Some things of note in October

This month in between tournaments, I’ve got a few links that have caught my attention recently - mostly not related to play^[1].

I’m also going to start an occasional series of very short essays called “In Praise of Something Simple.” Over the past couple years, I’ve found myself drawn to objects - often but not always mechanical in nature - that do one thing really well that improves my quality of life. These things often shine because of the choice to be simple and embrace the tradeoffs that come with it. This month’s is one especially close to my heart.

In Praise of Something Simple: The Aeropress

I recently bought an Aeropress. More precisely: I recently replaced the Aeropress that I have had on my coffee bar for a dozen years, which has travelled thousands of miles with me and made coffee on 4 different continents. In recent years, it had become exclusively my travel coffee apparatus…but in the last year it had ceased to even be that. It mostly just hung out on the bar because it had just grown long in the tooth: it no longer maintained a tight seal, and so its utility was seriously limited. Even though I could see that it had seen better days, I was hesitant to let it go because it was like an old friend who had been with me through a lot. I couldn’t just let it go.

But then I found myself at the Dutch Aeropress Championships with my oldest child, and we got caught up in the excitement and started hatching a plan to join the competition next year, so I couldn’t help but purchase a new one from the merch table.

Because one of the remarkable things about the Aeropress is that you can get a new one for $30^[2]. And even if you’re an absolute amateur, you can be making a good-if-not-great cup of coffee with very little learning curve.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Aeropress, then you’ve lived an impoverished existence. I kid, I kid…but what I’ll say about it is this: I recently made a reference to the Lifelong Kindergarten Lab at MIT Media Lab, and one of the ideas they talk about in the design of experiences is “low floors, high ceilings, and wide walls” - that is to say:

• low floors = a minimal barrier to entry for someone to start meaningfully participating
• high ceilings = very little upper limit to what is possible once you get started
• wide walls = diverse ways of engaging, expressing, and participating

And the Aeropress is the rare device that embodies these principles. The number of different ways one can use that single device to make coffee, the number of different variables that one can adjust, and also the ease with which one can choose to not care about any of it and do something dead simple and still get a fine cup of coffee is a true feat of engineering.

When I bought my first Aeropress, I was very novice in the world of coffee, and it was legitimately eye opening to enter on that low floor and start to see what was possible. Buying the same device again now that I’m a bit better grounded in the world^[3] and still feeling that sense of joy and delight as I started using it again…it’s sublime. My new Aeropress finds its way into my coffee routine a few times a week now. It’s resumed its place as my travel coffee driver. And my old Aeropress is still chilling in my coffee bar, because I just can’t bring myself to part with it.

A few interesting links this month

• Did you not know you needed an in depth consideration of the word “chaos” in your life? Come on, if you’re reading this newsletter then this is absolutely for you.
• How much it costs to charge an e-bike. I love seeing things like this quantified. I am also a person who believes that he is playing a game with his energy company because my monthly bill shows how my usage compares with similar households…so make of that what you will.
• A contrarian take on coding LLMs. The basic premise here is just delightfully hilarious: software companies are actually very bad at writing code, and coding LLMs have been trained on production code…so they’ll probably produce bad code.
• If Hindenberg Research is right, Roblox is really really unspeakably bad. Long story short: Hindenberg dropped a report suggesting that not only is Roblox massively inflating its user & engagement numbers, but its moderation & user protection is criminally abysmal. Hindenberg is a short-selling fund that publishes their research after taking a short position on the stock, so be appropriately skeptical…but they have a pretty good track record on things like this.
• If you’ve played pickup basketball, this will be very familiar. I had no idea but am not surprised by how much scholarship there is on the sociology of pickup basketball…this is a rabbit hole I’m pretty excited to go further down.

And with that I’m off to Lille, France - one of my favorite cities to visit on the European Pokemon Circuit. Look out for a new Pursuit of Play in the next couple weeks.