Espresso Shots 4-20-25

Here's my weekly update with a few interesting random findings that I came across the last week or two. I am going to try to make sure they're here in time for you to enjoy with your morning coffee (or beverage of choice) every Saturday or Sunday, and include some of my thoughts around them.

The Latest Drippings ☕️

• Less Doing. More Quitting.. I love this mantra: 'The smartest move is subtractive.' More specifically, this article dives into the concept of how much burden there is with invisible work which is incredibly relevant. While I hate to admit it, I've realized over the last months that I've been doing too much of this invisible work, so I'm heavily leaning into this idea. This week's must-read post.
• Playing Chess With a Pigeon. Timeless advice: 'Arguing with an idiot is like playing chess with a pigeon. It'll just knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and strut about like it's won anyway.' I will leave this classic quote from Shannon Alder here for reflection.
• How I Learned About Great Literature from Comic Books. In high school, I was an avid comic book collector - in fact, I still have a box of the 'most meaningful' ones wrapped in individual plastic wrappers for my nostalgia. Every individual issue of cult-classics such as The Sandman, Watchmen, Akira, V for Vendetta, Killing Joke, etc. So when I came across this post from Ted Gioia that you shouldn't 'underestimate the long term impact of childhood exposure,' it struck a cord on how much these comics meant to me at the time and how much it's shaped my thinking now that I'm in my 50's.
• Google Created A New AI Model For Talking To Dolphins. You'd think, with the way life is in 2025, they'd focus on helping people talk to other people. But instead, let's talk to the sea mammals.
• Infinite Mac Lets You Run Vintage Mac Operating Systems in Your Browser. This is a fun one about Infinite Mac, where you can run vintage OSs in your browser. From NextStep to MacOS, there are quite a few to play with.
• The Use (And Design) Of Tools. 'We've adopted the mindset of Too Busy To Learn. As a result, we prefer tools that give us quick results, not the ones that are worth learning.' One of the most useful pivots you can make is think more about what can provide systemic change versus short-term goals. I liked this post as it parallels a lot of the crazy 'short term' thinking around using Generative AI; I'm finding that using AI to offload work, not thinking is a much better way to view the long-term value of (or lack thereof) of these things.
• 4 Years Of Lessons From Running My Own Bookstore. A great retrospective from Ryan Holiday, which has a lot of great advice for business and life. My favorite: 'If you've always wanted to do it ... do it.'
• Why Small Networks Build Stronger Ideas. I've been a long-time advocate for having a personal board of directors (followup here), but this post is poetry for me: 'The best ideation networks are asymmetric. They aren't little echo chambers. They're cognitively and temperamentally diverse. They combine the formal and the chaotic. The spreadsheet brain and the poetry brain. The person who reads footnotes and the one who interrupts with metaphors. You want disagreement. You want stakes. You want someone who's willing to say: this doesn't hold. Small networks aren't scalable, and that's the point.'
• Quality Beats Quantity. Say no to protect the yes, is a core tenant of Essentialism, so when Gaping Void writes about how many are 'guilty of confusing quantity for quality', I need to read it. The parallels from the naval battle between Sir Francis Drake and the victory over Spain's Invincible Armada (1588) was achieved not by matching Spain's strength but by innovating naval engagement strategies. 'Success isn't more. It's finding the angle everyone else missed.'
• Why is there a 'small house' in IBM's Code page 437?. This is a fun look at why IBM has a glyph of a small house in their character set. I'm not going to spoil this fun read for font fanatics.
• Celebrate 50 Years Of Microsoft With The Company's Original Source Code. Speaking of classic code and fun reading, Bill Gates posted the source code for BASIC. But honestly, the origin of it all is fascinating to look through.
• Britbox's New Advert Is A 14-Hours-Long One-Shot Take. While watching The Studio, whose second episode was a one-shot about a one-shot (brilliant!), I came across this wild one from Britbox. It's a 90-second shot, which 'features a sped-up, continuous 14-hour single-take sequence, capturing an actor's transition through multiple meticulously designed sets.'
• The Size of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Over The United States. Many don't know about the 'largest accumulation of ocean plastic in the world that is located between Hawaii and California.' Even more shocking is that it covers an estimated 'surface area of 1.6 million square kilometers, an area twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France.'

Amor Fati ✌🏻