Espresso Shots 8-2-26

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 Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial. Brian Wilson said it best, 'Beware the lollipop of mediocrity; lick it once and you'll suck forever.' And while I've written about the curse of 'meh', this post (from a new addition to my reading list) was a fascinating exploration of the trappings and socioeconomics of 'premium mediocrity'. Though it was written almost 10 years ago, 2026 seems to have evolved into 'peak mediocrity' on so many things that it felt relevant to repost this week. 'Premium mediocre is food that Instagrams better than it tastes. Premium mediocre is Starbucks' Italian names for drink sizes, and its original pumpkin spice lattes featuring a staggering absence of pumpkin in the preparation. Actually, all the coffee at Starbucks is premium mediocre. Mediocre with just an irrelevant touch of premium, not enough to ruin the delicious essential mediocrity.'
• Maximum Viscosity. 'Systems thinking is a practical approach that embraces things' complexity, interconnections, and non-linearity. It offers a more flexible and dynamic way of understanding and solving problems. When you're an expert, and your focus is on a goal, your thinking becomes more linear and rigid. You concentrate on reaching specific targets without considering the broader system, which can be limiting and often has unseen side effects.' Two years ago that was a theory I was excited about. Today, it's just how I diagnose things. The goal was never the problem. The system producing it was. James Clear puts the same idea more bluntly, 'Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. That's the counterintuitive thing about improvement. We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results. When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. To improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.'
• We Are Losing the Ability to Discover What We Didn't Know to Ask. 'By shortening the time between asking a question and getting an answer, these tools are actually undermining curiosity — and paradoxically threatening our ability to understand the world.' Dr Anne-Laure Le Cunff, as usual, has an incredibly relevant post that confirms my suspicions that we're headed into a world of cognitive debt when it comes to some basic thinking skills: Critical thinking, systems thinking, curiosity, continuous learning. We have information at our fingertips, yet society seems addicted to the doomscrolling dopamine hit, turning us all into mush-brains. 'Curiosity puts the entire brain into a mode of heightened receptivity — not just for the specific thing you want to know but also for everything around it. Curiosity opens a window, and while the window is open, learning deepens across the board.'
• I Guess I'm Playing The Long Game Now. 'The Long Game means acknowledging it's going to be a mess, but we're going to be okay regardless. As my favorite philosopher Michel de Montaigne said: the purpose of life is to live it.' Oddly enough, I've had several conversations this past week about the concept of the 10-year-plan. An observation from several years back was that every major organization I've been a part of has some form of 'long-range plan' exercise, but few apply that technique to 'life'. Applying inversion to setting up your Life 2.0 goals is the single most valuable life-hack I can recommend to 'being intentional about how you want to be and spend your day and defining the path to get there.'
• Reviews of New Food: Aldi Crystal Clear Frozen Ice Cubes. I saw that you can (yes, it's true) buy Crystal Clear Ice Cubes this past week, and leave it to the masterminds at McSweeney's to do a proper review.
• The Case of the 500-Mile Email. I'm sure I've sent this piece of Internet history before from Trey Harris, but for the newer subscribers, it's worth repeating. Read what caused a university to have a 500-mile physical limitation on email. Solid debugging work (which I wonder if an LLM could figure out today).
• How to Write a Letter. I was lucky enough to snag one of the 50 print copies available, and I am really looking forward to reading it. But the brilliance here is the format: 'I like the idea of something you could subscribe to that would send you a single sheet of A4 every now and then. We could commission artists and writers to make one. I haven't quite worked out how to do that yet, but if you order one of the letters then you're agreeing that I can email you when I've worked it out.'
• Next up? You know it. You hate it. It's the invisible wall.. Check out this 8-minute video which explores the various ways games try to keep you in bounds. I thought it was a wild view of the effort these games go to in establishing controlled environments.
