good things 07.10.25

tums chewy bites, science-backed manifesting, dunkin

Jul 10, 2025

hey! i’ve been mainlining sooo many hours of the love island franchise (both UK and USA). it took me several minutes to type that sentence because of the brain death this show accelerates. to counteract this, i am rereading (and annotating) Trick Mirror. i also just picked up One Hundred Years of Solitude from the library, so you can expect next week’s entry to be written by a more embodied intellectual, rather than the zombie who greets you today.

1. tums chewy bites (assorted berries flavor)

whenever my stomach hurts i go yayyyy i get to have my special treat now.

2. the psychic question (search engine)

my self image has taken a bit of a nosedive in the last few weeks. i think a combination of factors are to blame. no doubt a big one is, as i mentioned above, the hours logged watching plastic surgeried young adults in bikinis discuss matters of the heart such as “being closed off”. whenever this spiraling happens, i go looking for answers and quick fixes, evident in my googling:

“hers prescription1 should i get it will it kill me”, “psychics real? nytimes”, “best psychic in brooklyn reddit”, “manifesting for people who believe in science”

i’m ashamed!! and i don’t believe in any of that stuff. but i sometimes want to. and this episode lands squarely in my interest zone. two journalists and skeptics — PJ Vogt and Dan Harris — discuss why people they respect follow this one psychic medium and what the woo-woo crowd has going for them.

3. the science of manifestation (10% happier)

the above led me over to this episode. it’s a conversation with a stanford neuroscientist about evidence-backed ways to train your brain to get you what you want. the guy interviewed is kind of a drag but there was some really useful stuff in here for me.

4. sitting on a bench in fort greene park pretending to read while listening to people’s conversations

in the last two weeks i have heard:

an incredible story of friendship and betrayal that unfolded at a recent new orleans wedding. the woman telling the story — let’s call her sally — hooked up with her friend’s platonic date, whose relationship turned out to not be as platonic as everyone thought. so now sally and her friend are in a huge fight. but sally asked her friend if it was ok before doing it. and then her friend changed her mind after. #TeamSally
a woman deciding if she should uproot her life and move to israel to attend a “useless” (her words) MBA program so that she can “have easier access to travel in asia” ??
two tech guys having a genuinely fascinating conversation about AI that i started taking notes on which you can read below. one of them worked at some kind of AI comedy start up? i was initially revolted but they won me over by the end.
anyone know about the environmental impact thing? i find this claim dubious but i also don’t think people arguing we should not use AI at all for this reason to be out of touch

4. watching people who are good at tennis play tennis

when i can’t find a juicy conversation to listen in on, i mosey over to the benches near the tennis courts and watch some very talented amateurs rally back and forth. people who play in fort greene are shockingly good and i get embarrassed for the average joes. i really want to play but i know my shortcomings and so i will stay on the bench (at least at fort greene — maybe i’ll try a more ranging skill friendly court nearby).

5. a dunkin iced coffee renaissance

because of the work of dunkin influencer megan zahorik, i have recently welcomed it back into my life. i used to drink gallons of their caramel iced coffee in high school. on wednesdays it was 99 cents and other days it was like $2. remember when every item didn’t cost ten dollars???? i have no idea how iced coffee differs from cold brew, which is a drink that should be put on the list of banned substances. but it does.

6. what lena dunham thinks the girls are doing now

if you see a lena dunham interview from this too much press tour, send it to me rachel. devoured this one from variety in which dunham discusses what she thinks hannah, marnie, shoshanna, and jessa are doing now.

“Shoshanna was married to, then divorced from, the mayor of New York City, and she runs an athleisure startup that’s zero-waste. Marnie — it’s third marriage. She still sings, but I think Marnie really needs to take it to sex and love addicts anonymous. Jessa is unvaccinated and lives on a boat in Croatia. Adam is a cult theater actor, and he’s probably living in Berlin, and Ray is still on city council and running his coffee shop and doing better than anyone. Elijah is the fourth lead on a sitcom, making a good amount of money and still looking for love in all the wrong places.”
Wait, what about Hannah? Dunham lets out a yelp as she realizes her own character slipped her mind. “Oh my God, I forgot about her!” she says. “She teaches at Bard and loves raising her son. She probably has a girlfriend who’s, like, a chef. And she’s less obsessed with being famous. That is where I feel that she would land.”

do you think sally was in the wrong? sound off in the comments.

xo see u next week

good things