— GeistHaus

How to come correct

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Sep 25, 2025

<figure><img alt="A wall full of small paintings. Dudes walking. Ducks sleeping. Feet stepping on police cars. Etc." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/c6fe7d13-d5fe-4b3d-8871-07319cdd257c.jpg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>A bunch of wee random paintings I made in 2022 or so.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>💰<a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-come-correct" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Enjoying the newsletter? Gimme $2</a>!💰 <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Charles Pearson: Is it weird that video meeting tools offer appearance retouching effects? Are we that consumed with smoothing out wrinkles and moles? No. It’s fine. Today is my grandmother’s birthday, so we’re gonna talk about my grandmother. My grandmother lived in a small village in Portugal, and spent the majority of her life under a fascist regime. In the interest of time, I’ll tell you one story that sums her up. My grandmother raised four kids. She gave birth to one—my father. The other three were collected through various family mishaps and shenanigans, which I don’t have time to explain. But one of them was my grandfather’s daughter from a previous marriage. I’ve never met her, but apparently she was stunning. She’s maybe seventeen in this story. She comes home crying one afternoon. My grandmother asks her what’s wrong and she tells her that a man said something to her that upset her. It was sexual in nature. My grandmother changes into her going-out clothes, fixes her face, fixes her hair, puts on her nice coat and the two of them go out looking for the man who upset my aunt. They find him in the town square, which isn’t surprising because this “man” was a young beat cop. My grandmother walks up to him, tears the badge off his coat, slaps him, and then walks to the police station and reports him. My grandmother was justice, my grandmother was vengeance, my grandmother was kindness, my grandmother was all those things. But the part of that story that most personifies my grandmother was that she took the time to fix her face. Because there was no way she was going to slap a cop if she didn’t look her best. My parents immigrated to the United States when I was two years old. But my grandmother insisted I spend my summers with her. So every year, until I was in high school, I’d fly over and spend a couple of months with her in the same town where she slapped that cop. Anytime we went out, whether it was to go to the market, or the cafe, or church (she insisted, saying no wasn’t an option), she would go through the same routine. She’d change from her apron, housecoat, and sandals into a going out dress. She’d fix her face. She’d fix her hair. This all took about an hour and if you think I ever dared complain, let me remind you this woman slapped a cop. My grandmother didn’t go outside unless she was correct. Looking back on this, I understand things I didn’t understand as a child. My grandparents weren’t people of means. In fact, they were poor. They grew up in a small podunk town deep inside a small country that was in the grip of fascism, and they did what they could to get by. They took in kids who needed to be cared for. They paid their bills. They put food on the table, which was often a chicken or a rabbit from the backyard. And when I spent summers with them their house was so full of love that there wasn’t room or time for lacking anything. I also understand that my grandmother’s mode of resistance was fixing her face. She had no status other than the status she conferred upon herself. The minute she walked out the door, you saw someone important. Someone who carried herself with great authority. Someone who you didn’t dare fuck with. If my grandmother had rushed out the door that afternoon my aunt was harassed by the cop in her housecoat and apron, things would’ve gone very differently. She would’ve been seen as someone with low status. Someone who’d probably spent the morning cleaning bedpans and defeathering a chicken in the kitchen sink. People like that don’t get to slap cops. So she put on her face. She fixed her hair. She stood up straight. She walked up to him. She ripped the badge off his coat. She reared back. She slapped a cop. Then she reported his ass. And no one dared to cross her because she didn’t look like someone you should cross. My grandmother’s method of resistance was granting herself the status she needed to survive. My grandmother understood that survival meant playing a role. She understood that there were people society listened to, and people that society ignored. She understood the power of simulation. She understood that there’s who we are, and who we need to be perceived as to accomplish certain things. (Small aside: My summer visit in 1974 came two months after the fascists were ousted from power. My grandmother, who never went to the airport, greeted me from her living room window waving a small Portuguese flag. It was the first time I’d ever seen a Portuguese flag inside her home.) When I log onto Zoom, or one of its cousins, I don’t use any of the imaging retouching effects. It doesn’t occur to me, because it’s never had to occur to me. I am a white man working in a white man’s field under a white man’s government. I have the privilege of looking like shit (I do clean myself up) and being taken seriously. This isn’t something I want, but it’s something I get regardless. I doubt people do backchannel chats on how I look during the call, or after the call. But rest assured that happens for other people on those calls. I know this because I’ve seen it happen after in-person meetings. We comment on the body of a recent mother, or a co-worker who’s gained (or lost) weight. We comment on people’s hair. (At least on Zoom we can’t ask to touch it.) We talk about the bags under people’s eyes. We debate who looks like they had a “rough night.” (Pro tip: it’s usually the recent mothers.) We talk about outfits. We use words like “unprofessional” and phrases like “not putting in any effort.” Also, let’s be honest. We’re not on Zoom because we’re working. I’m not even sure what we do anymore can be called work. It’s a simulation of work. We get on Zoom and report on whether targets, projections, and KPIs (whatever the good godfuck those are) have been met, we move things around a spreadsheet. We shuffle the chairs on the Titanic. We make proclamations about how much hot air we’ll be moving from one location to another location. We get and give updates on how close we are to achieving a breakthrough which is always right around the corner. We fire up some slop generator to come up with our next response. And just for kicks, we’ll do a complete reorg every couple of weeks. All while Chad and Todd backchannel about Cheryl’s cleavage. None of this is real (except the harassment), so why bring your real self to it? We’re all just projecting the selves that work best in the simulation until we can end the call, take a piss, and finish the egg sandwich we made three Zoom calls ago that’s sitting half-eaten on the kitchen counter. When my grandmother got home, the going outside outfit would come off and get hung back in the closet. Back into rotation. She’d put the housecoat back on. The apron. The slippers. She’d make a plate of crackers and cheese, or bread and butter, and we’d spend the afternoon watching bawdy Brazilian soap operas on TV, which we both loved. She saved her real self for the people she loved, and who loved her back. <hr/>🙋 Got a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-come-correct" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>. I might just answer it. 🙏 Why is Peter Thiel going on about the Antichrist? What’s it got to do with “the rapture”? <a href="https://newsletter.sachajudd.com/archive/god-in-the-machine/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-come-correct" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Sacha Judd explains it all</a>. 📺 You’ve probably already seen it, but just in case you haven’t… <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1tjh_ZO_tY&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-come-correct" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Jimmy Kimmel’s return monologue</a> is worth watching. 🍉 Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-come-correct" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-come-correct" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>.

How to bury your father

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Dec 13, 2025

<figure><img alt="TAP Air Portugal parked at SFO" draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/436d355b-f667-4b23-85b8-91320ca707dd.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption></figcaption></figure> This week’s question comes to us anonymously: How do you lovingly care for an aging parent who treated you like shit? This question has been sitting in my inbox for almost two years. While I fear that I’ve waited too long to possibly help the person who asked it—for which I am sorry—I had to wait until I was ready to answer it. That day is today. I’m currently on a flight to Lisbon to bury my father. The call came on Thursday morning, or rather there was a text. A text from my Aunt in Portugal telling me about funeral arrangements. “Funeral arrangements for who?!” There is a photo of my father somewhere (perhaps only in my memory of this point) where my father is sitting cross-legged on the floor of my parents’ first apartment in the United States. There’s a Christmas tree behind him (yes, this is a Christmas newsletter). The tree is foil or aluminum or whatever those old 70s trees were made of. A few feet away there’s a rotating color wheel that changed the tree different colors. He’s smiling. He’s got a 70s mustache that matches the tree. I have a vague memory of a thick white cableknit sweater. Philadelphia is cold. My parents immigrated to the United States when I was two years old. They moved to Philadelphia because people in small towns tend to immigrate to the same place. A community is displaced, and then rebuilds itself in a new place. And folks immigrating from the small town my parents were from all immigrated to Philadelphia. I’m guessing someone was first, but since the history of the Portuguese in the New World doesn’t tend to reveal good things, I never went looking. I’m guessing this photo would’ve been taken during their first Christmas here, which would’ve happened after they’d been here almost a year, since we immigrated in January. Although I’ve always been tentative about using the verb immigrated for myself. I was two. I’m an immigrant, but I never really immigrated. I was luggage. (I’m willfully omitting my younger brother from this story because although he is also an immigrant he voted for a man who kidnaps immigrants, and I am petty. I get to be petty today. I am erasing him.) Going back to the photo, as I rotate the scene—which it occurs to me I’m doing for the first time right now, never having given it a thought—I’m picturing my mother with a camera in hand. Some form a cheap Kodak 135 instamatic with a rotating cube flash (I have a vague memory of it). I imagine that she’s smiling back at my father, and it occurs to me that they didn’t smile at each other too often. Certainly not recently. But this photo is possibly evidence that they once did. I wonder what their first year in a new country was like. I’m sure it was frightening at times, but this photo—which is now most likely lost—is evidence that maybe, just maybe, for a brief moment they might’ve smiled at each other more, and possibly even loved one another. I’m currently on a flight to Lisbon to bury my father, who once bought a foil or aluminum or whatever it’s made of Christmas tree in Philadelphia and brought it home, to a shitty third floor walk-up, and set it up and then sat cross-legged on the floor in front of it, smiling at my mother while she took his picture and I am so so so fucking mad that man is dead, but that man died a long long time ago. And I am even madder about that. I am so fucking angry at you for not staying that person for longer than that moment. That one fucking moment that I have to hold so close because you gave us so few of them. And now I’m crying on a flight, and I am angry at myself because you do not deserve it. I want to put a stranger in the ground, but try as I might, you refuse to be that. Because there were moments that gave me hope. Moments that made me realize you were capable of more. I honestly tried so hard to get more of those moments out of you, and I hate you for withholding them. (This is an eleven hour flight, and I’ve slipped into the second person. I pity my readers this week. You are well and truly fucked.) Speaking of which; the last thing my father told me was to go fuck myself. This happened on the phone a few years ago, during a call with my mother. I heard her turn away from the phone and ask him if he wanted to say hello. I heard him reply in the background. Tell him to go fuck himself. And that was that. Death does not make saints, and I have neither the desire nor the power for beatification tonight. My father has died many times (although this current death seems particularly final). There is a particularly brutal death in the death of hope. The moment you realize that there won’t be a reconciliation, that the moment movies have taught us is possible, when an aging parent and a wayward offspring (they will always see me as wayward) come to an understanding, when the mistakes of the past are laid out for sifting through, and the clouds—both real and metaphorical—part, and they see you as you are and you see them as they are, and there’s a big cry. Followed by apologies, promises to do better, and possibly a shared tapioca at the home where that parent is living out their last days. And those movies generally end with the offspring and an underwritten but supportive spouse standing in front of a fresh grave so the offspring has someone to turn to and say “I’m glad I finally got to know him” before the credits roll and everyone immediately calls their mother. That moment doesn’t happen in real life. There is only the brutal awareness that time is slipping away and any hope of reconciliation, any hope of asking about that Christmas photo slips away with it. And that is brutal, but generally how it happens. Life isn’t written according to the rules of magical realism. There is only time, and time begets death. And it’s on us to work those two ingredients into a life that matters. To live it in such a way that our life is filled with love, and to live it in such a way that we become intertwined with other lives that we can fill with love and they, in turn, replenish our own lives with love. And if we manage to do this close-to-right (because perfectly is impossible), death is earned in a way that what we leave behind weighs more than what we put in the ground. Graves are heavy things when we end up burying hope along with bodies. There is another memory, in another apartment (there were many apartments, we moved almost yearly), and there are three of us now. (I have little to say about my youngest brother as well.) I don’t remember what particular mistake this was atoning for, but my father told us all to get in the car. He drove us to Sears on Roosevelt Boulevard, which is long gone, and told us to pick out baseball equipment. We thought this was odd because he’d never shown an interest in baseball, and I’m not sure any of us had either at that point. But we picked out gloves, a couple of balls, and an aluminum bat. I also remember that we bought Baltimore Orioles caps, which sticks with me because I’m not sure why a department store in Philadelphia would’ve had these in stock, but we most likely chose them because there was a cartoon bird on the cap, and we liked cartoons. He then drove us out to a park where he attempted to play baseball with us, which none of us could do. And I remember as his rage grew with every errant throw, and every missed catch, and every whiff of the bat, and I remember a slap, and I remember all the baseball equipment ending up in a trash can on the way to the car. I remember a silent ride home. I can’t remember if he came home with us, or if he angrily dropped us off. Most likely it was the latter, because I’m playing the odds. As time stretched away from the moment when that first Christmas photo was taken, home became less of a place where my parents would take smiling photos of each other and more of a place where he would stash the family he had grown to regret. The baseball story is a recurring theme with my father. The big moment that was supposed to make up for a thousand little missed moments. The large gesture that, in his mind, made all the kicks and slaps—and later, punches—something that could be brushed under the table. And even then, the big moment ended with a return to form. Children are not made for big moments. They cannot hold them. We didn’t want baseball equipment, we wanted him to smile when he looked at us. We wanted him—as stupidly cliché as it is—to tell us that he was proud of us. And since we’ve jumped into the cliché pool and we’re already wet—yes, I am flying to bury a man who never told me he loved me. But I say with with some amount of certainty, all children are born ready to love their parents. It takes a lot to push that away, and now that I’m a father myself I cannot imagine why someone would push away this amazing thing, this love, this thing that helps to keep me alive. And now I’m crying, not because of him but because I am thinking of my daughter, and how amazing it feels to hug her and tell her that I love her, and to know that she loves me back, and that we have a relationship of small moments. Moments that can be held in our hearts, but also moments that we know we don’t have to cherish like a lost half-century old photograph because our moments are abundant. I cannot wait to hug my daughter again, and to tell her I love her. But to do that I have to bury my father. Sometimes, to raise our children we have to bury our fathers multiple times. And here I will finally begin to answer your question: How do you lovingly care for an aging parent who treated you like shit? And look, I’ll be straight up and tell you that I had no idea where this was going when I started, but it revealed itself. You loving care for an aging parent by protecting his grandchildren from his sins. You lovingly care for an aging parent by making sure that the way they treated you stops with you. You lovingly care for an aging parent by learning how to love others, and by letting them love you. You lovingly care for an aging parent by digging multiple graves, the first one for their sins, and the second one for their body. As my therapist likes to remind me, my father hurt me because most likely someone hurt him. And while that doesn’t make it ok, it does contain the key on how to stop a cycle that doubtlessly has been running full steam in my family for generations. And that cycle is over, as least as far as one of three sons is concerned. (I fear it will continue for the other two.) Which explains why I’m on this flight, getting closer to his body with every word I type. It’s not because I believe in closure. It’s because I need to prove to myself that the man who raised me didn’t break me. That even though he didn’t teach me the right thing, I have learned what the right thing is. And it took some fucking work, man. And I am putting him in the ground in the same cemetary where generations of my ancestors have been put in the ground. And somehow, I need to let these ghosts, all these wretched ghosts that are expecting me in their genetic haunting ground, know that I won’t be joining them. This is the last of our dead we’ll put in this ground. We are done. A new cycle is starting, a cycle of small moments. A cycle where a child’s love is rewarded, and appreciated, and returned in kind. A cycle where we hold each others’ hands, and laugh at each other’s jokes, and fill each other with joy. And love. I was hoping to end this with the realization that, despite it all, I loved my father. And maybe I do, I’m still not sure. But I can say, without any doubt at all, that I wanted to. Man, I really wanted to. It was there for the taking. All he had to do was reach out. I’m truly sorry he didn’t. I think I would’ve been a good son. <hr/>❤️‍🩹 Thank you for making it to the end. This one was hard, and holy shit… I bet there’s a part two for the flight back! Buckle up, because Mom’s on the ground is she’s gonna want some stage time! <hr/>🖐️ Got a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-bury-your-father" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>! You too can get a feel-good reply like this one. 🍉 Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-bury-your-father" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. They’ve lost so much more than most of us can even fathom. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-bury-your-father" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>, and for fuck sake, if there is a trans kid in your life please love them. They are so so so so ready to love you back.

How to raise children

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Feb 13, 2026

<figure><img alt="A painting with a stick attached, so it looks like a protest sign. The background is pink, and in lighter pink it says FUCK ICE." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/973c7976-8555-43e5-9d77-e3562cb3783a.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>A wee little painting (11×14”, sans stick) I made last week. This one got auctioned off on Bluesky to help folks in Minnesota. I’m making more.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from April Piluso: My daughter turns 3 this month. I want to help her have fewer troubles than I did by teaching her about boundaries, values, independent thinking etc. I think if more kids learned this stuff, we’d have more good humans and fewer jerks. What do YOU think every kid should grow up knowing? Every kid should grow up knowing they are loved. Everything else is pretty close to a rounding error. Ok, maybe not a rounding error. I’m exaggerating to make a point. But honestly, there is nothing a child needs more in life than knowing they are loved. Love can make up for a lack of a lot, but a lack of love is very hard to make up for. Regular readers of this newsletter will now be familiar that I didn’t grow up in the best household. I grew up in an abusive household. I also grew up poor. And when I look back on my childhood, growing up poor wasn’t really a big deal. It was just a fact of life. And to be clear, poor is very subjective. We always had a roof over our head. We didn’t miss meals. I knew we were poor because every Sunday my parents would pile us in the car and go for a drive around the rich neighborhoods in town, getting progressively more upset about our own circumstances, and blaming each other—and their kids—for not being able to live in one of those fancy houses. Meanwhile, my brothers and I sat in the back seat, being as quiet as possible so as to not draw my father’s growing anger. We didn’t know we were poor until my father started hitting us for being poor. I’ll tell you a story, but first—some cultural background: in Portugal, where my parents grew up, if you had a house for rent you’d make a paper cutout and tape it to the windows. (This was pre-internet, obviously.) The cutout could be any of a number of things, probably made by whichever kid the landlord deemed to be “the artistic one.” No, I don’t know how this started, and it’s not the point of our story so I’m not looking it up. One Sunday afternoon, we’re driving around doing our routine wealth tourism on The Mail Line, and my dad stops the car. He pulls over. “Go see if that house is for rent.” I turn towards the house he’s pointing at. This thing was an old-school two-story mansion. Very old-Philadelphia money. Whoever built it probably has their name on a hospital now. Anyway, I ask him why he thinks the house (that we obviously cannot afford) is for rent. “You see the cut-outs on the window?” “Yeah, it’s Christmas. Those are snowflakes.” The slap came before I finished the sentence. Followed by the scream to get the fuck out of the car and do what I was told. So off I went, crying. I rang the doorbell. Some unsuspecting stranger opened the door, wondering why some crying kid was standing there and asking if the house was for rent, even though I knew it was not. He seemed understandably confused, but politely told me it was not, then closed the door. Receding, I’m sure, to a nearby curtain that he could peek out of. (Or possibly straight to the phone to call the police about immigrants in the neighborhood.) I walked back to the car, knowing what was coming. And when I told him the house wasn’t for rent, sure enough—it came. Right across the face. We drove home in silence, where he dropped us all off and went off to do something else with people who were not his family, who he hated. So yeah, when I think back on growing up, it’s not the lack of anything—except the lack of love—that I think about. Love and safety. Made all the more worse because every once in a while I’d get a glimpse of what those things were like. Sometimes he’d come home in a good mood. Sometimes he’d muss my hair on the way in. But those times were rare, but the fact that they existed at all let me know that they were possible, which made it that much crueler. Fast forward decades to a therapist’s office where my therapist—who I’m sure isn’t reading this—is telling me that my own relationships are falling apart because how am I supposed to love anyone else when I never learned what love was like growing up. (Yes, my therapist is RuPaul.) If you were raised in a similar environment, please believe me when I tell you that it is never too late to learn how to love. You don’t have to carry your parents’ sins into your relationship with your own children. Every kid should grow up knowing they are loved. Telling a child you love them is free. Also, while I by no means an expert in the field, and my opinions should be treated with much salt, I tend to believe that children are born good. They’re born full of love. They’re born full of confidence. (How fucking confident do you have to be to take that first step?!) They’re born curious. They’re born wanting to be part of a community. It’s not so much that we need to teach them these things, as much as we need to encourage them to keep believing these things. And protect them from people who would work to destroy those things. Yes, this is about AI. The AI industry can only succeed if it separates people from their joy and their confidence. An industry run by people who were not raised with love, attempting to steal it from others. I’ve written about this before, but every child is born loving to draw. They draw on everything. They demand crayons in restaurants. They draw on your walls. You should let them do so. Fuck your walls. It’s easier to eventually paint over a wall, than to rebuild a child’s confidence. It’s wild to me that we parent our children to fit into society, then get together with our friends and talk about how broken society is. I’ve seen people rail against our broken educational system, then demand their children get straight As in school. I’ve seen people complain about not having any time to themselves and then schedule every minute of their kid’s life. There is more we can learn from children than they can learn from us. Mostly we need to support children and let them know that they are loved. Children are so ready to love you back. For every cruel thing my father did to me, anytime he walked through the door and mussed my hair I was ready to give him another chance. I was so ready to love him. Congratulations on your daughter turning three. The fact that you’re worried about this stuff is usually a sign that you’re on the right path. The funny thing about parenting is that the people who are most worried about messing it up, are the ones most likely to get it right. I’m old enough that I’ve seen a lot of my friends have kids, and those kids are now adults in their own right. And one of the first things I noticed was that the folks who were the most chaotic, the most fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants, the most worried about fucking things up… they were the ones who ended up incorporating their kids into their messy lives, encouraging them to be themselves, giving them the space to be curious, to climb trees, to draw on the walls, to ask their neighbors for help. And ultimately, hold everything together with love. While the friends who made plans, and spreadsheets, and made lists of goals, and fretted about their kids not being able to tie their shoes yet, or read at a certain level yet—and by the way, I totally understand wanting to do these things, and worrying about these things—they were so concerned with how things were supposed to be going that they totally missed how things were actually going. Which is that this new amazing human was unfolding before your eyes, and while it might not be the human you were expecting… aren’t they amazing?!? And if you don’t understand them, well child what happened to your curiosity?! Your kid is going to be alright. With enough love, your kid is going to be alright. Don’t judge your children, love them. Because they will, in turn, love you back. And when they do—holy fucking shit, it’s just amazing. My daughter’s coming over for dinner tonight. I can’t wait to hug her and tell her I love her. I love you for asking this question. <hr/>🙋 Got a question for me? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-raise-children" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>! 📕 My new book, <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/how-to-die-and-other-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-raise-children" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">How to die (and other stories)</a>, is now available for pre-order! It’s stories from this newsletter. It’s very handsome. Yes, you want it! 📆 Related, but secret… if you’re in the Bay Area, please circle May 21 on your calendar. All will be revealed in time. 📣 There’s a couple spots left in next week’s <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting-work-with-confidence-tickets-1981439989347?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-raise-children" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Presenting w/Confidence</a> workshop. Sign up, we’ll have fun hanging out, we’ll make fun of AI slop, then I’ll help you get a job. 💰 If you’re enjoying this newsletter please consider joining the <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-raise-children" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">$2 Lunch Club</a>! Writing is labor and labor gets paid, right? 🍉 Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-raise-children" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. The ceasefire is a lie. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-raise-children" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>, and for fuck sake if there is a trans child in your life PLEASE tell them you love them, they are SO ready to love you back.

How to whistle for help

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Oct 23, 2025

<figure><img alt="The bottom edge of a painting with lots of wax dripping off it, and a stick connected to the bottom." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/f01fbb95-82ae-4b0a-8c24-e64b437c9ded.jpg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>Soon I will start looking for a new painting studio.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>Whistles aint cheap. <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-whistle-for-help" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Gimme $2</a>. <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Betsy Streeter: How can you be of help to someone when they don’t want anyone to help them? You can’t. Unless they’re drowning, trapped under a building, inside a flipped car, or some other life-threatening situation, most people will not accept help that they haven’t asked for. There’s lots of reasons for this, and we’ll go through a few, but the most important one is that you don’t get to decide when someone else needs help. Even if it’s totally obvious—to you—that they need it, someone has to decide for themselves that they need it, before they’re even open to the conversation. So when you offer to help somebody that doesn’t believe they need it, they’re not going to take it. Because in their mind they don’t need it. They may just not want to admit they need it. To themselves or to you. And while we can debate whether this is pride, or stubbornness, or mistrust, or some other thing—all of which we can do without passing judgement, by the way—it ends up having the same effect. They will not take the help. One of the guiding principles at Mule is the “ask vs offer” rule, which is something that we picked up from a long-forgotten (by which I mean too lazy to google) article in a newspaper that’s probably run by fascists now. The rule is that you can’t offer people help. They have to ask for it. Which sounds almost cruel, but I assure you it’s the exact opposite. Let’s run through a scenario. Someone is trying to use the printer and it’s not printing. All-too-common scenario. They start muttering under their breath, they start negotiating with the printer, they start pulling paper trays and opening little doors on the printer looking for a jam, and then slamming those doors shut. Just a little louder every time. And because this is happening in an open space, everyone can hear it, and is thrown off whatever they were previously trying to do. Eventually, someone will ask “Hey, do you need help?” And the person at the printer will say something passive aggressive about how they’re just trying to get the printer to work. Until the second person eventually walks over, after a big huge sigh, mostly because they’d like the noise to stop. That’s “offer” culture. You need help, but you don’t want to ask for it, so you’re waiting for it to be offered. And even when it’s offered, you attempt to shrug it off, even though it’s the thing you’ve been passive-aggressively looking for the whole time. It’s exhausting. In “ask” culture, the person who’s trying to use the printer encounters the problem, tries a few routine fixes (if they know any), and then says “Hey, I need help with a printer jam.” And someone would say “I had one of those a few days ago. I can help you in five minutes.” No one else is bothered. No one is wondering if help is needed, because it was asked for. Everyone can stay focused on whatever they were doing, which was probably playing Snood. (The old games are best.) Asking for help is often seen as a weakness. And we all carry around memories and traumas of times when we were brave enough to ask, and got shot down for it. The other part of “ask” culture was that you have to respond to the request for help. And unless it was needed immediately, like someone about to drop a large jug of water you were intending to load into the water cooler, you could let people know when that help was available. Thus “I can help you in five minutes.” Of course, the real lesson of being about to drop a large jug of water, was to ask for help before attempting to lift it by yourself. Asking for help is often seen as optional, even though needing help is not. A two-person job will always be a two-person job, even if one person is willing to see if they can make it a one-person job. I am so guilty of this. I’ve carried refrigerators up flights of stairs on my back, rather than ask for help. Mostly because in the moment I believe asking for help will slow me down, and it might, but it also vastly decreases the odds that I’ll end up crushed by a refrigerator. I am not a good role model for asking for help. It’s also important to understand when people are actually asking for help, and when they’re just venting. I’m part of a secret little friends’ community where people do a fair share of complaining. (Look around, there’s a lot to complain about.) Sometimes it’s about work. Sometimes it’s about the world. Sometimes it’s about home. Sometimes it’s about the insane bureaucracy of dealing with a medical problem. We’ve gotten good at asking “Are you venting or looking for help?” when this happens. Sometimes people just need to get it out. And because we’re helpful people, who like to solve problems, we tend to immediately jump in with a solution. But if someone isn’t looking for help, they’re not going to take it. Which then makes us all upset that we offered help and it wasn’t taken. Help must be asked for. So when someone tells us they’re just venting we say carry on, and then throw some hug emojis on their message to let them know they were seen. It’s fine to vent, as long as the audience is open to being vented to. Sometimes they’ll come back later and tell us that now they’re ready for help. Sometimes they’ll come back and say “Hey that venting really helped me sort it out in my head and I figured it out.” Which means that just listening to people is incredibly helpful. I’m going to say that again: sometimes just listening to people is incredibly helpful. So many people just need to feel heard. Sometimes when we complain that people won’t take our help what we really mean is they won’t follow our instructions. We can’t assume that’s what people need. Sometimes people just need to be heard. They need to hear themselves describe their problem, or see it typed out by their own hand. And when we jump to giving them instructions that weren’t asked for we’re telling people that we don’t believe they’re capable of figuring out by themselves. Which they might not be, but coming to that realization on your own opens you up to receiving help in a way that having help imposed on you, even with good intention, tends to close people off. I think sometimes our offer of help is really about people not doing something the way we would do it, or with the same efficiency that we would do it. Any parent who’s struggled watching their kids learn how to tie their shoes is familiar with this, and also knows when to let them struggle a bit to figure it out, and when to jump in when they’re exasperated. (Yes, there’s a point where you need to just open the can of beans for your kid.) So maybe the answer is to sit down with someone first, bring ‘em a cup of coffee and a donut and just chat. Hear what they have to say, and if the moment presents itself ask them if they need help. And even if all signs point to them absolutely needing it, you have to be okay with them saying that they don’t. Maybe follow it up with “let me know if things change.” Be careful not to say “if you change your mind” because that implies that you are being a fool for not accepting my help. “If things change” leaves open the possibility that the situation got worse than anticipated, and sometimes that just enough mental wiggle room for the person you’re trying to help to eventually take you up on your offer. Also, believing that someone needs help doesn’t necessarily make it true. You might be imposing your own values on someone who’s perfectly fine being how they are. But look, if your goal is to help people, boy do I have good news! There’s a ton of people out there right now asking for help. Whether it’s people you see on your way to work, or organizations looking for money, or groups that need your help cooking meals for people, or a scout troop looking for troop leader, or a local teacher who could use help in the classroom. There are literally people in front of stores asking for money so they can eat. All those people are willingly asking for help. I suggest giving it to them and giving it to them on their terms. When someone is asking for money for a sandwich it’s because they’re hungry. Are there larger systematic issues that put people in that position? Absolutely, and you should work with your community to help solve those. But right now that person needs a sandwich. When someone tells you the kind of help they need, believe them. My friends and I are currently looking at resources on how to make ICE warning kits, which I’ve had to ask a friend in Chicago about. We’re doing this because we’re trying to help our neighbors. The fascist thugs making it necessary to do this are invading our cities under the pretense of helping us. Which of course they’re not. But we also once rounded up Americans of Japanese descent “for their own protection.” So much of our planet is still trying to recover from American “help.” Help isn’t always helpful. America has a long history of “helping” people that ended up being anything but. In my own city, I’ve seen mayor after mayor attempt to “help” the unhoused by clearing away their belongings and moving them to where they wouldn’t hopefully be seen. We have a history of help that gives help a bad name. I’m glad you want to help people. Many of us need it. Many of us are capable of offering it. The first step in helping someone is building trust, and we have a lot of work to do there. <hr/>🇳🇴 I’ll be in Oslo next week giving a talk. So I’ll be taking a newsletter break. Meanwhile… 🙋 …it would be amazing to come back to a new mountain of questions to pick from. Got one? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-whistle-for-help" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>! 📣 Dan Sinker, who’s been dealing with this shit in Chicago, was kind enough to pass along the info for making <a href="https://www.pilsenartscommunityhouse.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-whistle-for-help" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Whistle Kits</a> from the good folks at Pilsen Arts & Community House. 🥶 Here’s <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/fuck-ai-sweater?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-whistle-for-help" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">a really stupid sweater</a> I designed that you can buy. 💀 …and <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/dont-build-the-torment-nexus-zine?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-whistle-for-help" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">a really stupid zine</a> that you can also buy. 📣 Oh, and I have a few slots open for the next <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting-work-with-confidence-tickets-1754965010589?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-whistle-for-help" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Presenting w/Confidence</a> workshop. Most importantly, since this newsletter is about helping people… 🍉 Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-whistle-for-help" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. The ceasefire is a fucking lie. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-whistle-for-help" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>.

