Month: September 2025

Even before his dad comes home, Joel knows he’s about to get the belt. But if you caught your preteen brother trying to buy drugs, what would you have done? Walk by and pretend nothing happened? Joel did what he thought was right using the only tool he knew: violence.

Several punches, one alarm siren, and an embarrassing drive home later, Tommy is scared shitless. But Joel says he’ll cover for him. Their dad, a policeman himself, sees through Joel’s story, of course. But on one point, Joel stays adamant: “You’re not gonna hurt him!”

For some reason, this time, instead of whipping his sons’ backs, Javier Miller chooses a different path. He grabs two beers from the fridge, hands one to his oldest, and begins: “Did I ever tell you about that time I stole a candy bar? I was ten.”

Javier’s father, a stern man in his own right, found out. He made him give back the candy bar, of course, and apologize to the cashier. But he also did something else upon their return home: “Just before I got out of the car, man, he just…he broke my jaw. There was blood everywhere. Grandma thought I was dead. My mouth was wired shut for two months. Everybody knew why.”

Joel is unsure how to react. On the one hand, he finally understands his dad a little better. On the other, if he knows how painful and humiliating parental bruise marks are, why the hell would he beat his own kids?

“Okay, yeah, I’ve hit you,” Javier continues. “And I’ve hit Tommy. But never like that. Not even close.” And then, with tears in his eyes, Javier finally tells his son the real reason: “I mean, maybe I go too far, I…I don’t know. But I’m doing a little better than my father did. And you know, when it’s your turn…I hope you do a little better than me.”

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The Last of Us is a show about many things. It’s about apocalypses and zombies and survival. It deals with species, choices, and the behavior of crowds. But perhaps first and foremost, it’s a show about parenting. And how most of that is just trying to do better.

It’s not that Javier wanted to hit his kids. It’s that he couldn’t stop the pattern passed down to him from his father. And although he will repeat it in a totally different, much nobler context, Joel, too, will one day struggle against his genetic memory. And when he finally has that conversation with his daughter, he will also fail to fully get through to her—but not before relaying the message that counts: “If that day should come, if you should ever have one of your own, well, then I hope you do a little better than me.”

Most people prefer short flights. One hour, two hours—those are easy enough to “sit off,” as we say in German. Me? I complain. “Two hours? That’s barely enough to read half a book!” On our three-hour flight back home from Lisbon, I read nearly all of The Catcher in the Rye. It was perfect!

If it weren’t for the bad air, lack of space, and difficulty with sleeping, I’d love eight, nine, even ten-hour flights too. Even now I don’t mind them. Lock me in a box for several hours, and I might actually get something done that feels both productive and meaningful.

There’s that quote from Einstein about time being relative. The example he uses is sitting on a stove vs. talking to a pretty girl. And while everything in life has an inherent time-relativity to it, what Einstein didn’t cover was that you, too, have the power to influence this dynamic.

You can take an event that feels long and make it short. This could mean accepting your circumstances or turning them into a fun game. Similarly, you can draw out what passes too quickly by savoring it to the fullest. Smell your coffee deeply rather than chugging it in one sip. Don’t watch your favorite show on 1.5x speed.

Take a long flight, and try to get it to feel short. See how much you can do in a one-hour train ride. Or take your commute as an opportunity to stare out the window.

Time is relative—but so are your emotions and perception. Make sure you use all the ingredients when mixing your cocktail of life.

Famed psychologist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl once explained why we should believe in other people using his flying lessons as an example. His instructor had told him, Frankl said, that if there’s a crosswind, you must aim for a spot that sits higher or lower than your actual destination. If you shoot for your actual target, you’ll miss it! Frankl suggested the same applies to humans: If we don’t give them more credit than they deserve, why would they ever improve?

There’s a similar analogy for modern planes: Even when everything is calculated to a tee, if you point the aircraft slightly more left or right before it takes off, unless you completely adjust your plan, the passengers might land in a different country than they had intended. “Be careful of small deviations,” this story seems to say. “They can have a bigger impact than you think.”

Lately, I find this also applies in the positive: If only I vary my path slightly from the norm, it may lead to a much better result.

For example, when showing my fiancée around the annual city festival, I suggested we walk on the side. Instead of shuffling amidst the big streams of crowds, we could pass behind the food stalls and vendors. Everyone trotted along in the middle of the street. Step one meter to the side, and you’re free.

When choosing a wedding date, the same pattern seems to apply. For one location, the earliest Saturday we could get lies 14 months in the future. “What about Sundays?” we asked. “Oh, then it’s no problem. Many dates available in June, July, August, and so on.” Deviate from the average by one day, and voilà!

