Field Notes by Mindy Yang

Should a Title Arrive Before the Achievement?

Field Notes by Mindy Yang — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 16:34:36 GMT

I recently read an article about people who put “astronaut” in their LinkedIn headlines before they’ve actually gone to space. The author’s point was simple: a future achievement gets quietly converted into present authority. Someone might be an astronaut candidate, an analog astronaut, a reserve member, or a passenger booked on a flight that hasn’t lau…

The Tongue Has No Map. The Nose Has Several.

Field Notes by Mindy Yang — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 17:53:18 GMT

For years we were handed a cartoon.

Sweet at the tip. Bitter in the back. Sour along the sides. Salt somewhere nearby, apparently in a decent school district.

Simple. Memorable. Wrong.

The human sensory system has never cared for our diagrams. Taste doesn’t stay inside the colored zones. Smell doesn’t arrive through one receptor labeled “coffee” or “jasmin…

The Mussel Problem

Field Notes by Mindy Yang — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 16:07:25 GMT

My nephew is six, and dinner with him follows a script. The food arrives. He leans back as if it might lunge. He announces, before tasting anything, that he doesn’t like it. There’s a negotiation—one bite, just one—and a standoff, and sometimes a small triumph, and often a plate carried back to the kitchen mostly full. Every parent and every aunt knows …

The Year the Machine Got Boring

Field Notes by Mindy Yang — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:10:38 GMT

A trend report landed on my desk last week. One hundred forty pages, nine categories, the usual confident typography. Trend Hunter’s mid-2026 read on where the world is heading, built from the firehose of products, launches, and consumer behavior they crawl all day.

Let me walk you through what the report saw, where it lines up with the world as it actu…

The Upstart’s Playbook: How Small Brands Are Quietly Eating Big CPG’s Lunch

Field Notes by Mindy Yang — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 21:05:23 GMT

There’s a quiet disruption happening in the aisles of your grocery store. It’s a new hot sauce, a better-sized bag of chips, a seasonal flavor you didn’t know you needed until it was gone. But behind those unassuming products is a strategic assault on the legacy brands that have owned shelf space for decades — and the people pulling it off aren’t Unilev…

The Echo of Orbit: Managing Acoustic Stress in Space

Field Notes by Mindy Yang — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:25:45 GMT

Acoustic metamaterials are redefining how we think about noise control in built environments. Instead of relying on thick insulation and sealed barriers, these precisely engineered structures manipulate sound waves through geometry, interference, and resonance — enabling broadband absorption while maintaining airflow.

In this episode, we explore the emer…

The Physics Trick That Could Make Space Stations—and Everything Else—Quieter

Field Notes by Mindy Yang — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:06:27 GMT

There’s a specific misery to the International Space Station that nobody puts on the recruitment poster: it never shuts up.

The Lemonade Paradox: What Your Eyes Tell Your Stomach

Field Notes by Mindy Yang — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 10:24:11 GMT

There’s a moment that happens in every Korean restaurant I’ve ever visited—from the cramped side streets of Myeongdong to the strip malls of Los Angeles—when the server sets down the banchan (small dishes of kimchi, pickled radish, seasoned spinach), your appetite, which was merely theoretical moments ago, suddenly awakens. Physical. You haven’t tasted …