Coffee With Tanya #34
December arrives quietly, wrapping everything in a softer light. The year exhales. Even here in Tel Aviv, the air finally cools, evenings slow down, and there’s the first real excuse to reach for sweaters and that Columbia coat waiting for it's time to shine 🧥.
I’m craving warm mugs, soups, jazz music with the rain outside the window and moments that feel intentionally unhurried.
It’s the perfect month for reflection stories, from noise to stillness, routine to ritual, and endings to meaning.
This episode leans a little more into history and the people behind it: curious minds, human flaws, and moments that refused to stay quiet. But not only that. There’s also space, music, comfort, and small rituals, because that’s how life actually works.
Here’s what’s brewing on this month’s menu:
- Winter Solstice Myths - When the sun almost disappeared ☀️🌑
- Space - Black holes and cosmic collisions 🌀
- History - Einstein’s quirks & Marie Curie’s erased love story 🧪
- Music - K-Pop’s global takeover 🎶
- Recommendations - What I’m reading, watching & listening to 🌟
- Word Bites - Hygge 🔡
- December in History 🌎
"Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner" // Lao Tzu - a legendary Chinese philosopher considered to be the author of the Tao Te Ching (Laozi), one of the foundational texts of Taoism.
When the Sun Almost Disappeared
Winter Solstice Myths Around the World ☀️🌑
First, what is Solstice?
It's the time or date (twice each year) when the sun reaches its maximum or minimum declination, marked by the longest and shortest days (about June 20-22 and December 20-22).
Before calendars and clocks, humans watched the sky as their lives depended on it,because they did.
The winter solstice, the longest night of the year, was frightening.
"What if the sun didn’t come back?"
So people helped it.
- In Scandinavia, Odin, a god associated with death and warfare, was believed to travel through dark realms to restore the light. Fires were lit, not for warmth, but as guidance 💡.
- In ancient Egypt, the solstice marked the rebirth of Ra, the sun god. Temples like Karnak were aligned so the returning sunlight would pierce them with perfect timing ☀️.
Different cultures, same instinct:
Darkness isn’t the end. It’s a pause.
I love how winter is never seen as failure, only as waiting.
The light always returns. Sometimes we just need to remember that.
When Space Gets Loud
Black holes, collisions, and cosmic reminders 🌀
You already know this about me:
I love space 🌌
Not in a sci-fi, rocket-launch way, but in the existential way.
The kind that makes everything else feel smaller… and clearer.
This year, space didn’t whisper.
It roared.
Astronomers watched something rare: a black hole forming not from a dying star, but straight from chaos... a galaxy collision so violent that gravity simply folded in on itself. No slow ending. No fade-out. Just instant collapse.
At the same time, detectors picked up the echoes of the largest black hole merger ever recorded. Two enormous bodies colliding billions of light-years away (billions!!), shaking spacetime itself. Ripples still reaching us, long after the moment passed.
What stays with me isn’t the scale... though it’s overwhelming.
It’s the pattern.
In space, destruction and creation are often the same event.
Something ends. Something else becomes possible.
Black holes aren’t emptiness.
They’re pressure. Transformation. A reminder that even collapse can be a beginning.
And somehow, knowing that… makes our own small storms feel a little more survivable.
Stephen Sabia
Thomas Sumner
The Genius Who Hated Socks
Albert Einstein’s Quirkiest Habits 🧦
Einstein didn’t wear socks.
Not as a rebellion, but he just noticed his big toe always made holes in them.
Problem solved.
No more socks!
He also:
- Smoked pipes constantly to “think calmly”
- Reused pipe butts when tobacco ran out 🤭
- Built houses of cards when stuck
- Napped holding a spoon, waking himself the moment creativity peaked
I don’t love this because it’s quirky.
I love it because it’s permission.
Great thinking doesn’t look neat.
Sometimes clarity comes from doing things your own strange way.
WHere there is too much noise outside, remember that you have a choice to do things your way! Build that house of cards...
When Pop Music Became a System
K-Pop’s Global Takeover in 2025 🌍🎶
I love music! 🎼
This year, I listened for 68,120 minutes, across 11,181 songs and 7,584 artists (Spotify Wrapped, obviously... dah).
One, or, if I’m being honest, probably ten of those artists and bands were K-Pop.
It’s the first year I really discovered the genre, with BLACKPINK and Lisa right at the top.
