Just a bunch of the most interesting links we could find
🥗 Yesterday was an important day for two reasons: It was U.S. Independence Day and the 100th birthday of Caesar salad, which was first served on July 4, 1924 at Caesar’s restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico. Chefs improvised it when the kitchen was short on ingredients and customers, apparently, demanded salad! Caesar salad: Proof you should exploit your constraints.
Issue #113: friendship breakups, maximalist headphones, and avoiding half-heartedness
By Harris Sockel
We read a lot for this newsletter, and there’s always a bunch o’ links that don’t make it in because they’re hard to group together into a coherent theme. But they’re still good stories we want to share! So, in the spirit of “Friday when everyone’s AFK because it’s a holiday here in the U.S.,” I will now share them with you.
Friendship breakups can be as brutal as romantic ones, but we tend to downplay them — which can make the pain even worse.
Related to ^ that: In All About Love, bell hooks writes, “Widespread cultural acceptance of lying is a primary reason many of us will never know love.” Illustrator and essayist Sophie Lucido Johnson reflects on that quote and a friendship breakup that happened five years ago. She still can’t shake it; in fact, it’s so confusing and unnerving she literally can’t open the last email her ex-friend sent her.
If Apple spun out its AirPods business into a standalone company, it would be worth over $175 billion (more than Starbucks, which is worth over $86 billion). Over one-third of the headphones you see on the street are Apple headphones of some kind. Tech writer Alex Rowe misses the experimental headphone market before Apple took over, back in the early 2010s when companies like Audeze were making steampunk-inspired headsets that felt truly unique.
I loved this essay by Ava Huang on how to avoid half-heartedness in relationships. If you tolerate people being lukewarm about you, it might be because you’re lukewarm about yourself.
Also by Huang: the friendship theory of everything. “Befriending people who are good communicators can make you a better communicator.”
What fishing teaches you: attention to detail and how to listen.
Ever told yourself to just “try harder”? It can backfire. Making something feel harder to accomplish can make you even less likely to do it.
For fun and adorableness, please enjoy Tarot with cats.
Your daily dose of practical wisdom: on starting conversations with strangers
Here are 50 conversation starters that are not “How are you?” My favorite: How would you describe to a six-year-old what you do in life?
Did someone forward you this email? Learn something new every day with the Medium Newsletter. Sign up here.
What do you think of this newsletter? Take this super quick survey to let us know.
Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com
