All about happier / healthier / funner ways to live. Founder @livenearfriends. Founding team @Culdesac. Lives @ Radish in Oakland Writes Supernuclear
Bay Area
Joined December 2018
- Tweets981
- Following368
- Followers1.9K
- Likes1.6K
Phil Levin retweeted
I've been actively fighting almost guaranteed age-related loneliness for years, studies show after age 30 you start seeing friends less and when you get older especially men don't have any social life left!
It's preventable, but it takes effort and initiative
We've now organized 70 weekly coworking days where we meet with friends and work together, do show and tell, and try help each other make things (also hardware stuff more recently)
We've also started organizing movie nights, art nights, barbecues, we watched the World Cup final on a projector screen in the garden with friends
We did a collage night the other day where we bought cheap gossip magazines, colored paper, and Pritt glue, and gave everyone scissors to make their own art, I think nobody spent time on their phone for at least 4 hours, making things puts you in a flow state and it's fun to do it in a group because you talk about different stuff while making things than you would for ex having a dinner
Movie nights are nice too but less popular I think cause everyone prefers to watch movies alone and also you can't really talk during a movie
Coworkings range from having sometimes 20 people to sometimes just 2 people, people have their own lives, but me and @rameerez still try to organize them weekly
One thing I realized is that we are usually the ones organizing stuff, but that's not a bad thing, there's even studies about this, there's usually a few people in a group who organize most of the events
If nobody in your group organizes stuff, it doesn't mean nobody wants to do stuff, but you have to take the initiative to bring people together which isn't easy in a time where phones and apps and the internet are simply easier and cheaper dopamine than driving to a friends house for a party
You can start with a coworking day, everyone brings their laptop, and you provide WiFi and coffee, then later you can try more types of events
Having an active social life is just as important or in some studies even more important for health than physical fitness
After a nice party I feel tired but satisfied, I had fun and didn't spend time on my phone or computer but instead talked and laughed with friends etc.
We don't drink alcohol with very few exceptions and nor do our friends, so it's mostly just having really nice food and sparkling water or kombucha etc, and we don't really need alcohol, after a few hours it gets fun enough anyway!
So I recommend everyone, take initiative, and organize something and get people together, it'll be fun! 😊
Great article on increasing solitude of our societies, in this case US but same probably in EU to a lesser extent:
"Derek Thompson's essay "You Are No Longer Invited to Dinner" argues that Americans have largely stopped having people over.
The headline stat comes from combining the old DDB Needham Life Style surveys Robert Putnam used in *Bowling Alone* with a new replication by Data For Progress.
The share of Americans who host friends or family at home at least monthly fell from 42% in 1975 to 12% in 2026, roughly a 70% drop. Most other forms of socializing also fell by double digits over the last 30 years, including cards, bars, sporting events, and volunteering. The decline in hosting was steeper than the much-discussed drop in church attendance.
He rules out two comforting explanations. People haven't just moved dinners to restaurants, since solo dining is rising and face-to-face socializing is down overall. They also haven't replaced parties with other social activities. Exercise and travel are up, but exercise is mostly solitary, and time spent at home has jumped sharply since the 2010s.
His explanations:
1. Harried dual-earner households. As societies get richer, leisure starts to feel like work, and planning a dinner party is basically unpaid project management. Women historically ran the family social calendar. When they moved into paid work, men didn't take over that job. He admits this can't be the whole story, because total leisure time has actually increased.
2. Intensive parenting. Parents, especially fathers, now spend far more time with their kids, and that time comes out of evenings that used to go to hosting adults.
3. Shrinking friend networks. Close friendships are declining, most sharply among people without college degrees, so hosting is becoming a luxury good. People who never host skew toward independents and non-graduates. He speculates that weaker social ties may lead to weaker party attachment, rather than the other way around.
4. Home is too comfortable. Americans spent almost two extra hours a day at home between 2003 and 2022, much of it on screens and short-form video.
His closing idea is a "Lump of Leisure" theory, a twist on the Lump of Labor fallacy. Technology hasn't made human work unnecessary, but it has made other people less necessary for fun. Social leisure turns out to be finite and easy to displace.
He frames this as a coordination failure rather than a personal one: a dinner party requires schedules, cleaning, food, allergies, and the risk of a dull evening, while TikTok asks nothing of you.
A footnote adds that if everyone gets a bit busier, the difficulty of coordinating a get-together rises multiplicatively, so small increases in individual busyness could produce large drops in socializing overall."
derekthompson.org/p/the-deat…
Phil Levin retweeted
Ordinary Abundance. This is the greatest thing I've read in weeks. No kidding. This should win a Pulitzer in a category not yet invented. ordinaryabundance.com/
Phil Levin retweeted
Existing real estate apps like Zillow are great for searching for homes, but homebuyers can't actually take action because their business model involves selling leads to agents. We built @_TurboHome so that we control the entire transaction which allows us the redesign the experience from first principles with the homebuyer at the center.
