iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

It's been a long while since I spent some time actively, joyously hating on things in Trying!, so today's is all about the unbearable awfulness of the Avatar movies, cryptocurrency, and Travel + Leisure — and about how loathing, truly and deeply expressed, is not much different from love.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Zionism? Anti-Zionism? From the river to the sea? These phrases get reinterpreted by anyone and everyone to mean anything and everything — they are now meaningless and useless.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

Children are truly terrible, but if you're only opposed to what Israel is doing in Gaza because kids are starving, well, have I got an essay for you!

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Yes, the world is ending. But no, I'm not going to rant and rave about it anymore. Instead, I'm going to live my life, enjoy the collapse of human civilization as much as anyone can, and be psychologically prepared to flee when the end is truly nigh. What are you going to do?

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

After the shooting in NYC yesterday, I wasn't sure I wanted to publish this essay about guns, which I'd mostly written before that news broke. It's called "If I had a gun," and it's a bit of a weird meditation on my own relationship to firearms.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

I'm not a polyglot—not even really bilingual—but I live a multilingual life, one that shades from English into Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Vietnamese and more. And it all began with a truly terrible book of puns.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

There's a lot of Condé Nast nostalgia in the air, so I figured I'd indulge with a memoir of my time at @bonappetit.bsky.social, back in 2012–2014. What was it really like there?

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

Why I wear women's clothing: mattgrossistrying.com/p/why-i-wear...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

What's the difference between AI slop and AI sludge? And which one will make your life worse? mattgrossistrying.com/p/ai-sludge-...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

I've always had an issue with the concept of pride—not only does it court the wrath of the gods, it's too showy, too one-note, too boring. Me, I prefer shame, the most delicious and interesting of emotions, the one that makes us truly human.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Twenty-five years ago I went to a restaurant that totally changed—or maybe clarified—my culinary philosophy, changing how I cook and eat.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

A few months ago, my dad asked me to write a Trying! essay in the mode of a naturalist, so this is what I came up with: a piece that talks about birds, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and what it means to pay attention to the world around us.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

The authorities push the myth of nonviolence as the only legitimate form of resistance, even as they use violence to punish the nonviolent.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Look, we all know there's no reason Andrew Cuomo should be running for NYC mayor—nor that he should be doing as well as he has been. And while it may seem like there's nothing we can do to stop him, I have actually found a solution: The solution is me.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Last November, I tripped during a long run with Old Man Run Club and landed hard on my shoulder. While I shook it off and kept going, it took me _months_ to fully recover. I'm 50, after all—I don't heal overnight anymore.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

Back in the mid-1990s, I spent a lot of time at Q Bar in Saigon. I was a bit out of place, was never an insider, but I loved it for what it was, and for the future it imagined for Vietnam.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

I have loved Stanley Tucci ever since the 1996 movie The Daytrippers, but I just will not—I cannot—watch him go to Italy and eat wonderful things.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

I've been absolutely loving Andor, and when it turned out the final three episodes were written by my old friend Tom Bissell, I called him up to talk about narrative structure, quick deaths, and getting T-boned by Star Wars history. mattgrossistrying.com/p/andor-tom-...

mattgrossistrying.com

We all have a place on the Wheel of Fate

A Q&A with 'Andor' writer Tom Bissell on narrative structure, quick deaths, and getting T-boned by Star Wars history.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

This is a 1906 self-portrait of Henri Matisse wearing THE STRIPED T-SHIRT OF MY DREAMS.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

A special this week: Five mini Trying! essays for the price of one! They are:

“[Family Portrait']” (ca. 1855), W.L. Germon

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Remember when bloggers blogged about blogging on their blogs? Me too—I was one of them. But that word, "blog," has haunted me ever since, giving me a complex about my current project, Trying! What am I even trying to do here?

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Let’s just pretend for a moment that we are not living in a simulation. The cosmos that surrounds us is real, and the laws of physics, whether we understand them or not, apply, universally and indifferently, to the workings of the flesh in which our consciousnesses reside.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

All my life, I had a complicated relationship with music—what I liked, what I didn't, what I was willing to tell people. Until, that is, I discovered Portishead, whose spooky-sad tunes wound up defining my life. Last month I saw their singer, Beth Gibbons, perform—so I had to write about it.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

More than any other event in history, the end of the Vietnam War determined the course of my life. On this 50th anniversary of April 30, I'm reflecting on the unpredictable strangeness of cause and effect—and wondering what comes next.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

As we ALL know, the best way to explore a new city is on foot. Or is it? After years of trekking this way and that, I'm starting to think there's a better approach—and it's one I never would've expected.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

I love hunting for public-domain art to illustrate Trying! Today's email was about how certain media outlets try to make you angry, but I really had a hard time finding an appropriate image. The words anger, hate, rage, and fury just didn't produce the right results. But then I happened on this one:

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

If the last few years of Marvel flops have left you feeling empty, you may be asking what I am in today's Trying! newsletter: Do we even need superheroes anymore?

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

The main characters of The Great Gatsby—now celebrating its 100th anniversary!—are pretty awful, and they're awful because they're rich, but unlike the careless people now wrecking our nation, they weren't particularly _greedy_. So how do we end the avarice that's at the heart of today's woes?