How to survive high school

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Jan 30, 2026

<figure><a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/how-to-die-and-other-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-survive-high-school" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img alt="My friend Milly’s well-manicured hand holding a test copy of my new book!" draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/fc4bbdd9-07ab-4c5f-8be1-77b983e055d7.png?w=960&fit=max"/></a><figcaption>My friend Milly’s well-manicured hand holding a test copy of my new book! It’s SO pretty.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Nika: I am 14 years old. I have friends my age. They’re nice, I like them, but they are sort of boring—even the weird ones!—and it’s hard to have engaging conversations. How do I get through high school like this? High school sucks. Every day I wake up and give thanks that I’m not in high school anymore. The only thing worse than high school is middle school, and your reward for getting through middle school is to get thrown in high school. I’m sorry. The worst part of high school might be that your parents—who previously went on at great lengths to anyone that would listen about the inadequacies and failures of the American school system like the good stylish Marxists that they probably were—will now demand that you get straight As in all your classes, do all your homework, develop lasting friendships, and respect the authority of your school administrators. Mostly because they don’t want to get calls from the school. I’m sorry for that as well. I also had a terrible time in high school. I went to high school a long time ago, and even though odds are high that we’re still using the same textbooks, it feels like a lot of the things that have changed between now and then would’ve made high school an even worse experience for me. For example, cell phones and social media. Whatever embarrassing incidents might’ve happened back then were witnessed by a few people, did their time through the grapevine, and eventually got moved on from. Even though it felt like forever back then, getting stuffed in a locker had a pretty short shelf life. It didn’t get posted on social media for the whole world to see. Which is brutal. So as hard as high school was while I was going through it, I can only imagine how much harder it is now. So I feel your pain. Now, you seem like an interesting kid, so I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Most people are boring. Yes—even the weird ones. And that’s ok. Because everyone is who they are, and we love everyone as they are. And mostly, because I’d rather deal with boring people than cruel people. Now I’m going to let you in on a big secret: everyone is interesting. Even the boring people. In their own amazing way. I guarantee you that everyone you know is interesting in a way you haven’t figured out yet. Your job is to figure out what that is! So my advice would be to stop having conversations with these kids, because a conversation requires both parties to be engaged and interested in the same way. Instead, just do little fun interviews with the other kids. Ask them what they’re into. Ask them what their favorite foods are. Ask them what games they like to play. Be genuinely curious about who they are and what they do. And then really listen to their answers. Because I guarantee you, all of those “boring” kids will have at least one interesting thing to tell you. Maybe you’ll find out that one of those kids is really into pencils, and while pencils might seem like a really boring thing to be into, the fact that someone is really into them? That’s interesting. Ask them how many pencils they have. Ask them what their favorite pencil is. Ask them how pencils are made. Watch as they get super excited as they tell you everything they know about pencils. Maybe one of those “boring” kids is really really into Taylor Swift, and while Taylor Swift may not be your cup of tea (or maybe she is!) don’t you wanna know why someone is that much into something? I do! And the fact that you’re asking them about what they care about will make them feel good about themselves. And making people feel good about themselves is great. You’ll learn something, and you might make a friend. Everyone is interesting. It’s your job to figure out in what way. And sometimes, kids are just shy. You have to be interested in them to get them to warm up to you. Also, having “boring” friends will be incredibly useful when you get older because your parents are tracking you on your phone, and you can leave your phone at your boring friend’s house while you go out committing crimes. <hr/>❤️‍🩹 I am rushing to send this out today because I am joining the General Strike tomorrow. No school (that means you, Nika), no work, no buying shit. We stand with the people of Minnesota. Fuck ICE. There is probably a march, or a gathering, or a protest where you live. If you’re in SF I’ll see you at Dolores Park at 1pm. <hr/>🙋 Got a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-survive-high-school" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>! I’ll give a meandering answer that may or may not help you. Roll the dice! 📓 My new book, <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/how-to-die-and-other-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-survive-high-school" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">How to die (and other stories)</a>, is available for pre-order! It’s SO handsome. You’ll be so glad you got one. 🖤 <a href="https://defector.com/dan-mcquade-1983-2026?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-survive-high-school" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">RIP Dan McQuade</a>, a good Philly Guy. 🍪 If you’ve been thinking to yourself “man, I really want to help people in Minnesota, but I also want some cookies, AND I’d also like to help out trans, neurodiverse, and BIPOC youth“ boy oh boy do I have <a href="https://digitalcookie.girlscouts.org/scout/troop58515c477?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-survive-high-school" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">some good news for you</a>! 📣 The next <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting-work-with-confidence-tickets-1981439989347?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-survive-high-school" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Presenting w/Confidence</a> workshop is scheduled for February 19 and 20. Get a ticket and get over all your fears and anxieties. Yes, all of them! 💰 If you’re enjoying this newsletter you can <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-survive-high-school" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">give me $2/mo</a> to encourage my bullshit (by which I mean help pay my rent) 🍉 Please donate what you can to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-survive-high-school" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate what you can to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-survive-high-school" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>. All this brutality is interconnected. None of us are safe until we’re all safe. ❤️

How to fix a Kit Kat clock

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Jan 16, 2026

<figure><img alt="A shelf in my art studio filled with wax cups in different colors. Forbidden Reese's cups!" draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/ad6df144-7a72-4f95-b71d-7e39ac80d623.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>I haven’t started making anything in my new art studio yet, but I organized!</figcaption></figure> <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Gwen Dubois: How do I keep functioning in a capitalist world? I am going to tell you a very shameful story. Erika got me a Kit Kat clock for Christmas. For those who are unaware, a Kit Kat clock is shaped like a cat, with a clock in its belly, and eyes and a tail that go back and forth like a metronome. I’m sure you’ve seen one. They go back to the deco age of the 1930s, and if you’ve ever dated someone with bangs they have one in their kitchen. They’re usually black. Erika got me a kelly green one. (Go birds. Fuck ICE. Free Palestine.) I was very happy to get it. On Christmas night, after friends and family had all left, I decided to hang up my Kit Kat clock. I rummaged through the junk drawer (I’m kidding, they’re all junk drawers.) until I found two C batteries, inserted them in the clock, then hung it up. The eyes and tail weren’t moving. I gave the tail a little push. Nothing. Hmm. I took it down and checked the batteries, which had expired in… 2018. Batteries expire? I decided to deal with it tomorrow. The next day I walked up to my local ma and pa drugstore (I’m kidding, it’s a fucking CVS) and bought a fresh pack of C batteries. I went home, put in the new batteries, put the clock back on the wall, and… nothing. Gave the tail a little push, and… nothing. This time I decided to see if the clock itself was working. I checked the time, came back 30 minutes later, and… the clock was working. This most likely eliminated the batteries as the source of the problem. By this point Erika was on the internet doing what she does best, research. Readers, there are a lot of videos out there on fixing Kit Kat clocks. We tried a few different things and none of them worked. Finally, we found a video that told us the most likely culprit was that the magnets used in the clock to make the eyes and tail move probably weren’t strong enough but could be easily fixed by adding more magnets to the clock. I was into this solution for two reasons: magnets and a reason to go to the hardware store, which I love. So off I went to the local hardware store. “Do you have 8mm by 1mm neodymium magnets?” (The video was very specific.) “All we have is what’s in the case.” They weren’t in the case. No biggie, there’s another hardware store five blocks away, and it was a nice day for a walk. Sadly that store didn’t have 8mm by 1mm neodymium magnets either. (Fun medical fact! Neodymium magnets come with very large warnings about keeping them away from children and idiotic adults who will think it’s funny to swallow them, except that they’re so strong they’ll get stuck in different parts of your colon and accordion your colon when they attract each other, as magnets do. The results aren’t good, but on the upside the surgery is incredibly expensive.) Having struck out at the two local hardware stores I could walk to, I decided to wait a few days and go to the even bigger, but still locally run, hardware store by work. (Shout-out to Center Hardware!) Which I did. They had an extensive supply of magnets, neodymium and otherwise (No, I don’t know what the difference is.), but unfortunately, not the specific size I needed. Here comes the shameful part. At this point I was so frustrated that I opened the Amazon app on my phone and ordered 8mm by 1mm neodymium magnets, which of course they had. A couple days later a shame-filled envelope showed up at my door with one hundred 8mm by 1mm neodymium magnets inside. (I need two.) And, yes, I realize I hadn’t exhausted all other options, including other online options, before resorting to Amazon. But I let frustration get to me and took the easy way out. None of this specifically answers your question, but it’s related and I needed to get it off my chest. Still, I feel like I at least tried to buy these magnets at three local stores before letting frustration get the better of me. And what I’m maybe saying is that it’s sometimes hard to use the system differently than it's been designed to work. Because at this point, the system is definitely designed to get me to go to Amazon first. A few days ago I was sitting in the local dogpark when the ever-popular topic of San Francisco’s downtown came up. Apparently another big store had shuttered. And the Old Men of the Dogpark™had much to say about “the state of things” including crime sprees and other make-believe bullshit that was keeping people from doing their shopping downtown. As they’re saying this I’m watching various Amazon trucks circle the park. Finally I asked one of them when he’d last bought something at Amazon. “Last night.” “Where would you have bought that before Amazon?” “Downtown.” Three things are happening here: our options are disappearing, we’re being sold a bullshit narrative about why our options are disappearing, and the evil alternative—which isn’t an alternative at all because it’s killing all its competition—feels incredibly easy. Because it is. You open your phone. Every item you could ever want is there. You push a button. It comes to you. Your city dies. I’m gonna turn into an old man for just a minute. There was a time, not that long ago actually, when I could’ve walked four blocks to a Radio Shack and said “You got magnets?” And they would’ve showed me a wall of magnets. Then, just to rub it in, I could’ve stopped next door at Tower Records and spent an hour looking at magazines before picking out a record and walking back home. And I honestly miss doing shit like that, but I realize that these are part of my past, and trying to convince people that my past was better than their present is incredibly annoying, doesn’t solve shit, and is deserving of all the eye-rolls you are now giving me. And yet… Radio Shack was fucking glorious. Rant over. So how do we function within capitalism? I lied. Rant not over. Not quite. Because the lesson we can take from how “things used to be” is that we used to have options. The endgame of surveillance capitalism is to take away as many options as possible, which sounds to me a lot like a company store. Where your dollar can only go to the one place that provides the thing you need, at the one price it costs, at the one quality it’s offered. And honestly, if I were to look outside and see a lot of joy and happiness and people enjoying their one life here on Earth I’d be inclined to say “Good job, here’s my dollar!” But that’s not what I see. Half my neighbors are afraid of being shot in the face by the government, and the other half are providing that same government with their own surveillance data by covering their homes in nest cams inside and out. Orwell fucking wept. Unfortunately, capitalism is here and will probably remain here for the foreseeable future. Even if we, hopefully, start adopting some of the tenets of socialism, we will be interweaving it with capitalism. Which means we need to be more intentional about where we put our dollar, and we need to be aware of what we’re actually trading for our dollar. Once upon a time (here he goes again), if I went to the hardware store and bought a light bulb that is exactly what I got. A light bulb. Depending on the hardware store my purchase might trigger a subtraction to their inventory database, and if they were really fancy, there might be a record that I bought a light bulb which might could be useful in a few years if I were to go back, be confused, and ask them if they knew what kind of light bulbs I’d bought last time. But for the most part, me walking out with a pack of light bulbs was the end of the transaction. These days, a light bulb purchase is the beginning of a transaction. You screw in the lightbulb, you fire up your lightbulb app, you set up a scenario, you get the light bulb to talk to your phone, you make it behave depending on your phone’s distance to it, or the time of day, etc. All of this creates juicy data that is then bought and sold by the light bulb company, the app manufacturer, and probably Palantir who then sells it to ICE so they know when you’re home. Motherfucker, you just needed a light bulb, man. So yeah, I miss the capitalism where I exchanged my dollar for your light bulb and that was the end of that. Turns out smart homes are anything but. Peter Thiel does not need to know what kind of light bulbs you use. Or when you’re home. If we are going to keep functioning in a capitalist world we need to be more careful about where we are spending our money. The local hardware store will only be there as long as you keep using it. Same for the local grocery store, the local café, the local record store, the local pet store, etc. And while it might be easier to get something delivered to your door, I’d encourage you to pay those folks a visit once in a while. Those people are part of your community. Jeff Bezos is barely part of humanity. He does not deserve your dollar. The people at Target do not deserve your dollar. The union-busters at Whole Foods do not deserve your dollar. As someone who does a lot of shipping of zines, books, and assorted other shit, Uline does not get my dollar. (Special shout-out to the DSA for sending out their calendar in a Uline mailer. Fuck yeah, I’m gonna call your ass out on that!) And yes, sometimes the right thing is gonna cost. $8 might seem a great price for a t-shirt—and if all you have is $8 and you need a t-shirt, go ahead and get it!—but selling you an $8 t-shirt means somebody somewhere is getting fucked. (To be fair, if you are at a concert and a t-shirt is $80, the person getting fucked is you.) The TL;DR on functioning in a capitalist world is to move a little slower, with a little more intention. Your dollar helps people stay in business. Be careful where you put it. I’m not saying it’s easy. As I told at the top of the story, I shamefully let frustration get to me and I took the easy way out. This’ll happen. But every time we keep doing it, we get closer and closer to having no other options than having to shop at a company store run by white supremacists. America has one neck, and it’s the economy. If you want to change how things are going, you have to change where you’re putting your dollar. <hr/>🙋 Got a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-fix-a-kit-kat-clock" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it!</a> It’s fun for both of us. 💰 Speaking of where you put your dollar, <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-fix-a-kit-kat-clock" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">gimme $2/mo</a> and help me keep writing this newsletter. 📣 There are a few seats left in next week’s workshop. If you’re job hunting this workshop will help you get your dollar. <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting-work-with-confidence-tickets-1980129910867?aff=oddtdtcreator&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-fix-a-kit-kat-clock" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Grab ‘em</a>! 🍉 Please give what you can to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-fix-a-kit-kat-clock" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. The ceasefire is bullshit. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please give what you can to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-fix-a-kit-kat-clock" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>.

How to avoid listening to Radiohead

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Nov 20, 2025

<figure><a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/2025-sock-of-shit?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-avoid-listening-to-radiohead" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img alt="A cheap mess xmas stocking filled with zines, stickers, pins, candy, cheap toys, and assorted other stuff" draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/2f80f6d1-9249-4e9f-9032-2ec5fe1ac2d3.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/></a><figcaption>Read all the way to the bottom for your goodie stocking.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>💰 <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-avoid-listening-to-radiohead" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Support my bullshit for $2/mo</a>💰 <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Mike Jacobsen: I love Radiohead. My wife, on the other hand, really hates them. We have come to an understanding that their music won’t be played in her presence. So my question is how do you convince your spouse of the virtues of Radiohead? You don’t. I’d encourage you to respect the understanding you claim to have reached with your wife, both in letter and in spirit. Cause right now you’re looking for a way to break that understanding. You’re using a ceasefire as an opportunity to find more ammunition, and I don’t want to help with that. I will of course help you, but not in the way you were hoping to. Which is kinda the lingua franca of this newsletter. (Look at me, getting fancy!) The bigger issue here is that you believe your spouse is wrong. That the virtues of Radiohead would just reveal themselves to her if she were to open her mind, or listen more carefully, or adjust her taste levels, or fix herself in some way as to make the undeniable virtues of their music obvious to her. Which is bullshit. She’s not wrong in not liking a band that you like, and you’re not wrong in liking a band that she doesn’t. You like different stuff, and not only is that okay, it’s necessary in a relationship. Part of being together is having things that you enjoy doing by yourself. I get that you’re trying to share something you enjoy. That’s a nice thing to do. You love a thing. It’s brought you good feelings. And you want to share those good feelings with someone you care about. You want them to enjoy something as much as you do. That’s commendable. I’d encourage you to keep doing that. Everyone is looking for more things to enjoy, and we certainly need them. And I bet you’ve probably recommended a bunch of stuff to your spouse, and to your friends, and to your neighbors, that hit the mark and brought them joy. You should hold on to those victories, and use them as data to build that little recommendation engine in your heart. And I’d also encourage you to remember your original intent—wanting to bring joy to someone you care about. Because that’s the key. Once your spouse says “yeah, Radiohead isn’t for me” that door is closed. You went in with good intention, which is commendable, but it didn’t work out. It happens. And because your original intent was to bring this person joy, you take the loss and move on. Doubling down and insisting that they’re wrong to not enjoy something is going to make someone feel bad. Which was the opposite of your original intent, yes? Yes. Also, you’re making music a chore, which is a sin. Let’s discuss one of the most violent phrases in the English language: “Did you read that book I gave you?” For the sake of transparency, I’ll admit to once having been one of these people. You come across a book, you decide someone would enjoy it, you give them a copy for their birthday, or Christmas, or just ‘cause. Then every time we see them we ask them if they’ve read it. What we’re really looking for is an award for having recommended the right book, or the right band, or the right TV show to someone. You’ve turned joy into a point accumulation exercise for yourself. I was lucky enough that someone eventually told me that every time I asked them if they’d read the book I gave them it made them feel guilty for not having read it yet. I’d turned a gift into a chore and chores making horrible gifts. I love recommending things to people. Music. Books. TV Shows. Movies. Restaurants. If I’m experiencing joy in something I want to spread it around and tell other people about it. And all those recommendations are made with good intention. I’ve also learned that once you make the original recommendation you need to back off. Either people will try something or they won’t. (Their lives might not be aligned with trying a new thing at the moment for a variety of reasons.) If they try it they might come back to you and tell you they enjoyed it, and that feels great. They might also enjoy it and not feel the need to report back, which is fine. Your joy should come from sharing a joyful thing, not from the validation that you were correct. But checking back in will always turn your recommendation into a chore, which no one wants. Speaking of which, let me talk about male friendship for a second here. Because male loneliness epidemic, blah blah. Sure, maybe. But in the past few years I’ve been in situations where I make friends with someone, we get to the point where we exchange numbers and within twenty minutes of shaking hands, talking about getting together for a drink later, or whatever, they’ve sent me a link to a 45 minute YouTube video from anything to making your own beer (I don’t drink) to smelting your own knife (are knives smelted?) to the truth about vaccination (I’m deleting and blocking your number.) Then exactly 45 minutes later they’ll text “What did you think of the video I sent?” My dudes, do not do this. I have watched exactly two videos over three minutes on YouTube, and both of them were sent to me by friends I have known forever. (One was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UoHb0ziMDA&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-avoid-listening-to-radiohead" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">a Bobby Fingers video</a>, one was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laZpTO7IFtA&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-avoid-listening-to-radiohead" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">a 6,7 explainer</a>.) The male loneliness epidemic could be cured if men agreed not to share videos with one another for the first six months of a relationship. Back to Radiohead. I’m going to do you a solid here, Mike. Because you asked a question about Radiohead and I usually listen to music while I write these newsletters, there was no way to really listen to anything except Radiohead while I wrote. I’m going to tell you something that might be crushing at first, but if you just sit with it for a little while you’ll realize what an incredibly lucky guy you are. Ready? Your spouse is correct. I started by listening to Kid A, which is ok. It’s passable. There are admittedly a few good songs on it. Then I dove into the deep end and put on A Moon-Shaped Pool, which is… not good, Mike. Honestly, it’s the kind of music you listen to if you’re sending other dudes 45-minute IPA explainer videos, or shit about the Roman Empire. I lasted maybe four songs. Then I retreated to Amnesiac, which I remember liking when it first came out. It’s better than A Moon-Shaped Pool, but I can’t stress this enough—almost everything is. So if I were you, I would be very happy that your spouse knows what they like, what they don’t like, and is willing to communicate that to you clearly. I’d stop bugging her about this, because she is correct. I am lucky enough that I live with someone who brings different musical tastes into the relationship. Our venn diagram is music we both like is fairly small, but it’s solid. Erika absolutely hates what she calls “sad white guy music,” which I enjoy. (Enjoy probably isn’t the right word. It’s more like I gravitate towards it sometimes because of a Catholic upbringing.) And while we haven’t come to a stated understanding that it won’t be played in her presence, if she’s close by and I’m putting on music I’ll try to put on something that I know we both enjoy because my goal is to create a shared space where we’re both comfortable. We have enough music that we both enjoy that I don’t feel like I’m being robbed of my “sad white guy music,” which I can put on when she’s off doing something else. And I’m sure she pulls out music I’m not crazy about when I’m not around. We got here by a lot of trial and error. I’ll put something on, she’ll either like it or not, and we go from there. Sometimes she’ll put something on, and I’ll do the same. (Somehow, she likes the Mountain Goats more than I do, which I cannot explain.) Sometimes she’ll get me to like something I was originally closed off to, and we end up at a Lady Gaga concert having a blast. Which is something I wouldn’t have pictured if she hadn’t tried, and maybe twisted my arm a little bit. I’m ok with that. So what I’m saying is go ahead and try. The gift is in the trying. But the gift is also in the letting go. Know when to let go. For every Radiohead you strike out with, there’s gonna be something you introduce each other to that hits the mark. And the sooner you move on from the misses, the sooner you get to the hits. But the best gift of all is that I can now stop listening to Radiohead. <hr/>🙋 Got a question for me? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-avoid-listening-to-radiohead" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it!</a> Unless it’s another question about Radiohead. I think we’re done there. 📣 The last <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting-work-with-confidence-tickets-1974520646406?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-avoid-listening-to-radiohead" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Presenting w/Confidence workshop</a> of 2025 is scheduled for December 11 & 12. Get your ticket, and treat yourself to two sessions of hanging out with amazing people like yourself. 🎅 Remember those cheap mesh stockings you got as a kid that were filled with candy and cheap toys? I made one filled with zines and stickers and other crap! <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/2025-sock-of-shit?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-avoid-listening-to-radiohead" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Get yourself one</a>! 💀 Don’t forget your <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/fuck-ai-sweater?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-avoid-listening-to-radiohead" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Fuck AI sweater</a>. When the bubble bursts you’re gonna make sure yours already looks a lit worn. 🦃 Thanksgiving reminder: <a href="https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-eat-with-others/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">you don’t owe your time to people who want your friends dead</a>. 💰 Enjoying the newsletter? <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-avoid-listening-to-radiohead" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">You can support my bullshit for $2/mo</a>. 🍉 The ceasefire is a lie. Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-avoid-listening-to-radiohead" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ Today is Trans Day of Remembrance. Please donate what you can to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-avoid-listening-to-radiohead" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>. They do the work.

