, Donnell Wyche imagines a protected bike network that would enable his kids to bike from their home on Scio Church Road to the downtown library to play the Summer Game. This would get most of the way there, as it almost links up with the buffered bike lanes on Seventh between Stadium and Scio Church.
The Physical Street
Resurfacing needed: both Hutchins and Fifth have stretches rated as “very poor” on the city’s pavement conditions dashboard and the bikeway installation can coincide with their resurfacing.
Plenty of room: Hutchins is wide, with parking on both sides of the road for most blocks. Residences have driveways and as a result the street parking is underutilized. The same is true for Fifth. To make room for the bikeway, parking could be removed on one side with no meaningful impact on residents.
Addresses a sidewalk gap: currently there’s no sidewalk on the east side of Hutchins north of Potter and no sidewalk on the west side south of Potter. A child riding to school on the sidewalk has to cross the street here just to continue.
I gave a tour of Workantile this week to a prospective new member who shared her experience working out of The Wing’s DC branch. We got to talking about how WeWork and The Wing were valued in the billions and hundreds of millions of dollars, respectively, before crashing to nothing. Those valuations were clearly absurd, but as a coworking insider, I’ll go a step farther and say there’s not much money in operating a coworking space.
That doesn’t mean coworking spaces aren’t valuable. Workantile has grown friendships, mentorships, careers, side projects, community services and made its members significantly happier. We kick around ideas, eat together, share recommendations and hand-me-downs. A long-time member swears that Workantile saved her marriage. But those benefits accrue to members and their networks and can’t easily be monetized by the space.
And it doesn’t mean people shouldn’t create coworking spaces. On the contrary, now’s a perfect time. Office rents are down, the boom of newly-remote workers are getting lonely, and concern about COVID transmission is receding. But don’t launch a coworking space – or invest in someone else’s – thinking you’ll get rich. The numbers don’t work.
