Espresso Shots 3-22-26

It's that time again for my weekly update, which includes a short collection of noteworthy finds, posts that inspire, as well as a few reflections from the past week or two. I'll aim to land these in your inbox by the weekend, in time to pair with your morning coffee (or your preferred cup of inspiration).

The Latest Drippings ☕️

• The Last Quiet Thing. This incredible entry asks an important question: 'What if the exhaustion everybody feels isn't a moral failure but the completely rational response to being made responsible for an ecosystem of objects that never stop asking?' Powerful stuff, and a framing that I never really considered before this. 'The problem was never how many things you own. The problem is that OWNING means something it never used to. Everything you buy is the beginning of a relationship you'll be maintaining until one of you dies or gets discontinued.' This one is for the commonplace journal, as it's a great reminder on how important silence is, and that 'technology got bad at being finished.'
• Nobody Gets Promoted for Simplicity. Look, simple is difficult, and while this post has a bit of a software engineering perspective (see more on boredom), there are some great life lessons in here. 'The actual path to seniority isn't learning more tools and patterns, but learning when not to use them. Anyone can add complexity. It takes experience and confidence to leave it out..'
• The Optimized Self and the Life That Got Away. Speaking of complexity, some time ago I went down the rabbit hole to this idea that I could optimize chaos and better understand my body by hyper-focusing on data, aka the 'quantified self'. While I can't dismiss that it does provide insights, I wonder how much real value I get from it. Joan nails it: 'The mindfulness industry sold inner peace as a productivity intervention, and you were supposed to meditate because it would improve your focus metrics, and whether sitting still with your thoughts was worth doing on its own terms was entirely beside the point. The gym absorbed this logic, and the body became a startup, and the optimization influencer became its growth hacker, and the language of biohacking was borrowed directly from Silicon Valley engineering culture: stacks, protocols, outputs, iterations. The journey was irrelevant, and the destination was simply a more productive you. In the psychological literature going back to D.W. Winnicott, play is the space where creativity and selfhood develop, and play is, by definition, purposeless. You do it for its own sake, or you're not really playing. When the entire surface area of life is conquered by purposeful activity, play becomes structurally impossible.' A lot to revisit here.
• What Brené Brown and I Will Never Agree On. As a long-time fan of both Brené Brown and Adam Grant, their new podcast, The Curiosity Shop, was an instant "subscribe" for me. 'Every Thursday, Brené and I will combine our right-brain and left-brain sensibilities to embrace informed complexity over easy answers. We’ll explore big questions, riff, disagree, and dive deep into the ideas, evidence, and cultural moments that intrigue us most.' 🎧
• Why I'm Not Worried About Running Out of Work in the Age of AI. 'The one thing I find most missing from the AI future analyses I've read is a simple realization: in my experience, there is always, always more work yet to do.' The job market right now is a total mess, and there's no limit to how much uncertainty there is in the world. As a parent of two kids exiting college, I can attest that it's pretty damn bleak out there. But for a long time, a techie like myself resonates with this post. 'Since no AI post would be complete without a reference to Jevons Paradox, let's invoke it here: When technology makes something cheaper or more efficient, we tend to use more of it, not less. When steam engines became more efficient, coal consumption didn't fall — it exploded because steam power became economical in far more applications. The same dynamic has repeated itself with computing, storage, and bandwidth. Every time technology dramatically increases our ability to do something, we don't run out of work to do. We discover many more things worth doing.' Or, like I mentioned last week: 'The value of 90% of my skills just dropped to $0. The leverage of my remaining 10% went up by a thousand.'
• How the Hell Are You Supposed to Have a Career in Tech in 2026?. I've been spending a lot of time in these spaces lately (sorry), but I liked where Anil went with this: focus on curiosity. 'A lot of us still care about things like the potential for technology to help people, or still believe in the idealistic and positive goals that got us into our careers in the first place. We weren't wrong, or naive, or foolish to aspire to those goals simply because some bad actors sought to undermine them. And it's okay to feel frustrated or scared in a time when, to many, those goals seem further away than they've been in a long time.'
• Why ATMs Didn't Kill Bank Teller Jobs, but the iPhone Did. Keeping on the same thread, another relevant post here: 'there's a lot more to replacing labor than just automating tasks.' A really interesting read on how technology replaced bank tellers. 'So what happened to bank tellers? Autor, Bessen, Vance, and the like are right to point out that ATMs did not reduce bank teller employment. But they miss the second half of the story, which is that another technology did. And that technology was the iPhone.'