How to listen to records

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Feb 20, 2026

<figure><img alt="36 hot pink whistles that say FUCK ICE fresh off a 3D printer." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/ed056921-9d78-4c44-9fac-ecd301ebc337.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>Yes, I bought a 3D printer just to make whistles. Fuck ICE.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Alan McCoy: What's your process for welcoming a new record into your collection? Ok, so here’s a recent story. A few weeks ago I headed to one of my locals with a bag of records in hand. I’d spent a couple of months putting aside records I didn’t want anymore, either because I decided I didn’t really care for them, or because someone in the band turned out to be a sexpest, or because I’d accidentally bought a copy of something I already had. There were lots of reasons, all vibe no formula. When you live in an apartment, space is at a premium, records come and go, and there’s a certain thrill when you can pay for new records with old records. So off I go with my little bag of records. I hop on the bus that takes me to the record store, I wander down a small hill, I get to the store, and hand my unwanted records to a clerk to be “evaluated” then wander the store looking for new records. Thirty minutes or so later, I’ve successfully exchanged a large stack of unwanted records for a smaller stack of new records that I’m ready to take home and listen to. As I head out of the store I spot my bus. Like an idiot I go running for it, only to trip on one of our many glorious uneven sidewalks, take a header, and land firmly on my chest. My little bag of records flew in one direction, my eyeglasses flew in a different direction, and I bruised a few ribs. Short aside about ribs: Ribs (and toes) are the cheapest bones in the human body to break. There’s absolutely nothing that a doctor can do for them other than to tell you to not do anything stupid for a few weeks and take a lot of ibuprofen. You can of course—if you’re insured—go to the ER where you’ll wait 8 hours to be seen by a doctor, get a very expensive x-ray, and then be told that you bruised a couple of ribs and just don’t do anything stupid and take a lot of ibuprofen until your ribs heal. (Oh, with toes you can just tape the broken one to one that’s not broken.) I cannot stress enough how much you shouldn’t take medical advice from me. Moving on… I got the wind knocked out of me, and my neighbors were nice enough to slowly get me up. Someone handed me my glasses. Someone handed me my bag of records. Several people asked me if I was ok, and when they realized I was unable to respond, they hung out a little bit until I could. Which was nice. Amazingly, the bus waited for me. And after thanking everyone for their help, I got on. Short aside about neighbors: if the last few weeks have taught us anything, it’s that neighbors will look out for one another in a way that no one else will. Once I took my seat on the bus, and the adrenaline started wearing off, I realized how hurt I was, which we’ve already covered. I also realize how much worse it could’ve been. I still had my teeth, I didn’t hit my head, I didn’t smash my eyeglasses. (Childhood trauma always has me check my eyeglasses before anything else.) I also realized that all my records were bent on the corner that hit the sidewalk. Just the covers. The discs turned out to be undamaged. But now, every time I pull out one of those records I’ll remember taking a header on the sidewalk, I’ll feel my ribs, and be thankful that they healed just fine. Then I’ll put the record on. Every record tells a story. Those records now have theirs. I’m lucky enough that I’ve been able to travel to various parts of the planet, and obsessed enough about records that the first thing I check for in an unfamiliar city is record stores. So every once in a while I’ll pull a record from the stacks and be transported to a cold February day in Copenhagen, or a warm summer evening in Melbourne, or that time I was able to successfully haggle for a very rare Beastie Boys box set in a hole-in-the-wall record store in Paris. All of those records have stories, and pulling a record from its cover is like pulling a memory out of a box. When my daughter still lived with us we’d go to the record store and I’d tell her to pick something out for me and then we’d walk home while she told me the story of that band, and why she’d picked it out. Those conversations would eventually reveal themselves to be about larger topics, which she might not have been ready to talk about otherwise. All the records she chose for me now contain those memories as well. Obviously, there’s nothing about records that make them uniquely capable of holding onto and triggering memories. Your thing might be postcards, or fridge magnets, or books, or physical maps. You might even be one of those weirdos that takes pictures of yourself and your family on vacation. But we all tend to have objects that we map our memories onto. Mine are records. Yours doesn’t have to be. In fact, let me do you a service: if you do not currently have a turntable, or records, don’t get one! They’re expensive, they take up way too much space in your home, and they’re a giant pain in the ass when you move. You will also end up inviting audiophiles into your life, and they are exhausting people. They will argue with you about wiring. They will argue with you about styluses, they will argue with you about speaker placement. They will also make you listen to records that you don’t want to listen to and berate you while using words like “appreciation,” and phrases like “you’re just cheating yourself if you don’t get the gold plugs.” They will talk to you about the warmth of vinyl, and child—I am 58 years old, I have tinnitus, I can’t hear shit. I can tell the sound of a guitar from the sound of a bass, and I am thankful for that, but no I cannot hear the difference in warmth. I wish I could. The best way to listen to music is however you listen to music. I listen to records because I’ve always listened to records, and because it means trips to the record store, which means flipping through bins, pulling out records that have sat in sleeves for over 30 years, which unleashes 30 years of stale cigarette smoke into the air. This is not a thing I’d wish on anybody. But records have been a throughline in my life. From 3rd Street Jazz in Philadelphia to Stranded in San Francisco, to Tiger Records in Oslo that specializes in jazz that feels cold, to the giant Tower Records that still exists in Tokyo, to all the record stores around the world I’ve been lucky enough to visit just that one time, my life has been measured in records, each one invoking a memory. A time machine. A reminder of a time, or a person I spent that time with, moods both good and bad, all of that shit is embedded in those grooves. A short stack of memories brought back with great care from distant cities. A few records brought back from a lazy Sunday walk that also included pinball and a slice of pizza. For me, the record store has always been a center of community. Yes, there are a bunch of other ways to listen to a record you want to listen to, but none of them come with a trip to the record store. A reason to walk out of the house, walk through your neighborhood, possibly take a bus to a different neighborhood, and walk into a place where you can just hang out, and talk to people about a thing that you have in common. Again, you may have your own type of place that does this exact same thing for you and that’s great. I love that for you. Those places, whatever that place may be for you—bookstore, dog park, ceramic studio, hardware store, bakery, union hall—are so important to have in our lives at all ages. They get us out of the house. They get us to talk to strangers. They get us to try unfamiliar things. (I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard something new at a record store and walked out with that record in hand.) They get us outside of the house and interacting with our neighbors. At the same time, I’m acutely aware that one of the reasons record stores have always felt so welcome to me is because I’m a white guy who tends to like the same kind of music that the prototypical white guy record store clerk also enjoys. (Insert Yo La Tengo joke here.) Although, this is something I’ve seen some progress in as well. The snobby clerks we might remember from the High Fidelity movie are thankfully fading away, being replaced by a more diverse, welcoming clerk that is happy to sell you the new whatever-it-is-that-stirs-your-drink record. As it should be. Record stores should be a welcoming place to anyone, and you belong in every room you walk into. In another life—which may well get grafted onto the current one before it’s all said and done—you will find me as the clerk in my own record store. I’ve got it all planned out. Every month I’ll sell twelve different records. (Lots of copies of each one.) Across genres, some brand new, some from the past. They’ll all be picked by me, with lots of input from friends. They won’t be categorized in any way. Just a wall showing our twelve selections for the month. You’ll walk in, sit down on the couch, I’ll make coffee, and you can point to any record on the wall and I’ll put it on. We can sit there in silence, or we can have a conversation if you want. Of the twelve, you will find one you like. Come back next month and there will be twelve different records. You will always be welcome, I will always be happy to play music for you. I will try very hard to find something that you can take home, hopefully along with a memory of a neighbor that made you feel welcome. <hr/>🙋 Got a question for me? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-listen-to-records" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>! 🧊 ICE is STILL terrorizing the people of Minnesota. My friend <a href="https://venmo.com/u/Kristina-Halvorson?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-listen-to-records" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Kristina Halvorson, who many of you may know, is collecting money to feed neighbors</a> in NE Minneapolis, Columbia Heights, and Fridley who cannot leave their homes. Trust that this donation will go directly to help them. 📓 My new book, <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/how-to-die-and-other-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-listen-to-records" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">How to die (and other stories)</a> is now available for pre-order! Get yourself a copy. Comes signed and with extra stuff. 💰 If you are enjoying this newsletter and would like to pitch in for weird shit like rent and server bills, please consider joining the <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-listen-to-records" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">$2 lunch club</a>. 🍉 The ceasefire is bullshit. Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-listen-to-records" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please support <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-listen-to-records" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>, and for fuck sake if there is a trans person in your life please tell them they are loved.

How to eat pizza

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Apr 17, 2026

<figure><img alt="A photo of two books scissoring. The books are laying on a bed of pink styrofoam hearts." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/a8ee1ebd-b063-4f51-989a-ac4b638e3e45.jpg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>I did a photo shoot with the new book and things quickly went south.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Michael Walsh: Can I eat the last slice of pizza in the box? This is the wrong question to be asking. The better question is “Am I hungry?” An even better follow-up question is “Am I the hungriest person here?” And, if you wanna get all Marxist about it (and trust that I do), an even better questions is “Who the fuck ate the other seven slices?” Pizza etiquette is a fucking war zone, so let’s get the easy shit out of the way: Are you the only person in the house? Eat the last slice. Are you the last person left awake? Eat the last slice. (Morning pizza is great, but anyone left awake on the day the pizza is ordered has first dibs.) Have you gone around and asked everyone if they want the last slice? Eat the last slice. Did you just help someone move? You can eat the last slice. (Tell the friend you helped to order more. Helping someone move means endless pizza.) Are you the only person in the kitchen during a party where the pizza was left unattended? Fuck it. Eat the last slice. Did you have an exceptionally shit day? Eat the last slice. Are you super fucking high? You should probably eat the last slice, and then see what else might be in the fridge. Is it a kid’s birthday party? No, you cannot eat the last slice. Is it an intervention for your friend Steve? No, you cannot eat the last slice. Are you at an exorcism? Last slice goes to Elijah. Are you treating your kid’s t-ball team to post-game pizza? No, you cannot take the last slice. As someone who’s hosted events and ordered pizza for people, I always appreciate when the pizza boxes are empty at the end of the night. Finding that last remaining slice in a box is a pain in the ass. I’m now thinking I should eat it just so it doesn’t go to waste. Sure, I could save it for tomorrow, but I’m trying to clean up. I’m in the zone. I’m ready to run these boxes down to the recycling bin (because me recycling four pizza boxes is definitely going to offset the carbon emissions from your “make the boobs bigger” Claude prompts) and now I’m stuck with this lone slice of pizza, which is both a problem and delicious. I will probably end up just eating it, which means I’ve eaten a slice of pizza I most definitely didn’t need, and will probably end up sleeping like shit. So if I invite you to something at my house, please just eat the last slice in the box. Speaking of events at my house, I used to be the guy who’d walk around and ask what kind of pizza people wanted. And because I know both meat-eaters and vegetarians, I’d usually end up with a couple of vegetarian pizzas, and a couple of pepperoni pizzas. And here’s where we go Stanford Prison Experiment. If you put both kinds of pizza out for people at least half the meat eaters will say “oh, that veg (they always say just “veg,” by the way, because saying “vegetarian” is too exhausting and they need to save their energy to, I dunno, hunt?) looks really good” and then taking a slice. Which meant that they were dipping into the resources of people who they knew wouldn’t dip into their pepperoni resources. Their pepperoni resources were safe from counterattack. I’m sure there’s a Marxist name for this, but I’ll just call it violence. This would usually end up with the vegetarians getting understandably upset for being shorted, and the meat-eaters using my bathroom in ways that guests should not. (We should do a newsletter about that soon.) I eventually solved this problem by ordering vegetarian pizza for everyone, and if meat-eaters complained I’d just say “but doesn’t the veg look really good?” Also, I just stopped inviting people over because Covid broke me. Let’s talk about crusts. Some people like pizza crusts. (I am one of them.) And let’s be clear, I’m talking about standard crusts that are just dough, they’re crispy, they’re wonderful. Not some suburban nightmare crust that’s been injected with cheese. (Seriously. Just order mozzarella sticks if you need more cheese.) But some people do not like pizza crusts. They will collect crusts on their plate like the spoils of war. Bones of vanquished enemies. And that is perfectly ok. What is not ok, is taking the crusts from someone’s plate and eating them, no matter how much you like crusts. In the privacy of your own home? Between partners and/or roommates? Sure, go nuts. But I was once in a social situation where someone reached over to someone else’s plate and just grabbed their crusts. Please do not do this. Yes, I’ve got some trauma around this. I was raised in a culture where your plate was everybody’s business. From making comments to how much or too little food was on it. To making comments about which things you seemed to be enjoying and which things you weren’t. (No one wants a carrot that’s been boiled for two hours, mom.) To being raised by a father who would toss whatever he didn’t want onto my mother’s plate like it was the bin. Yes, I admit to having trauma around this. But I’m a firm believer that everyone’s plate is their private space, and even the threat of entering someone’s plate airspace should be viewed as a breach of diplomacy, if not outright war. Also, my dog loves pizza crust. So we’re happy to let him have it. He’s eighteen. He gets to eat what he wants. Yes, I have strong pizza opinions. For reasons. I grew up in Philadelphia. A shitty slice from a Philly corner pizzeria will always soothe my heart more than a wood-fired pie at some fancy restaurant. And your fancy pie might be amazing, but that shitty slice is touching parts of my heart, and awakening memories of thousands of shitty slices that had to be folded to eat. When I was in high school there was a pizza parlor across the street. They made a great shitty slice. If I remember correctly a slice was two dollars. I think it was called Bruno’s. Google Maps tells me it’s still a pizza parlor, but the name has changed now. Bruno is long gone, and it’s quite possible that Bruno was gone way before I ever stepped into Bruno’s. It’s quite possible that everyone running the place just inherited the moniker. It’s cheaper to assume an identity than it is to get new signage. We were strictly prohibited from crossing the street and getting a slice during the school day. Which we of course did anyway. School pizza was not as good as Bruno’s. My last forbidden trip to Bruno’s happened during spring semester of senior year. A point at which everyone had long stopped caring about anything high school related, most especially rules that made zero sense. We walked in and ordered our slices, only to hear a voice from the farthest booth call out our names. Not Mike, but Mr. Monteiro, which was always a sign of trouble. Our principal had decided to set up shop at Bruno’s to bust us for going off-campus. He made us sit in the booth with him as our slices were delivered to our table. Slices he happily ate. It was here that we learned truth and power are very different things. Of all the foods, pizza is the closest to the human heart. Philadelphia has both the best pizza, and the biggest heart. I am being both metaphorical and literal. Every Philadelphia child has walked through a human heart. We have all walked through the giant heart at the Franklin Institute. We are knowledgeable about how it works. We’ve stepped through its valves. We’ve chased our friends through the ventricles. We’ve sharpied our initials in the vena cava. We’ve snuck sloppy kisses in the chambers of the heart. And because we know the ways of the heart, we are uniquely qualified to judge pizza as well. San Francisco, where I live now, has an uneasy relationship with pizza. I’ve heard it’s something in the water. We have great water, but we apparently don’t have great water for making pizza. And we have a tendency to upscale what doesn’t need to be upscaled. But catch me on a good Saturday, after an afternoon of playing Addams Family pinball, and I’ll stop for a slice at Escape from New York, which is pretty good pizza for San Francisco. It’s too crispy to fold. It’s never quite greasy enough. But if I close my eyes, I can almost make it work. Traveling back in time to neighborhoods that are long gone, shared with friends who are no longer here, eaten on nights that are long past, when we were all so much prettier, and the world was less awful. Eaten on the still-warm hoods of Chevy Novas. Coming home from punk shows in the basements of abandoned warehouses. Staring out into empty lots of West Philly and North Philly. Watching lightning bugs dance on sticky summer days. And washing it down with a bottle of RC Cola that still has a styrofoam wrapper around the bottle. Wiping pizza grease off our pants. Wondering who was going to eat the last slice. <hr/>🙋 Got a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-eat-pizza" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>! 📓 If you want more stories (with less typos!) my new book <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/how-to-die-and-other-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-eat-pizza" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">How to die (and other stories)</a> will satisfy that craving! 💰 You can support this newsletter by joining the <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-eat-pizza" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">$2 Lunch Club</a>. 📣 Do you enjoy asking questions? Erika (who also likes pizza) is doing a <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lets-do-design-research-right-tickets-1987575625199?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-eat-pizza" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">research workshop</a> on April 30. You should go! 🧺 <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/gilly-amp-billy-enamel-pin-fpbpz-y2d7t?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-eat-pizza" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Gilly & Billy pins</a> are back in stock! 🍉 Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide. Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-eat-pizza" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ Trans people are here. They’ve always been here. They’re amazing. And they could use our help. Please donate to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-eat-pizza" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>.

How to love comics

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Mar 13, 2026

<figure><img alt="Captain America punching Hitler, by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/e148f2af-e094-4537-b81b-edf34d6c9c79.png?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>Had to. (Wanted to.) Jack Kirby and Joe Simon.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Betsy Streeter: What is the most powerful artistic medium and why is it comics? Because it’s the most accessible. When I was a little kid growing up in the Logan section of Philadelphia there were two stops I’d make on my way home after school. First was the public library. It was a majestic red brick building with columns on the front. It looked important. And for me (and I assume for many other people) it was. Having a place where I felt welcomed was everything. (It still is.) And there were books. So many books. They let you borrow them! Libraries are fucking magical. But we’ve already written about the library. Today I want to write about the second stop, which at the time was called Mister Grocer. Mister Grocer was your standard grocery store, closer to a 7-11 than a corner bodega. It was a free-standing building and had a parking lot. It was WaWa for neighborhoods that WaWa avoided. (Real Philly will understand what I mean.) Mister Grocer was where you stopped for a drink (remember those little juices that came in plastic bottles shaped like barrels) (juice is a kindness in that description) (they were 80% sugar, 10% water, 5% Three Mile Island runoff, and 5% lead because in Pennsylvania everything contains at least 5% lead), candy, and comics. Mister Grocer had comics. The comic stand was one of those rotating wire things, next to the magazine rack. (I miss magazines. Yes, I know there are still magazines, but there aren’t magazines in the same way that there used to mean magazines) (no, I don’t mean porn) (I kinda mean porn) Anyway… the comics were in a rotating wire thing, and they were to the left of the front door where the high school kid working the counter could keep an eye on them. Amazingly, the counter was to the right of the front door. Which meant if you really wanted to steal a comic you had a greater than 50/50 chance (since the kid behind the counter had to either leap the counter or go around the corner to stop you and minimum wage makes athletes of no one) of making it through the door before you got stopped. Not that I ever stole a comic, but that was less about an ethical dilemma and more about being a fat kid. I would’ve gotten caught before I made it to the door. (Nothing in this paragraph advanced our narrative. Deal with it.) Comics were 25¢ when I started going to Mister Grocer after school. Which meant all I had to do to get a comic was to find a quarter somewhere. And quarters were kinda magical as a kid. They didn’t come around every day. But every few days you’d come across one in between the couch cushions, or just minding its business on the kitchen table, or left on the edge of the bathroom sink by my father as he prepared to go out for the evening. Quarters weren’t given. They appeared. And they quickly disappeared. Into my pocket. To be traded for a comic at Mister Grocer the next day. All of which were neatly stacked in the closet of the bedroom I shared with my brothers. In a box. With a pile of sweaters on top. Not because they weren’t allowed in the house, but because I was afraid that my parents would discover that I cared about something. Growing up, caring about something (or someone) made it a target of my parents violence. But that little stack of comics was an amazing escape from my young shitty life, which is why I guarded it so carefully. The Avengers. Spider-Man. Batman. Swamp Thing! Doctor Strange! Fantastic Four. Captain America. Howard the Duck absolutely fucked me up in ways that it took me years to understand. (This is a positive.) The Inhumans. And Jack Kirby, wtf? Jack Kirby made me want to draw like Jack Kirby. Jack Kirby made everyone want to draw like Jack Kirby. I spent so much time as a kid copying Jack Kirby artwork. Badly. I absolutely loved/hated/loved every minute of it. I was so bad at it. (I was nine years old.) But every failed attempt sucked a little bit less than the previous one. I’d spend hours just trying to draw Black Bolt’s wings. Medusa’s hair (ok, not just her hair). Lockjaw was fucking impossible. And I was terrible at it! Until I got, if not good, then serviceable at it. And there’s a feeling that washes over you as you do that. A feeling of… capability. Competence. Achievement. Or as Loki would say… glorious purpose! The idea that you can sit down and try to do something, fail a hundred times, and then get to a point where you realize you didn’t fail a hundred times, it just took a hundred steps to get there. And the journey was worth it cause the current feeling is pretty good. (Yes, this is about what AI is stealing from our children.) For a kid that had to find his own joy growing up, those moments were everything. Comics are the most powerful artistic medium because they’re the most accessible. Human beings love to tell stories, and human beings love to hear stories. Comics are the perfect vehicle for both. It’s easy to make a comic. Anyone with a piece of paper, or the inside of a shopping bag, or a piece of cardboard, and a pencil, or a crayon, or a marker, can make a comic. You don’t even have to be able to draw like Jack Kirby to do it. (None of us ever will.) And a comic is generally meant to be passed to another human being. To be shown. To be shared. They are communal. And everyone can make them. Comics are human-scale. Some of our greatest comics are made of <a href="https://xkcd.com/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">stick figures</a>. Some of our greatest comics are made from <a href="https://archive.org/details/getyourwaroncomi0000rees?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">recycled clip art</a>. And yes, some of them are very elaborate. But our attraction to comics tends to be more about the vibe than the execution. We like Garfield because we like Garfield. Not because Jim Davis is a particularly great artist. I mean, he’s absolutely fine. He’s a great storyteller. What draws us to Garfield is that in three panels we get a full story that resonates with us. Maybe not in a profound way (you need <a href="https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Garfield Minus Garfield</a> for that). But we enjoy these little vignettes into a lasagna-eating cat’s life. Human beings love being told a story. Especially a pocket-sized story that we can enjoy for a minute while reading the paper before we move on to the pocket-sized story below it. (God I miss reading comics in the paper. Especially on Sundays. It was a whole section. And it was the absolute best way to start a Sunday morning.) Movies and television—which I also love—are just comics going very very fast. One sequential image after another at a speed where the human brain grants them the power of movement. But at heart, they’re also comics. (Marvel proved as much.) In their soul, deep down in their soul, all artistic mediums are a way for me to tell you my story, and for you to tell me yours. We are engaging with one another. We are sharing a world that we’ve created and our audience is saying yes, that looks like a fun/terrifying/safer/more exciting world. Tell me more! We are working through our feelings on a thing and our audience is saying yes, I also feel that way, or I had no idea you felt that way, or knowing how you feel has changed the way I feel! We are documenting our history in a way that gives that history the audience it needs. We are bearing witness to joy. We are <a href="https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/palestine-hardcover?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">bearing witness to horror</a>. We are bearing witness to the human experience in a medium that makes it accessible to as many humans as possible. Comics taught me it was <a href="https://screenrant.com/captain-america-punch-hitler-best-marvel-moment/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">OK to punch Nazis</a>. Over the years comic books went from 25¢ to 35¢ to 50¢ (to this day I vividly remember the Marvel Comics starburst that said STILL ONLY 35¢ and can probably draw it from memory) and eventually they made their way to a dollar. (They are much more now, of course.) And in time, the little spinning metal stand at Mister Grocer turned into a proper comic book shop in downtown Philly, Captain America turned into <a href="https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/new-this-month/products/locas-the-maggie-and-hopey-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Maggie and Hopey</a>, Gotham City turned into <a href="https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/palomar-the-heartbreak-soup-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palomar</a>, The Incredible Hulk turned into a dozen different angry <a href="https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/the-complete-hate-volume-1?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Peter Bagge</a> characters, Jack Kirby turned into <a href="https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/simon-hanselmann?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Simon Hanselmann</a> and <a href="https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/dirty-plotte-complete-julie-doucet/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Julie Doucet</a>, Marvel and DC turned into <a href="https://www.fantagraphics.com/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Fantagraphics</a>, <a href="https://drawnandquarterly.com/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Drawn & Quarterly</a>, and a hundred other comics publishers that have come and gone. Even the grumpy Simpson’s comic guy, based on so many actual comics shop owners, gave way to a bunch of genderqueer kids running their own shops, making their own comics and zines, running their own distribution networks and making sure their stories are told and read. And one day your daughter is handing you a copy of <a href="https://www.juliakaye.com/superlatebloomer?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Super Late Bloomer</a> because she has a story to tell, and she understands there’s a medium for telling it perfectly. At heart, deep in their soul, comics have always been the medium where the marginalized could share their voice the loudest. Anyone can make a comic. Anyone can mail a comic to someone else. That means you. That means me. I love comics. <hr/>❤️ If you’re sharing this newsletter online, and I hope you are, please include some of the great comics I’ve forgotten to include in here—ESPECIALLY if you made them! <hr/>🙋 Got a question for me? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>. I promise to give a rambling answer. 📣 I’ve got a few spots left in next week’s <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1984157517547?aff=oddtdtcreator&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Presenting w/Confidence</a> workshop. If you’re dealing with the shitshow of applying for a job this workshop will do wonders for your confidence. Promise. 📓 Buy my new book, <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/how-to-die-and-other-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">How to Die (and other stories)</a>, directly from me and get a secret story, stickers, and I personalize it! 💰 If you’re enjoying this newsletter WHICH IS NOT ON SUBSTACK and want to support it, you can join the <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">$2 Lunch Club</a>. 🍉 Israel is insane. The ceasefire is a lie. <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Please support the children of Palestine</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please support <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-comics" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>. And if their is a trans child (or adult!) in your life please remind them they are loved. ❤️ Not gonna lie, I had a shit week. So if you wanna hit reply and <a href="mailto:mike@muledesign.com?subject=Everyone%20sucks%20but%20you" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">just say hi</a> it would mean the world.

How to eat with others

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Oct 9, 2025

<figure><img alt="Horizontal painting. Yellow background. Black text that says DON'T RENT HERE. IT'S TOXIC." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/96e62042-901e-40a4-a680-d4b5c8af5f22.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>This is the last painting I did at my old studio. I left it behind.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>You can <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-eat-with-others" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">support my shenanigans</a> for a mere $2/mo. <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Milly Schmidt: Some people have friends with very different politics and they keep them very separate to avoid conflict. Obviously there are benefits of having diverse friends, even politically. Do you think all your friends should be able to be invited to a party or have a meal together? I love everybody that loves everybody. I also think that hanging out with people who agree on everything is boring. It’s also close to impossible, thankfully, because you’ll ultimately find something you disagree about. And that tends to become when hanging out gets interesting. For example, this weekend friends will get together and someone will say they’re enjoying the new Taylor Swift. Someone else will say it’s an album for cop wives. And suddenly, that becomes an interesting hangout. Spending my childhood summers in Portugal, I spent a lot of time in cafés where people would argue about anything and everything. Finding the minor disagreement that would spark the argument was the goal of being at that café. Someone unfamiliar with that kind of environment would walk in and assume a fight was gonna break out. But this was just people communicating. This was people enjoying their evening by having spirited conversations with their friends. Which, counter-intuitively, ends up bringing people together. Because if I enjoy a lively discussion—and I do—the person willing to go toe-to-toe with me is going to be someone I end up treasuring as a friend. As long as everyone understands the rules of discussion. We are arguing about minor things. We’re making argumentative mountains out of molehills. This isn’t conflict, it’s sport. I also remember one particular evening in one particular café when someone loudly commented about how the previous regime did a lot of good for the country. Mind you, this was fairly soon after the revolution that knocked the fascists out of power. The café got stone cold silent. Every argument stopped. Every conversation came to a close. I have a vivid memory of hearing a spoon slowly stirring an espresso. And I watched as everyone’s head turned towards the man that had just said something positive about fascism. The silence held. And held. Until he quickly downed his coffee and politely excused himself as he walked out the door. Within seconds the café went back to its usual argumentative din. There are welcome arguments between friends, and there are arguments that end friendships. It’s important to know where that line is for you. While I appreciate having friends with different points-of-view, or even different politics (as you phrased it) I will not be friends with people who want my daughter dead. I will not be friends with people who want, or even tolerate, my neighbors being kidnapped. I will not be friends with people who believe some of us are somehow entitled to more rights than others. And I will not be friends with people who believe if we keep our heads down, as others around us suffer, we’ll save ourselves. We can argue about sports teams, we can argue about zoning, we can argue about the cost of goods, but we cannot argue about the civil rights of other human beings. We cannot argue about the right for people to live in peace. We cannot argue about the right for other people to love who they love. This is the line where argument turns from sport to a relationship-ending event. Personally, if I’m having a gathering in my home I want my friends to feel welcome. Not just by me, but by everyone else there. And I need my friends to know that me, my guests, and my house are a safe place. Not just for this particular event, but always. Think of it this way: if you invite someone from a marginalized community into your home and they ask if there’s going to be someone there that wants them dead, or doesn’t feel like they’re entitled to full personhood, and you tell them that you’re having a separate party for those folks the next night, how do you think that person would feel? You can’t claim to care about someone while also caring for the people who would bring them harm. You really don’t care about your friend in that situation. You’ve made a decision that speaks more to your standing in the social order than their safety. And that’s fucked up. If you had dinner with a trans friend on Tuesday, and dinner with fascists on Thursday, your trans friend had dinner with a fascist on Tuesday. Which of course brings us to Thanksgiving. My parents, being immigrants, didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. But in time, my brothers and I wore them down. We wanted to celebrate the same holiday that our friends were celebrating, which makes sense. We were kids. We wanted to belong. We also wanted pie, which was understandable. Pie is great! And, while I’m not overlooking the atrocious origins of the holiday, the idea that sitting down with the people you love and giving thanks is a genuinely nice idea. One that should actually be extended to all our meals. We sit down with the people we love and we share a meal together. The problem with Thanksgiving is that we’re not sitting down with the people we love, a lot of us are sitting down with the people we feel obligated to be sharing a meal with, even when some of those people want your friends dead. After my brothers and I had grown apart and eventually moved out of my parents’ house and into our own apartments, we still made an effort to come together for Thanksgiving. Mostly because it seemed to make our mother happy, and despite our disagreement on mostly everything else, we understood that this was important. Still, these were not what I would call enjoyable events. The tone was tense. The possibility of my father’s mood going sideways was always in the air. And we were guaranteed to speedrun from a conversation to an argument to a fight fairly quickly, which my father used as justification for getting up, grabbing his keys, and bolting out the door. Which was how Thanksgiving dinners ended. After a few of these, my mother started pulling me aside before my brothers got there and asking me “not to rile them up.” Which a few people reading this will understand translates to “don’t tell them there’s racism coming out of their mouths.” My brothers were free to use the N-word during Thanksgiving, the problem was that I wasn’t ok hearing it. The problem wasn’t that my brothers were racist, it was that I was pointing it out. At one point I asked her if she’d ever had one of these asides with either of them. Had she ever asked my brothers not to spew racist bile at the table? It was a needless question, because I knew she hadn’t. Growing up in their house racism was the default. That was the last time I spent Thanksgiving at their house. Let me say this plainly, for folks wrestling with whether they should spend Thanksgiving with relatives that want their friends dead: Don’t. In the end, we are defined not just by our actions, but by the actions we tolerate. If you insist on spending Thanksgiving with your racist relatives, go to fight. Call Uncle Bob on his Jim Crow bullshit. Make sure that the first person who brings up “men playing women’s sports” is met with a face full of mashed potatoes. When Aunt Mary starts reciting FOX News talking points on eugenics start screaming at the top of your lungs. When your brother-in-law starts yapping about the “criminal element” in the city, slap him with a ham. When your dad brings up what a terrible idea it is to have Bad Bunny do the SuperBowl halftime show, pick up the turkey and slam it across the wall. Become ungovernable. Bring airhorns. Bring whistles. Bring the chaos. Making a meal enjoyable for racists is never the goal. There are no medals to be won for sitting silently while a table that is meant for giving thanks is taken over by hatred. There are no medals to be won for being tolerant of people who want your friends dead. If you’re not willing to fight, then you’re just having a meal with racists. Telling someone they need to be on their “best” behavior is only an issue when their real behavior is intolerable. A better idea may be to spend the day with people who love and support you. People you actually give thanks for. The friends who have your back. The friends who love you at your fullest, loudest and truest. People only complain about the turkey being dry when the company is terrible. There is never enough gravy to make regret feel like anything but your soul leaving your body. When we are surrounded by people who deserve and cherish our company the meal is always amazing. Family is a choice. And those whose blood you share had first dibs at making a choice, and trust that they did. I will be honest with you, when my friends tell me that they’re off to spend Thanksgiving with family it fills me with sadness. Not because I’m not happy for them—I am! But because a part of me will always wonder what that is like. We are born ready to love those closest to us. Our parents and siblings had first dibs on our love! I was always ready to love my parents, and there is a part of me that always will, but there is a bigger part of me that refuses to become the person I need to become for them to love me back. They made a choice, and in return I made one too. I love everybody who loves everybody. When I invite my friends into my house it’s with the understanding that there is both love and nourishment there for them. There will also be music, which we may argue about. And we might argue about the best way to make brussels sprouts. Or whether pie goes best with ice cream or cheese. (The answer is two slices of pie, one with each.) We might argue about something happening in local politics. We will definitely argue about the new Taylor Swift. But we will never argue about whether one of us belongs there or not. We will never argue about whether anyone there should feel welcome or not. We will never argue about whether someone should’ve brought their significant other, or others. (A heads-up is nice, if only to make sure we have enough pie.) We will never argue about whether someone should have autonomy over their own body. We will never argue about whether Palestine deserves to be free. We will never argue about whether we should look out for our neighbors. We might argue about the best ways to do these things, and those arguments will get lively. They’ll get loud. Even within our core agreements, there is enough to argue about. There is love in those arguments, and in the end, they tend to bring us closer together. I love everybody who loves everybody. I hope that includes you. <hr/>🙋 Got a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-eat-with-others" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it here</a>! I might just give you the rambling answer you weren’t looking for. 💀 You like zines? Me too. You hate AI? Me too. I’ve turned an old essay, <a href="https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-not-build-the-torment-nexus/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">How to not build the Torment Nexus</a>, into a fun zine that can be yours for $5 cheap! <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/dont-build-the-torment-nexus-zine?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-eat-with-others" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Buy it here</a>! 📣 If you get nervous/anxious/etc when you have to talk about your work, please consider taking my Presenting w/Confidence workshop. It really helps! There’s one next week. <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1754952924439?aff=oddtdtcreator&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-eat-with-others" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Get a ticket</a>! 🍉 Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-eat-with-others" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. Shit is worse than ever. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-eat-with-others" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>. Reward the bravery it takes to live your realest life.

