The Ventures. With summer approaching, I've been adding some seasonal music into my rotation.

By J.L. Lawson. I like to keep totems in my pockets. One of my favorites is the Decision Maker from J.L. Lawson. I don't actually use it to make decisions.

Change: What Really Leads to Lasting Personal Transformation by Jeffrey A. Kottler. I read this book while researching my Dying Breed article on the effectiveness of therapy. The big takeaway? There’s no single magic bullet for personal transformation. Kottler examines various approaches to behavior change and finds that success often depends on a mix of factors rather than one specific technique. What works seems highly individualized. Despite all our psychological research and self-help wisdom, we’re still remarkably uncertain about what truly causes lasting behavior change. It’s a humbling read that challenges our cultural obsession with finding the “one right way” to fix ourselves.

The Ventures. With summer approaching, I’ve been adding some seasonal music into my rotation. Lately, that’s meant diving back into surf music from the 1960s. I had a serious surf music phase back in high school. I owned this two-CD compilation that I bought from Walmart got heavy play in my room. My favorite band from that era, by far, is The Ventures. Their reverb-heavy instrumental hits like “Walk, Don’t Run” and “Pipeline”make you feel like you’re riding a wave off some sunny coast. Despite never having stood on a surfboard in my life, their music continues to evoke a certain carefree feeling that perfectly accompanies the longer days and warmer temperatures.

Why Even Try If You Have A.I.? Joshua Rothman’s New Yorker piece introduces a provocative idea: As A.I. becomes more capable, are we in danger of becoming mentally flabby? Just as we can become physically weak by always taking the easy route, we might become mentally soft by outsourcing our thinking to LLMs. The solution? We may soon need to carve out mental workouts for ourselves free of A.I. to keep our minds and character sharp.

J.L. Lawson Decision Maker Coin. I like to keep totems in my pockets. One of my favorites is the Decision Maker from J.L. Lawson. I don’t actually use it to make decisions. It’s more of a reminder that sometimes the decisions are so close, any option is a good option. You just have to make a decision. Also, it looks pretty dang cool. I like to give these away as gifts.

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Sunday Firesides: You Might Be Living in a Golden Age Right Now and The Virtues of Re-Reading Books.

Quote of the Week

Recreation is not a secondary concern for a democracy. It is a primary concern, for the kind of recreation a people make for themselves determines the kind of people they become and the kind of society they build.

—Harry A. Overstreetoutput: Change: What Really Leads to Lasting Personal Transformation by Jeffrey A. Kottler. I read this book while researching my Dying Breed article on the effectiveness of therapy. The big takeaway? There’s no single magic bullet for personal transformation. Kottler examines various approaches to behavior change and finds that success often depends on a mix of factors rather than one specific technique. What works seems highly individualized. Despite all our psychological research and self-help wisdom, we’re still remarkably uncertain about what truly causes lasting behavior change. It’s a humbling read that challenges our cultural obsession with finding the “one right way” to fix ourselves.

The Ventures. With summer approaching, I’ve been adding some seasonal music into my rotation. Lately, that’s meant diving back into surf music from the 1960s. I had a serious surf music phase back in high school. I owned this two-CD compilation that I bought from Walmart got heavy play in my room. My favorite band from that era, by far, is The Ventures. Their reverb-heavy instrumental hits like “Walk, Don’t Run” and “Pipeline”make you feel like you’re riding a wave off some sunny coast. Despite never having stood on a surfboard in my life, their music continues to evoke a certain carefree feeling that perfectly accompanies the longer days and warmer temperatures.

Why Even Try If You Have A.I.? Joshua Rothman’s New Yorker piece introduces a provocative idea: As A.I. becomes more capable, are we in danger of becoming mentally flabby? Just as we can become physically weak by always taking the easy route, we might become mentally soft by outsourcing our thinking to LLMs. The solution? We may soon need to carve out mental workouts for ourselves free of A.I. to keep our minds and character sharp.

J.L. Lawson Decision Maker Coin. I like to keep totems in my pockets. One of my favorites is the Decision Maker from J.L. Lawson. I don’t actually use it to make decisions. It’s more of a reminder that sometimes the decisions are so close, any option is a good option. You just have to make a decision. Also, it looks pretty dang cool. I like to give these