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Twenty years ago, on a flight from Vietnam to Hong Kong, I wrote this email to friends and family, and it really captures the feeling of freedom and dislocation that was unique to that era: Q: Where is Matt Gross? mattgrossistrying.com/p/how-i-trav...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Once I gave up on AI imagery, I turned to plundering museums for public-domain artwork. It was incredible! But I soon ran into another hurdle: the 1200x630 thumbnail, now standard across social media platforms—including this one. It's another form of tyranny! mattgrossistrying.com/p/under-my-t...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

It’s easy to ruin chicken breasts—just overcook them! But it's also so easy to roast a whole chicken and get juicy, flavorful meat throughout that I'm convinced that "dry chicken breasts" is a myth. Trigger warning: I am about to use the word "spatchcock." mattgrossistrying.com/p/classic-ro...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

This gives me an idea! mattgrossistrying.com/p/lets-kill-...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Travel bucket lists are superficial, fatalistic, and _extremely_ popular. But what happens if you actually complete your list? What do you do, where do you go, how do you carry on? I been everywhere, man. Now what? mattgrossistrying.com/p/i-been-eve...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Rather than wait a few weeks and pay ten bucks, Meta and Mark Zuckerberg downloaded my book, The Turk Who Loved Apples, from a pirate site to train their AI model. Dick move, Zuck: mattgrossistrying.com/p/why-did-yo...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

There's really only one show on TV that's taking on what it means to live in the Trump era—but unless you're a nerd like me, you're probably not watching it. Consider the image below a clue; can you guess the show? Feckless criminal pols + loads of violence = mattgrossistrying.com/p/the-only-t...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Last Saturday, a 50-year-old Brooklyn dad found himself alone in New York City, free to do whatever he wished. But what is that, exactly? Prepare to read the most important travel story ever written: mattgrossistrying.com/p/the-most-i...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

My deepest apologies to all: I wrote another poem. About the constitutional crisis. I can't promise this won't happen again. Sorry: mattgrossistrying.com/p/your-morni...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

For 37 years and 11 months, I've been having Bad Hair Days. Yet I persist in the belief that my hair will do what I beg it to do. Have I gone insane? Or do I just look that way? We must imagine Sisyphus with luxuriant, flowing locks: mattgrossistrying.com/p/a-lifetime...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

I am so, so angry about Mahmoud Khalil. Not gonna make friends with this one: mattgrossistrying.com/p/not-gonna-...

A Goya illustration of a bearded man in hand and foot shackles, called "The custody is as barbarous as the crime."

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

The first decade of the 21st century was an exciting time to travel—and Skype was, weirdly, at the center of it all. Now the great Internet phone app is getting shut down, and I've got some hefty thoughts and feelings. A lament for a lost golden age: mattgrossistrying.com/p/a-lament-f...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Everyone wants to become a travel expert, but few realize what that'll mean for their friends-and-family vacations. In Key West for my dad's 80th birthday, I reflected on the pitfalls and rewards of my profession. Plus: chickens! Never become a travel expert: mattgrossistrying.com/p/never-beco...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

My childhood was populated with one failed father figure after another. So where did I turn for masculine mentorship? To my own actual dad, of course: Robert A. Gross, who on Monday will be celebrating his 80th birthday! Yeah, I got daddy issues: mattgrossistrying.com/p/daddy-issues

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

I’ve been having a hard time lately. Each day a new horror story out of D.C. It’s awful, it’s absurd, and I can’t look away. But this morning I realized: We should've voted—all 81,282,916 of us—for Trump. In 2020. Because things would be so much better now: mattgrossistrying.com/p/you-should...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

What if you were a celebrated German novelist, and when you died everyone ignored one of your books because of its title? That book: mattgrossistrying.com/p/fuck-america

mattgrossistrying.com

'Fuck America'

A celebrated German novelist wrote a great book—that no one wants to admit exists.

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

BOOM! I'm super-psyched to announce that today marks Day 100 of publishing a newsletter essay every single day (including weekends). To celebrate, I used today's email to demystify my process. The secret recipe for literary genius—revealed! mattgrossistrying.com/p/how-to-wri...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

I didn't come up with "sex robot murder comedy," but I love the phrase anyway—so I figured I'd delve into what makes it work. mattgrossistrying.com/p/the-sex-ro...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

I'm sick and tired of optimization, usefulness, practicality, and character-count limits! To hell with best practices: It's time to do everything wrong, embrace creative freedom, un-train our brains—and accept the consequences. First, the worst: mattgrossistrying.com/p/in-praise-...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

When my friend's son asked me to write an essay about "what is the best Pokémon and why," I figured I'd have to give it a try—even if I don't know or want to know a thing about Pokémon. Here goes! Wait, what do we mean by "the best," anyway? mattgrossistrying.com/p/what-is-th...

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Breaking news: Men suck! Turns out women don't like unequal marriages and sexual assault. Crazy, huh? My solution: Let's redefine masculinity out of existence. mattgrossistrying.com/p/men-suck

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Matt Gross @worldmatt.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

In today's installment of Trying!, I took a closer look at the @beehiiv.com newsletter economy, and all of our roles within it. The Scheme for Full Employment: mattgrossistrying.com/p/the-scheme...

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