one of my favourite short stories ever is The Fox & the Grapes, by Aesop.

it goes something like this:

one day, a hungry fox spotted some beautiful, ripe grapes hanging up high on a vine.

with his mouth watering, the fox jumped & jumped, trying to reach them.

but no matter how high he jumped, the grapes remained just out of reach.

after many failed attempts, the fox got tired & frustrated.

finally, he gave up & walked away.

as he left, he muttered to himself:

‘those grapes were probably sour anyway. gross.’

i love that story, because it calls us out on something we do every day:

we convince ourselves that good things are bad, because we’re not willing to do what it takes to earn them.

think about it:

would you like to have an extra $50k in your bank account at the end of the year?

of course you would — & there’s nothing wrong with that.

the problem lies in your answer to the next question:

what are you willing to do about it?

Naval says that ‘desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.’

but i think there’s actually 2 ways to avoid that unhappiness:

  1. do what it takes to get what you want

  2. stop wanting it

realistically, you probably could earn an extra $50k this year.

you’d just have to be willing to do things like:

& to be clear, i’m not saying you should do those things.

i’m just saying that if you had gun to your head & you had to earn an extra $50k this year to survive, you would not behave the same as you do right now.

so this is my whole point:

option 1 (getting the thing we want) is usually hard.

sometimes, it can even be impossible.

so what do we do?

we take option 2.

but we do it the wrong way.

instead of admitting something costs too much & letting go, we secretly hold onto that desire & trick ourselves into thinking we didn’t.

we do this by convincing ourselves that we never really wanted the thing in the first place.

it’s sour grapes at an existential level.

& whether you agree with those things or not, the reason why we say them is simple:

the only thing we hate more than not having what we want, is getting proof that we’re not capable of having it.

in other words, we’re so scared of trying & failing that we take the only path where failure can’t touch us:

doing nothing.

it’s impossible to fail at something if you never tried in the first place.

right?

i don’t actually think so.

we overestimate the cost of action, & we underestimate the cost of inaction.

& then we justify our inaction by lying to ourselves about what we really want.

so let me ask you this:

what dream life do you secretly want, but tell yourself is unrealistic?

be 100% honest here.

in that dream life:

the list goes on.

& once those answers tell you what life you really want, you’re left with the same 2 choices that the fox had:

  1. do what it takes to get what you want

  2. stop wanting it

you can risk trying & failing, or you can accept that you’re not willing to try.

both options can bring you peace.

anything else is just fear disguised as reason.

so make the choice.

because i promise you,

the grapes aren’t actually sour.

i never even wanted people to subscribe to my newsletter. that would be dumb.

some things i learned

  1. redheads require ~20% more anesthesia than people with other hair colours
    this is one of those facts that sounds fake, but isn’t. scientists have no idea why, but they suspect it’s something to do with the specific MC1R gene mutation that causes hair to be red.

  2. the infinite library problem that AI creates
    ‘if a library contained every possible book with every permutation of characters, it would contain all truths, all falsehoods, and all gibberish.

    the library is effectively useless because finding meaningful text is statistically impossible.

    information without curation or structure is noise.

    the curation and structure come from your taste.’
    ~ Dan Koe

  3. a contronym is a word with 2 opposite meanings
    left — departed or remaining
    buckle — to fasten or to collapse
    dust — to remove dust or to add dust
    sanction — to approve or to impose a penalty
    bound — heading to a place or being tied to a place’

cool stuff i found

  1. a hotel in Mallorca i want to visit
    it’s called Grand Hotel Son Net, & when you catch me writing this newsletter from there, just know — i made it. check it out:

  2. a book i’ve enjoyed reading
    Don’t Trust Your Gut is a fun book written by an ex-Google data scientist who wanted to see when our ‘gut feeling’ is wrong. he uses data to try answering questions like ‘what makes a happy relationship?’ & ‘what are the easiest sports to get a scholarship in?’ among many others.

  3. a great video
    it’s only 4 minutes, & i think it’s definitely worth checking out.

bonus pic lol

that’s all for this week!

i caught a nasty flu a few days ago, & it’s had me on my ass since then.

even though it’s frustrating not having the energy to work as hard as i want, it’s also been a nice reminder of how lucky i am to get to do stuff like this, so no complaints.

my next video will be released as soon as i have a normal-sounding voice to record with, lmao.

side note: i rushed the packaging (title + thumbnail) of my last video, ‘26 lessons for 2026’ because i set an arbitrary deadline to upload it by.

the result: 1.3k views, my worst-performing ‘real’ video in a while.

the lesson: i will not rush a video again, & i’m being much more intentional about what ideas + packaging i choose.

i probably sound like a broken record, but i know i’m on the cusp of achieving my goal, which is being able to do this stuff for a living.

i just have to let my work do the talking.

~ liam (:

PS - if you haven’t seen my list of 10 books that changed my life, i think you’re missing out! check it out here.

‘everyone wanna be a body builder but nobody wanna lift no heavy ass weights’

~ Ronnie Coleman (8x Mr. Olympia)