How to die

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Oct 2, 2025

<figure><img alt="Paintings of three little Casper ghosts. Identical. White on black." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/cd984bb9-64f0-44b1-b53a-4d7370fcc24e.jpg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>These little ghosts ended up being part of a much larger painting.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>If you’re enjoying the newsletter <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-die" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">gimme $2</a>. <hr/>This week’s question comes to us anonymously: How do you deal with your impending mortality? I believe that the best way to die is to do it once, and right at the end. I’m trying to remember when I first learned that we all die. (Spoilers!) And while I can’t pinpoint the exact moment, I imagine it must’ve been pretty early. I grew up in a Catholic family, which meant crucifixes were all over the house. At some point I had to ask what they were all about. Some kids learn about death when their gerbil kicks it. It’s a good lesson. Gerbils, although very cute, are infinitely replaceable. Some kids learn about death when they’re told the almighty being responsible for absolutely everything was murdered, which is a little more of a kick to the gut than tossing Mr. Peaches in a shoebox, having a little backyard ceremony, then stopping for ice cream on the way to pick up Mr. Peaches II. After being told that god was dead, I was told that he did it to save us, because we were born filthy and were destined to go to hell for it. But, for logic or magicks that I’ve never fully understood, because he let himself get murdered he broke that cycle and now we could go to heaven when we died… maybe. But only if we followed the rules. (Which, if you think about it, sounds like he didn’t do it for us as much as he wanted to get control of the craps table for himself.) After that I spent eight years in Catholic School, which is a racket designed to convince you—using terror and guilt—to live the one life you’ve been given in the service of the church, with the promise that doing so would grant you a fantastic payday. But only once you were dead. Don’t worry though, kid. Let me tell you about the afterlife! I was maybe in 6th grade when I realized this was all a con. Which brings us back to square one: we are all going to die. I myself have not died yet. (This sentence will age badly.) Some people believe that dying is a transitional phase, and some people believe that death is an end phase. And while I count myself among the latter, I have no desire to talk anybody into—or out of—a belief system. I’ll respect yours, and I hope that you, in turn, respect mine. (I do reserve the right to shit on Catholicism, for reasons.) The first person whose death I remember is my great-grandmother’s. I didn’t know her very well. I only saw her in the summer. And by the time I was aware of her she was already lost to Alzheimer’s, although we didn’t call it that yet. By the time I was aware of her, she was a shadow, going from room to room in my grandparent’s house, sitting in front of the TV, being chaperoned for the occasional walk by my grandmother, eating silently at dinner. Then one summer she wasn’t there. I didn’t register her loss as much as I registered my grandmother’s pain from losing her mother. In time, we lost my grandmother the same way. When you lose someone to Alzheimer’s you lose them twice, and the first time tends to be the harder of the two. The person you know is gone, and you are left with a ghost. A ghost who has the same shape as your grandmother, and the same smile as your grandmother. And you love her, because she is your grandmother. But your grandmother has also left. The pain of being able to touch someone who is no longer there is unbearable. And when the second death comes, the death of body, there is almost a sense of relief, and along with that, of course, the shame of feeling it. I will also lose my father the same way, except that I’ve already lost him in ways that I’m not ready to talk about yet. He was a ghost for most of my life. I’m now old enough that I’ve seen the majority of my older family members die. As well as teachers, and friends. At 58, I’m also old enough now that when my own death occurs I’ve aged out of that period in life where people greet the news with statements like “gone too soon.” I’ve moving into my “he had a good life” era. Which means you made it to the end, or at least the zone of life that people begin to think of as an acceptable age to die. Which isn’t to say that I, myself, am in a hurry for it to happen. I’m not. I enjoy being here. My people are here. My stuff is here. And like I already said, I think of death as an endgame. I still have a lot of stuff I want to do. We’re all going to die. (Spoiler.) We should choose to do it once. Right at the end. The sad truth about death is that it isn’t a singular event. It occurs over the course of an entire life. For some of us death is a slow-motion event that occurs over the course of our lives. When we make choices to endanger others, we die a little bit. When we refuse to help someone in need, we die a little bit. When we choose personal gain over the health of our community, we die a little bit. When we present a fascist autocrat with an award to curry favor, we die a little bit. When we turn our heads to other people’s suffering, we die a little bit. And with every small death we become more of a ghost of the person we used to be. As a child, I watched my mother die almost every day as she acquiesced to the brutality and the gaslighting of my father. I watched as she slowly disappeared into a ghost world where she thought she would be safer. I watched as my father would pull her out of her ghost world only to manifest his rage on her again. I watched as her joy slowly disappeared, replaced by bitterness. And I knew she wasn’t happy in that ghost world because eventually she spent her life trying to pull her children into it with her. To be a ghost among the living is a lonely thing. I am watching my mother die in slow motion. Of course, every sentence in this paragraph is passive, because to write it the other way would be to acknowledge that my father slowly killed my mother over the course of her life. Eventually I will bury a ghost, and with that final death, the death of body, will come relief, along with the shame that comes with it. I believe ghosts are real. They walk amongst us. Not as lost souls of those who’ve passed, but as the weakened souls of those who die in slow motion. Dying in slow motion might be the most horrible way to die. We are watching our nation die in slow motion. With every acquiescence to fascism we become a bit less of what we used to be. We become more of a ghost. In our fear, we believe that if we die just a little bit there will be less of us to hurt, or the monsters will be satisfied. But monsters are never satisfied. In our fear, we hand over those who are even more vulnerable than us, hoping that their sacrifice will appease a monster that will never be appeased. But an attempt to delay your own death is a death unto itself. And when I said our nation was dying in slow motion I meant us. Every time we give the monster a piece of ourselves we die a little. If we’re going to die, let’s do it all at once, and at the end. As James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time: “…one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.” The goal of life is to earn your death. To live it in such a way that death becomes a celebration of how that life was lived. To live it in such a way that we arrive at the end knowing that we wrung as much joy from the experience as we implanted in others. To live it in such a way that death itself mourns your passing. To live it in such a way that those whose lives you touched will gather together to remember you, and graft pieces of your heart onto their own. To live it in such a way that those who are still living their own lives are driven to keep living them. Let your death become a model for living. I was lucky enough to be alive when Henry Kissinger did the greatest thing he’s ever done, which was die. Throughout my life I’ve seen plenty of death. I’ve seen death celebrated, and I’ve seen the dead celebrated. I’ve seen what it looks like when death is earned, which is not the same thing as death being celebrated. We earned Henry Kissinger’s death, he did not. We owe the dead only the truth, and to canonize the dead is to disrespect the ghosts their own lives were responsible for creating. To wash away the evil deeds of the dead is to take that death upon ourselves. Living your life in a way that people celebrate your death is a choice that certain people make, and in their death we should honor their choice by telling the true story of who they were, and the true cost of their lives. I have no control over how I will die. It’s a thing that will come. It could be violent and quick. It could be slow and annoying. It could come tomorrow. It could be decades away. I know death is there, lurking in the shadows, trying to snatch a little bit of life every day. Sometimes it does manage to snatch a piece. The shadow of my death was born at the same time as I was. Living alongside me. Whispering in my ear. Offering me an easy exit, which I’ve continued to refuse to take. Instead, I whisper back. I tell death how good apple pie is. I tell death how nice it feels to be in a crowd watching a band together. I tell death how nice it feels to sit on the couch next to someone you love. I tell death how amazing it feels to have a dog lick your face. If I could choose my manner of death, I would choose to have enough time to tell those that I love that I do love them. I would choose to have enough time to tell those I’ve hurt that I’m sorry. But because I refuse to choose the manner and the time of my death I’ve instead chosen to do these things on a daily basis. I want to earn my death by living my life as if it’s not a practice life. Earning your death means that it is there, whole, for you at the end. A complete thing that hasn’t been borrowed from in life. And you are a complete thing that hasn’t borrowed from death during life but met it, whole, at the end. We should aim to live our lives in a way that people pick up our unfinished work, because we will leave unfinished work, and finish it. We should aim to live our lives as if this moment—right here—is the one that matters, and should be lived to its fullest. We should aim to live our lives in a way that when death finally comes—and it will—the ones that are left are happy to carry your memories for you. Because the truth of it is that as long as the people you love carry a piece of your heart grafted onto their hearts, you never truly die. <hr/>🙋 Have a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-die" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it!</a> You too might get a rambling depressing answer! 📣 Presenting w/Confidence workshops are set up for October and November. If you get nervous talking about your work—and yes, this includes job interviews!—<a href="https://www.muledesign.com/presenting-workshop?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-die" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">grab a ticket</a>. 📢 I’ll be speaking at <a href="https://www.y-oslo.com/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-die" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Y Oslo</a> at the end of the month. This’ll be my first talk since 2020. So yeah, I’m a little nervous. But if you’re in the neighborhood, come on my. Meanwhile, send me recommendations for record stores in Oslo. 🎃 <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/billionaire-tote-bag?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-die" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">This</a> makes a good Halloween candy bag. 📚 Don’t forget to <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-die" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">buy a million books</a> from us. 🍉 Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-die" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fun</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-die" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>.

How to feel wonderful

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Jan 9, 2026

<figure><img alt="A recently set up and relatively clean art studio. There's a couple of tables, a rolling stool, and a shelving unit along the back wall filled with assorted crap." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/c8c545bf-efa6-43a2-ab70-fd71d207573f.jpg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>New art studio taking shape!</figcaption></figure> This week’s question comes to us from Kylie Gusset: What makes you feel wonderful? Ok, yeah. So… the last couple of newsletters were heavy. <a href="https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-bury-your-father/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Dead fathers</a>. <a href="https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-attend-a-funeral/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Crazy families</a>. Feelings. (Y’all were so nice with your replies. Thank you.) This was all followed by a two week Christmas break where it rained every day and started to feel like cabin fever. On top of that there’s… the news. And yes, at some point we will talk about the news, especially because it’s unforgiving and relentless and if I were to mention “the incident” at the beginning of this newsletter there’s a pretty good chance “the incident” could mean a totally other incident by the time you read this newsletter. Under fascism, the incidents are plentiful and the horror remains unrelenting. So… For your sake as well as mine, this morning I went looking through the question pile for something a little light to start off the new year and Kylie came to the rescue. Thanks Kylie. Let’s talk about things that make us feel wonderful. And no, this is not a copout. Remembering, and holding on to the things that make us feel wonderful are fuel. In some cases they remind us of what we’ve lost. In other cases they remind us of what we’re fighting for. And, on a really good day, they remind us of what we’re still able to achieve despite the weight of absolutely everything trying to keep us from doing so. Last week I moved into a new art studio. It’s a little smaller than my previous one so when I got all my stuff in there I realized that I’d have to make some hard decisions about what needed to stay and what could go. I spent an hour sitting in the corner annoyed that everything didn’t fit and then I texted my friend Adam a photo of all my crap piled up in the new space along with the message “studio setup day,” which was actually shorthand for “fuck new studio setup day nothing fits and I think I’ve made a horrible decision.” Here’s the thing about my friend Adam: his joy is annoyingly infectious, and it’s 100% sincere. So when he texted back “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8LqMv416mw&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-feel-wonderful" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">I love studio setup day</a>!!” (Yes, two exclamation marks.) I realized I needed to adopt his attitude. After sighing deeply and muttering “fuck you, Adam” under my breath, I got out my notebook and measuring tape. I started sketching out where things could fit. I made a list of things I needed. I found my drill in one of the boxes. A couple of hours after getting his text I’d built shelving units, loaded them up with my stuff, mounted my tool chargers on the wall, created a list of next steps, and a list of things I needed to run to the hardware store for. So yes, studio setup day is wonderful. Sometimes you just need to be reminded of how lucky you are to have a place to unpack all your boxes into. I figure it’ll take me another week, maybe two, before I’m making new paintings in that space and it’ll feel wonderful to make those. It’ll also be wonderful to share those paintings with all of you. At the risk of turning the rest of this newsletter into a listicle, while absolutely also turning the rest of this newsletter into a listicle here’s some other stuff that makes me feel wonderful. (Also, small aside: it’s weird to say “wonderful.” I keep wanting to downplay it to “good.” Things that make me feel good. It feels very self-conscious to say something makes you feel wonderful. Also, a little dorky. Fuck it. Let’s feel wonderful this year. Not only do we deserve it, but we fucking need it.) Opening a new record feels wonderful. Going to the record store is great. Finding a record you want also feels great. But getting it home and opening it up? That’s the sweet spot right there. Are you going to attempt to slice it open with your fingernail and tell yourself that this is the one time you won’t get a papercut? (Stop. You will get a papercut.) Are you going to look for the weak seam in the plastic and risk bending the corner? (Stop. You are absolutely going to bend the corner.) Are you going to pull out your trusty pen knife and run it along the opening? (Yes, and here’s a pro tip: the duller the blade the better. A sharp blade will slice right into the cover itself. And never ever use a razor unless you’re a professional vinyl record opener.) But that moment when you first open the new record, pull out the vinyl, and then carefully peek to see if there’s anything else inside (lyric sheet, sticker, etc) is pure bliss. Being in line at a sandwich place for lunch, turning around and seeing a friend you haven’t seen in over a year and immediately hugging each other feels wonderful. This happened to me last week. We ended up eating together and catching up. Totally out of the blue. Yesterday I had to make a small repair in our apartment. It required me to come up with a solution, go to the hardware store, buy wood, make a thing with a saw and a sander, then attach it. And man, when I popped it in and heard that satisfying click that meant it was working as it was supposed to… it felt wonderful. I love being able to fix small shit like that. I’m coursing with endorphins just thinking about it a day later. Hearing “That’s great advice Dad, thanks” will always feel wonderful. Knowing that I was able to help my daughter, even if it was just as a sounding board. Even if it was for the most inconsequential of things like “how do you mix peanut butter” (Pro tip: drill and a clean paint mixing bit. Works for tahini too.) hearing that phrase will put me in a good mood for days. Finding the leading end of the roll of tape feels wonderful. Watching Erika’s face light up when she opens a Christmas gift feels wonderful. One of my hidden superpowers is that I’m really good at giving gifts. A few years ago I watched as she ripped open a large box that was filled with packing peanuts, thrust her arm into it, jumped three feet in the air, and then screamed “What the fuck is that?!?” That turned out to be a stuffed badger. We named her Carol. This year, for reasons we’ve already discussed at length, I didn’t have as much time for Christmas gifting. However, as I was walking back from my father’s funeral I walked past a small gift shop that had mounted ceramic jackass heads that said “We’re jackasses but we’re happy” in Portuguese, and that felt right, so I stopped and grabbed one. Getting new baby photos from your friends always feels wonderful. Listening to Fishbone always feels wonderful. Seriously, none of you are listening to enough Fishbone, and you’ve had the opportunity to be listening to Fishbone for over twenty years. I’m listening to them right now. Some of you younger folks might be wondering who the fuck I’m talking about, to which I say… <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK640dPPhXE&list=RDKK640dPPhXE&start_radio=1&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-feel-wonderful" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">you’re welcome</a>. Getting a surprise gift box from friends full of fun stuff from the city they live in is always wonderful. (I’m currently wearing a beanie hat from Movie Madness in Portland. Do I know what it is? No, but I want to!) Riding my bike around town feels wonderful. (Less so when it’s raining, which is a large part of what was driving me nuts last week.) Riding through the city, especially if there’s a warm breeze in the evening, and the sun is in the right place, and I can smell every restaurant as I’m riding through The Mission will always make me feel like I’m a part of the city that I’m riding through. It’s humbling in the most amazing way. People are crossing the street, people are walking home from work, people are picking up their kids, seventeen different types of vehicles are navigating the same stretch of street and absolutely no one is in sync but we’re all making it mostly work because a city is humanity’s most amazing broken machine. And when it doesn’t work it’s tragic, but it mostly does work. All of these things happened in the last couple of weeks. All of these things that happened in the last couple of weeks made me feel wonderful. And yes, there were a lot of things that happened in the last couple of weeks that most certainly did not feel wonderful. In no way I am minimizing those. I am listing these things out as reminders for why we fight. Your list may be very different from mine. I hope it is. (I want to know what’s on your list!) I’m listing these out as reminders of why it’s worth it to hold on to and preserve the things we love so that someday we can sit down together and share those lists with each other, because we shouldn’t be selfish with our lists. I bet there’s something on your list of what makes you feel wonderful that would make me feel wonderful, but it hasn’t even occurred to me! And vice versa. Maybe you’ve got spicy mango on your list. It’s wonderful, right? Maybe you’ve got a good molotov recipe. Wonderful, let’s share it. Maybe one of us will knock an ICE goon on his ass. I guarantee that’ll feel wonderful. Like ice cream at the perfect temperature, or a Thin Mint right out of the freezer. 2026 is the year we win. That’ll feel wonderful too. <hr/>Favor: if you share this newsletter out on social media (not-so-gentle hint), please add something that makes you feel wonderful in your post. ❤️ <hr/>🙋 Got a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-feel-wonderful" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>. I’ll probably use it to go off on a tangential rant, but hey… 💰 Enjoying the newsletter? <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-feel-wonderful" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Gimme $2/mo</a> and I promise to use it to make art. 📢 The first Presenting w/Confidence workshop of the year is scheduled for Jan 22 & 23. <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting-work-with-confidence-tickets-1980129910867?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-feel-wonderful" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Get your ticket</a>! 🔬 Erika has a Design Research workshop coming up on Jan 15. <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lets-do-design-research-right-tickets-1978474590760?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-feel-wonderful" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Get your ticket</a>! 🧺 <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/gilly-amp-billy-enamel-pin-fpbpz-y2d7t?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-feel-wonderful" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Gilly & Billy enamel pins</a> are back in stock! 💀 Still have a few <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/dont-build-the-torment-nexus-zine?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-feel-wonderful" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Don’t Build the Torment Nexus</a> zines in stock. ❤️ Once again, thank you to everyone who sent a note about my father’s passing. It sincerely meant a lot to read those.

How to usher in an era of abundant donuts

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Apr 10, 2026

<figure><img alt="Box of donuts. Half are iced to look like the Artemis logo. Half are regular glazed. I think they're from Krispy Kreme." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/287bcbf8-520c-4faa-9b86-6848314d4d89.jpg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>photo of Artemis donuts by Mark Jacquet, Engineer at NASA Ames Research Center</figcaption></figure> <hr/>This week’s question comes to us anonymously: What would you say to someone who proclaims, “I want to be a donut maker,” but has never actually made a single donut in their life? You say “That’s awesome. What can I do to help?” Look, I’m going to be totally honest with you. Every week, I go through my bin of newsletter questions, looking for something I want to answer, and I get incredibly depressed. The vast majority of them are from people getting laid off, or being in their sixth month of looking for work, or justifiably freaking out because they heard layoffs are coming to their company. It’s a world of despair and a world of shit which, sadly, only appears to be picking up steam. Meanwhile, half the people I know are wondering how they’re going to pay their rent and go to the doctor, and the other half are proclaiming this the “Era of Abundant Intelligence.” (For who?!?) All they need is half the world’s money (the half not going to bombing school children), half the world’s land, half the world’s water, all of the world’s microchips, and they will eventually deliver [checks notes] something in exchange for all this, just don’t ask them what because it’s really hard to say, but it’s right around the corner. (I promise this newsletter will turn positive soon.) Meanwhile, if I am stupid, sad, or desperate enough to go on LinkedIn for a minute, it’s a sea of people writing letters in praise of the leopard, proclaiming it has always been their dream to work for the leopard, asking the leopard not to eat their face, or hoping to get one of the few jobs at the face-eating factory where they feel like they’ll be safe from the face-eating leopard, which of course they’re not. So, yes, there are a fair amount of questions in my inbox from people upset that the leopard ate their face even though they were happy to help the leopard eat everyone else’s face. (Or I may spiral out of control.) Seriously though, era of abundant intelligence for who?!? Let’s talk about your friend who wants to be a donut maker. Because they may be the smartest person here. First off, everyone loves a donut. Secondly, no one has ever reacted badly to the news that someone is making donuts. But most importantly for us today—not a single human being has ever been born with the ability to make donuts. Like all skills, you learn it, you do it badly for a while, then you do it better. Some people will get amazing at it, and most people will reach some level of competency. So while there’s an incredibly slim chance that your friend will become the world’s greatest donut maker, there’s an incredibly high possibility that your friend will learn how to make good, even great, donuts. Which you will benefit from. And which you should be incredibly grateful for. For the last week, Erika and I have been glued to Artemis updates on the NASA site, because it’s become such a joy to watch people be good at something, and enjoy doing it, and all of this while being incredibly human about it. Seriously, these people sound positively giddy to be in space! And they’re rocking it. It feels like such a luxury to watch these people do their thing, and do it well, and with joy, at a time when we’re surrounded by a government who is very bad at what they do, and does it in the cruelest way possible, and an industry that’s trying to convince us that we are incapable of doing the things we love, and we’re doing them inefficiently anyway. (Because the problem was always that we weren’t breaking the world fast enough.) Competence should not be a luxury. Competence should not be something that we look at with nostalgia. We’re lucky that we get to watch the Artemis crew do their thing, which they can do because they practiced doing it a thousand times. And you know that they made a lot of bad donuts, before they finally made a good donut. You know there was a Day One of learning to be an astronaut, just as there’s a Day One of learning to be a donut maker, or learning to be a designer, dentist, farmer, or teacher. And the only way to get to Day Thousand is to start at Day One, do it 999 more times, and get not just better, but confident enough that you decide you can do it in the confines of space. Confident enough that you can say to yourself and to everyone around you that you want to be a donut maker. Meanwhile a friend who’s deep into a job interview is being asked to bring a passport to their next scheduled remote interview because their skillset shows a level of competence that has the potential employer worried they might be interviewing a deepfake. With one hand they force the slop down our throats. With the other hand they defend against us using the tools against them. Human competence has become a source of distrust. If you don’t trust the results of the tool, stop demanding we use it. The era of abundant intelligence is actually the era of abundant theft. First they stole your work, then they stole the confidence you needed to do the work. This is violence. Your friend is going to make some pretty crappy donuts to start. That’s to be expected. And then the day will come when they’ve gotten all the crappy donuts out of their system and they’ll hand you a good donut. I think you’ll be genuinely happy for your friend when this happens. And for yourself, which is fair. But can’t you just get donuts at the corner bodega or at the donut shop? Yes, you can. And they are good. Donuts are good at every price point. From the waxy little chocolate ones at gas stations, to the funky ones you can buy from someone with a liberal arts degree and a polycule at Voodoo Donuts in Portland, to the boujie made-to-order (lord) donuts at Coffee Movement in SF, all donuts are good. (Bob’s Donuts are the best.) But your friend doesn’t want to buy donuts. Your friend wants to be a donut maker. And that is a very different thing. Human beings crave making things. We make things out of wood. We make things out of wool. We make things out of steel. We make things out of folded paper. We make things out of flour, salt, and sugar. We make zines. We 3D-print whistles. We draw. We paint. We make instruments out of brass so we can make sounds. There is no more flexible word in the English language than “make.” We can make donuts, we can make plans, we can make someone dinner. We can make our cities more walkable. We can make bike lanes. We can make it around the moon. We can even make up our minds. Making is an act of sharing, it’s an act of using our joy, our labor, or expertise, in the service of adding to what’s here. Hopefully, in the service of improving what’s there. We make things so that we can bond with others. And while the sloplords might reply to this by telling me that they enjoy making money, I’d happily reply that the making is actually done with our labor. It’s not the making that drives them, it’s the theft of labor. The theft of joy. And now the theft of competence. You can hear it in their language. They do not make. They disrupt. They extract. They colonize. Their joy is not in the giving, but in the taking. They are so broken, their only recourse is to attempt to break everything else around them. In their psychosis, they call this abundance. I know very little about your friend, in fact all I know is that they want to be a donut maker and they’ve never made a single donut in their life. From this I can safely extrapolate that your friend isn’t currently a donut maker. I can also reasonably extrapolate that whatever your friend is currently doing isn’t what they want to be doing. And from there I can go out on a limb a little bit, from extrapolation to conjecture and guess that your friend isn’t happy doing what they’re currently doing. Happy people don’t generally dream about doing something else. Turns out the Era of Abundant Intelligence isn’t coinciding with an Era of Abundant Happiness. And here’s the thing about donuts: you want one. And the more I mention donuts the more you want one. Maybe you’re thinking of a custard donut, or maybe you’re thinking of a pink frosted donut with sprinkles, or maybe you’re thinking of an old-fashioned, or maybe you’re thinking of a gluten-free donut because everyone deserves donuts, but no one has ever had to be convinced to eat a donut. (The harder part is stopping, trust me.) Donuts are not inevitable, they are anticipated. When you make something you love, and other people also love, and it brings about as much joy as a donut does, there’s very little convincing that needs to happen. No one needs to declare that it’s the Era of Abundant Donuts because it’s apparent anytime you walk into a donut shop. The result of human competence, human labor, human joy, all laid out on baking sheet after baking sheet. Boston Cream. Glazed. Powdered. Chocolate Sprinkle. Jelly. Crullers. These are real. They exist. And they’re fucking delicious. Trust that we are all closer to a good donut shop than we will ever be to AGI. Trust that we are all closer to a good donut shop than we will ever be to AGI, and we should be taking full advantage of what is close to us, and what is possible, and what brings us joy. And that when the sloplords tell us that the thing we need might be right around the corner, maybe consider that they’re right after all. If there’s a donut shop around the corner. We are in the Era of Abundant Donuts. If we want it. We should want it. Because a donut is amazing, and it’s right there for the taking. I hope your friend succeeds in becoming a donut maker. I hope their donuts are amazing. I hope there are lines around the block for their donuts. I hope you end up helping them at the donut shop and loving it so much that you decide you want to become a donut maker too. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s not the donuts that get your attention as much as it is your friend’s joy. Maybe you decide you want the joy, but your joy is found in something else. Maybe it’s making tacos, or opening a bookstore, or knitting, or opening a bar, or designing shoes. I hope that when this happens someone says “That’s awesome. What can I do to help?” <hr/>🙋 Got a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-usher-in-an-era-of-abundant-donuts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>. I will try to answer it. 📣 Trust me when I tell you that you are competent. But they may have stolen your confidence. I can help you get it back. I’ve got a few seats left for the upcoming <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1986010061556?aff=oddtdtcreator&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-usher-in-an-era-of-abundant-donuts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Presenting w/Confidence</a> workshop. You should grab one. 📕 My new book, <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/how-to-die-and-other-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-usher-in-an-era-of-abundant-donuts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">How to Die (and other stories)</a>, is actually uplifting as fuck and you should get a copy. And if you’re in The Bay Area, come see me and Annalee Newitz talk about it at <a href="https://booksmith.com/event/monteiro26?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-usher-in-an-era-of-abundant-donuts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Booksmith on May 11</a>! 🧺 <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/gilly-amp-billy-enamel-pin-fpbpz-y2d7t?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-usher-in-an-era-of-abundant-donuts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Gilly & Billy</a> enamel pins are back in stock. 🏳️‍⚧️ <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/fix-your-hearts-pins?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-usher-in-an-era-of-abundant-donuts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Fix Your Heart</a> pins are here. 10 pins for $20, with $5 from each sale going to Trans Lifeline. 🍉 The ceasefire is a lie and Israel is insane. Please donate what you can to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-usher-in-an-era-of-abundant-donuts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>.

