Espresso Shots 10-05-25

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 ☕️

• 58 Things I Know at 58. Next year will be a significant milestone for me (so maybe I should start compiling a list) to share when I turn 55, but I enjoyed this list of life lessons and personal insights. Some great pearls of wisdom in this list, such as 'Sometimes, the most helpful and courageous thing you can say is, I don’t know.'
• The Hidden History of the Burbank Airport. I've been flying somewhat regularly to Hollywood Burbank Airport since 2008, and have often been amused by the wild 80's playlist that seems to have been on a loop since time began. What I didn't know - the entire airport was hidden by camouflage during World War II. Wild stuff: 'In the 1940s, the airport was known as Lockheed Air Terminal. Col. John F. Ohmer, an engineer and amateur magician who had studied how the British concealed their military facilities from the Nazis, was authorized to camouflage the Lockheed plant by whatever means necessary. He recruited a bevy of Hollywood set designers for the job. The crew stretched a layer of heavy-duty netting and canvas over the terminal and hangars, then constructed an elaborate replica of a regular SoCal neighborhood on top, complete with fake houses, inflatable cars, and trees made out of wire and spray-painted chicken feathers. As an added touch to throw off surveillance attempts, workers brought the illusion to life by periodically hanging up laundry on clotheslines and moving the inflatable cars around the fake neighborhood.'
• Paul’s Treatise Against Efficiency. While the origin for this is in a podcast (at 19:50), 'Paul’s Treatise Against Efficiency' was particularly insightful: 'Efficiency is asymptotically inefficient: as costs approach zero, the cost of further reducing them approaches infinity.' Give the link a quick look, or even better, listen to the podcast.
• Cursed Math and Astronomical Inclusivity. Whoa, a number that cannot be seen - a number that has that 'has so many digits that the chance of any living human ever actually seeing it is essentially zero.'
• The Selfish Gene is Alive and Well. I mentioned DO Radio last week, but this post had my nodding my head in agreement - 'People don’t care about anyone else. They do what's best for themselves. Always. When push comes to shove (actually, they don't even need a shove), selfishness is their default position.' Everything seems just so disconnected these days, and it was a friendly reminder to make some extra effort to reach out and connect with others more. 'Tiny things. Moments that don't announce themselves. But they add up. They remind me that selfishness might be everywhere, but it isn't everything.'
• GenAI Predictions. This was an excellent and insightful post on the financial damage that GenAI will cause, along with some predictions of the 'reverse centaurs' phenomenon. Two great callouts - 'Generated code will be a routine thing in the toolkit, going forward from here. It’s pretty obvious that LLMs are better at predicting code sequences than human language.' and the upcoming revenge of the junior developer.](https://sourcegraph.com/blog/revenge-of-the-junior-developer)'
• Where to Start in Reading David Foster Wallace. Last week I had mentioned David Foster Wallace, so this was a nice follow-on piece with some great advice on where to start reading more of his works.
• No One Has Your Problems. What a great opener: 'no one really has the same problems you have' in this post, which leans into the power of a Personal Board of Directors. 'Don’t waste your time looking for advice from people who faced the exact same problem you are facing today. They don’t exist. Gather advice from multiple people and use their versions of the problem to put it all into perspective.'
• Reverse Impostor Syndrome. This one introduces reverse imposter syndrome. 'I define reverse imposter syndrome as primarily a perception problem. You are confident in your abilities, but the external signals and clues about your work understate your actual ability.' 🤔
• Why I Hate the MVP Car. For those in the software world, for as long as I can remember, we've talked about MVPs. This post goes for the jugular and asserts that all it does is 'oversimplify the product development process.' An insightful post.
• Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47. Kurt Vonnegut had been a struggling writer, a car salesman, in PR, and a failed playwright before publishing his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five. A great reminder that 'we live in a culture obsessed with precocity. We valorize the twenty-two-year-old founder, the thirty-year-old Nobel laureate, the poet who dies before publishing her second book. To be forty-seven in America often feels like you are past your prime, coasting toward irrelevance. And yet Vonnegut’s story punctures this narrative. It raises the uncomfortable, thrilling question: how much can be done late, when everyone thinks the window has closed?' So it goes.
• Social Media's Highlight Reel. The reason to keep your own personal blog: I'm just writing for me.
• Subscription Prices Gone Wild!. I highly recommend using an app like Orbit, or simply tracking your subscription costs in a spreadsheet. (Side note: I've nuked almost $1200 in subscriptions this year). 'Streaming economics are broken, and price increases were inevitable. The streamers are following a very simple strategy: (1) Raise prices and (2) Cut costs. You might notice that improving quality and reputation are not part of this equation.'

Amor Fati ✌🏻