Espresso Shots 3-01-26

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 ☕️

• For Those Who Zag. I really appreciated Brad's post reflecting on Apple's famous 'think different campaign. 'It just feels like a really odd time to be a human. Tech progress has gone from being something exciting to "Oh no, I think they're trying to automate my soul."' His new take on it, 'For Those That Zag' was a fun read. And, as a side note: even today, I still find the message incredibly motivating - a 'think different' poster still hangs upstairs near my home office.
• Omoiyari. I needed to add the word Omoiyari to my personal dictionary. 'There’s a Japanese word with no English equivalent: Omoiyari. It means something like a deep, reflexive consideration for others that permeates at all levels of the culture.' There's something wonderfully special about a word that describes 'how the environment shapes reality, which shapes language and culture, which shapes behavior. It’s all connected.'
• Curate People. On a similar theme of having your own Personal Board of Directors, I really enjoyed The Naval Podcast on the conversation around recruiting. 'Recruiting is the most important thing because you need creativity; you need motivated people. Ideally, the early people are all geniuses. They’re self-managing, low-ego, hardworking, highly competent, builders, technical; maybe one or two sellers; but you can’t watch everything. You can’t micromanage everything.' The idea that the best only want to work with the best isn't a new one - Steve Jobs often talked about building teams of A players, and how in software 'the difference between average and the best is 50 to 1.'
• Letters to a Young Creator. Maybe I'm feeling a bit sentimental (or inspired) this week, as I have a lot of callbacks to Steve Jobs. Recently, The Steve Jobs Archive published 'Letters to a Young Creator', 'a collection of honest perspectives on what it takes to make something great, written by people who have done it before.' You can download it free from Apple Books or download it to your favorite e-reader.
• Why Aren't Smart People Happier?. A super interesting article which explores the disconnect between intelligence and happiness, questioning why individuals with high IQs aren't necessarily happier.' The author dives into how most testing focuses on well-defined problems rather than poorly defined ones (which are where most life challenges come from). 'All of your optimizing, your straining to achieve and advance, your ruthless crusade to eliminate all of the well-defined problems from your life; it doesn't actually seem to make your life any better.'
• How I Found, Lost, and Rediscovered My Purpose. I've been acutely aware of the hedonic treadmill before. In a reflective blog post, Darius Foroux talks about his story. 'From 2015 to 2024, I rode that momentum. I was writing and building. I had a direction. Then, I hit a ceiling.' The question is always: what are you going to do about it?.
• A System to Organize Your Life. I've heard of the Johnny Decimal organization system, but never really spent any time digging into it. The idea is to 'assign a unique ID to everything in your life' and that 'these IDs help you stay organized. They impose constraints that make it harder to get lost. And you create your own index to link everything in your life together.' It could be useful for folks; I've shifted into more of a tag and search method of organizing. Rather than complicated organizational folders, I drop everything into a single folder. It could be useful for someone reading this newsletter.
• The Sunday Meeting You Should Be Having with Yourself. 'Everyone plans. Almost nobody examines.' I really liked this approach to a consistent 30 minute block on Sundays to examine things: 'I tend to accumulate tasks and other aspirations quickly, which is why the examination aspect is more important than the planning piece, and is exactly why this works so well for me as part of my overall weekly system.' Perfectly stated: 'Sunday gives you the distance to think clearly and the proximity to act precisely.'
• Deplatform Yourself. I've been pretty active on the idea of decentralized social, specifically Mastodon, for the last several years. Cory dives deep into the concept of unmonetizable content, which I hadn't really considered before. 'I make a lot of "unmonetizable content," starting with this blog, which has no metrics, no analytics, and (of course) no ads. I refuse to add social media cards, and hide obscure jokes in incredibly long URLs that get truncated on social media. I labor for hours over the weird illustrations that go at the top of the posts, which I release (along with the text they accompany) under Creative Commons licenses that let pretty much anyone do pretty much anything with them, without asking me, telling me, or paying me (it's always very funny when someone accuses me of publishing this work as clickbait – clickbait for what? To increase bandwidth consumption at my server?).'
• Is the New York Times a Games Company?. I had heard a few years back that NYT Games was driving incredible subscriber growth (in 2024, NYT Games was driving more subscriptions than the paper), but I never really thought of them as a 'games company'. The trend has even further continued driving growth into 2026.
• Podcasts Lead AM/FM in Spoken-Word Listening, Marking a First. Speaking of growth, podcasts have finally overtaken radio listening. 'Quarter by quarter and year over year, time spent using AM/FM radio to listen to spoken-word audio has declined significantly and shifted to time spent with podcasts. As of Q4 2025, 40% of time spent listening to spoken-word is now spent with podcasts and 39% of time is spent with AM/FM radio. Not only does radio not beat podcasts by a significant margin, it now trails the on-demand platform for spoken-word audio listening.' Frankly, I thought this had already happened.
• Too Many Satellites? Earth's Orbit Is on Track for a Catastrophe – But We Can Stop It. I had opened Night Sky to get some data on this week's Lunar eclipse (blood moon), and was surprised how much of the sky was covered with the artificial constellation created by StarLink with only 9,400 in orbit as of Jan. 'SpaceX filed an application with the US Federal Communications Commission for a mega-constellation of up to one million satellites to power data centers in space.' Great, the sky is now getting enshittified.
• Actors Who Stole Desirable Merch from on Set. It's amusing to read about what actors have stolen from film sets. Chris Hemsworth should technically have a Thor's Hammer prop, though.
• The John S. McMillin Mausoleum. On the island where I live, there's a strange monument in the woods that I love to take visitors to. When you see it, it's something out of what you'd only expect in a film, but the (perhaps haunted) Afterglow Vista has a really interesting history. 'This grand structure is both a tomb and a piece of art. McMillan and his family members ashes are interned (he was cremated) at the base of the thick concrete chairs that also act as headstones. The whole scene represents the family dinner table and the unity of the McMillins during life and death. An empty space at the table is rumored to represent the McMillin son who turned away from the family's Methodist faith.' Although I've visited it many times, I haven't seen anything .. uh, extraordinary, but 'according to countless reports from visitors, strange blue orbs have been spotted and photographed hovering above the chairs at the limestone table in the center of the monument.'
• Building a Functional LEGO Typewriter. Ok, this is too cool not to share. :)

Amor Fati ✌🏻