The Monthly Mentor is an easy to skim bullet point list of things I enjoyed this month, usually a personal update and something to: read, watch, and buy.
💡 Remember you can get free copies of my books here.
This is the Monthly(ish) Mentor of September/October 2025.
[ Personal ] - I’ve managed to go skydiving a few times again
I love the feeling of jumping out of a plane, and sleep like a baby after doing so. For those in the Netherlands, Teuge is a really nice dropzone with fun people and good equipment. Shoutout to Rhys who got his skydiving AFF licence! Work-wise we just deployed a whole network upgrade making our decentralised VPN swarm capable of infinite scaling (readme for the nerds).
[ Read ] In the economy of user effort, be a bargain, not a scam (link)
A very detailed and practical overview of how to think about user experience and effort. The main thing that stuck with me: “Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible”. I redid a bunch of couchcaster.app to try to adhere to that.
[ Watch 20:53 ] The alarm bells are sounding for young men. Will we listen? | Richard Reeves (link)
This topic lands on my radar periodically1. In many western countries boys and men aren’t doing well. And talking about that is precarious because it often triggers a "are you implying women don’t need support” reaction in conversation. Reeves is very good at describing the issue and how it is not a men vs women thing, but a “us together” thing.
[ Watch 2:30 (bonus) ] Partij tegen de Burger feat Vincent Karremans (link) - For the Dutch: de meest hilarische politieke video die ik dit verkiezingsseizoen gezien heb. Met de echte meneer Karremans die heerlijk meespeelt.
[ Buy ] Senz micro storm umbrella (link)
Their smallest one yet. 196 grams, windproof up to 70 km/h, 2 year warranty. Perfect as an every day carry item in autumn.
[ Favor ] I’m considering writing two object related posts: 1) a walk through my house covering my favorite purchases. 2) my shopping list for this black friday. As you all know I have many little gadgets I love, and I like sharing them. But I don’t want to turn these emails into an infomercial if you guys don’t want that. Please hit reply on this email (or comment on substack) with “1” or “2” or “1, 2” so I know which you would enjoy.
Ps. Manu I have not forgotten about the post that explains why millennials can’t buy a house and why that is not a capitalism problem. I need a bit more space in my calendar to properly write that up. It will happen and I can’t want for our in person debating.
Enjoy your week friends!
~ Mentor
💡 Remember you can get free copies of my books here.
I read “Of boys and men” earlier this year and it put this issue on my radar. It fascinates me because it’s a blind spot for me. I’m exactly the demographic that is NOT struggling: high educational attainment, financially stable, multiple senses of purpose in life. When I read that boys are falling WAY behind in school (reading, math, etc) this is a difficult thing for me to understand because it is so far form my experience. The same is true for women in my age/education cohort out-earning men. Me and my wife are in the same approximate bracket of education and earnings, not only have we never had to figure out how to deal with her out earning me, we are the kind of people that would find that conversation quite easy. Our social/educational milieu was made for flexibility in relational dynamics and cultural adventurism in general. But not everyone is a cosmopolitan university graduate that dreams in a language that is not their mother tongue, and those like us are not only more numerous but people like us tend to forget about their experience of society all-together.
2!
1 & 2 please!