Today we're rolling out our new buyer app which gives our customers direct access to world class AI tools with their expert real estate agent in the loop for the entire journey. A few things you can do with 1 click:
- Find properties
- Run a valuation
- Schedule tours
- Query live MLS data for insights
- Draft offers
- Chat with your agent
Available on web, mobile, and iMessage at app.turbohome.com
Phil Levin retweeted
If you want small developments to be more viable, need adopt a risk-based approach to regulation, where you exempt smaller projects from some of the more onerous parts of the building code.
For example:
In LA, we have 10s of thousands of 5-10 unit apartment buildings without sprinklers or fire panels that have been safely housing people for 100 years.
But, if you tried to build one today, you would go to jail.
Phil Levin retweeted
Calling it now. People being able to clearly articulate an alternative architectural aesthetic will have a measurable impact on what gets built in the future.
We're going to have a Cambrian explosion of new architectural experiments *and* a return to previous forms.
Everyone can become an infill developer (even non-pros).
It's now possible with relaxed missing middle housing regulation.
And made easier with tools like the one @typefive are (generously) making public to quickly evaluate sites.
It's time for California's housing boom.
Many recent laws have made building homes easier across the state, but only a few know how to use them.
We're launching @infillworks to make it simple for anyone to figure out how to add new housing to existing lots in the neighborhoods we love.
A project you will be hearing a lot about in the coming years.
Devon is doing a really hard thing, and doing it as thoughtfully and diligently as you possibly can.
Phil Levin retweeted
Last night was a movie.
+250 people gathered in an old theater in Healdsburg be free. Ages ranging from 1.6 to 86.
I call this theme park for connection ride “Freedom Mountain”, designed around the feeling of freedom. 🙏 Destani, Brian, David for the collab.
Vibes & recipe 👇
Phil Levin retweeted
Interesting question — outside of resort towns — what are the wealthiest, most prosperous places that don’t have a major anchor city associated with them?
An incredible visualization of an alternative future for SF
A lot of ink is spilled on the topic of housing in SF ... this is one of the best treatments I've seen.
I split a lot of time between San Francisco and Tokyo, and one thing has always bothered me: why does the capital of technology still look like so much of it got frozen in the 1930s?
I love San Francisco. The ambition, the interesting conversations, the sheer talent density.
But after living in Tokyo, it’s hard not to notice how much urban form shapes what a city makes possible.
Phil Levin retweeted
SF is the hottest real estate market in the country, with 88% of homes selling over ask in April.
Today we’re launching TurboHome Markets: a free prediction game that’s basically Zillow × Polymarket.
Predict what 5 homes sell for daily, learn the market with AI driven insights, and win prizes like World Cup tickets.
Play for free at turbohome.markets or starting tomorrow embedded in @sfstandard's game section.
This is @zmwang’s genius:
@bermster once set out to prove fresh garlic isn’t better than pre-minced or pre-peeled in food.
She called Mike. They ran a blind test on a 30+ friends across 3 dishes × 3 garlic prep methods.
The foodies out there won't want to hear the results.
I'm writing a cookbook for connection and launching the first recipes → cookbookforconnection.com
For 15+ years I've been the friend people texted at 11 pm before a big life thing.
"I'm walking into my first board meeting tomorrow, how do we build trust in the first 10 minutes?"
"I'm designing my 35th, help me make it more than a bar night."
"I'm going on a trip with my parents, how do we actually connect?"
"We're designing our intercultural wedding, how do we make it magical and not formulaic?"
🍽️ They each wanted a "recipe" for how to design an experience. I'm sharing some of the meaningful ones that helped them (ingredients, steps, and a little science explaining why it works).
👨👩👧 What I learned is that people wanted to connect with the most important people in their lives, but were stuck. Holidays with parents, date night with their partner, a cousin's trip, a team offsite, a birthday, a baby shower. We default to the same script and wonder why the night felt okay but not great. It's usually not a lack of love in the room. It is a lack of inspiration about how.
🍚 In the same way you pull up a food recipe when you want to cook something great for someone, I believe we need inspiration from recipes for the experiences we host. Magical recipes to teach people how to host, facilitate, and create the "vibes".
I will share a new recipe every Monday (cookbookforconnection.com).
Comment 👇: What recipes would you want to read? Who do you want to deepen connection with in your life?
Phil Levin retweeted
living near your friends is one of the best life upgrades you can make
excited to launch our partnership with @livenearfriends that paves a way for anyone to create a friend compound using new missing-middle laws and our new infill design system @typefive
Phil Levin retweeted
Over the past 20 years, America has basically stopped building condos. Owing to a mix of restrictive financing regulations and endless defect litigation, the most viable path to urban homeownership has largely disapprared. In my latest for @TheAtlantic, we explain why.
