Espresso Shots 12-21-25

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 ☕️

• 2025 Word of the Year: Slop. When I first mentioned the word 'slop' in a meeting over a year ago, there was a general surprise in the room, along with a sense that I made up the term. But no, I follow Simon Willison, who started to talk about the problem in 2024; at the time he said 'watching in real time as slop becomes a term of art. The way that spam became the term for unwanted emails, slop is going into the dictionary as the term for unwanted AI-generated content.' Flash forward to the end of 2025, and Webster has now coined it word of the year. While 'Merriam-Webster said that the word slop originated in the 1700s to mean soft mud before the meaning evolved to food waste in the 1800s and, eventually, "rubbish" and "a product of little or no value" in colloquial terminology. The flood of slop in 2025 included absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books, 'workslop' reports that waste coworkers' time... and lots of talking cats." I wonder what 2026's word of the year will be.
• A Big Misunderstanding. I really liked this post on the distinction between stated motives and actual motives. 'They confuse our words with our deeds. It's like mistaking Starbucks' mission statement — inspiring and nurturing the human spirit, one person, one cup, one neighborhood at a time — with its goal of maximizing profit.' I would also suggest, after digesting this one, read more about the Dichotomy of Control.
• How the World's Leading Breach Expert Got Phished. I have been a follower of Troy Hunt (and you should check out Have I Been Pwned to see if your email has been in a data breach) for many years now, but I somehow missed this post from this past April on how he himself got phished. 'If you can't spot the sucker at the poker table, you're the sucker. Also, if you think you can't get phished, you're the sucker.'
• Please Learn How to Use Your Computer. 'The number of professionals in journalism, media, communications, and academia who still don't understand how to use the very tools they depend on for their livelihood is, frankly, staggering.' I would like to extend this to the current trope that 'AI is going to replace humans. Werner summed it up best: 'But like the great thinkers of the Renaissance who refused to be confined to a single discipline, developers can no longer live in silos. You must think bigger, the moment demands it. This is the dawn of a new age for developers. You have never been more valuable. Your creativity has never been needed more. So keep building, stay curious, and keep solving the world's hardest problems.' Leaning into curiosity has been the biggest mental unlock for me the last 12 months.
• How Gemini Gives Me Hope for a Future Internet. This past week, I learned about Gemini (no, not the AI from Google), but rather a new internet technology supporting an electronic library of interconnected text documents.' I am still digging into this, but I find it fascinating - 'Gemini exists because a few people said enough is enough with the current state of the internet and did something about it. There were enough people who believed in the same idea and principles that now there is a decent community living on this network. People are sharing their lives, recipes, resources, you name it.'
• Learning as Rebellion. Critical thinking. Curiosity. Continuous Learning. Leaning into fun. These concepts have been at the forefront of my brain for the last year and are something I'm trying to go deep on in 2026. I really enjoyed Harold's post on learning as an act of rebellion: 'The use of these tools on a large scale does not sound like a huge leap in collective human learning but rather a path that will impede creativity and innovation. Is human learning now an act of rebellion? If so, it's a rebellion I want be part of.'
• Interstitial Journaling: Combining Notes, To-Do and Time Tracking. A follow-up from last week's link regarding Journaling like a Spanish Fighter Pilot. I guess this methodology for taking notes is referred to as interstitial journaling; 'The basic idea of interstitial journaling is to write a few lines every time you take a break, and to track the exact time you are taking these notes.' This week I put it into practice by creating a shortcut that I have tied to the Action button on the phone (and can be run from the watch - bonus!) that incrementally builds up a daily journal with each quick entry. And, for fun, at the end of the day, I also wired Apple Intelligence to summarize that day in a single sentence. More on this to see if it sticks and/or what the value is.
• The Best Upgrade Is You. More in the same vein of continuous learning. 'I have come to believe that the best and most cost-effective technology upgrade that one can make is to themselves. I’m not talking cyborg implants here. I’m speaking about knowledge. That is, increasing your skill, aptitude, and understanding when it comes to any device, application, or tool.'
• Continually Making Myself Obsolete Didn't Work. 'In spite of my best efforts to render myself useless, I was never able to reach my goal of quietly sitting back with nothing new to do. It turned out that my relentless pursuit of automation and the creation of software that offloaded my efforts didn't end my job; it just changed it.' I think this is an important idea to think about - even though tools change, automation accelerates tasks, these tools (despite what consultants think) don't replace people. They can be used to accelerate manual tasks and potentially give back time.
• A Year of Confronting Complexity. An interesting thought piece on how important the understanding of complexity is for understanding change: 'We are witnessing a massive cultural crises stemming from the destruction of craft across all the arts including music, writing, visual arts and process arts.'
• What Obituaries Reveal About American Values. Fascinating post on 'what it means to have lived a good life.' Side note: The Top Five Regrets of the Dying is an excellent reminder of things to focus on to have a good life while you still have time. Momento Mori.
• Windows 3.1 Included a Red and Yellow 'Hot Dog Stand' Color Scheme So Garish It Was Long Assumed to Be a Joke, So I Tracked Down Microsoft's Original UI Designer to Get the True Story. TIL the origin story behind the Windows 'Hot Dog Stand' theme. From Virginia Howlett, a member of the original design team 'It was not intended as a joke. It was not inspired by any hot dog stands, and it was not included as an example of a bad interface—although it was one. It was just a garish choice, in case somebody out there liked ugly bright red and yellow.'
• The Book of Pete. I've often thought of these nuggets of life wisdom that you collect as what would comprise one's own Commonplace Journal, but Pete Prodoehl muses that 'people look to your work and the kind of person you were.' He goes on, 'I don't want this to be dark, because I want to keep living for a few more decades, but I also want to encourage others to view blogging as a legacy they can leave behind. You'll make mistakes, you’ll get things wrong, but if you use those failings as opportunities to learn and grow, then I think that’s pretty cool.'
• How Did the C.I.A. Lose a Nuclear Device in the Himalayas? (gift link). Uh, ok - apparently in 1965 a group of C.I.A. climbers' abandoned a nuclear device that contained nearly a third of the total amount of plutonium used in the Nagasaki bomb.' The device, a 50-pound, beach-ball-size nuclear device, was part of a device that was planned to be used to eavesdrop on Chinese mission control. 'But right as the climbers were about to push for the summit, the weather went haywire. The wind howled, the clouds descended, a blizzard swept in, and the top of the forbidding mountain, called Nanda Devi, suddenly disappeared in a whiteout. It hasn't been seen since.' Makes me wonder how many random nukes have been just 'lost' around the world.

Amor Fati ✌🏻