Espresso Shots 5-17-26

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 ☕️

• taken. I thought this was a powerful, yet simple, way to show that personal information is just "given" away when you open a webpage: your location, your computer type, your language, and more. When I opened this, it revealed 32 different data points that are just up for grabs. 'Every page you have ever visited knows at least this much. Most of them know more. None of them told you.' A powerful reminder.
• A Work in Progress. I was reviewing several old posts, and this one popped to the top of my brain as I feel like I'm down this hole again. 'I'm tired. I get that most of this is all self-induced stress around getting things done, but something feels "more" stressful this year. There's more weight to things. It's probably in my head.' I can sense a bit of a major refocus for me on the near horizon as the current stress is just not maintainable.
• Outrage Is Letting Someone Else Set the Frame. 'There is nothing neutral about the feed. It's a slot machine built to dispense outrage on whatever schedule keeps you returning. The story in front of you was picked because an algorithm, somewhere, ran the numbers and concluded it would make you feel something corrosive enough to produce a reaction.' I've been drawn into getting away from the algorithm across most of my reading these days. I'm back to leveraging RSS content in big ways lately, and plan to remove the remaining algorithm apps, such as LinkedIn, from my devices. Terry's blog has also been a tremendous inspiration, and I've recently been getting together a few feeds (ala sourcefeed) of books, music, films, etc. for your consumption. More on this in a future post about how I'm going to embrace this mindset.
• Foo Fighters: Tiny Desk Concert. I've always enjoyed NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts, so it was fun to see a band I've seen perform in a large stadium take on a smaller, intimate setting. There are 900+ performances up there, so check out a few of my other favorites: Noah Kahan, Mumford & Sons, Billie Eilish, and Olivia Rodrigo.
• The WeatherStar 4000, Then and Now. From the retroist comes a look at the rise and fall of the cable TV 'weather machine', also known as WeatherStar. 'The local forecast. Blue and orange graphics rolling through temperature highs, humidity readings, and multi-day outlooks, all set to early 90s light jazz. If you grew up watching cable in the eighties or nineties, you know exactly what I mean. I spent a lot of time with that channel as a kid. Something about it was really calming. I could tune in before school, or late at night, and it would just be there, cycling through the current conditions, extended forecast, and local radar. There was no anchors, no opinions, just data rendered in that chunky digital typeface with the sun icon and the little cloud graphic. It made the world feel a little more organized.' Check out one of the online emulators with your own zip code and enjoy the nostalgia.
• Wisdom from a Clear Pen. 'What a clear little pen helped me realize about minimalism and opulence.' A lovely post that's less about the pen and more about an appreciation for the things that are beautiful and meaningful. 'The more I pondered on this tug and pull between minimalism and opulence, the more I saw the harmony that comes with a perspective that sees the value in both. They are not exclusive ideas, and each has its own time and place.'
• In Defense of the Skunk at the Garden Party. 'Hosting is an act of creation. Gathering is about connection. It is also about power. Who you bring together, under what auspices, and who you place alongside one another are all acts of creation. And perhaps none is more direct than the decision of who to invite. If the host wields power at a gathering, every guest also holds some. But as guests, our toolkit collapses into two blunt instruments: polite silence or burning the house down. We lack the language and the imagination for what lies in between. Perhaps we ought to name it.' This is a fascinating post from the master of understanding the power of gatherings, Priya Parker. She calls this skunk guesting: 'It’s the choice to use your temporary belonging — your seat at the table, your proximity, your invitation — not just to enjoy the room, but to shape it. To widen the geography of conversation. To interrupt, when necessary, in service of a larger value.' Priya's latest book, The Art of Fighting, is already at the top of my 'books to buy' list when it comes out later this year.
• The Hay Is in the Barn, I've been enjoying David's latest book Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better. 'I woke up yesterday thinking: The hay is in the barn. I think it’s a useful mantra for life in general. There is infinite opportunity to worry about all the things that we might have done. But that won’t change anything. Whatever you’ve got in the barn is what you’ve got. Time to proceed.'
• It's OK to Use Coding Assistance Tools to Revive the Projects You Never Were Going to Finish. I spend a ton of time in various AI tools as part of my technology adventures, and have spent a lot of time lighting up multiple projects that I just never had the time to get to, or ones that I let die on the vine due to having not enough time. 'Sort of like the Japanese word Tsundoku, for the pile of books you intend to eventually read one day. We all have these projects and they are good candidates for testing out AI coding assistance. After all, they were never going to get done anyway.' It's a great way to test/learn/understand the boundaries of where AI will fail you.
• You Should Read Programming as Theory Building. Content and intent are everything these days. 'Programming as Theory Building suggests that the program code, documentation and other products are secondary to what programming really is about: Building an understanding, or a mental model, of the program, its requirements, and how they relate to everything around it. That is, your primary goal as a programmer is to learn, understand, retain, improve and share this “theory” of the program.'
• The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess. The future of work has been on my mind as of late, so if I'm circling a theme this week, apologies. I see a stark conflict between an army of agentic interns and the power and skill of human creativity and curiosity. 'Executives seem very excited about this idea of hiring AI employees. I keep wondering: what kind of employees are they? Imagine a co-worker who generated reams of code with security hazards, forcing you to review every line with a fine-toothed comb. One who enthusiastically agreed with your suggestions, then did the exact opposite. A colleague who sabotaged your work, deleted your home directory, and then issued a detailed, polite apology for it. One who promised over and over again that they had delivered key objectives when they had, in fact, done nothing useful. An intern who cheerfully agreed to run the tests before committing, then kept committing failing garbage anyway. A senior engineer who quietly deleted the test suite, then happily reported that all tests passed. You would fire these people, right?' 100% spot on.
• The Largest Supply Chain Attack You Missed. Speaking of AI issues, you probably didn't know about this massive security issue that hit recently. While this is true of cybersecurity in general, 'the LiteLLM attack exposes a fundamental vulnerability in the AI development ecosystem: the supply chain is only as secure as its weakest dependency.'
• Body Language. Terry keeps knocking out banger posts, with this one focusing on how communication technology has historically reshaped human anatomy. 'Teenagers today report a dent in their smallest finger from the weight of a phone cradled in one hand for years. Strained ligaments in the thumb from the repetitive reaching across glass. Small injuries. The kind you post about and laugh at.' Stop and think about that for a moment, though - phone usage is rewiring our own anatomy. And his point is now that the 'migration has reached the end of the arm': what happens next? What is the next cost? 'When communication takes days, you have days to think. When it takes seconds, you have seconds. When a machine drafts your reply before you've formed your own thought, you have no time at all. The thinking doesn't happen faster. It stops happening. Speed didn't just change how quickly we communicate. It changed whether we think before we do.' If you read anything this week, this is the one.

Amor Fati ✌🏻