And it turns out… it wasn’t just me.
2025 wasn’t K-Pop’s breakthrough year.
It was the year it became infrastructure.
IVE dominated tours and festivals.
Stray Kids kept landing Billboard #1s.
Spotify Wrapped confirmed it: global listening habits have shifted.
Groups like BTS and BLACKPINK aren’t just artists anymore, they’re ecosystems.
What fascinates me isn’t the music alone.
It’s the closeness.
The future of pop isn’t louder.
It’s more connected.
Give it a try if you haven't listened to it yet.
Check out the top ten groups here 👇
Eram Shaikh
The Love Story History Tried to Erase 🧪❤️
If you haven’t heard her name, Marie Curie was one of the greatest scientists of all time, a physicist and chemist whose work changed how we understand radiation, and the first person ever to win two Nobel Prizes.
After Pierre Curie’s death, Marie didn’t just lose her partner.
She lost her ground.
Years later, she fell in love again... with physicist Paul Langevin. Someone who understood her grief and her mind.
It was quiet. Human. And, by the standards of the time, unforgivable.
When private letters were exposed, the backlash was cruel😢.
She was judged for being foreign. Independent. A woman who didn’t behave quietly.
The story was flattened into something easier to digest: scandal instead of grief, transgression instead of complexity.
And still, in 1911, Marie traveled to Stockholm and accepted her second Nobel Prize 🏆
No apology.
No explanation.
Just presence.
Her story stays with me because I’ve noticed how much our world loves clean narratives.
- Heroes or villains.
- Right or wrong.
- Success or failure.
But the older I get, the less I believe in clean edges.
People can be brilliant and confused.
Strong and tired.
Certain in public, unsure in private.
I don’t trust stories that sand down complexity, not in history, not in relationships, not in myself.
Some truths don’t announce themselves loudly. They sit quietly, waiting to be noticed.
And maybe that’s the real lesson Marie Curie left behind:
that brilliance and humanity were never opposites.
We just prefer our heroes simplified.
ד”ר אורנה ליברמן
Word Bites 📚🌟
Hygge ✨
The art of creating warmth, comfort, and quiet joy.
Not luxury, just presence.
Soft light. Shared silence. Small rituals that feel like home.
I love that this word exists, because it reframes happiness
not as something you chase,
but as something you notice...
right where you are.
December in History 🌍
- December 1, 1955 - Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat, igniting the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the modern civil rights movement ✊🏽🚌.
- December 7, 1941 - Attack on Pearl Harbor pulls the United States into World War II ⚓️💥.
- December 10, 1901 - The first Nobel Prizes are awarded, honoring achievements in science, literature, and peace 🏅📚.
- December 17, 1903 - The Wright brothers achieve the first powered airplane flight, changing how humans move forever ✈️.
- December 31, 1999 - The world holds its breath for Y2K… and wakes up to a new millennium largely intact 🎆🖥️.
Recommendations 🌟
What I’m reading / watching / listening to this month:
- 🎬 Movie - Demolition
A quiet unraveling. Jake Gyllenhaal (my love) plays a man who loses his wife and then slowly breaks down his life, piece by piece. Demolition isn’t really about grief as sadness; it’s about grief as confusion. The kind that makes you ask strange questions, write uncomfortable letters, and take things apart just to see how they work. Messy, human, and unexpectedly tender. - 📖 Book - Normal People
This book still lingers. Two people orbiting each other across time, intimacy, miscommunication, and class. Normal People is sharp and emotional without being dramatic. It captures how deeply we can know someone and still miss them entirely. A winter read that feels personal, in the best way. - 🎤 TED Talk - The Art of Reading Minds
What looks like mind-reading is really attention. Oz Pearlman breaks down how observation, listening, and tiny signals reveal far more than we think. It’s fascinating but also grounding. A reminder that presence, not magic, is what makes people feel seen.
Wrap-Up
That’s all for today. Stay tuned for the January coffee with me! New Year! New Beginnings!
You can find me writing about Product management on Linkedin, running my business at velonova.io, rating movies/TV shows on IMDB, or making playlists on Spotify.
You made it all the way here.... thank you for sharing this coffee with me ☕❤️.
If there’s a topic you’d like me to dive into next, just send it my way.
Ciao!
- Tanya
If this piece was forwarded to you, sign up now to never miss a monthly edition!
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.