• Seth Rogen Knows the Secret to Marriage and Being Rich in Hollywood (Gift Link). Every once in a while, you come across an interview that you don't expect. While I've enjoyed Seth Rogen (especially his work on The Studio - excellent if you're not watching it), he's most known for his relationship with cannabis. I guess that's why this NYT interview was so delightful for me to read. His views on desire, comedy, love, marriage, and wealth were just incredibly insightful to me. 'It comes from something I relate to deeply: The thing that makes you the happiest is also the most painful thing in your life at times. "The Larry Sanders Show" is the thing that me and Evan Goldberg reference a lot. That's an incredibly great comedic character. He's constantly trying to be someone he isn't. He’s constantly trying to be nice and cool, cool, cool to the employees that he works with, but he's too wound up to allow it to happen. He wants to think he can date a woman who's more famous than he is, but he can't. He wants to think he can allow his sidekick to be funny, but his ego won't allow it. It’s the conflict between what the worst parts of your ego make you do versus what your purest desires want you to do.' The Invite is next up on my watch list now.
• AI and the iPod Test. I wish I had kept my original iPod (though I still have an iPod Touch somewhere in the parts bin). I liked the idea of 'friction maxxing' (remember, not all friction is bad) that older devices have. 'An emerging term, friction-maxxing, where steps are deliberately reintroduced into a task to counteract technology designed to be frictionless. Further, she pointed to resistance to surveillance capitalism, to the inevitability framing tech companies keep selling us and to the sense that our devices were changed without our consent. She also ties it to the body and the tactile pleasure of a mechanical engagement.'
• A Vintage Typewriter Enthusiast Savors the Journey of Writing. Speaking of intentional friction with a dash of vintage analog, old typewriters have begun to develop a special place in my heart for writing. Check out a post on someone who 'cultivated a collection of 12 vintage typewriters as a deliberate counterpoint to the digital age.' Oh, while I'm on that, also pop on over and check out this iPad Bluetooth Keyboard: the Qwerkywriter, 'a modern typewriter-inspired mechanical keyboard designed for writers, creatives, and professionals who value both form and function.' I need to get on with building the LEGO Typewriter over the next few weeks.
• You Don't Have to Be Smart if You Can Think Clearly. 'When you're on fire, problems are transparent: they're solved simply by the act of looking at them. Even complicated layers of multiple problems can simply be glanced through like stacked panes of glass. But nobody can work that way all the time. This is a common pitfall for smart engineers. Accustomed to being able to immediately intuit the solution, the first time they run into a problem they can't do this to is a disaster. It doesn't even have to be a hard problem, just a problem where, for whatever reason, they don't see the trick right away. The difference between a smart engineer and a strong engineer is how they react to problems that aren't solved instantly. A smart engineer might flail and struggle, hoping to find that flash of insight that eluded them; a strong engineer will have some process for methodically plodding away.' I guess I'm on a think different kick lately.
• I Thought I Would Have It All Figured Out by Now. Filing this in my 'morbid math' notes, Brad Montague reflects on things that he thought he'd have figured out by the time he turned 45. What I appreciated about this one is that it's not the traditional look back, like my 55 for 55 post, but rather what he thought he'd know by now. 'Here’s the part that surprised me: None of the older folks had it all figured out. These were people over the age of 100. None of them encouraged me with false hope that I would someday be all knowing. In fact, the folks who impressed me the absolute most were the ones who were first to admit they were still learning. Wise enough to know what all they don’t know. Still curious. Still asking questions. Still growing and changing.'
• Why Designers Love this Soy Sauce Bottle. Closing out this week with a fun post from the wonderful Grovemade folks. 'What connects a classic soy sauce bottle and the Narita Express train? Ken and Sean, the design team at Grovemade, dive into these objects through the lens of personal connection, design history, and the roles different objects play in the world. Opening your eyes and being curious can lead to all sorts of magical things.' If you're not familiar with them, spend a few minutes reading about their design ethos and origins.

Amor Fati ✌🏻