How to clear an inbox

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Sep 4, 2025

<figure><img alt="A wax hand, flipping the bird, made of wax, with studio keys embedded inside. Because I am petty." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/d0946813-1f28-4a2d-8348-2f7ec1733aac.jpg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>Cleared out of my art studio last week.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>Because last week’s newsletter was such a bummer, and because this was a short week, and because I have tickets to a Valkeries game tonight, let’s do a mailbag and just run through the silliest questions we’ve got. Cool? Cool. Ballhalla! <hr/>💰 <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-clear-an-inbox" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Join the $2 Lunch Club!</a> 💰 <hr/>Kio Stark asks: Which do you think is a more important invention, the post-it or the index card? Personally, I have to go with the post-it. Because I’m getting forgetful in my old age, and I’ve got post-its all over our apartment and at work. Post-its reminding me to charge my bike lights, reminding me to take my keys with me, reminding me to grab milk or coffee, etc. I imagine this is only going to get worse with time, and I will eventually need post-its that tell me which shoe is left and which is right. My monitor at work is also covered with post-its of things that probably shouldn’t be on post-its, like account user names and passwords. Which, honestly, might be safer than having this shit online where Sam Altman’s evil elves scrape every inch of the cloud looking for training data. The best thing about post-it notes is that you can put the info you need where it’s most likely to be helpful. Like the post-it on the bathroom mirror that reminded me I had a dentist appointment this morning. I saw it as soon as I woke up, and it got me to brush my teeth extra good. We long ago offloaded all the things we used to remember, like phone numbers and birthdays to different online services. The only phone number I still remember is my grandmother’s, and I haven’t had cause to use it in twenty years. Now I miss my grandmother. <hr/>Dan Ryan asks: What's the best alcohol for a molotov cocktail? Do you prefer yours neat or full of rocks? Look, almost all of you have a bottle of cheap vodka in your freezer, and it’s probably been there for years. You’ve long ago decided you’re not going to drink it. Also, even though Waymos are covered in surveillance cameras, none of them are going to think twice about you getting in with a bottle of vodka. You’re just a young person going to a party and bringing a shitty gift for the host. Vodka also isn’t going to ignite and blow up. It’s generally about 40% ABV (alcohol by volume.) So while it’s flammable, it’s not combustible. Meaning, no boom. But it’ll make a mess. And when you end up getting nabbed by the cops, you can point out that no, you didn’t make a molotov cocktail because only an idiot would use vodka to make a molotov cocktail, and you’re not an idiot. But to answer your question, and only to answer your question, you’re looking for grain alcohol, which is 95% alcohol, and which should always be taken neat. My lawyer wishes I hadn’t answered this question. <hr/>Anonymous asks: In Jurassic Park, why did the scientists clone dinosaurs instead of inventing time travel to send their guests back to the actual Jurassic Period? Some people would still have died, but not as many! This is an excellent question. For the purpose of this question, let’s agree that the invention of time travel is just as feasible as cloning dinosaurs, and go from there. I want to say the reason was that the atmosphere in the Jurassic period wasn’t great for humans. It was pretty high in CO2, and while we could breathe it if we had to, it wouldn’t be great for us in the long haul. Then I remembered that we also invented asbestos and wrapped every schoolbuilding in it for decades, so that’s probably not it. Also, if you’re going to splurge on time machines, you probably have enough VC funding to cover a few gas masks? A better answer might just be our good old friend capitalism. You can make more money setting up a dinosaur park as a destination, and then enticing people to come to you, than you can by sending guests back in time, and then somehow monitoring their safety. Not that that worked out well in the movie. But hey, we got to watch Richard Attenborough work his way through a dining room table full of melting ice cream. There’s also the whole butterfly effect of fucking with the past because it can change the future, and after spending thirty minutes this morning watching RFK Jr being interrogated by Congress, I certainly want to preserve as much of this timeline as possible. Plus, if we wait a few years Sam Altman will bring the Jurassic to us. <hr/>Andy Welfle asks: What is the collective noun of "clusterfuck"? America. <hr/>Wannie Nguyen asks: What do you think about the “laws of UX” and the millions of articles or thinkpieces we get weekly in the field that are based on shaky findings in psychology with studies that are barely replicated at best? I think they’re bullshit and everyone’s working a grift in what history books will someday refer to as “The Era of the Con.” I’m kidding. There’s no future. There won’t be any more history books to document what’s happening now. Probably. Also, I don’t think this is a silly question, you just got grouped in here with these other questions. I’ll try to answer it honestly. Silicon Valley is long done doing anything real or useful. And since most designers (I hate the phrase UX anything) reading this have some tangential relationship to what happens in Silicon Valley it’s going to affect how we work. When you work at a carnival there’s nothing to be gained by being the person who’s taking their work seriously. When everyone around you is working a grift it’s really hard to do what you might consider “real work that helps people.” Especially when the people we used to look up to in this industry are now clowns trying to convince you that the AI-generated balloon dog they just handed you needs to be walked. (If you’re wondering whether this is about someone in particular, it probably is.) <hr/>From Dana Chisnell: Where can I find some optimism right now? I’d get to that bottle of vodka in the freezer before Dan Ryan does! Seriously, though. Look, the reason I’m doing a newsletter’s worth of silly answers is because last week I hit everyone with <a href="https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-lose-a-child/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">a downer</a>. I don’t regret writing the downer. I think it needed to be written. But I also like to take care of my readers, and look out for people. So every once in a while we gotta take a deep breath and maybe have a few laughs, or smell some flowers, or eat some pie. We can’t ignore all the bullshit that’s happening out there. That’s irresponsible, especially when we’re in a position of privilege. But we also need to take the time to recharge and enjoy this life. After all, this is the problem: the uneven distribution of a life you can enjoy. Optimism is the fuel that will drive our victory. There are no guillotines or molotovs without optimism. I find optimism in riding my bike around town and watching people going about their day, and living their lives. I find optimism in watching people walk their dogs. I find optimism in taking the time to reach out to someone I love and telling them I love them. I find optimism in knowing that, as shitty as things might be, there are still people making art, and writing books, and making music. And I try to support those people as much as I can. The thing about optimism is that it’s not just about finding it. You also need to create it for other people to find. Optimism is a public trust. Sometimes you take, sometimes you leave a little bit for someone who might need it. And quite often you will find the optimism you need in the exact same place where you’ve left some optimism for others. All is love! <hr/>🙋 Got a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-clear-an-inbox" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it.</a> Who knows what kind of answer you might get. 📣 I’ve got a few spots left in <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting-work-with-confidence-tickets-1623475511959?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-clear-an-inbox" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">next week’s workshop</a>. Come learn how to talk about your work with confidence. And yes, this includes job interviews. 📘 Finished Karen Hao’s <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/empire-of-ai-dreams-and-nightmares-in-sam-altman-s-openai-karen-hao/22156498?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-clear-an-inbox" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Empire of AI</a> this week. It’s so worth your time. 💩 Malcolm Gladwell is <a href="https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/09/iconic-writer-malcolm-gladwell-says-hes-100-against-trans-women-in-sports-this-is-nuts/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-clear-an-inbox" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">a piece of transphobic shit</a>. 🤖 Ed Zitron’s <a href="https://www.wheresyoured.at/how-to-argue-with-an-ai-booster/?ref=ed-zitrons-wheres-your-ed-at-newsletter&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-clear-an-inbox" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">How to Argue With an AI Booster</a> is worth an hour of your time. Also, it’s really funny.(Maybe not to AI boosters, but they suck.) 🍉 Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-clear-an-inbox" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-clear-an-inbox" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>.

How to love your neighbors

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Mar 27, 2026

<figure><img alt="25 panels with 24 screaming cartoon ducks. White on black." class="" draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/b5a97b8a-3f28-434e-8de7-7f921c4c2b23.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>More ducks. I may not stop painting ducks.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Tuan Son Nguyen: How do you form a circle of like-minded people to keep your sanity when so many horrible things are happening? I’m not exactly sure when this happened, or what triggered it. But I remember it was a nice day. Maybe it was a nice day after a few rainy days, or a few cold days, or maybe I was just up in my feelings. But I got home, locked up my bike, and instead of heading up the stairs to our apartment, as I would normally do, I headed out to the dogpark. The dogpark is a block away, and I visit regularly with my dog so he can do all his dog things. We’re regulars. But this time I didn’t have my dog and I had no need to go to the dogpark. I just wanted to. I wanted to go sit on one of the benches and soak up what was left of a nice day. Which is what I did. Here’s the thing about the dog park, which I’ve written about before. It’s dog-centric. Everyone knows your dog’s name. Everyone knows whether your dog can or cannot have treats (always ask if you don’t know). Everyone’s relationship at the dogpark, with a few exceptions, revolves around the dogs. And that’s been true for as long as we’ve been taking our dog (who is now amazingly close to eighteen years old) to the dog park. This is by design. When everyone is brought together by geography and your dog’s need to take a shit, it’s in your best interest to get along with the people who end up in that shared public space. You wanna keep conversation light. You discuss the weather. If someone is wearing a local team hat, you take it as a sign to elevate the conversation to “did you see the game?” or “this is our year.” (It’s not.) You mention new restaurants or cafés in the neighborhood, or sadly more appropriately these days—you mention restaurants or cafés that have recently shuttered. But mostly you talk about the dogs. “Did Grumble get a haircut today?” “I like Mojo’s Pride kerchief.” In general, it’s best to avoid more complicated issues with your neighbors, which is why I stay off NextDoor, which is just an online Klan rally. Once you know certain things about your neighbors, you’re stuck knowing them, and you realize how much time you spend around them holding a bag of dog shit in your hand. And the temptation becomes too strong. This is how peace was kept in the dog park for years. The occasional flare-up for politics, of course, the occasional flare-up for world issues, as well as local issues. Which will happen whenever folks get together, which is good. But those conversations would eventually subside. A regression back to the mean. Back to the dogs. But neighborhoods are living, changing things. On the day I decided to just go sit in the dogpark without my dog (he was still at work), I realized other people were just sitting there in the dogpark. Yes, some of them had dogs, but some didn’t. They were just sitting there, sometimes talking to one another, sometimes not. Literally in a circle because of how the benches are laid out. And then other people started coming out and wandered over. To be clear, I’m not saying I instigated any of this. If anything, we were all getting pulled in by some cosmic need to be among other people. And for the past few weeks, this has been a regular occurrence. Every day I come home, and I walk to the dog park and sit with my neighbors. Yes, we talk about our dogs, but we also check in on each other, we vent about our day, we trash talk. Sometimes people bring snacks. Yes, we talk about the state of things in the world, which is awful, but having this small community of people that we can hold peace with makes it… well, not less awful. But it makes a difference knowing there are other people on the spaceship with us. Are we like-minded? We’re like minded in some things! For one, we all like sitting in the park in the evening, and that’s nice. We all love our neighborhood. We seem to all like donuts. And dogs. And a little bit of a breeze coming off the mountain. We all believe there’s one neighbor that goes too fucking hard. We all believe in shared spaces, or at least we believe in this shared space. I think we also believe that it’s important to interact with each other with a certain level of kindness. For example, one of our neighbors recently had knee surgery and everyone’s bringing her food. Another neighbor is out of town and there are a few neighbors moving her car around so she doesn’t get tickets when the street cleaning happens. We watch each other's dogs when we’re out of town, or working a long shift at work. We lend records that better be returned in good shape soon. (This one might be a little targeted.) We hold vigils when a beloved dog leaves us. We commiserate together when someone loses a job, and we celebrate together when a new job is procured. We say goodbye when someone moves away, and we widen the circle when a new person moves in. Are we like-minded in all things? Fuck no. Way too many of my neighbors still own Ring cameras. Way too many of my neighbors still believe their “I got this before Elon went crazy” bumper sticker is an act of resistance. Way too many of my neighbors still believe Gavin Newsom is the solution to something. (Gavin Newsom is a piece of shit.) And more than one of my neighbors have sat down next to me and told me that the Democrats need to give a little bit on immigration, not realizing they were sitting next to an immigrant. So, no we are not like-minded in all things. But I do believe there is a shared core of decency to all my neighbors, and within that core there may be unexplored areas that need to be explored a little bit. We all grew up believing certain things, things that we hold to be sacrosanct, that could use a little further exploration. And I’ve been able to have a few of those conversations with people, and they’ve been able to have some with me. It’s easier for people to have those conversations when they’re coming from a place of common decency. That said, not all differences are equal. I don’t sit with Nazis. I don’t sit with terfs. We all avoid the zionist lady. And as much as I’d like to say that I don’t sit with racists, if you are white and you were raised in the US, you are a racist. (I’m including myself here.) So on that one, I must sadly admit that it’s a matter of degree. Although I’ll happily report that there have been difficult conversations in the park that I believe have moved some souls closer to heaven, if not through the gates. We’re getting there. (By the way, no one in the dog park is going to talk to me again after this.) In general, I think the idea of “like-minded” is overrated and a little boring. Sitting with people who agree with everything you agree with feels great for about five minutes. Then (and maybe this is because I am from Philadelphia) I want to fight. I want to argue. I want to argue about who the most influential NBA player of our lifetime was, and why it was Allen Iverson. I want to argue about the best Beyoncé album, and why it was Lemonade. I want to argue about why the park needs public restrooms, and yes I know people will use them—that’s the fucking point, man! I want to argue about which of our cafés makes the best coffee. (Trick question. It’s me. I make better coffee than any of them.) I want to argue about street parking. My god, I love arguing with my neighbors about street parking. (Why should the city be providing storage for your private property? Get a bike. Ride the bus.) Street parking is always guaranteed to start a fight in the park. And I love having those fights with my neighbors. I think they honestly bring us closer together. (They may disagree.) But no, we will not have any arguments about who belongs in the park, because something that every one of my neighbors agrees about is that if you are in the park you belong in the park. If you are in the park, you get the same privileges as everyone else in the park. And if you want to join the community circle in the park we will make room for you. And also, if shit starts coming out of your mouth you will be called on it. Everything is shit. And when everything is shit, minor differences become less important than the things we hold in common. We’ve seen this in LA. We’ve seen this in Chicago. We’ve seen this in the Twin Cities. Punks fighting next to suburban dads. Wine moms fighting next to anarchists. Socialists fighting next to librarians. (I’m kidding here, all librarians are socialist. I love librarians.) We see this when people come out to protect their neighbors. We see this when people yell at the ICE goons. And someday we will see this when we put all these fascists on trial. Roomfuls of people, who may not agree on much, but they agree on this: The shittier they treat us, the more they bring us together. <hr/>💰 Special request: I love/dread writing this newsletter every week. And it is labor. The more folks sign up for the <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-your-neighbors" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">$2 Lunch Club</a>, the more that labor gets converted into rent, and the more that happens the more this newsletter becomes something that helps pay the rent, and less like something distracting me from doing things that pay the rent. So, if you can, please sign up to be a paying member. As promised, everyone will always see the same thing, regardless of membership. I love you all equally. I’d like to love some of you a little more equally. 💰 <hr/>🙋 Got a question for me? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-your-neighbors" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>! All questions answered by a human. (Me.) 📓 Buy my new book <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/how-to-die?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-your-neighbors" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">How to die (and other stories)</a>! 😠😀 Come see me and Annalee Newitz talk about that book at Booksmith on May 11. <a href="https://booksmith.com/event/monteiro26?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-your-neighbors" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Tickets going fast</a>! 🧺 <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/gilly-amp-billy-enamel-pin-fpbpz-y2d7t?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-your-neighbors" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Gilly pins</a> are back in stock! 📣 The next <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1986010061556?aff=oddtdtcreator&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-your-neighbors" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Presenting w/Confidence</a> workshop is scheduled for April 16 & 17! This will help you with the thousands of job interviews you’re all doing. 🍉 Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-your-neighbors" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. Fuck Israel. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to the <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-love-your-neighbors" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>. Trans people belong in the Olympics. Trans people belong everywhere. Fuck Gavin Newsom.

How to grow strawberries

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Feb 27, 2026

<figure><img alt="Wall of new paintings. Three green paintings that say GO BIRDS, FUCK ICE, and FREE PALESTINE. Three purple paintings that say FUCK ICE. All the paintings have sticks attached so they look like protest signs." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/ffdc4bdf-02a0-4626-b3f7-551e6cbb597c.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>Feels so good to have a studio again.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Anthea Tawia: I came to San Francisco to visit the company I work for—sadly I was let go the first day I visited the office. I’m early in my career, worked there about 5ish months and really felt this was my big break. It’s disheartening to find yourself searching again after thinking you found what you’re looking for. How do you face a future that feels so uncertain? First of all, I’m incredibly sorry this happened to you. It’s unforgivably brutal. Secondly, I fear you’re about to be deeply disappointed in my answer because there is no easy answer to what you—and so many other people—are currently going through. I also refuse to engage in the type of toxic positivity that would tell you this is a good learning experience, or that it will all be alright. Because the former is a straight-up lie and the latter is questionable at best. I’m sure other people have told you this, but it bears repeating not just for you but for anyone else reading this who might’ve recently lost their job: It’s not your fault, and there is nothing you could’ve done differently to change the outcome. I’ll say it again: It’s not your fault, and there is nothing you could’ve done differently to change the outcome. I’m assuming, just playing the odds here, that you work in tech. Probably in some design or design-adjacent capacity. My own design and tech journey started under very different circumstances, at a very different time. I accidentally joined up almost at the very beginning, when things were more driven by curiosity than profit motives. And by “accidentally,” I mean that I had no clue this could be a career. None of us did. We had no idea what it was that we were making or how it would slot into the world, but either through naivete, hubris, prescience, or a combination of the three we felt this was something important, and overall positive. Words like “democratization,” “netizens,” and “new economy” were being thrown around with wild abandon. We were right about some things. It did change the world, but that was a massive monkey’s paw. We were wrong about other things. It was not overall positive. And we were ignorant about more things than we were right or wrong about combined. But by and large, there was the sense that the industry was attempting, if not always succeeding and certainly mired in the biases of white men, to make the world a better place. It did feel, for at least a while, that we were doing a fair bit of solving problems, and making things that people enjoyed. Online banking and bill paying is nice. The iPod was cool. Cue cat? Very cool. Social media could’ve worked, maybe with different people in charge. 3D printers are cool. (I’ve made about 500 anti-ICE whistles this week!) Video cams were cool when we were pointing them at coffee pots and not our neighbors. Borrowing books from the library on an e-reader? Amazing. Eventually, the industry did well enough to make a lot of people accidentally rich, which attracted people who were now expecting to get rich, and as with every new industry that eventually matures and goes into maintenance mode, a group of people who were pissed off they weren’t getting rich as quickly as the last group. And that’s when the problems that we were trying to solve switched from “what do people need” to “I’m not rich yet.” And eventually to “Ok, I’m richer than I ever need to be, but there is still some money, land, and water, over there that I want.” But when I think back to myself at the start of my career, and the things that pulled me towards this industry, I don’t see myself making that same decision if I were making it now. This is not a place of honor. As Pavel Samsonov so clearly and succinctly said <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/spavel.bsky.social/post/3mf7yuq4ngs2q?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">recently on Bluesky</a>: “Once, technology solved problems. People liked having problems solved, so they liked technology. Tech execs started to think of that sentiment as their due. So when they stopped solving problems, and people stopped liking them, they became outraged. ‘How dare you not love whatever we give you?’” We do not love the surveillance. We do not love the slop. We do like paying rent and going to the doctor though. So we keep trying to do the work. I think we need to open our eyes to the fact that the current industry many of us work in, not only doesn’t care about their workers, it actively resents them. In their eyes, we have gone from being the people who made things possible, to an unnecessary burden on the bottom line. They hate that we charge money for our labor, and see that money as something we are stealing from their pockets. Which are very large, are already more full than they will ever be able to use in a lifetime. They don’t want you to improve, they don’t want you to be more productive, they don’t even want you to be more pliable. They just want you gone. As I was writing this sentence I got an alert from a friend that Block, Jack Dorsey’s latest chewtoy, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/26/block-laying-off-about-4000-employees-nearly-half-of-its-workforce.html?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">has laid off 4,000 people</a>. Which made its stock rise 24%. When 4,000 people lose their livelihood, their ability to pay their rent, their ability to go to the doctor, their ability to look out for their children, and the system that we live under cheers that on… That system needs to be destroyed. Capitalism sees workers as a bug, not a feature. They are dying to eliminate us. Capitalism is not a system of honor. If you are looking for a sliver of positivity in those last few paragraphs, it might be that five months into your career you still have time to walk back out and try another door. I realize that this is neither easy to do, nor uplifting, nor the answer you were looking for. But I feel like I am duty-bound to tell this industry is not a place of honor. CEOs are <a href="https://www.advocate.com/news/tim-cook-donald-trump-gift?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">handing out lucite to fascists</a>. Companies are building <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/cybersecurity/why-ring-s-feel-good-super-bowl-ad-freaked-people-out/ar-AA1Wmo4r?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">massive surveillance networks</a> to make kidnapping our neighbors easier. The world’s richest idiot has turned Twitter into <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/5/eu-flags-appalling-child-like-deepfakes-generated-via-xs-grok-ai?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">a child pornography factory</a>. VC firms are hiring partners <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/nyregion/daniel-penny-hired-andreessen-horowitz.html?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">whose only job qualification is that they’ve murdered Black people on the subway</a>. And an industry that senses its own decline is now stuffing every product and service we’ve adopted with slop like slop is <a href="https://gizmodo.com/ai-added-basically-zero-to-us-economic-growth-last-year-goldman-sachs-says-2000725380?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">the only lifesaver left on the Titanic</a>. To make it even more depressing, as if that were necessary, when I look out at the evil bastards doing these things, celebrating the murder of my neighbors, I see many of the same faces who were talking about tech as a force for good when I first started. I see many of the same faces who were posting letters about the importance of diversity to their corporate sites in 2020. I see many of the same faces who promised to “do better,” after the brutal murder of George Floyd now <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/letter-salesforce-employees-sent-after-marc-benioffs-ice-comments/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">calling for a bigger ICE presence on our streets</a>. These are not people of honor. Anthea, I am so far away from answering your question. So here I will attempt to do so, but I fear that you will not like my answer. However, I have too much respect for you to lie. Your last sentence was about facing a future that feels so uncertain. But I feel like a career in tech at this point is far from uncertain. In fact some things are more certain than uncertain. You would most likely be working for someone who doesn’t value you. You’d most likely be building something that is not improving the world. You’d most likely be forced to either spend your time babysitting the slop machine (and secretly fixing its mistakes) or actively working on the slop machine (and secretly pretending it was not full of mistakes). You’d be surrounded by over-eager 9-9-6 techbros who feel they’re temporarily embarrassed millionaires who don’t want the boot off workers’ necks as much as they envision their own foot inside the boot. I know none of this feels good to hear. But I don’t think this industry deserves you. You deserve to work at a place that treats you with respect. A place that gives you the room to learn and grow, while cherishing the expertise you’re already walking through the door with. A place that pays you well and provides medical benefits for you and your family. A place with set hours, so you can flourish outside of work as well. A place where your opinion is not only welcome, but encouraged. A place where you feel safe. A place where you and the other workers can collectively bargain with management, because they understand that you are where the value comes from. I say these things not because you are special—although I’m sure you are!—but because all workers deserve these things. Sadly, I fear those things are close to impossible to find in the tech industry at the moment. As you found out from direct experience. So I’d suggest asking yourself what you would be doing right now, if not for tech. Not because you don’t deserve to be here, but because it doesn’t deserve you. If you decide to persevere in this industry, I’d walk into every interview with your head held high and remember that you are interviewing them, as much as they are interviewing you. You are deciding whether this is a company you want to sell your labor to. And I wouldn’t hesitate to walk out of any interview where you didn’t feel safe or valued. I’d walk the floor. I’d talk to other workers. (Outside work if possible.) I’d read up about the company. And I’d walk into that interview like I was doing a deposition. And of course, remember that none of this is a guarantee that they wouldn’t pull the same shit as your last company. There is an uncertain future in front of you. And for that I am very sorry. Again, none of this was your fault, and there is nothing you could have done to keep it from happening. But in that uncertain future you may start finding things that you didn’t expect to find, maybe behind doors that you’d previously closed off. And maybe, hopefully, one of those will lead to a life full of joy and love. Keep in mind that a job will take up a huge percentage of your life, and this is not a practice life. It deserves to be amazing, not spent working for assholes. Life is wild, it doesn’t always go where you’re expecting it to. Shit sucks. Shit is unfair. Shit is brutal. Shit also makes strawberries. And whatever else we may do with our lives, we are all, at heart, strawberry farmers. And for any tech leaders who are reading this and believe themselves the exception? Great. Show me. Instead of sending me the “not all tech leaders” email you’re already crafting in your head… do something to prove to us that it’s “not all tech leaders.” Take a stand. Call out your brethren. Refuse to work with Nazis. Stop licensing your software to Nazis. Start treating your workers with the respect they deserve. Every dollar in your very large pockets came from their labor. Share it. And if you are running a company that respects its workers, and treats them honestly, and fairly? Hire Anthea. She seems awesome. You’d be lucky to have her. <hr/>📓 Some book news: If you’ve pre-ordered the new book, <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/how-to-die-and-other-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">How to die (and other stories)</a>, thank you! I originally planned on getting all the pre-orders shipped out in February, but my printer has been sloooooooooow in getting books to me. Some orders have gone out. And there is a large shipment headed my way. I am sending books out in the order I received them. Fun fact: I asked a friend who works at a bookstore why things were slow and he told me every press in America is swamped right now, printing Heated Rivalry. Which honestly? I can’t get mad about that. I appreciate your patience. I love you. <hr/>🙋 Got a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>. I might meander myself into a useful answer. 💰 Join the <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">$2 Lunch Club</a> and help me pay my rent. 📣 The next Presenting w/Confidence workshop is scheduled for <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting-work-with-confidence-tickets-1984157517547?aff=oddtdtcreator&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">March 19 & 20</a>. It’s a good workshop for folks interviewing. 🏳️‍⚧️ This week we are funneling all our help to the <a href="https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/ab0d171c-cf60-425d-ace5-e805b00f9388?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Continental Pipeline</a>. They’re busy getting trans people the fuck out of Kansas, and into Colorado. Because, yes, <a href="https://www.advocate.com/politics/states/kansas-revokes-transgender-drivers-licenses?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-grow-strawberries" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">it’s come to this</a>. Fuck these fascists.