Obstacles come with going fast. But they also come with venturing where everyone else is trying to go. Step off the main street for a minute. Slight deviations lead to uncrowded places—and sometimes, the surprise of where you’ll land is the best part of boarding a plane.

The most notable observation was how much everything had changed. It started with my parents’ house, which my friend hadn’t set foot in for at least five to six years. “Wow, this all looks different!” he said.

The country house style kitchen had given way to a modern, black-and-white design with a big island in the center. The back wall separating it from the dining room was gone entirely, creating a much larger, unified open space. “Ah, this is also new,” Jens remarked about our fireplace which had indeed been replaced. New TV, new couch, new living room layout. And that’s only a small part of the renovations inside.

It’s not like my parents went on a massive shopping spree at the DIY store. All of these upgrades were done slowly, one at a time, over several years.

As we reminisced about our college days, we noticed our everyday lives had changed a lot, too. Both engaged about to marry. Jens is building a house. Twelve years ago, I was sleeping on the floor in his tiny, 20 square-meter apartment over the summer. I had just returned from studying abroad in the US and needed to pass my exams with no flat to live in. Jens would always sleep in. I’d wake up early, go swimming, and pick up stuff from the bakery before studying.

In the years since graduation, he’s been working for a big steel manufacturer, slowly rising through the ranks. I started my own business and ran that for a decade before taking on my first full-time role. Now, we’re thinking about houses, apartments, weddings, and kids. Our Pokémon cards are retirement plans more so than toys. And yet, the current of time never stops.

After recapping much of what had happened, Jens just said there, smiling. And then, in his typical, nonchalant tone, he said: “It always goes on.” Actually, I think that was the most notable observation.

That’s what my friend Zulie said when we caught up. She was talking about actual video games, and how they helped her relax during the beautiful but tough adjustment of being a new mom.

Zulie’s husband got her into video games a few years into their relationship. So did I with my fiancée. “How do you just run through this maze in one go?!” the latter sometimes asks me. Zulie, too, said she sometimes struggled more with navigating using a controller than her husband. I gave both the same response: “Just 30 years of playing video games.”

If you’ve done something since you were eight years old, of course you’ll have a level of familiarity with it that’s hard to beat. A lifelong swimmer can easily adjust to any water environment. A voracious reader may navigate a new library with ease. And long-time gamers will usually pick up the mechanics of the latest title rather quickly. The question is, as always: What is it for?

I never set out to be a professional gamer, and it’s unlikely I will from here on out. My partner also isn’t trying to win any esports trophies. The point is to have fun, learn, and relax. That’s why, as we discovered, Zulie and I both love cooperative games and have played several of the same ones. She recommended a puzzle-solving title I’d love to try. I can see my fiancée and I now: Squeezing our brains, staring at the screen, discussing the solution, and laughing about how long it took us to find an obvious answer.

It’s nice to be good at something—perhaps especially if you didn’t particularly grit your teeth to get there—but remember: If you’re having fun, you are winning the video game, and that’s one of the few prizes in life that actually counts.

Our edition of Rummikub is at least 40 years old. In the game, every player gets 14 tiles with numbers in various colors on them. The goal is to build chains of numbers and colors in order to get rid of all your slabs. It takes luck, a good eye, and quick thinking to win.

Every day, I could be doing a million things to “relax.” From fully immersing myself in a virtual world where I slice blocks with lightsabers to the beat of a song to digging on crypto Twitter for the next great investment to ogling at Pokémon cards and prices—in today’s world, boredom is optional.

Rummikub is a relic from a different time. A time with fewer options, less to do, and not as much instant gratification. “I’m bored. Let’s play Rummikub!” I used to say that. Now, Rummikub must be a deliberate decision. A break from the endless stream of brain activity and entertainment that awaits behind any screen. If I don’t “choose” boredom first, I’ll never play Rummikub, and that would be a shame.

Yesterday, I played with my fiancée, mom, and dad. We laughed. We thought. We learned new ways of playing the game. And Rummikub is only one of many board games we have in our basement.

Every now and then, close the laptop. Pretend you’re bored. Choose a game. And do what would remain if technology didn’t exist: Talk, think, and connect.

In any asset class I participate, I have a long list of investments I’d still love to make. It’s not always a literal list, but the aspirations are there. “Could I get to 100 shares of this stock? Or 1 million units of that coin?”

This makes it harder for me to take profits. Whenever I sell something, I’m inclined to just dump the money straight back into the next play. It’s hard on my wallet at times—but as long as I keep choosing decent assets, it’s great for my portfolio.

