106: The best part of waking up

[Before] A few words about my favorite beverage

I’m one of those people who can drink a cup of coffee at 9:29 p.m. and, if I want, fall asleep soon after. I’ve heard it has to do with a protein some of us weirdos are born with.

Genetics would make sense. My family got a coffee grinder back in the early 1970s, when our extended families and everyone else we knew enjoyed canned Folgers. We called that stuff, “brown crayon water.”

This was the era when local coffee roasters first began to appear in cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul. I think it started in this area with the Dunn brothers; decades before Starbucks expanded the concept of a third space. But my parents would purchase oily French Roast beans from Lund’s grocery.

There was a brief period of resistance. When extended family came to visit, they referred to my parent’s coffee somewhat admiringly as Rocket Fuel. Within a year or two everyone had their own grinder, their own preferred source for beans; our collective noses turned up at freeze dried.

My parents never had a coffee maker, either. It was always water boiled on the stove top, poured onto the ground beans held in a paper filter over the carafe. They still do it that way. I should introduce them to Cometeer. (Thanks, Joseph.) Concentrates remind me of freelancing at CP+B’s Miami office. Around 2:00 p.m. the office manager’s mother would roll by with a coffee cart: “Cafecito?” She had a pot of dense, sweet slurry you’d cut with water and/or dairy and sugar, always sugar. Ideas flowed.

Now our sequence at home has three potential modes: 1) Peace Coffee’s Birchwood blend timed to arrive early morning. Tastes even better in a Vilks Stoneware mug. 2) Those Cometeer cups seem to be replacing brewing a second pot in the Cuisinart. 3) After dinner is usually some Nespresso (first generation classic, double water—preferably the Roma, South African or Miami blends).

I gave up coffee once. I was living in Boston. My stomach was bothering me, and I chalked it up to the oil in those delicious beans. Looking back, the cause of irritation was too much air travel. Regardless, I went all-in on PG Tips Earl Gray tea, black, because that’s what Tom Clack, renowned audio engineer, drank. And he wore ascots, but that’s a tale for another time.

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Happy Monday!

🎙️👂🏼✏️ I took a lot of notes listening to Claire Hughes Johnson (ex COO at Stripe, many roles at Google) talking with Tim Ferriss (Apple, Spotify). If you’re seeking insights on managing people this is your episode. If you want to better understand yourself, and have considered authoring a “How To Work With Me”/Owners’s Manual this is your episode. They get pragmatic and go deep. (Again, thanks, Joseph.)

👅 🤔 I don’t disagree. “As templated tools, the proliferation of AI and the ubiquity of design tutorials make technical skills more accessible than ever, it’s simply not enough to be able to draw or design anymore. Now you need to have taste,” writes Elizabeth Goodspeed, US editor-at-large for It’s Nice That. The challenge becomes, what = taste?

🤖🎸 Monday evening’s AI class is focused on generative audio. So we’re going to have to take about one of my all time favorite artists, Laurie Anderson, and how she is, “growing hopelessly hooked on an AI text generator that emulates the vocabulary and style of her own longtime partner and collaborator, Velvet Underground co-founder Lou Reed.”