How to vote early and often

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Feb 5, 2026

<figure><img alt="Three green paintings with sticks, to look like signs. White text. From L to R: GO BIRDS, FUCK ICE, FREE PALESTINE" draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/6514e32f-7687-46f6-aba9-94a80fe0ea09.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>First painting in my new studio! This is The Einbinder Trilogy.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>Enjoy this newsletter? <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Gimme $2/mo.</a> This is labor. <hr/>This week’s question comes to us anonymously: Is voting an illusion? Short answer, ehhhhh… no. Voting is real. Too many people have died for the right to vote for me to make light of it. The fact that millions of people are willing to wait in line, many of them under threat of harassment (both physical and bureaucratic) to get their vote counted makes it real. Very real. The fact that so many terrible people in power spend so much energy trying to keep people from voting also tells me that voting is very real. And something that scares them. I get why you feel frustrated by the process though. I sometimes share in your frustration. But as a naturalized citizen who had to jump through a few mild hoops and wave a little flag in order to get the right to vote, I still take pride in the act of voting, if not so much with the choices of who or what to vote for. The problem isn’t the voting. It’s everything around the voting. Everything from the names that get printed on the ballots, to how those names are chosen, the money that puts those names there (and the lack of money that keeps other names off), and then how those votes are cast, collected, and counted. With a side of gerrymandering, as a treat. But I want to talk to you about another kind of voting today. Because while I agree that voting is real, and you should aim to do it, I also don’t want to have a discussion about elections. Which is what we end up talking about when we talk about voting. (I also don’t want to start an argument about how it’s our duty to vote for the candidate who wants to commit genocide with a sad face versus the candidate who wants to commit genocide with a scowl on their face, and I won’t berate people for withholding their vote from candidates that want to bomb their family. We can save that argument for another day.) Here’s the truth about voting: We vote every day. Which is not to say that the voting that typically happens on November 4 isn’t important, it is. But what I’m saying is the voting you do on the other 364 days of the year are just as important, if not—in some ways—more so. Because in America, the biggest ballot box is the cash register, and in America you vote with your dollar. I want to talk about where we’re putting our dollar. To see how quickly the oligarch class threw democracy under the bus in order to continue doing business as usual should be enough to disabuse you of the notion that they care about democracy in the least. To see how quickly the tech oligarchs caved to fascism in order to get the deregulation they needed to continue inhaling profit they’ve long ago stopped needing should disabuse you of the notion that they saw democracy as anything but a feel-good fantasy they were willing to entertain because, sure why not. The honest truth is that the collapse of American Democracy™ hasn’t had much of an effect on people in power. They’re still in power. And sure, Tim Cook might not exactly enjoy flying to DC to kiss the ring, show up with lucite awards, and sit in a private screening room (which has to reek of Big Mac farts pressed through a syphilitic tube) to watch Melania, but he’s going to do it because it’s the new price of doing business in America. Chuck Schumer wishes he was majority leader of the Senate—it looks good on a résumé, I suppose, and who doesn’t want to be Top Boy—but the difference between AIPAC donations to Senate Majority Leaders and Senate Minority Leaders is fairly negligible. Chuck’s doing fine. And he sure as shit isn’t putting those contribution checks in danger because you had a bad day of being murdered by ICE goons. (Have you tried not being murdered by ICE goons?) Most of the people in power were willing to do away with the fantasy of democracy as long as capitalism kept chugging along. Capitalism is the true cornerstone of what makes America America. Because in America, the biggest ballot box is the cash register. We need to be more mindful of where we are putting our dollar. I was fifteen years old when the ET video game for the 2600 came out in 1982, very shortly on the heels of the movie. (Some of you reading this are old enough that you just got angry.) For those not familiar, this video game was the most shoddily-made piece of cash-grab garbage that had ever entered our young lives. It was unplayable. It scarred us. I still bring it up in therapy. Also, that fucking game also cost $30 and at fifteen years of age you either got those $30 from your parents or by saving up $30, which in 1982 took shoveling the snow from six houses. Which meant that you weren’t getting another game for a while. I myself didn’t get an ET game at the time because I didn’t have an Atari 2600 yet. But my friend Rob did. He put thirty of his dollars down on an ET game. So we’d hang out in his basement trying to make ET eat his fucking Reese’s Pieces and see if this was maybe the time the game did what it was supposed to do, which of course it didn’t because it was a badly coded piece of shit. Nevertheless, we persisted because to admit that it didn’t work was to admit that he had put his thirty dollars on something stupid. A few months later, after I’d finally persuaded my parents into getting me a 2600, I walked into Toys R Us and there was an endcap mountain of ET cartridges for $1. I remember staring at them, arching my short body’s neck up to see the top of the mountain, and thinking “well, it’s only a dollar” before snapping out of it and remembering how much that game sucked and no, it was not getting my dollar. I was reminded of all this as I left the house this morning and ran into my neighbor who was telling me he was in the market for a new car. He mentioned that he really wanted an EV, which is a reasonable thing. Then, lowering his voice just a little bit, mentioned that used Teslas were going for about five dollars. And suddenly I was back at Toys R Us staring at a mountain of ET cartridges and thinking fuck no, that is still too much. That is not where you should put your dollar. San Francisco can tell me it is a progressive city all it wants to, but when I ride my bike I see evidence that it’s simply not true. Because I can see how you’ve voted with your dollar. I see that you were willing to give your dollar to a nazi transphobe that defunded USAid and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/feb/03/aid-cuts-avoidable-deaths-study-children-uk-us-donor-countries?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">killed 22 million people in the process</a>. “But we didn’t know he was like that.” Yes we did. Every time we shop at Target we are supporting a company that dismantled all its DEI and Pride initiatives before they were even threatened with anything. <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/target-says-it-is-ending-its-dei-goals-and-programs-citing-an-evolving-external-landscape?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">They caved ahead of the curve</a>. (The fact that Target headquarters is in Minneapolis should fill everyone on the board of that company with a lifelong shame.) Every time we walk into a Home Depot or a Lowe’s we’re supporting a company that gives ICE a reach-around every time they pull into their parking lot. Every time we share a Substack we’re supporting <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/substacks-nazi-problem-wont-go-away-after-push-notification-apology/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">a company that’s built fascism into the core of its business model</a>. Every time we walk into a Starbucks we’re giving our dollar to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/04/starbucks-strike-workers-urge-customers-delete-app?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">union busters</a>. Every time we install a Ring camera from Amazon on our front door we are <a href="https://indivisiblesf.org/blog/2026/2/3/your-amazon-ring-camera-works-for-ice?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">putting an ICE agent between us and our neighbors</a>. Every <a href="https://refuseuline.com/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Uline</a> order you place is a bullet in the gun of an ICE agent. You cannot complain about all the retail vacancies in town while also getting thirty Amazon packages delivered to your door every week. You cannot complain all the restaurants are closing when you’re ordering all your meals from UberEats ghost kitchens. This list could go on forever. Every dollar we put down is a ballot cast for the values of the organization that we’ve handed it to. More importantly, when we put our dollars there, we don’t have that dollar anymore. We no longer have a dollar that we can give to our local hardware store, to our local coffee shop, to the trans-inclusive Girl Scout troop, to a rent relief fund in Minnesota. We’ve already voted. We gotta be better voters. What we’re seeing in Minneapolis right now is the strength of community. People with a strong core of decency—who probably disagree on a lot of things—coming together and looking out for one another. And we’ve all seen a lot of photos of what’s happening on the ground. And in those photos there are storefronts. And in those storefronts there are signs telling ICE to get the fuck out of their town, and telling their neighbors that they are welcome there. These are the places where you should put your dollar. These are the places where you should place your vote. The same community that will look out for you when you need it. And I fear that we will all need it, if not against the current madness then a madness yet to come. And let me also make sure to say that community is not necessarily geography. The people of Minneapolis are our community, wherever we might be. And we are theirs. We need to vote for each other. We need to put our dollar where it best feeds our community because in America, the biggest ballot box is a cash register. To finish off the ET story, the majority of Atari ET cartridges eventually went unsold. On September 26, 1983, Atari buried 700,000 game cartridges in a landfill outside Alamogordo, New Mexico. I remember hearing this as a rumor when I was a kid. The great ET Landfill. We wanted desperately to believe it was true, because that fucking game stole our thirty dollars and we were still angry. But this was before the internet, so who knew whether it was just wishful thinking or not. In 2014 it was verified. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">The landfill is real</a>! And while not all 700,000 cartridges were ET cartridges, many of them were. (A lot were Pac-Man, which also sucked, but it was at least mildly playable.) The things you refuse to put your dollar on, the things you refuse to vote for, will eventually end up buried, lost to time. I hope to some day visit the ET Landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico but when I do I hope to also see the Tesla Landfill next to it, and the Ring Camera landfill next to that, and the Harry Potter Landfill next to that (because fuck JK Rowling), and the ICE equipment landfill next to that. (With apologies to the people of New Mexico. Maybe we should spread these around.) Oligarchs like Tim Cook and Elon Musk have shown us their ass. But when you show someone your ass you end up also exposing your neck. America has one neck, and it’s capitalism. Which runs on your dollar. If you want to change how America works, change where you’re putting your dollar. Change your vote. <hr/>🙋 Got a question for me? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>. Please. I love questions. 📓 Pre-order my new book <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/how-to-die-and-other-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">How to die (and other stories)</a>. It’s a collection of the best stories from this newsletter in a handsome nice-to-hold hardback book. ❤️‍🩹 I asked a friend in Minneapolis who needed immediate help and she immediately sent me a link to the <a href="https://afghanculturalsociety.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Afghan Cultural Society</a>. They’re helping detainees and their families. Do what you can. 📣 The next <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting-work-with-confidence-tickets-1981439989347?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Presenting with Confidence</a> workshop is February 19 and 20. A few seats left. It will either help you get a job, or make your current job suck less. 🍉 The genocide in Gaza continues. <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Please help if you can</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ Our trans friends and family need <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-vote-early-and-often" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">help</a> as well.

How to point at fascists and laugh

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Nov 8, 2025

<figure><img alt="Background of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant with the text GO BIRDS. FUCK ICE. FREE PALESTINE. overlaid." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/c074d12b-8bb8-48bc-86cc-85232412c014.png?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>The last slide from my new talk. It plays a role below.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>Contribute to my eventual bail fund at <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-point-at-fascists-and-laugh" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">$2 a pop</a>. <hr/>This week’s question comes from me, actually: How was your trip? Last week I flew to Oslo to give a talk at Y-Oslo. It was my first talk in five years. It was my first flight outside the US in five years. Let’s mostly blame the pandemic for both because the pandemic deserves most of the blame for both, although not all of it. Some of the blame might also go to being a bit exhausted and my internal clock feeling like a blender at full speed. But mostly let’s blame the pandemic because fuck the pandemic. Anyway, these nice folks in Oslo were nice enough to invite me right around the time when I was starting to feel like maybe I was willing to do it again. And because it scared me a little bit to say yes, I said yes. And I went, and I did a talk, and it was fine. (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH2dFXDMwe4&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-point-at-fascists-and-laugh" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">You can watch it if you want</a>.) And Oslo is of course an amazing city that I hope you have an opportunity to visit yourself someday. Especially on someone else’s dime. Because it’s also very expensive. Not having flown for a while I was a bit anxious about the whole thing. I started having dreams about forgetting my passport a couple of months out. I also had to recreate all my little bags of cables and adaptors and tiny toothpaste, stuff I used to have at the ready. But also the national mood had changed. Exiting and entering the country was no longer a given. Especially when you hold a US passport that says you were born in another country. Before leaving for the airport I took the Gaza pin off my backpack because I wanted to avoid any bullshit going through security. I didn’t like doing it, but it seemed a sensible thing to do at the time. I was optimizing for “not giving them a reason.” Except having a Gaza pin on your backpack isn’t “a reason.” It’s a pin, showing solidarity with a people being erased with the help of our own government. (In this particular case the horror pre-dates Trump). And having it on your backpack does little more than say that you wish people weren’t getting murdered. Which in America is apparently a controversial position. Normally, I have all manner of pins, buttons, etc on my backpack or jacket and don’t give it a second thought. But the anxiety of having to pass through a space controlled by the federal government—and I think in 2025 we need to be honest and call it a fascist government—gave me enough pause that I edited myself. Which was a sign of something… something I didn’t like seeing in myself. Leaving the United States, even for a few days, turned out to be an amazing experience for many reasons, none the least of which because it was a reminder of what we’re losing every day. Walking the streets of Oslo felt free. I breathed easier. I worried less about what was around the corner. People were going about their day, living their lives, going to work, going home, meeting friends. And yes, I saw some of the same problems that all you’ll find in every city because cities are complex. But it is different to walk around in a city where your government isn’t hunting its own people. It is different to walk around in a city where your government isn’t kidnapping your neighbors. It is different walking around in a city where you can drop your children off at day care and not fear that their teacher is being kidnapped by goons whose salary is being paid by your taxes. It is different to walk into the public library of a city that cares about its people. (Seriously, always visit the library.) Being outside the United States was a reminder that we’re crabs in slowly boiling water. We’ve normalized so much of the shit going on, thinking that if we make a fuss the chef will turn the heat up. But the result is the same. Dying slowly means dying a little every day. We know what the big things are, and the big things are big. The kidnappings. The killing. The starving. These are absolutely things to worry about. But I also worry about the little things. Worrying what might happen if you express empathy for the wrong group of people online. Deciding to let something slide at work because you don’t want to make a fuss. Double checking every item on the wall behind you before you turn on Zoom for a work call. Wondering if you should pull a slide from your talk because it says Free Palestine. (I didn’t, but man, I thought about it.) Deciding to be silent when you need to be anything but. That extra little blip of anxiety when your kid makes a new friend that their grandparents are gonna ask a lot of questions about. Suddenly nodding along when your boss says something stupid like he doesn’t want any politics in the workplace right before telling Todd to take the diversity statement off the company website. Feeling the need to remove a pin from your backpack. The big things raise the temperature in the boiling water by a lot, and while the little things might only raise the temperature by a degree or two, they’re also dangerous because they’re less noticeable and there are a lot of them. Such a minor change. Such a small death. We can accommodate that. It’s not the hope that kills you, it’s hoping that the little things don’t matter that kills you. We are making ourselves small in the hopes of being able to hide in smaller spaces, but in the end it’s still hiding. And we shouldn’t have to hide. We are too beautiful to hide ourselves. Coming back to the United States, I had a panic attack landing at SFO. I was legitimately terrified shit would go down at passport control. For a little context, a couple of days earlier ICE had detained a British author, Sami Hamdi, who was on a book tour in the US, for making pro-Palestinian comments during his book tour. This was also at SFO. The airport that I call home. I feared that either I’d get harassed (my passport clearly states I wasn’t born here) or I’d see someone else get harassed. What would I do? Would I come to their aid or would I make myself small by pretending not to see it, or convincing myself it was none of my business? I’m sure other travelers saw Sami Hamdi getting rushed by ICE. Did they do anything? Would I have done something? This is our business. When they come for the brown-skinned person at the airport you go to their aid. Because you’ve read <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-point-at-fascists-and-laugh" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">the fucking poem</a>. I never want to feel that way when I get home. Home should be safe and home should be safe for everyone who calls it home. We need to get out of the boiling pot because it’s killing us in big ways and in small ways. Plus, we need the pot for the rich and the horrible. We’ve made it way too easy for people to be horrible. Tim Cook giving a fascist an award should’ve been the end of Apple. Marc Benioff calling for thugs in the street should’ve been the end of Salesforce. Sam Altman’s product killing a kid should’ve been the end of OpenAI. A government not feeding its most vulnerable people should be the end of that government. Armed thugs kidnapping daycare teachers should be the end of those thugs, and lest you think I am advocating violence I would remind you that violence is already here. Looking out for each other is self-defense. Looking out for each other is the whole fucking poem. On Election Day we got a glimpse of life outside the boiling pot. We—and by we I am mostly referring to the people of New York City—climbed out of the boiling pot and voted for a man who has unapologetically not made himself small. Someone who has decided to take up the space that every human being is entitled to. Zohran Mamdani didn’t become mayor of New York despite his brown skin, despite being Muslim, despite recognizing that what is still happening in Gaza is a genocide, despite being a Socialist. He became mayor of New York because of those things. Because he refused to apologize for any of those things. Because they aren’t things you need to apologize for. They are things you celebrate. Because people needed to see, and believe in, someone taking up space, and celebrating the space they were taking up, and inviting you to do the same. In a shared space you can all call home. I ended my talk in Oslo with a slide that said GO BIRDS FUCK ICE FREE PALESTINE. As made famous by <a href="https://www.albawaba.com/entertainment/hannah-einbinder-wins-emmy-says-%E2%80%9Cgo-1612461?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-point-at-fascists-and-laugh" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Hannah Einbinder’s Emmy speech</a>, which I wanted to pay homage to. And as I was making the slide I thought to myself that no one in Norway would get the GO BIRDS part, but they would get the other two parts, and that’s ok because sometimes you toss in treats just for yourself. After the talk, I was sitting in the hallway of this strange student union building, in this foreign European city, when a Norwegian woman I’d never met before came up to me, pulled her laptop out of her bag, and pointed to the Philadelphia Eagles sticker on the cover. “Go birds!” she said. “Fuck ICE.” I replied. “Free Palestine.” we both said in unison. We do indeed have friends everywhere. When the fascists try to make you feel small you raise your bike over your head and you get big. I have no doubt that the fascists will react to last week’s election in the worst way possible. They’ll double down on their atrocities. They’ll double down on the kidnappings. They’ll double down hurting people we love. They’ll double down on making you think that all this, big and small, is normal. It’s not. They’ll be aided in this by democratic leadership telling you that to survive you’ll have to give a little. You’ll have to stop coming to the aid of trans kids. You’ll have to stop coming to the aid of immigrants. They’ll try to get you back in the pot. Instead you should point at all of them and laugh. Because you read the whole fucking poem. ❤️ <hr/>🙋 Got a question for me? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-point-at-fascists-and-laugh" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it!</a> I might give you a convoluted answer! 🎥 Again, here’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH2dFXDMwe4&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-point-at-fascists-and-laugh" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">How to Draw an Orange</a>. Look, this was my first talk in five years. I’m really proud of it. And when I’m proud of something I made I make it everyone’s problem. Plus, no conference in the US will ever hire me to give this talk. For the very reasons I’m writing about today. 👕 Yes, my talk has merch. How does your’s not? <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/fuck-ai-sweater?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-point-at-fascists-and-laugh" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Here’s your holiday sweater</a>. Here’s <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/dont-build-the-torment-nexus-zine?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-point-at-fascists-and-laugh" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">your holiday zine</a>. 📣 Erika has a <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lets-do-design-research-right-tickets-1956952069319?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-point-at-fascists-and-laugh" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Design Research workshop</a> coming up. You should sign up. She’ll teach you good things. 🍉 The ceasefire is a lie. Please support the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-point-at-fascists-and-laugh" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ Fuck Gavin Newsom. Protect trans kids by supporting <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-point-at-fascists-and-laugh" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>.

How to get through cold, wet, dreary days

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Dec 4, 2025

<figure><img alt="New art studio. Someone else's clutter is still in it. Table. Crates. Lotta white walls though." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/61d74946-074d-4ffd-a0c1-9b4fca71bf92.jpg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>Huzzah. I finally got a new studio. Haven’t moved in yet.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>💰 <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-get-through-cold-wet-dreary-days" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Gimme $2/mo if you’re enjoying this</a>. 💰 <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Jim Christensen: How do you get through cold, wet, dreary days? Last week was pretty great. It was Thanksgiving weekend, which is historically the beginning of human hibernation. At least on my particular half of the planet—which as we all know—but because it is 2025 I feel like it’s important to say in print—is round. The Northern half of the planet—again, round—tilts away from the sun so that the Southern half can have its moment of warmth. Which means it gets colder, and the days get shorter, and—depending on where in the Northern half you live—some form of wetness starts falling from the sky. The scientific term for this is dreary. Shit gets dreary. For some of us dreary begets a state of less activity, which for some of us also begets depression. Which is awesome. (It’s not awesome.) Let me also take the time to admit that I am a total baby about the weather. Because even though I was raised in Philadelphia, where we spent the winter wearing thermal underwear, snow was sometimes measured in feet, and spring was welcomed by the smell of winter dogshit thawing along everyone’s sidewalk, I’ve now lived in California long enough that when I say that it was very cold last week I mean that it was in the low 50s. I can now function at full capacity only within a narrow ten degree band between 60 and 70 degrees. Anything outside that band is either too cold or too hot. In fact, last Wednesday I woke up shivering, turned on the heat and wrapped myself in a blanket because it felt like the end of days and then I checked the weather to find out it was 54º. Jesus wept, in a light sweater. In our defense, our houses are drafty and tend not to have central heat. Just a giant brown space heater, installed in the 30s, and jutting out of that thing in our Victorian living room that maybe used to be a fireplace. Also, we are technically in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which is great in the summer, but not so great in the winter. So while the temperature might not reflect it, it’s a cold that gets in your bones and tends to linger in there. Anyway, last week was cold. For us. My truth is my truth. Thanksgiving aside (because it was a whole thing in and of itself) I spent the majority of the long weekend, sitting in our library reading. I turned the little heater on, put on some nice calming music, and sat there reading for hours. Erika joined me for a lot of it, and we just sealed ourselves off from the world, which is currently not just cold, but awful. Turns out reading is a great way to deal with cold, wet, dreary days. When I was a kid, my dad would hang plastic sheeting over the windows in the living room. The kind of sheeting you heat up with a hair dryer to get it nice and taut. He’d hang the same kind of sheeting across the doorway to the living room as well, but without the hair dryer. Then he’d turn off the heaters in the rest of the house. (I think I’ve written about this before.) My parents couldn’t afford to heat the whole house in the winter. (And by whole house I mean a rowhome in the Olney neighborhood.) Our options for staying warm were either to be in the living room, in the kitchen with the oven on, or in bed fully clothed under the covers. Which is the option I usually took, because it also granted me solitude. And safety. Safety was at a higher premium than heat growing up. So I’d get in bed and read. And at the risk of falling into the old cliché of reading providing an escape from everything going on around me as a kid, there’s a reason why it’s a cliché. Reading did exactly that. And the escape that reading provides is anything but allegorical, it is real. As a kid, reading provided me with the lessons parents were supposed to impart. Reading provided me with escape options. Goals. Heist plans. Reading provided me with proof that other ways of living were possible. Reading provided me with proof that people could love each other. Reading provided me with proof that other people had risen from far worse circumstances than me, which is a really important lesson to a kid who only knows the circumstances they’re growing up in. Reading gave me the triangulation I needed to realize where I fit into humanity which was basically “this sucks, but there’s a way out and you can do it.” I read books for the same reason people buy guns—to feel safe at home. Our apartment has a library. It’s a room in the center of the house. And there are bookshelves along all four walls. And those bookshelves overflow with books. The room is obviously a fort. With all four walls fortified by the safety of books. Thick enough to muffle outside sounds. Thick enough to keep the room warm. Thick enough to throw at intruders. Thick enough to serve as a barrier from what’s cold, what’s wet, and what’s dreary. A library as a safe room. (It’s not lost on me that I’ve created an insulating layer against the cold, much as my father did when we were kids. I’m pointing this out for myself before my therapist does.) Every book is an escape hatch to transport me to a place that’s safer, but even more importantly—every book is a recipe book for making our current place safer. Every book is filled with lessons both allegorical and practical that we can apply to our own life in the here and now. Sometimes they jump out at you, sometimes they plant a seed that takes a little bit to germinate and it hits you a bit later. And that’s ok. I have never regretted a minute I spent reading. My friend Annalee Newitz, who’s an amazing writer, likes to say that they don’t write dystopias or utopias. They write topias. Because every place is both, in some amounts. And that rings true. Because even in our current hellscape, which most of us would describe as dystopian, there are moments and places where we create little pockets of something close to utopian. Places that feel safe. Places where we go, not to hide, but to reload. Places where we go to plot, to learn, to explore possibilities. Places that help us get through the cold, wet, dreary days. There is a reason fascists ban books and not guns. Guns are a tool for one thing, books are tools for everything. I am lucky to have a place where I can go to get past the cold, wet, dreary days. So many people don’t. And that number climbs every day, as our topia tips in the wrong direction. We all deserve to have a place like that. And I am happy that I’ve been able to fill that place with books that make me feel safer and have within them the clues needed to tip things in a better direction. We all deserve to feel safe like that. And I am happy that I’m able to take the time, when I need it, to sit and learn, and stew, and plot. And we all deserve time for that, too. Most of all, I am happy that this room has two chairs, so that as winter—both real and allegorical—washes over us, I am reminded that the second chair is there because love is real. I read it in books. <hr/>🖐️ Got a question you need a long run-on answer to? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-get-through-cold-wet-dreary-days" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>! 📣 There’s one last <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1974520646406?aff=oddtdtcreator&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-get-through-cold-wet-dreary-days" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Presenting w/Confidence workshop</a> left this year. December 11 & 12. Sign up, learn some stuff, meet some nice people, say hello to their pets. 🎅 The <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/2025-sock-of-shit?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-get-through-cold-wet-dreary-days" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">2025 Sock of Shit</a> was a great success and they’re all sold out, however we still have BOOKS! <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/pulp-trash-collection-signed?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-get-through-cold-wet-dreary-days" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">OMG BOOKS</a>! And we will sign them! And they’ll make great gifts! 🧺 We also have <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/gilly-amp-billy-enamel-pin-fpbpz-y2d7t?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-get-through-cold-wet-dreary-days" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Gilly pins</a> back in stock and they make amazing stocking stuffers. 🍉 We all need places where we feel safe. Please donate what you can to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-get-through-cold-wet-dreary-days" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ We all need homes where we are loved. Please donate to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-get-through-cold-wet-dreary-days" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>.

