🤖 Mitch's newsletter

Mitch's Blog

Oct 26, 2025 ↓

Man Alarmed to Discover His Smart Vacuum Was Broadcasting a Secret Map of His House. “Our homes are filled with cameras, microphones, and mobile sensors connected to companies we barely know, all capable of being weaponized with a single line of code.”

Oct 26, 2025 ↓

The secret to happiness is finding life purpose and acting on it

Happiness is not achieved by pursuing happiness. Happiness is a byproduct of finding life purpose and pursuing that purpose.

Dana Milbank reports at The Washington Post:: The best way to achieve happiness is focus on others and how you can contribute to them and their well-being. We need to find meaningful ways to contribute, “and often that will lead to the happiness that you’re seeking,” says psychologist Kendall Cotton Bronk of Claremont Graduate University.

Ask yourself what “the world is missing” and how you uniquely “fill that gap a little bit,” says psychology professor Todd Kashdan, who runs the Well-Being Lab at George Mason University. “The specific purpose doesn’t matter; it’s just a question of ’what lights you up. Then commit to make a specific regular contribution – particularly time – toward that purpose.”

The contribution doesn’t need to be “a major life-changing allocation of time or energy” but rather “things we can fit into our everyday routines,” says Cornell psychologist Anthony Burrow, who runs the university’s Purpose and Identity Processes Lab.

Milbank writes:

There’s no right or wrong purpose. It could be related to family or work or anything else that gives you meaning and helps you order your goals. It’s not necessarily altruistic (evil people can have purpose) but often is. Your purpose can change over time.

Oct 26, 2025 ↓

“Since 1982, [Charlotte] Chopin, now 102 years old, has taught yoga in Léré, a French village in the Loire region.”

Oct 26, 2025 ↓

Who Is the Dapper Louvre Heist ‘Detective’ And Is He Even Real

“‘Never gonna crack it with a detective who wears an actual fedora unironically,’ Melissa Chen, a tech executive based in London, wrote in an X post that has been viewed more than five million times. ‘To solve it, we need an unshaven, overweight, washed-out detective who’s in the middle of divorce. A functioning alcoholic who the rest of the department hates.’”

Alisha Haridasani Gupta at The New York Times

(This article ran on Thursday. This morning, French authorities arrested
suspects charged with being the Louvre thieves, according to headlines.)

Oct 26, 2025 ↓

Mexican immigrants to Los Angeles made stars of formerly humble tuba players

People long associated the instrument with polkas, elephants, clowns, and players at the back of the band, imprisoned by conductors’ preconceived notions of what the horn, and those who play it, were capable of. But today, tuba players have found freedom and, through hard work and focus, they dazzle, unconstrained by others’ views.

Sam Quinones at Times of San Diego