• The Ends of AI. In addition to this excellent post from Scott Galloway, 'I now worry that synthetic relationships could erode users mojo, stunting their capacity to handle conflict and forge bonds with friends, mentors, and partners in the real world', this post dives into the problems of AI psychosis. It's 'the feeling that you are better understood by the chatbot than by people, or by the belief that AI is more objective and neutral than experts, journalists, or your neighbours. The feeling of AI psychosis is also being convinced that you are, in fact, superior to others; an unrecognised genius, or special in some ways that people around you simply don’t recognise, but that the chatbot does. This is what happens when you sell AI as god-like — people might actually end up believing that they are having spiritual awakenings.' We're treading on some really scary ground, and did you know that most AI chatbots are used for therapy and companionship? I don't think this will end well.
• The Fast Rise and Epic Fall of Clubhouse. Remember Clubhouse? I really enjoyed this postmortem on what happened to it. 'Clubhouse was an initially invite-only, audio-based social network that worked like an old-timey party line or radio call-in show… and it was exactly what people needed who suddenly found themselves stuck at home.' There's a variety of reasons it didn't last, but this take is probably the most succinct: 'Clubhouse didn’t fail; it simply stopped being necessary once the world started moving again.'. Video link here if interested.
• How 'Sync Music' Became the Soundtrack to Our Lives (gift link). I didn't know that it had a name, but you know that background music you hear in all sorts of videos, from reality TV shows like Love Island to YouTube tutorials and commercials? It's called sync music. Learn all about 'the music you hear all day, without ever noticing'. Really interesting post.
• What 100 Million Volts Do to the Body and Mind (gift link). 'The odds of being struck by lightning in America in a given year are one in 1.2 million. How does the experience reorient a person’s sense of chance, of fate?' Last week, I mentioned ideas of 'quantum change' and this certainly falls into it. 'The most fundamental consequences of being struck by lightning are often metaphysical, and not easily communicable. How does falling victim to one of the most notoriously unlikely of all misfortunes reorient your sense of chance, of fate? How does it feel, when you’re trying to describe the most transformative experience of your life, to be met, routinely, with disbelief?' Really interesting.
• Rule #22: Ask Beautiful Questions. I really wish Scott would finish the book already; it's been a joy reading his thought pieces as he writes. 'The magic of a question is that, unlike a statement, it creates space. That's all it does. It opens things up. It invites the other person to fill the shape we've offered them. Or to change it. In our culture, we give too much attention to smart people who know the answers, but we undervalue the wisdom of people who know what to ask in the first place.'
• Maybe Making Is About Mattering. It's taken me a good 55 years on planet Earth to understand what drove my childlike curiosity that got me into this wacky technology world. This post really connected with me: 'That's always been the unifying theme in everything I do: technology in pursuit of human flourishing. It's never been about the technology. It's always been about the people. I care about people. I want to use technology to make their lives better. To help them flourish. To achieve their potential. I always come back to that idea, though I’m not sure why. It just feels so obvious to me. We can shape our environment and create a future in which people live happier, healthier, and more fulfilling lives. That’s a beautiful thing to be able to do! It feels like I have an obligation, a duty. That seems to be the mark of a craftsperson: a sense of obligation to better the lives of those around them by making things for them.'
• The Measure of a Life Well Lived: Henry Miller on How to Grow Old and the Secret of Remaining Young at Heart. Another wonderful post on aging well.
• In Favor of Enjoying Things on Purpose. Wrapping up this week with a reminder on why we should enjoy things. 'As far as I can tell, virtually every moment offers many such sources of enjoyment, if you can learn to enjoy things consciously and voluntarily. You can, if you intend to, enjoy the dappled light on the breakfast table, the gentle hug of your socks on your feet, or your smoothly-running vehicle — any aspect of the moment you recognize as welcome, helpful, pleasant, or beautiful. Indulging in these pleasures does not require a special sentimental mood or the conditions of your life to feel favorable in general. They only require a moment of voluntary appreciation for a single good thing.' Very akin to Kurt Vonnegut's advice for making the most of every day: 'And I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different.'

Amor Fati ✌🏻