How to cook brussels sprouts

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Sep 18, 2025

<figure><img alt="A wee painting that says FIX YOUR HEARTS in pink text on a white background. There's a stick at the bottom because it's a sign." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/179fe9b9-99ad-41e6-aa83-13ba9ba527a1.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>This is FIX YOUR HEARTS, a little painting I did earlier this year.</figcaption></figure> <hr/> 💰 Support independent publishing and join the <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-cook-brussels-sprouts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">$2 Lunch Club</a>! 💰 <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Gurj Johal: What would be a reader’s best reaction to reading one of your newsletters? To re-examine something they’ve believed for a long time. The human brain starts out soft and squishy and full of possibilities. We’re born free of opinions, free of hot takes, free of prejudice, and free of hate. We become what the world makes us, and by “the world” I mean those closest to us as we’re growing up. We’re little sponge babies soaking up other people’s opinions because they’re, well, because they’re there. We adopt our parents’ sports teams. We adopt our parents’ love (or hate) of the outdoors. We adopt the language that our parents’ use to refer to the neighbors, the people they pass in the car (as they remind you to lock the doors), and the people they see on the news. (Please feel free to replace the word parents with whichever caregivers are most appropriate to you.) We adopt our parents’ diets. We adopt our parents’ faith. We adopt our parents’ politics. As we get older the circle of influence grows and we start adopting the opinions of relatives, siblings, neighbors, and others around us. But as like tends to attract like, this only tends to reinforce opinions already starting to take root in our heads, rather than introduce new, and competing, opinions. That will come later. The Aunt that disagrees with your parents on mostly everything might be a lifesaver. As might a good teacher, or a librarian that overhears you say something stupid and walks over with a book you should read. (Stay away from priests and cops though.) Now, obviously, as we grow up and start making our way in the world a lot of those opinions that we were introduced to us children get challenged (hopefully) and we start re-examining them. For example, you eventually go to school and meet kids who look different than you and realize the opinions your parents instilled you with aren’t matching the experiences you’re actually having. Here’s where you get shafted, though. Realizing that you are forming your own honest opinions based on your own experiences in the world is fantastic, but it doesn’t magically hand you the tools to maneuver your new reality. For example, I grew up in a household where people talked to each other loudly and in anger. My parents screamed at one another, and at us. Eventually my brothers and I screamed at each other, because that’s how human communication was modeled for us. And when we went out into the world, we screamed at other people. Not always in anger, mind you. But our volume was set to “loud.” Because we grew up in a household where you needed to be loud to be heard. And while I eventually decided that this wasn’t how I wanted to talk to people, that realization didn’t come with a set of instructions on other ways to talk to people. So I got quiet. Unless I got upset. At which point I went back to what I knew how to do, the thing that had been baked into my little baby brain from watching my parents communicate, I got too loud. I found that I was either sitting quietly in the corner, not knowing how to communicate well, or screaming at others. This was exhausting for everyone around me, and it wasn’t doing me any favors. It took years of therapy—not to mention very patient friends—to actually get the tools I needed to have the kinds of conversations I wanted to have with the people who were around me. Wanting to fix a broken step doesn’t come with the knowledge of how to fix a broken step. It needs to be learned. Which is hard, but also necessary. I am so far from answering your question right now, but I’m going to bring us back. Let’s talk about brussels sprouts. I grew up hating brussels sprouts. Rubbery. Squishy. Tasteless. Which is what happens when you boil a brussels sprout for an hour. Which is how my mom cooked brussels sprouts. And all other vegetables. My hatred of brussels sprouts was only increased because she would boil them for an hour, along with other vegetables which shouldn’t have been boiled for an hour, and then prepare two plates. One for me, and one for her. My dad and my brothers would get something else. Usually in the meat and potato families, which I got to watch them eat, while gnawing on rubber sprouts. To add actual injury to trauma, when you bite into a sprout that’s been in boiling water for an hour, the insides of your mouth get treated to a squirt of third degree burns which is just fucking intoxicating. This is why I hated brussels sprouts. So you can understand why I spent the next ten years avoiding them. Until finally I was invited to a friend’s house for dinner and one of the sides was brussels sprouts. “No thank you.” “Why not?” Explanation of traumatic childhood events ensued, and then my friend said, “Your mother didn’t know how to cook brussels sprouts.” Which was a healing thing to hear. So I tried them, and they were amazing! They had a crunch! They had a flavor! It was wild. I asked her how she’d done it and she walked me through the whole process. My mind was opened. Brussels sprouts are amazing. Top five vegetable. So yeah, that’s what I’m hoping to get out of my newsletter: a willingness for my readers to re-examine brussels sprouts. As well as any other opinion that might be living rent-free, and unexamined in their head. And if you still end up still hating brussels sprouts, that’s fine. Maybe you really just don’t like them. But at least you’ll have given yourself the gift of re-examining a belief you’ve been carrying around. Unexamined beliefs are heavy. They’ll keep you from getting to where you need to be. Throughout our lives, we adopt opinions about things. We’ve talked about the ones that were instilled in us as children, which are the ones that tend to run the deepest, because they were planted into a soft trusting foundation, and those might indeed be the hardest ones to re-examine, if only because we tend to forget they’re even there. These weren’t decisions we ever made, they’re almost part of our firmware. We are Phillies fans because it’s unimaginable not to be. We belong to a certain church, mosque, or synagogue because it’s unimaginable not to belong to that particular type of congregation. We celebrate the 4th of July because it’s unimaginable to not do so. We are this way because we’ve always been this way. But it’s worth remembering that those were put there by others. Sometimes with great love! Sometimes not. Some of us were raised to be healthy, some of us were raised to be carbon copies of unhappy people. We also need to reexamine the opinions that come to use throughout our entire life. Is the company you were excited to go work for still doing things that make you proud to be there? Does the political party you joined in college still stand for the same things it did back then? Does a friendship still feel mutually beneficial and joyful to you? Is In Rainbows—an album you’ve been defending for close to twenty years—actually any good? Are you sure? Does the idea that you shouldn’t give money to a hungry unhoused person still hold up? Is the subway actually scary? Is that AI breakthrough actually right around the corner? Was the real issue “economic anxiety?” Do you really have an informed opinion about trans athletes? (Really? Informed?) Sometimes we end up being wrong. Sometimes we were right, until we weren’t. And sometimes we were right and continue to be right, which is nice. All of these are ok. It’s okay to have been wrong, like I was about brussels sprouts. But in the face of new evidence—there’s good ways to make them!—it would’ve been stupid to not change my mind about them. I would’ve robbed myself of some amazing meals had I not re-examined an opinion—which was made honestly!—and adjusted to the new reality in front of me, which was delicious. (Do you really think I’d talk about how good brussels sprouts are without including a recipe? I’m not cruel. It’s at the end.) <hr/>🙋 Got a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-cook-brussels-sprouts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>! 📣 The next Presenting w/Confidence workshop is happening on September 25 & 26. <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1623476986369?aff=oddtdtcreator&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-cook-brussels-sprouts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Sign up</a>! We’ll have fun. 🖤 RIP Robert Redford 🍉 Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-cook-brussels-sprouts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-cook-brussels-sprouts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>. <hr/> And now, a very good brussels sprout recipe: As a special treat I asked my friend Jim Ray—who’s a wonderful chef, as well as an incredibly kind human being—for his go-to brussels sprouts recipe. This is what he sent: Roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon As with most vegetables, the key to making them taste amazing is to a) roast them and b) use a bit more fat and salt than you think necessary. If you’re avoiding meat (or just pork), you can leave out the bacon and just use a neutral oil instead. Trimming the sprouts just means cutting off a sliver of the bottom that’s likely hardened and turned brown. Try to find smaller sprouts—they’re sweeter—but if you get stuck with some big boys, quarter them. Opt for the thickest cut bacon you can find. If you are friends with your butcher, just ask her to sell you an entire slab and you can cut it into ½” lardons. For this many sprout, you will likely need two half-sheet pans. Don’t try to squeeze them all onto one tray, they’ll just steam and not properly roast. You can probably get away with making one tray to serve immediately and then pop a second tray in once folks start serving themselves dinner and it’ll be ready by the time grandma’s boyfriend heads for seconds before everyone else has even sat down. Equipment <ul><li>2 half sheet trays</li><li>Large bowl</li></ul> Ingredients <ul><li>2kg (about 4 ½ pounds) of Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved</li><li>225g (about half a pound) of thick bacon, cut into rectangular lardons</li><li>Neutral oil, like canola or sunflower seed</li><li>Salt</li></ul> Directions <ol><li>Set the oven to 450ºF and arrange two racks in the middle.</li><li>Cook the bacon lardons over medium low heat to render out as much fat as possible and crisp the bacon. Use a slotted spoon to remove the bacon and leave behind as much bacon fat as you can.</li><li>Dump the trimmed and cut sprouts into a large bowl then pour the bacon fat over them and stir to combine. Add a bit of neutral oil if it seems the sprouts aren’t fully coated.</li><li>Arrange the sprouts cut side down on the half sheet trays and then pop them into the oven. After 15 minutes, flip the sprouts and roast for another 10-15 minutes until crisp and charred at the edges.</li><li>Transfer the sprouts to a serving bowl and toss with the cooked bacon. Taste and add salt if needed.</li></ol> Because I am selfish and don’t eat hog, I asked Jim for more vegetarian options. He suggested these: “For a vegetarian version, I’ll add grated parm right when it comes out of the oven for that umami. And a healthy shake of MSG if you’ve got it. “You can also mix together 1tbsp of sriracha with 1tbsp of maple syrup and toss the sprouts in that after they roast. That shit is gooooood.” Thanks Jim! I hope you try this recipe. And if you grew up hating brussels sprouts, as I did, I hope it changes your mind. All is love.

How to haunt a house

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Jan 23, 2026

<figure><img alt="A photo of my grandmother's house." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/bed3b57c-c993-44b7-b2cb-eee4909c1b61.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>Our grandmother’s house</figcaption></figure> <hr/>READ TO THE BOTTOM FOR AN EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT! <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Betsy Streeter: Do you think houses can be haunted? Yes. On my recent trip to Portugal my cousin Irina and I walked to my grandmother’s house. My grandmother lived in a small town, which is now a bigger town, and her house—which is actually an apartment—was much closer to the center of town when she was alive. When she died, the town grew in the opposite direction. Almost as if she’d been a source of gravity that kept the town pulled close to where she needed it. Which she kind of did. So my grandmother’s house is now close to the outskirts of town, in a neighborhood that is slowly falling into disrepair. Also, it was always “grandma’s house.” Despite numerous people also having been raised there, and my grandfather having outlived her by a few years, we never referred to it as anything but “grandma’s house.” Grandpa lived in grandma’s house. We all lived in grandma’s house. And we all followed grandma’s rules. My grandmother raised three children (possibly four) in that house. (Our family is short on facts, long on mythology, and ever-shifting depending on who is best served by the telling.) Only one of those children, my father, was her biological child. (She was the first woman he destroyed.) All of them called her mother. And all of them followed her rules. She also helped to raise a handful of grandchildren, her influence gradually fading along with her memory. But Irina is my Aunt’s oldest, and I am (<a href="https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-bury-your-father/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">was</a>) my father’s oldest, so we got pretty close to the full-strength grandma experience. We both have her tattooed on our body. (That’s not a metaphor. I’m talking about actual tattoos. I have my grandmother’s name on my arm. Irina went the visual route and has a portrait of both my grandmother and my aunt on hers.) That was all a very long way of saying that both of us miss her very much. As we walked towards her house, a walk I hadn’t taken in over ten years, I was shocked by how much disrepair the old neighborhood had fallen into but also amazed that my body remembered exactly where I was. This is where the sidewalk gets too narrow to walk side-by-side. There’s a loose cobblestone here. This gate doesn’t lock. There’s a tile mural here. Don’t lean on this fence, it’s loose. All of this from having walked this street a thousand times, what felt like a million years and a few lifetimes ago. We passed the old firehouse, and I remembered not just the fire fighters who worked there but also the German Shepherd that terrified me as a kid. We pass the butcher store and I remember my grandmother complaining to the butcher about the price of meat. We pass the grocery store and I am asking my grandmother if I can get a candy bar. She’s saying yes. We pass a house where one of her friends lives, and her friend is in the window waiting for my grandmother to pass by for a good gossip session. (Yes, I realize it sounds like my grandmother lived in Richard Scarry’s Busytown. But she kind of did?) All of these people are gone, and all of these places have long since closed, or moved. (The firehouse is now on the other side of town.) Except they’re not gone. Because I can feel them. They’re real. My body still feels them. My eyes remember them. I can see them. I can see this neighborhood as it was when my grandmother and I walked it. I can hear it. I can smell it. This neighborhood exists exactly as I remember it. Maybe not to look at it. Maybe not to the naked eye. But it exists somewhere. In some time. In some memory. Which is more real than what we are currently walking through. As we turn the corner into my grandmother’s little street, my cousin and I both stop. We are both looking up at my grandmother’s bedroom window. We are waiting for her. Anytime she sent us out on an errand, she would be up in her second floor window as we rounded the corner. Sometimes to scream out something she’d forgotten to tell us she needed from the grocery store. (This was a time before cell phones. This was a time when you could get a message across town screaming at the closest person on the street and watching a small town create a human message chain until the message arrived at its destination. Somewhat confused, like the actual game of telephone.) We both stood there waiting for my grandmother to come to her window. Sure that she eventually would. Not saying a word to one another, but knowing that we were both standing in the same spot, at the same time, with the same-sized hole in our heart, looking for the same ghost. A thing that could not be mended. Our grandmother died twenty years ago. But she’d already left us long before that. Her memories long gone to a brutal disease that destroys time itself. What was left of her was a ghost. A brutal memory of a person we could no longer reach. Someone who we waited for at the window but could no longer come out to greet us. My cousin and I eventually crossed the street and walked right up to the door, as we’d done thousands of times before. We didn’t have a key. But we didn’t need one. We knew where the mirror was at the bottom of the stairs, the mirror that our grandma used to check her face every time she went out. We knew the staircase. We knew the number of steps. We knew the number of rooms in the apartment. We knew where we’d find our grandmother, depending on what time of day it was. Either in the kitchen making lunch, or in the living room watching her Brazilian soap operas in the afternoon. We knew our grandpa would be on the back porch, shirt off, suspenders on, feeding his canaries. We knew we would run to grandma first, for a hug, before running out to tease grandpa. We knew we’d both avoid going to the attic, which was haunted even then. We knew we’d eventually settle down somewhere to read comic books. We knew all of this was still real, even as we stared at a door that we could no longer open. It was still all up there. I’ve since found out that my grandmother’s house has been abandoned since my grandfather died. Their landlord tried renting it out, but with the entire town moving in the other direction, there weren’t any takers for an old apartment in a neighborhood on the wrong side of town. And from the looks of it, that appears to be the story of every house in that neighborhood. Eventually, the pendulum will swing back. Someone will finish what time’s already started. The land will be sold. Bulldozers will come in. New buildings will go up. Maybe one will have a butcher store. Someone will argue with the butcher about the price of meat as their grandkid stands mesmerized by the cow tongue in the meat case. To answer your question, yes, houses can be haunted. But not all haunting is bad. Sometimes houses are haunted by the smell of caldo verde, and the laughter of a grandmother as she tickles her granddaughter, the smiles of a couple of idiot kids as she asks them if they want a treat, the memory of a grandmother waiting at a window. Or the image of two grandkids, now roughly the same age as that grandmother when they first met her, standing across the street, wanting her desperately to come to the window so they can tell her how much they miss her. <hr/>📖 🚨 📖 🚨 📖 🚨 📖 🚨 📖 🚨 📖 🚨 📖 🚨 📖 🚨 📖 🚨 📖 🚨 Ok… IMPORTANT LITERARY ANNOUNCEMENT! TL;DR: click the picture! <figure><a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/how-to-die-and-other-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-haunt-a-house" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img alt="Book cover. Black with hot pink image! Text: How to die (and other stories) by Mike Monteiro. Drawing of two soft serve ice cream cones. One new. The other down to a nub. Image by Kate Bingaman-Burt." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/d8893bcd-f1a3-4eb7-9588-a30fd5a6252b.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/></a><figcaption>So handsome!</figcaption></figure> On April 2, 2024 I sent out a newsletter saying “What I need from you is questions. You ask a question. I answer it.” That was almost two years ago. I promised to do this on a weekly basis, and except for a week here and there, I managed to stick to that. Late last year, I decided I had enough stories to put them all together in a book. So I rung up my friend Kio Start, who’s a great editor, and she did the work of compiling the best stores, putting them in a nice order, and then editing the bejesus out of them. My friend Kate Bingaman-Burt, who did the illustration of me at the top of this newsletter, was nice enough to do an illustration for the book and it’s magnificent. The book is called <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/how-to-die-and-other-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-haunt-a-house" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">How to die (and other stories)</a>, it’s a handsome hardback, an intimate 5×8 inches, which feels nice in your hand. You can get it a few ways: <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/how-to-die-and-other-stories?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-haunt-a-house" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">order it directly from me</a> (and I’ll toss in a secret extra story, personalize it, sign it, and toss in whatever stickers I have laying around), you can get it from your favorite online retailer that isn’t Amazon (which might be the best way for our international friends because shipping sucks). It’s slowly making it's way to all those places. Or, you can walk into your local bookstore and say “Hey, can you order me a copy of Mike Monteiro’s How to die? It’s in the Ingram database.” (They’ll know.) Anyway, buy my book. We made it together. <hr/>🙋 Got a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-haunt-a-house" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>! You might get an answer that has nothing to do with your original question. ❤️‍🩹 The people of Minnesota are under attack by their own government. <a href="https://www.standwithminnesota.com/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-haunt-a-house" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">They could use your help</a>. 🍉 Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-haunt-a-house" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. The ceasefire is a lie. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-haunt-a-house" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>. 😿 Oh, oh, oh… for everyone who asked (and fuck there were a lot of you) no, <a href="https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-fix-a-kit-kat-clock/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">the kit kat clock wasn’t fixed</a>.

How to make coffee

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Oct 16, 2025

<figure><img alt="The back side of a painting. Two wooden panels cut at a diagonal, bolted together. Wax drips coming down the sides." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/95ce9bba-1ded-4d18-bc44-9eedae99b48b.jpg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>The back side of art.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>Enjoying the newsletter? <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-make-coffee" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Gimme $2</a>. Coffee aint cheap. <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Victor Lombardi: What are your opinions about how to make coffee? First of all let’s all agree that this is going to be an incredibly contentious topic. Because while I absolutely have opinions about coffee—which I also believe to be correct beyond reproach—many people will argue that their way to make coffee is the best way to make coffee. Which it will be for them. Everyone has the right to drink coffee the way they want. I also love tea drinkers. But maybe there’s someone out there who enjoys coffee, and is looking to try out a new way of making it. This is for you. Let’s also establish that what I’m going to be talking about here is basic American morning coffee. What Special Agent Dale Cooper (ACAB, sorry) would refer to as “damn fine coffee.” The kind of coffee a union electrician would fill a thermos with in the morning, the kind you grab at a cart on the street, at a diner, at a Wawa (or lesser convenience store like Sheetz or Dunkin), or better yet—make at home. Coffee starts at home. Let’s talk about my relationship with coffee. Because if you’re going to take advice from someone, you should know who you’re taking advice from. I am an addict. I need coffee as soon as I wake up. In fact, coffee is a non-negotiable part of the waking up process. I wake up, I go to the kitchen, I make coffee. If the stars are aligned, I’ll be lucky and Erika will have gotten up before me and made coffee. She makes great coffee. In fact, I’ll admit that I sometimes lay in bed seeing if there’s any chance that she gets up before me and makes coffee. Thereby sparing me the anguish of making coffee and then standing there waiting for the coffee to be ready, which in real time doesn’t take that long, but in “real” time takes forever. My relationship with coffee is one of dependency. I’ve gone out in snowstorms to buy coffee just to make sure it’s there in the morning. Coffee is personal history. I grew up with instant coffee, as most people my age probably did. It was the 70s. Our parents were enamored with frozen tubes that turned into orange juice, TV dinners, ferns, and powder that turned into lemonade. Modern conveniences of the space age. Signifiers of America’s place atop the world order, which turned out to be just as authentic and lasting. Astronauts drank Taster’s Choice. Flavor crystals. So sometime between Apollo 10 and Apollo 14, all our parents threw away their parents’ percolators and switched to instant coffee. If you’ve never had instant coffee, just think of it as the AI of its time: it sucked. This was also at the same time that we were being told that real food was killing us and we needed to switch from butter to margarine, from olive oil to canola, from cotton to polyester, from breastfeeding to Nestlé formula, and from hardwood floors to wall-to-wall shag carpeting, which the cat would always mistake for a full room litter box. (On the plus side, the first Space Invaders arcade cabinet was introduced in 1978.) I didn’t enjoy instant coffee. My mother told me it was because I was too young for coffee, which may have been true. But it also sucked, so more likely it was a combination of both. Luckily, there was something even worse in the house, which my mom saved for special occasions and company (we rarely had either): General Foods International Coffee, which was neither international nor coffee. It was basically Nestlé Quik for people who didn’t want to admit they were drinking Nestlé Quik. (The same way someone using ChatGPT doesn’t want to admit they’re coasting by on stolen intellectual labor.) It was slightly coffee-like, super sweet, and made you feel cosmopolitan for drinking it. I got addicted to that shit. So much so that I insisted on taking a tin (it came in fancy tins) with me the next time I flew to Portugal to spend a summer with my grandmother. (Who I have been writing about… A LOT! Putting a flag here for my therapist, who is probably reading this.) My grandmother took a look at the tin, and asked me what it was. I said it was coffee. She told me to make her a cup, which I did. She took a sip, made a face, poured the rest in the sink, threw the tin in the trash, and told me to get dressed. We walked to the café where she ordered us both espressos and said “_That_ is coffee.” And that was my first cup of actual coffee, as I think of coffee today. I had a lot of espressos that summer, which probably did some developmental damage. And after getting back to the States it wasn’t easy to find a café that served espresso in the 70s. It did, however, start my lifelong quest for better coffee. None of this answers your question, but we are getting there. Coffee takes time. I eventually talked my parents into a proper drip coffee machine. This still being the 70s it was most likely a Mister Coffee made of white plastic with a flat-bottomed basket for holding coffee grounds, which still came ground in a large tin can. Coffee beans were not a thing stocked at the local ACME Market. Once I got my own apartment in college, and was too poor to afford my own Mister Coffee drip-coffee machine, I resorted to a single cup pour-over jawn, which I filled by heating water in a pot on the stove. And here I need to take a minute. Because when I walk into a bougie café now and see “pour-over” as a special bullshit bespoke option I cannot help thinking that people are suckers. That’s how I made my coffee when I was too poor to make it any other way. Beans had not yet entered the picture though. For that, we have to introduce some minor crimes. In my second year of art school one of our friends got a job as a cashier in a little bougie market close to school. The kind of place that was a precursor to Whole Foods. Every week she would share her schedule with us, and we’d take turns going “shopping.” On our first trip there we all got a Chemex, coffee filters and… coffee beans. (We also filled up on fancy cheeses, lunch meat, bread, all manner of fancy peanut and almond butters, jams, jellies, and assorted other stuff, which our friend was nice enough to ring up for maybe three or four bucks. Hey, Reagan was president. The nuclear clock was at 11:59, and we were Pennsylvania children who came within minutes of being wiped out by the Three Mile Island meltdown, so we didn’t think shoplifting was too high on the list of crimes. I think at one point our apartment had four Chemexes in it. We got really good at making coffee. Which was handy, because coffee went really well with cigarettes. (Which sadly were not sold at the little fancy market. We had to learn how to break into the cigarette machine at school for those.) The next twenty years was spent trying out a variety of drip coffee machines, which got fancier after the original Mister Coffee. Auto-stop. Auto-start. All manner of programmable functions, all of them having everything to do with user convenience (not the worst thing) and nothing to do with the actual brewing of coffee. The Obama years brought giddy experimentation with French Presses, Aeropresses, home espresso machines, coffee scales, burr grinders, and even (good lord) hand grinders—all of which filled us with hope initially, but ultimately proved to be a little too fiddly for someone just trying to make a cup of coffee in the morning before having to run out and catch the bus, which ultimately resulted in a lot of people deciding that espresso pods were just fine, which they are not. I should probably get to the point and tell you how to make coffee. First you’re going to need coffee beans, and this is going to get contentious. For my money, there is nothing better than a French Roast bean. It’s dark. It’s oily. I’m about to get 500 emails about how wrong I am. I am about to get 500 emails about how light roast beans have more caffeine. This is, of course, correct. And yet I cannot stand light roast coffee. Trust that I have tried. Trust that I am not talking you out of what you love, merely expressing my own preference. French Roast beans make sludge. They make a damn fine cup of coffee. I don’t want notes of fruit in coffee. I don’t want notes of wood. I want coffee. Dark, bitter oily coffee that reminds me of a Pennsylvania coal mine. Also, Costco has French roast in 10 lb bags, because coffee should be hoarded. We go through a lot at our house, and a half pound bag of light-roasted coffee that a civet shat out that runs $30 will break us. It also tastes like shit, which shouldn’t be surprising considering the manufacturing process. Next we’re gonna need a grinder, and again, you’re going to get in your feelings. Burr grinders suck. Mostly, because the oil in French Roast beans will absolutely destroy them. Also they are expensive. Too expensive to run oily beans through. If you’re making light roast coffee feel free to get a burr grinder, but your reward will be bad coffee. Blade grinders are $20 and they last forever. Until they break. But they’re $20. Finally, we are going to need a coffee maker. Remember all that money we saved on beans and grinders? There was a reason. We’re going to spend it on a coffee maker. Trust that I’ve tried dozens of different coffee makers in my time. Trust that I’ve tried different categories of coffee makers in my time. There is no better coffee maker than the <a href="https://us.moccamaster.com/collections/thermal-carafe-brewers/products/kbt?variant=44554681450659&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-make-coffee" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Technivorm Moccamaster</a>. It has exactly one button on it, and that button makes coffee. The coffee goes into a thermal carafe which keeps it hot, and doesn’t sit on a hot plate, which cooks it. You want your coffee brewed, not cooked. It retails for around $350, which is pricey. But it also lasts forever. It has very few moving parts and they’re mostly replaceable should one of them break. (Which it won’t.) Think of it as buying a really good pair of shoes that you can resole and will last you a lifetime. Trust me on the coffeemaker, if nothing else. Having gathered all the necessary components we will now make coffee. Let’s talk about measuring. Throw your coffee scale away. Coffee is made by feel. Coffee is made with your heart. Coffee is made with your chest, not with a scale. Fill the grinder to the top. Press down on it and grind those beans like you’re grinding a fascist’s bones. Pulverize those fuckers into a fine dust. You cannot use too many beans. Every bad cup of coffee is the result of not enough beans, and I’m including folks who enjoy light roasts here. You’re not using enough beans. The basket is that size for a reason, if it was meant to be half-filled it would be half the size! Add the grounds to the basket. Fill the coffee maker with cold water. Not warm. Not hot. Cold. Hit that button. While you wait for that coffee to brew you can clean the counter, or wash the dishes, or sweep the kitchen floor, because that wait will be interminable. But in the end, you’ll have a perfect cup of coffee. That perfect cup of coffee will remind you of every cup of coffee you’ve ever had. From espressos with your grandma, to pour-overs in your first college apartment, to stopping at Wawa on the way to your shit job, to fumbling through crappy coffee setups in hotels all over the world, to every cup in a diner at 3am while you were on your way to or from somewhere, to incredibly bad cups from the machine in the hospital waiting room while you waited to find out if news was bad or good, to Sunday mornings in the Fall sitting in the front room listening to Françoise Hardy on the turntable as your wife leans over to kiss you good morning and tells you “Good job on the coffee this morning.” A coffee maker is a time machine. Reminding you of where you’ve been, and how you got here, right before dropping you back exactly where you need to be. Make it count. <hr/>🙋 Got a question? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-make-coffee" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it!</a> I might have a long-winded tangent-filled answer for you. 🐋 I’ll be speaking at <a href="https://www.y-oslo.com/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-make-coffee" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Y-Oslo</a> in a couple of weeks if you’re in the neighborhood. 📣 There are a few spots life for the Presenting w/Confidence workshop in November. <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting-work-with-confidence-tickets-1754965010589?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-make-coffee" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Sign up here</a>. 🖤 RIP D’Angelo. 📆 Happy <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_raid_on_Harpers_Ferry?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-make-coffee" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">John Brown Did Nothing Wrong Day</a>. 🎉 We’ve been busy adding a lot of fun crap to the store. Here’s a <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/dont-build-the-torment-nexus-zine?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-make-coffee" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">zine</a>, a <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/fuck-ai-sweater?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-make-coffee" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sweater</a>, and a <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/car-magnet?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-make-coffee" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">magnet</a>. Give us money in exchange for goods! There’s also… you know, <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-make-coffee" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">books</a>. 🚰 If you are enjoying this newsletter, please consider a <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-make-coffee" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">$2 subscription</a>, but if you can’t afford that just reply and say hi. I love hearing from folks. 🍉 The ceasefire is a lie. Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-make-coffee" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-make-coffee" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>. Our government is hunting our children.

