Voicemails, the Coalesce Multiverse & Space Pigeons

Oh, did you think Summer School was over? Just because the leaves changed in New York doesn’t mean class is dismissed. Joke’s on you: it’s summer right now in South America (and a few other excellent places). Which means, technically—Summer School never ends.

You’re welcome. This round: spookiness, silliness, and side quests.

Don’t want to get this? Hit reply with “not for me” and we’ll expel you from Summer School—no hard feelings.

When was the last time you changed your voicemail message?

Naomi: Last year. I recorded one where I ask people to start leaving me extra-long, “old-fashioned” voicemails. It works. Now I have these weird, long messages from friends and I only try to listen to them when I’m in my apartment, so it feels like I have a real answering machine.

Tucker: Ok, maybe you shouldn’t have answered this one first. I don’t think I have re-recorded mine since I got rid of my Palm Pixi (I still miss that phone).

Of course, there was a time when I regularly updated my background screen, my ring tone, and my voicemail message. Even further back, a family voicemail message on the answering machine was a whole gag. These days Apple has an automatic setting to rotate my lock and background screen from my iPhotos. I don’t even know how you change the ring tone on this glass box.

This is part of a broader homogenization of technology that started with Apple minimalism and is only growing with the spread of AI. Over and over again we’ve traded personality for efficiency or sleekness. Webpages are being replaced with the shapeless boxes of “answer engines.” Voicemails have been traded for texts (or voice memos for those of you who hate typing but love rambling).

Our very own Barbara wrote a super-thoughtful piece about the importance of ornamentation recently. We certainly agree with her that now more than ever, it’s important to find the things that matter to you and to invest your personality into them.

So to answer the question: I have not been doing voicemail messages, but we really should be. Not only should we be updating our voicemail messages, we’ll start leaving them, too. These are the artifacts of our personalities that we get to leave in the corners of our collective experiences. I’m proposing a solution inspired by this Subway Hot Take: your background photo, ringtone, and voicemail message should expire every 30 days and you can’t access your phone until they’re updated. Is that too much?

I am taking suggestions for my updated voicemail message. Does anyone want to record one for me as a guest spot? Here’s some inspiration for you.

Is this you guys? >> coalesce.io

Naomi: Nope, not us. But we get that a lot. The Coalesce multiverse is vast and confusing:

• Coalesce IO is a data tool.
• Coalesce from Get DBT is a conference.
• Coalesce Capital manages private equity.
• And Coalesse (not our spelling) makes chairs.

We are the only Coalesce doing what we do—which I’m pretty positive you probably don’t know how to accurately describe. So here’s how we tell it: we turn brave ideas into brands and products. (Because what you make matters, and who you make it with matters too. Nice, right?) Our weird group has been building sites and launching products since 2006. So we were here first.

If that’s not clear enough: we’re the space pigeon people. My next rant will be on everyone who’s jumped on THAT bandwagon. (But keep sending me pigeon links! Like these Philly pigeon tours, or purse pigeons, or tiny pigeon cowboy hats, or the High Line’s pigeon pageant. Pigeons being in the zeitgeist right now makes me feel extremely vindicated.)

Why are culture writers saying the Upper East Side is cooler than it’s ever been?

(The trigger: a Wall Street Journal piece declaring the UES cooler than ever.)

Tucker: I have mixed emotions here. When I moved to the UES in 2015 it felt very boring and practical. The saving grace was realizing I could kind of be the big cool fish in the lame, domestic pond. Then the Q opened, and in the ten years since, buildings on all three sides of ours have been torn down and replaced by mega-scrapers with starting prices in the “how the hell does anyone afford this?” range. And now the neighborhood is cool? This makes me very uncool by comparison.

Matt (another UES resident and head of The Creative Factor): OK, well, I moved there one year after Tucker, and this sudden “hipness” feels ginned up by some editor a little too eager to run a trend story. Don’t come up here for cool. But do come for the classics: a martini at Bemelmans so big you can do the backstroke in it, a bloody-rare burger from JG Melon’s, northern Italian at Antonucci sitting among people who are old, older, and prehistoric (but who all dress up!). The coolest spot we have might be Zitomer’s—a pharmacy established in 1950, and, as pharmacies go, a helluva time.

Tucker: If you insist on invading our neighborhood I’ll add a few spots. Like Jeremy’s for drinking in Old German Town aka Yorkville, especially if you want to talk about the sinking of the General Slocum (a famous UES dad pastime). If you’ve had more drinks than you needed, get a Berlin-style sausage at Schaller Stube. And if you made it this far into the email, you’ll get my Upper East Side tantrum-quelling parenting secret of Central Park: skip the insane line at Le Pain Quotidien in Sheep’s Meadow by ordering pick-up on Seamless instead.

Hot Links

• We have a soft spot for a “classroom rules” list, but this one posted at a Nashville election poll site really made us smile. “Rule 9. Safety First.”

• Coalesce designer Barbara has tried to convince us to buy these super-comfy Clove Superboots three times in the last two weeks.

• Ink is more expensive than stallion semen. Jacobin continues the saga on internet “enshittification,” leading now to a complaint about printer ink and a truly lovely quote: “It sells for more than $10,000 a gallon, making it literally cheaper to print your grocery list with the semen of a Kentucky Derby–winning stallion than with HP ink.”

• If you don’t want to waste time playing this very cute animated game, do not click this link…seriously, don’t do it. You will waste a good chunk of work time: messenger.abeto.co

• Explore some fake planets that our friends at Public Official created alongside some very savvy scientists and animators. We’ve been contemplating ways to get our planet idea into the next deployment. Proxima Kosmos (best on desktop).

• Naomi went to a conference in an old train factory in Copenhagen called Future Product Days to support her younger brother’s book launch (90 Percent Human! Buy it!). Top two takeaways: this site that looks into the future, ai-2027.com, and (very literally) this branded emergency raincoat inside a keychain.

• Our pal DK made a great Donkey Kong drums cover: Aquatic Ambiance.

• Is this the greatest product demo of all time? Watch this video for Orchid (a very pretty synthesizer) featuring Matt Berry and Jemaine Clement.

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Whew! OK. That’s it for round five of Summer School.

Reply with your burning questions, bad ideas, or seasonal meltdowns—if we get any, we’ll keep this train going.

See you wherever we find you, Naomi & Tucker