Now

Last Update: June 2nd, 2026

What I’m up to now…

📍 Location

Still in Paris, year 7. The city finally flipped into summer mode this week — terraces packed by 6pm, long golden evenings, everyone slowing down just a little. Last weekend I was at the Parc des Princes watching the Champions League final with 48,000 people. Last night I was at a Nikki Glaser standup show in a classic Parisian theater. Paris in June is a pretty good place to be.

🏠 Life

🩵 The Baby™️ / Azul is 2.5 and absolutely in charge of the household. Her vocabulary has exploded in both French and English — she has opinions about her shoes, her breakfast, who puts her to bed, and everything in between. Last week we took her to the Cité des Sciences and she walked around wide-eyed for two hours. That kind of thing doesn’t get old.

🎙️ Shana launched Episode 02 of her podcast — three years after Episode 01, with me as the guest. Strange to be on the receiving end. A lovely thing to record together. Find her at shanaweisberg.substack.com.

🏃 🏀 The leg finally cooperated: first run back since the lower leg muscle tear in March, almost at regular pace. Slow return but a return. Thursday-night pickup basketball is so back!

☕ Home coffee setup still dialed in since the scale upgrade in March. Setup notes at tibz.blog/coffee.

📚 Finished Why We Love Baseball by Joe Posnanski ⭐⭐⭐⭐ — perfectly timed with the season, then went down a rabbit hole of the YouTube iconic moments playlist it references. Also wrapped Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 Omnibus Vol. 2 — done with the Buffyverse comics chapter at last. Currently juggling a few at once: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Tonight in Jungleland (the making of Born to Run), and deep in the Angel: After the Fall comics run.

💼 Work

Still at Itonics. The highlight of the spring was a completely unprompted customer email — my champion copied my manager, our CEO, and our co-founder. Three years of consistent presence compressing into a single moment. That one stays with me.

More at tibz.work and LinkedIn.

🛠️ Building

Earlier this spring I wrote about the AI-assisted personal guides I built — Paris, Berlin, coffee, workout, and a shared recipes page. All one-tap from my iPhone Control Center. The Berlin one is now a trip log: after Easter I rewrote it to document what we actually did, not what I planned. tibz.blog/berlin.

🎮 Play

Recent recommendations:

• 🎬 Letterboxd — Catching up where I can between everything else.
• 📺 Trakt.tv — Drops of God Season 2 keeps getting better. Shrinking Season 3 stuck the landing.
• 🎶 Last.fm — Mac Miller is #1 this month by a mile (411 scrobbles), followed by All Time Low (261), Gorillaz (221), Good Charlotte (192), and Yellowcard (184). Top track: Big Blue Eyes by Yellowcard. The pop punk pipeline is fully operational. John Mayer still the all-time #1 at 3,800+ scrobbles.
• 📚 StoryGraph — Currently reading different things at once: Americanah, Angel: After the Fall, Batman: Resurrection… 15 books read this year against a goal of 10 — helped by reading some more collected comic book trade paperbacks.
• 🕹️ Tibzback on PlayStation but “gaming” at this stage mostly means NYT’s Wordle and Connections.
• 📰 The Athletic, NYT, News+.

Live shows:

Already saw Angel Du$t live in May — small underground club 15 min on foot, one of those gigs you feel lucky to have walked to. Last night: Nikki Glaser standup date night at a classic Parisian theater.

June still stacked: Billy Talent, Pennywise + The Ataris (pop punk double feature), Tom Misch date night. Also very hyped for Good Charlotte with Yellowcard and Motel Du Cap later this year — which explains the Last.fm charts, honestly.

Fall: A$AP Rocky, Simple Plan, J. Cole.

Sports:

⚽️ Last weekend: Champions League final at the Parc des Princes with my cousin — PSG vs Arsenal, 48,000 fans, incredible atmosphere. I’m no PSG fan, but when it’s Paris vs London, you cheer for the city. PSG won back-to-back. What an evening!

🏀 Paris Basketball is in the semifinals. We finished first in the regular season for the second year running, took care of SIG Strasbourg in the quarters (Game 1 was 95–64), and now facing Cholet — Game 1 is today as I publish this. The LNB Betclic Élite Finals don’t start until June 14. A back-to-back domestic championship is absolutely on the table.

🏀 The Wizards won the #1 pick at the NBA Draft Lottery. AJ Dybantsa is coming to Washington. First real reason for optimism since John Wall’s knee ended our hopes circa 2019. WE ARE SO BACK.

🏀 Also caught the official NBA Playoffs viewing party at Le Grand Rex again — second year running, 2,500 fans in that iconic 1920s cinema, with Mickael Pietrus and Maxime Raynaud as special guests.

⚾ Baltimore Orioles season is underway. Go O’s!

⚽️ The Premier League is done — Arsenal won the title, a big rebuild summer ahead for Manchester City with a new manager.

Now: Paris Basketball playoffs and the FIFA World Cup this summer.

💭 Things I’m thinking about

• Paris in peak summer mode is genuinely hard to argue with. Came home from the Champions League final last weekend through a city that can’t quite believe its luck — joy and car horns everywhere: that’s a memory.
• What it feels like when work relationships actually compound. That customer email in April was the clearest proof I’ve had that the job I do daily adds up to something real.
• Concert season as a reliable source of joy — I keep being reminded that live music with people you want to spend time with is one of the better things.
• Paris Basketball going for back-to-back. French basketball has quietly become something serious.
• The World Cup is coming this summer. Strange to have it in this America.
• Building a body of work quietly over long horizons — 13 years of this blog now. Quiets a lot of noise about what things are “for.”
• Azul growing up bilingual without us really having to try. One of the unexpected gifts of Paris.