How to watch my new talk

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Oct 31, 2025

Hello. There is no question this week because I’ve been traveling. Just got back from Oslo last night. Got to give a new talk at <a href="https://www.y-oslo.com/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-watch-my-new-talk" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Y-Oslo</a>, which is a fun excellent conference. Oslo is also an amazing city, full of kind people. I recommend it. Y-Oslo is also super quick about putting talks online, so I thought you might enjoy watching this. <div> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" class="youtube" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zH2dFXDMwe4" title="YouTube video player"> </iframe> </div> I’m glad they picked a still that makes it look like I’m running the Stanford Prison Experiment for toddlers. I’ll be back next week with questions. (<a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-watch-my-new-talk" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Send me some.</a>)

How to attend a funeral

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Dec 22, 2025

<figure><img alt="Praia do Norte. Nazaré. Portugal." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/454ae15e-0d40-4140-9905-81ec540195c4.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption></figcaption></figure> There’s no question this week. This newsletter is part two of <a href="https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-bury-your-father/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">last week’s newsletter</a>. <hr/>My father was buried on Sunday in the town of Alcobaça, where he grew up. The service, which included a full Catholic mass at my mother’s request, was held in a small chapel right next to the cemetery. The same cemetery that contains my grandparents, my sister, and several other relatives. But before you start picturing some old European gothic chapel made of stone, with a high ceiling, and featuring incredible gargoyles, this chapel was recently built, and featured all the charm of an airport Marriott conference room. (Also, he wasn’t actually buried on Sunday. The funeral service was on Sunday and then his body was driven off to a crematorium a few towns away, and buried a few days later, but that feels like a technicality, and “my father was buried on Sunday” seemed like a stronger opening line, so we’re going with that.) I was the only son in attendance. (And yes, I am mentioning this in a very petty manner. But also, think of it like Chekhov’s gun. It goes off in the third act, and pulls the story together in a deeply satisfying way.) The service was attended by a few family members and by my father’s friends. All of them asked me if I remembered them, which I did not. All of them asked me how my brothers were doing, and while I was tempted to make up fantastic stories (They’re off-planet and couldn’t make it back in time), or to tell the truth (They’re fascists now!), I ended up going with a non-committal “They’re fine.” Let’s do a little geography. Alcobaça is located 13 kilometers from Nazaré, home of the world’s largest waves. (If you’ve seen HBO’s 100 Foot Wave you’ll know what I’m talking about.) My goal was to end this trip staring at those waves. So I was playing this little game where every well-meaning comment was just a wave coming at me. Rolling. Breaking. Washing over. Big waves. I was not at this service to do any mourning. That wasn’t my role. My role was to be someone all these people could say what they needed to say to and then move on. My mourning, which was still formless for reasons, would happen later. It would be between me and the sea, and the sea hates a coward. Everything was a wave. You’re the spitting image of your father. Wave. Let it break. Let it wash over you. Your father and I spent a lot of time together. Wave. Let it break. Let it wash over you. Your father was a good man. Wave. Let it break. Let it wash over you. Your father often spoke about how proud he was of you. Wave. Big wave. 100 foot wave. Let it fucking break. Dive under. Be with the sea. Let it wash you ashore. For the record, my father never once told me that he was proud of me. I’d made my peace with this a long time ago. The first in a long line of burials. But to find out that he was telling this to others ended up filling me with rage. It’s one thing to believe your father hasn’t given you a second thought. It’s another thing altogether to know that he has, but withheld this information from you—and apparently you alone—your entire life. It’s a mindfuck, and ultimately an act of cowardice. For fuck sake, tell your children you are proud of them. It’s the smallest of acts. Deliver it directly. Say it with your chest. Say it before you can no longer say it. Say it before they are hearing it from a stranger and wanting to pry your coffin open to ask you one last question. Because you’ll never be able to answer that question. My father’s coffin was small. Smaller than I expected. Sitting in the middle of the chapel, a picture of him in front of it. I was expecting something larger. More imposing. He was so large in life. Looming over me as a constant threat of rage and violence. Covering all light. Covering his entire family in shadow. And now he was small. And in a box. And still. I walked up to him, and wished for a second that he could know that I was there. To know that he hadn’t broken me. To know that I wasn’t a coward. But I knew, and that would have to be enough. During the service, the priest spoke about Jesus’ sacrifice, as priests like to do. And he spoke of fathers and sons. (Catholicism is a man’s game.) He spoke about how God the Father sacrificed his only begotten son blah blah. And I wondered if there wasn’t a better gospel. One where Jesus lives a nice long life. One where he meets someone and encourages her to follow her dreams, but also brings her (or him! or them!) blankets when they’re cold. A gospel where Jesus has kids and teaches them how to fish, or woodworking, and bandages their knees when they trip. A gospel where Jesus and his family are gathered together for Christmas and he receives lots of gifts (Jesus would get birthday gifts on Christmas). A gospel where Jesus teaches his kids kindness, and is there for them when they need someone to listen. A gospel where Jesus is your first call after a breakup and drops everything to meet you at the bar. A gospel where Jesus gets a dog, and ends up hanging out at the dog park. A gospel where Jesus picks you up after school and attends your soccer games, and isn’t one of those asshole parents who yells at the ref. A gospel where Jesus reminds you to make every minute count. A gospel where Jesus eventually slows down a little bit because his knees start to hurt, and maybe he grows a little paunch, but still enjoys working in his backyard garden, and eventually teaches his grandkids how to pull weeds so the tomato plants have room to grow. And maybe he has a few olive trees and makes his own olive oil. A Gospel where Jesus dies peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by family, and friends, and they miss him when he’s gone. I wonder how different our lives would have been if my parents’ faith was centered on how to live a good life, instead of how to die a dramatic death. A good life is worth more than a dramatic death. A good life plants seeds in soil that a dramatic death steals to bury our sins. The priest continues about how our suffering in the here and now ensures our place in paradise later, and I think, silently, that he can go fuck himself. Which may be unfair, as he is playing his role, as I am playing mine. All of this is happening as my mother, playing hers, holds onto me and cries loudly and I think of big waves. After the service ends the mortician asks us if we’d like the coffin open and I say “NO.” before my mother can get an answer out. The next day I meet my mother to help her tie up some loose ends, and she decides this is a good time to chew me out in public for never being there for them, being negligent in my duties as a son, not being there for my father when he needed me, telling me she needs me because she is mourning my father, and honestly I stop listening after a few lines and start thinking of big waves. Breaking. Washing over me. “We have loose ends to tie up, correct?” “Yes, but first I want to stop at this pastry shop and pick up some sweets for your brothers.” The ones who love us least are the ones we try hardest to please. The day before my flight back I wake up at dawn and take the bus to Nazaré. I walk along the beach, towards the large cliff where I see the funicular that takes you to the top. This is where I spent summers with my grandparents. The beach is calm. The sun is shining on the cliff, doing a whole postcard-worthy thing. In the summer this beach is crawling with tourists, and the smell of sardines being grilled on the sidewalk. Today it’s empty. It’s raining a little bit. It’s perfect. I’ve always appreciated the beach more in the winter, when the sea reclaims what’s theirs. I ride the funicular to the top of the cliff where I walk along a small winding road to the lighthouse at the tip. More geography: the cliff separates Nazaré, a small fishing village with a nice calm beach from Praia do Norte (the north beach) which is where the big waves are. The big waves are caused by an undersea canyon right offshore that doesn’t extend to Nazaré. So you get a calm beach and you get a big wave beach, split right down the middle by a giant cliff. Duality. Metaphor. Blah blah. I ended up missing the 60 foot waves, and the surfing competition that came with them, by a day. Which is fine, because although the waves weren’t as big it also meant less people, which fit what I needed to do. Which was staring at the ocean for a while. Which I did. I watched the big waves beat the fuck out of that cliff for a couple of hours. I watched the cliff stand there and take all of those beatings. Unbent. Unbowed. I watched waves form. I watched them grow. I watched them break. I watched some of them reach the shore, while others crashed into the cliff. I watched the sea put on a show. And the sea doesn’t put on shows for cowards, because the sea hates a coward. If you’re waiting for the moment where I pulled out my father’s ashes and threw them into the sea it isn’t coming. One of the errands we’d done the day before was to settle up with the funeral agency. My mother asked when my father’s ashes would be returning and the funeral director said “Oh, they’re already here” as he rolled back his office chair and clipped the urn which was leaning against the wall on the floor with one of the chair wheels, giving a very satisfying clink. <hr/>Thanks to everyone who sent kind words last week. They were incredibly helpful and nice to read. And thanks to everyone who’s been patient about the erratic schedule of the newsletter lately. This will be the last one of 2025. We’ll start back up, hopefully on our regular schedule in January. Which means… 🙋 <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-attend-a-funeral" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Send me questions</a>! I can’t answer questions if I don’t have them. And answering a question let’s me know that I’m helping someone, which is nice. 💰 If you enjoy my newsletter please consider <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-attend-a-funeral" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">“subscribing” for $2/mo</a>. You get exactly the same shit you get for free, but it’s a nice thing to do if you can. 🎉 However you celebrate this time of year, and with whomever you choose to celebrate it with, please know that I love you. And I wish you happiness. Things may suck, but you don’t. 🍉 Please consider donating to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-attend-a-funeral" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. If we’re going to celebrate the birth of Jesus, we should stop bombing the place where it happened. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please consider donating to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-attend-a-funeral" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>. And if there is a trans person in your life, please let them know they are loved, and they are here, and the world is so much better because they are here.

How to read

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Apr 24, 2026

<figure><img alt="Two badly printed hot pink busts. One of me, one of Annalee. Sitting on a pile of books. With even more books behind us." class="" draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/814c4061-ba5f-4293-8038-6205ce3b8d62.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>Join me and Annalee Newitz on May 11 at Booksmith! <a href="https://booksmith.com/event/monteiro26?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-read" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">RSVP</a>, please.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Jonathan Stephens: I want to write like you when I grow up. What potential paths would you recommend to travel towards? Whatever path gets you to the library the quickest. But before we go into that, let me just say how much I appreciate the compliment. It’s very nice of you to say that. Now, let’s talk about basketball. We are currently in the first round of the NBA Playoffs, which I love, because there are sometimes four games to watch a day, and first round games tend to be insane and unpredictable. (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/reels/DXhaWe-Dk2d/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-read" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Hello, Knicks fans!</a>) So yeah, I’ve been watching a lot of basketball, which means it was bound to serve as an analogy for something at some point. (Nothing goes to waste.) If you watch enough basketball, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of space to fill during time-outs, halftime, and the occasional garbage time. So along with Draft King ads, GLP1 ads, and ICE recruitment ads, you get the occasional interview with a player. Sometimes it happens courtside, sometimes it’s been pre-recorded in the studio. And once in a while, these players, who are very very very good at playing basketball, will get asked about their origin story on the basketball court, and more often than not, they will mention a player they grew up watching and attempting to emulate. They grew up wanting to shoot like Kobe, or wanting to defend like Gary Payton, or wanting to wag their finger after a block like Dikembe Mutombo (easy to emulate, but incredibly inadvisable unless you can actually block like Dikembe Mutombo, which you cannot), and they all wanted to learn how to do <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwSpSCR1JW4&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-read" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">a crossover like Allen Iverson</a> (the only AI worth a damn)(second time I’ve snuck this joke into a newsletter). What I’m saying here is that these people who are now very very good at basketball all got their starts watching other people who were very very good at basketball and then trying to repeat what they saw. If you want to become very good at basketball, a great first step is to watch people who are very good at basketball actually play basketball. (There are, of course, more steps. Otherwise I would also be very good at basketball, which I objectively am not.) If you want to become very good at riding a bike, a good first step is to watch other people ride a bike. If you want to become very good at baking, a good first step is, no, not watching other people bake, but eating some baked goods. Because you need to know what a good donut tastes like before you should even attempt making a donut. If you want to get really good at writing, your first stop is the library. You need to get really good at reading. You need to experience what good writing is like. Luckily, we have been blessed with libraries, where you can borrow amazing books, on a vast variety of topics, for free. (Knock on wood.) And we need to be using the fuck out of them. A few years ago I made the only New Years resolution that’s ever stuck: if I am bored, I read. I took that shit to heart. I became a monster. Lazy Sunday afternoon? Pick up a book. In bed, but not quite ready to go to sleep? Pick up a book. Layover between flights? Pick up a book. And not only was I reading, I was casting a wide net. Whose books haven’t I read before? Where are all those books you should’ve already read, but didn’t? Let’s reread the books I really enjoyed. If a friend recommended a book I’d read it. I got a library card, which sadly I hadn’t had in ages. My library card kept me sane as a kid, (mostly because all the other kids were playing basketball) but I lapsed. Growing up, I was the kid who always carried one or two books around with me. As an adult, those books had turned into a phone, and reading turned into a thing I’d get to after I checked my “socials,” which never seemed to happen. And when I was reading, I was mostly reading a lot of industry books because I wanted to be good at my job. But that turned reading into a chore, which it had never been before. Never turn your escape pod into a utility closet. Let me be clear about this: the most important goal of reading is to read. It’s exploration at an intimate human scale. You can immerse yourself in the history of this world. You can immerse yourself in new worlds. (Which are always not-so-secretly about our own world.) You can learn more about things you care about, and learn that you care about things you didn’t even know about. You can look at something from a point-of-view you hadn’t considered yet. A book is a time machine, a scalpel, and a rocketship. And it can all happen from your favorite reading chair. (You do have a favorite reading chair, right?) The cure for the “male loneliness epidemic” is to get your hands on a fucking book, read it, and then get a second one. For one, you are never alone when your nose is in a book. You are somewhere else, with a cast of characters that, when well written, become as real as you need them to be. And please, my lonely dudes, venture away from the crypto how-tos and biohacking aisles and venture into the other parts of the library. Read to get lost. Read for joy. Secondly, as John Waters once famously said “If you go to someone’s house and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ‘em!” Gentlemen, get to a fucking library if you want to get fuckable. But as a writer, there’s a second goal in reading. It’s to get better at writing. And the best way to get better at writing is to absorb good writing. I mean really good writing. The kind of shit you get immersed in and enjoy the fuck out of. You will never become a good writer unless you’ve read a lot of really well-written books. Hold on, we’re going on another tangent. I also watched a lot of basketball when I was a kid. Specifically, growing up in Philly, I watched a lot of Sixers basketball. I grew up watching Dr. J do his thing, and after getting a basketball for Christmas one year, I went out to the local court and quickly realized that I would be going to art school instead. So that’s what I did. First step of becoming a good artist? Look at a lot of art. Luckily, Philadelphia has a great art museum, so I was able to spend a lot of time looking at great art. Step two was to try to emulate some of that great art. Which, of course, started out as a disaster (same as everyone’s first attempt at an Iverson crossover). And honestly, it’s frustrating to suck at something, except that we all suck at something the first time we try it. The trick is figuring out whether this is something I could see myself getting better at with practice (art, writing) or whether this is something I was absolutely not designed to be able to do no matter how much I practiced (basketball). (We talking about practice?!) (Three of my readers will understand that I absolutely nailed that reference. The rest of you will be annoyed by this long nonsensical parenthetical. I don’t care. Actually, that’s a lie. I want you all to watch the infamous practice press conference because it will not only explain the reference, it will improve your life. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tknXRyUEJtU&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-read" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Here’s the longest version I could find</a>.) Luckily, I wasn’t completely frustrated by how badly I was at the start. Art felt like something I could, and more importantly—wanted, to get better at. So I stuck with it. I got a little better every time I tried it. More importantly, I could feel myself getting better at it, which was building my confidence in being able to do something. Later in life, the same thing would happen with writing. Now, a good art teacher will give you these projects, “Go to the Academy of Fine Arts and copy this Eakins.” (Philadelphia is swimming in Eakins paintings. We had one in our high school. Pretty sure there’s one hanging in the Center City Wawa.) And they’ll give you this project not because they think you’ll be able to copy an Eakins (you won’t), although there’s certainly something to be learned from the attempt. You can learn composition. You can learn foreshortening. You can learn a fuckton about light and shadow. And while those are important lessons, they are not the main lesson. Attempting to speak in someone else’s voice will irritate you to the point where you will eventually find your own voice. “You have a heavy hand.” This is what my art teacher said to me after I presented him with one of my Eakins attempts. Of course, what I heard was “too heavy,” which is not what he said. But in my multiple attempts to copy the same painting something had become very clear to my art teacher. I have a heavy hand. This means my pencil, my charcoal, my brush, does not glide elegantly across the page. It means I carve into it. As a writer, I think the same is true, my words do not glide smoothly across the page. They carve into the page. They leave a mark. And any attempt to make my words glide smoothly across the page would be as elegant as me attempting an Iverson crossover at 58. Reading had the same effect on my writing. When you read Joan Didion or Eve Babitz you will eventually attempt to attempt to write a sentence like they do. (Jesus fuck, no one could write California like Eve Babitz. No one could do lazy, sun-drenched, washing over you, initially seeming throw-away, yet revealing itself to be dark and deep as fuck like that woman. Read all her shit.) Good writing wants to be emulated, and in the failed emulation you find yourself. You find your voice. I write because there is something in my head that I am trying to communicate to you, my reader. My goal is to do that as clearly as possible, which I feel I’ve been able to accomplish a couple of times. (Oh, he’s fishing.) But the struggle of writing a sentence, erasing it, rewriting it a few times, leaving it be, and then scrolling back to rewrite it one more time in the middle of another sentence three paragraphs down pales in comparison to the dopamine levels released when you feel you’ve taken that thing from your head and put it on a page. The same as it feels to paint something great, or to cook an amazing meal, or to do a crossover that totally snaps your defender’s ankles (I imagine.) It’s a feeling worth chasing. The joy of finding your own voice is a pain in the ass, but ultimately worth it. It takes effort. You will fuck up. You will try on a lot of other people’s voices before yours bursts through. This is The Process. Trust The Process. (Waves at the six people who got this reference.) And look, I know there are stupid tools out there trying to sell you the easy way out. Trying to convince you that it can do all of this shit for you. You just need to write a prompt, my man. The stupid tools will comb through the stolen knowledge of every writer that’s ever put pen to paper. They will give it to you in the style of Didion. They will give it to you in the style of Faulkner. They will even give it to you in the style of David Foster Wallace, although why you would want that, I do not know. They might even return something… capable? But the stupid tools will never hand you the best source of joy you’ll ever encounter: the confidence of finding your own voice. Which takes work. Work that is ultimately rewarded by getting compliments like the one you paid me at the very beginning of this ride. Compliments that make me think I succeeded in pulling an idea out of my head, and managed to put it on the page in a way that resonated with you. That kind of a connection, which is so important to the human soul, and cuts through all the bullshit, only happens when you do the work. I promise you that it’s worth it. And I’m confident you can do it. 🏀 🧡 <hr/>🙋 Got a question you’d like a long meandering answer to? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-read" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>! 📣 Erika has a few seats left in her <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1987575625199?aff=oddtdtcreator&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-read" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Let’s Do Research Right</a> workshop next week. It’s a fantastic workshop for learning how to ask questions. (Some of which you can then send to me!) 📣 I have a few seats left for my <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1987951529539?aff=oddtdtcreator&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-read" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Presenting w/Confidence</a> workshop on May 7 & 8. It’s a great workshop for finding your voice! 📓 My new book, How to die (& other stories), is now available as an <a href="https://www.mulebooks.com/store/how-to-die-and-other-stories-epub?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-read" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">ebook</a>. For people in tiny apartments, foreign lands, or who just prefer that sort of thing. 🚲 My friend Brian Carr’s non-profit, Game Devs of Color, could use your help with <a href="https://givebutter.com/GDoCBike?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-read" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">their fundraiser</a>. Riding bikes for a great cause! 🍉 Please help <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-read" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">the children of Palestine</a>, who are being murdered by bombs paid for with our tax money. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please support <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-read" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>. 🚰 Never hesitate to just say hello.

How to fold socks

Mike Monteiro’s Good News Sep 11, 2025

<figure><img alt="Bunch of plastic bins and tables stacked up on one another in an otherwise empty room." draggable="false" src="https://assets.buttondown.email/images/61cb1e50-4209-467b-bf6e-929c7f6b4dbd.jpeg?w=960&fit=max"/><figcaption>This is my art studio all packed up. It’s all in storage now. Still looking for a new place.</figcaption></figure> <hr/>💰 <a href="https://buy.stripe.com/fZe2c81Kn2gE4DK6oq?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-fold-socks" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Join the $2 Lunch Club!</a> 💰 <hr/>This week’s question comes to us from Gina Trapani: How do you think about your creative practice? What are the most important parts of it? Folding socks. Seriously. I love folding socks. Every couple of weeks, usually on Sunday, I have my morning coffee, grab my hamper, and go through my laundry to sort it. Once I’ve washed and dried my socks I dump them all onto the couch, and dial up something calming on the TV. (Grand Designs, Bake-Off, and Project Runway are good sock-folding shows.) Then I sit there folding socks. First I pull all the striped socks out of the pile, give them a healthy stretch, match them up, fold them in thirds, and make little stacks on the coffee table. Then I move on to the polka dot socks, then the solids by color, etc, etc, until all the socks are folded. At which point I pause the TV—usually while Kevin is just slightly breaking the fourth with a smirk as a homeowner says they’re going to manage the project themselves—and slowly carry all of the folded socks to the sock drawer where they are arranged in very ordered rows so that the folds point downward, to maximize the amount of visible pattern for easier choosing. I should also note that I have as many socks as will fit in the sock drawer, and should one of them give up the ghost I make a mental note that I can be on the lookout for a new pair, should I come across a good one. What does this have to do with my creative practice? Everything. At least inasmuch as I might have something called a “creative practice,” which I probably do, the term just leaves me slightly itchy, which is my own hang-up. But also nothing, which ends up being everything. I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that I don’t really make a strong distinction between things in my life that are part of a creative practice and things in my life that are outside of a creative practice. While also trying very hard not to be one of those annoying people who has opinions about how to make coffee. I mean, I have them. I just don’t feel like I need to exhaust everyone around me by constantly voicing them. Make your coffee how you like. By default I am an anxious person. I also suffer intermittent bouts of depression, which at the moment—knock on wood—I’m handling, thank you. But one of the things that happens when I start going down that slide into depression is that I can’t differentiate between the size and importance of things. For example, I’ll be managing to hold my shit together while my country turns into a fascist hellhole, but then I’ll run out of dish soap and have to make an emergency call to my therapist. Not because the little things are more important than the big things. I objectively know they’re not! But the chemicals in my brain do an amazing job of convincing me that doesn’t matter. In fact, this is one of the checkpoints my therapist and I have put in place to let me know whether I’m sliding into depression. Are big things big? Are small things small? Can you tell the difference? So I take care of the small things. Every morning I wake up and wash the dishes. I cannot leave the house unless the sink is clean. And every morning, before I leave the house, I stare at that sink and I think to myself “the sink is clean.” And as I grab a t-shirt from the IKEA cubbyhole I look at all the other t-shirts and realize that they’re all folded to the same size and I think to myself “the t-shirts are in order.” Then I head over to the sock drawer, look over all my sock possibilities, and pick out the pair I want, while thinking to myself “the socks are organized.” Does this mean my home is all amazingly organized? Far from it, it’s a maximalist circus tent decorated by people raised by wolves. But it means I’ve set up enough reminders for myself, as I move through my morning routine, that when I walk out the door I have reminders that I’ve taken care of the small things. I’ve recognized them as small things, while also recognizing the importance of small things. If I do nothing else of value that day, I’ve at least done this. This way, when I walk out the door, into the land of bigger things, I’m ready to do those. I’m ready to recognize them as bigger things, and tackle them with the care that bigger things require. And should I fail, which is a normal part of the whole being human thing, I’ll come home and stare at the sock drawer for a while and it kind of resets me. When I think of having a “creative practice,” again getting slightly itchy, I think about all the stuff that I get to do every day. Big things and small things. Is writing this newsletter part of that creative practice? Yes, but so are doing workshops, and the occasional client project, and making sure that there’s milk in the fridge, and taking out the recycling. Does it feel great to solve a big design problem? Yes, but it also feels great to rewire the speakers, or put away all the records I listened to last night, or make sure the dog has snacks. Is this painting I’m working on important to me? Yes, but so is repainting the living room. I really enjoyed doing that. Erika and I sit in that room every night and I think to myself “I’ve made a nice place for us to hang out.” It’s also a great room to fold socks in. My mental health requires that I understand the difference between small things and big things, but it allows me to love them both. Which I do. This is about the interconnectedness of all things. The importance of all things, be they big or be they small. Everything has an effect on everything else. Everything in your life is related to everything else. A perfect peach can lead to five pages of good writing. Leaving the house without cleaning the sink can lead to a day of doing shitty design. Being a good listener also means listening to your own brain. Even if it’s fighting you. I’m not good at compartmentalizing. An issue I’m having at work doesn’t usually get solved at work. It gets solved during a bike ride. A sentence I’m struggling to find will pop into my head while I’m taking out the trash. So I’m happy to let it all swim around in there and come out when it comes out. If I get stuck writing, I usually solve it by going to do something else. Likewise, if I’m in the middle of writing and I suddenly remember that the back porch needs sweeping, I’ll get up and sweep the back porch. This all makes me a terrible employee, which is why I stopped trying to be a good employee. It was never going to happen. I’ve been doing this newsletter for over a year. I used to sit down, bang it out, and publish it. (The typos will confirm this.) Then on my bike ride home I’d think of all the things I wished I’d added. Sometimes I’d get home and add those things to the web version, which meant the people reading the email weren’t seeing the newest version. After doing this too many times it finally occurred to me that I should build the bike ride into the writing process. So now I start the newsletter on Wednesday afternoon, get it close to finished, and then ride home. As I’m riding, the newsletter starts swimming around in my head and realigning itself in strange new ways that just wouldn’t happen if I was staring at a Google doc. No matter how hard I’d try to focus. A few weeks ago, I had to pull over three times to jot down notes as things came to me. When I get home, I add in all the stuff that came to me during the bike ride. Then I publish it the next day. (With even more typos!) So as much as it might make me itchy to admit, I guess I do have a creative practice. Everyone does. It’s how we make our way through the world. Listening to what our brains might need from us. Taking care of little things and big things, while appreciating the love and attention that small things, big things, and in-between things need. Allowing our ideas to interact with the world, as well as letting them race up a hill or make their way through city traffic. Letting them take naps. Throwing them for your dogs to fetch and seeing what they look like when they come back. Take your ideas for bike rides. Take your troubles for a walk. Hop on a train and take your big design problem to the beach, let it breathe the salty air. Let it get some sun. Let it be part of the world. We’ve had too many ideas that attempt to take over—or disrupt—the world. It’d be nice to have some that want to be part of it. <hr/>🙋 Got a question you need a weird-ass roundabout answer to? <a href="https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ask-a-question?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-fold-socks" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Ask it</a>! 📣 The next Presenting w/Confidence workshop is happening on September 25 & 26. Interviewing for a job? Need to talk about your work without getting nervous? <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting-work-with-confidence-tickets-1623476986369?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-fold-socks" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Get in here</a>. 📓 If you are an educator or a librarian and would like copies of the Design Is a Job zine, hit me up. We can work out a deal. (I’ll ask you to pay shipping.) The rest of you can <a href="https://www.designisajob.com/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-fold-socks" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">buy it here</a>. 🤖 Are you raising a boy? I’ve been friends with Chris Pepper for a long time. He’s a health teacher in the San Francisco school district and he’s legit good at it! He and Joanna Schroeder have written a great book called <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/talk-to-your-boys-16-conversations-to-help-tweens-and-teens-grow-into-confident-caring-young-men-christopher-pepper/243cf1183127dbaa?ean=9781523527311&next=t&utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-fold-socks" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Talk to Your Boys</a>. 🍉 Please donate to the <a href="https://www.pcrf.net/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-fold-socks" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund</a>. 🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to <a href="https://translifeline.org/?utm_source=monteiro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how-to-fold-socks" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a>.