Many people have the opposite problem. They’re too fixated on the short-term return. They sell as soon as they see a 10%, 20%, 30% gain. There are times for that, of course. But if you cash in every time you make 200 bucks, it’ll be really hard to get to six figures in net worth. What’s more, it trains you to short-shift your gains. How will you ever hold something to a 500% return if your usual exit pole is the 50% mark?

Still, a return is a return, and I get it: You worked hard to make this deal and pull it off successfully. Why wouldn’t you reward yourself with some cash? You can split the money 50:50, of course—but then what do you buy next?

I recently heard an interesting take from a long-term Pokémon investor: “Just convert a small number of old items into a large number of new ones.” Collector’s items and trading cards in particular are their own, special kind of market, but they do have one thing going for them: It’s easy to reinvest because you can do it with discrete units of your collection.

When the Evolving Skies expansion came out, for example, a booster box cost around $100-$120. Let’s say you bought five to keep as an investment. It’s an extreme case, but in the four years since release, the box price has shot up to around $2,000. If you now sold just one of your boxes, you could buy up to ten displays of newer sets, even considering prices have increased across the board. This isn’t to say that those ten boxes will also go up 20x in value—but the chances of them increasing 2x, 5x, 8x over the next few years are higher than the chances of Evolving Skies repeating its meteoric rise.

With physical items, it’s easier to witness the multiplication of your assets. I can see that five boxes are more than one. With stocks, where prices are relative and it’s all just numbers on a screen, it’s much harder to determine: “If I roll my return into a new equity, will that give me more than I’ve had before?”

The nice thing about life is you can learn your lessons wherever they’re available. If trading a single baseball card for a lot of ten of them teaches you what it’s like to grow your portfolio, that will do. And if it takes flipping a car into two smaller ones, so be it. You can then still transfer that learning to your crypto or stock holdings, and apply it there as well.

If you want to grow your wealth, make reinvesting easy. After all, compound interest is the secret sauce—and you don’t get rich by taking profits.

For the better part of a year, I was waiting for my crypto portfolio tracking app to add two new coins I had built positions in. Every few weeks, I would search in their catalog, realize they still weren’t there, grunt, and close the app again.

The other day, the company’s handle popped up on my news feed on X. “Heck, let me just ask them,” I thought. I pinged them, and, within a day, they replied. “Here’s our listing request page. Just fill in the info, and they should show up in a few days.”

I had to create an account to fill in the listing form, but overall, it probably took five minutes to submit the data they needed. I forgot about the whole thing just as quickly. A week later, I remembered. For the umpteenth time, I repeated my ritual: Punch the ticker into the search bar and…voilà! Both coins showed up, charts, exchange markets, and all. Another 15 minutes later, I had added both positions to my tracker, and my portfolio was finally complete.

Many things in this life, you can ask for all you want, yet, ultimately, you’ll have to earn them. Some demands, however, you can never fulfill by yourself and, therefore, will always need help with, no matter when you hope to attain them. Wherever that’s the case, you might as well make the request sooner rather than later.

You can’t get what you don’t ask for—and even a definitive “no” is better than a “maybe” hanging in the balance.

A good friend of mine teaches architecture at the university of Munich. Recently, he and his students opened a pop-up café for a few months.

In search of someone to take over the place after their assignment ends, he met several people in the Munich restaurant scene. One of them was from LAP Coffee, a Berlin coffee store chain that’s expanding quickly in Munich these days.

“They opened three stores in the city in the last two months,” my friend told me. “That’s not normal. Apparently they have some big US investors who drown them in money so they can grow fast, fast, fast.”

The story reminded me of my fiancée’s former flat in London. It was owned by a Hong Kong real estate fund. There was no way to really get in touch with anyone. The flat was nice, and everything went smoothly. But outside of the contact with the agent when renting and dealing with the contract, there was no trace of an owner to be seen.

One more example: Pokémon card prices have exploded in 2025. Not everything has recouped its high from the 2021 boom, but much product has grown well beyond. Sealed boxes. Graded cards. Collection boxes. Some items are up 500% in the last year alone. It’s crazy how much money is flowing into the space in such a short time.

There’s that famous quote from Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park: “Life finds a way.” Well, so does money. Wherever there’s a return, money will flock to. And in our modern, globally connected world, it doesn’t matter much whether you wire a million bucks to your neighbor or someone on a different continent.

With politics unstable, wars in several countries, and stocks at all-time highs, perhaps it’s no wonder many dollars are seeking growth in new destinations. Perhaps you, too, can look beyond the familiar. Whether you desire investment for a venture or a profit on your cash, open the curtains. Consider the entire landscape that’s in front of you—not just your favorite pop-up café down the street.