12 Apr 2026

Espresso Shots 4-12-26

Corporate chaos, dopamine chasing, health rabbit holes, locker dives, a Civil War submarine mystery, and Mr. Brightside.

let the beans pour

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 ☕️

'Survivor' Style Corporate Retreat Descends Into Hellish Nightmare. What's that old proverb? 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions.' As a Survivor fan, this headline caught my interest, but I couldn't have imagined the scenario that unfolded at Plex's employee offsite. They spent '$500,000 flying 120 employees to Honduras for a week of forced fun,' and of course, chaos ensued. Even the CEO came down with E. coli right at the onset: 'Just as people were arriving on the buses, I was like, 'Uh oh.' I lost 8 or 10 pounds. They had a doctor come to me, which apparently is pretty standard. They nailed an IV bag to the bedpost.' Totally wild story, and here's an idea: perhaps a farm-to-table breakfast would be a better idea for employees instead of nearly killing them.
Burnout Looks Different Across the Org Chart. Watch for These Signs. The more I have stepped back and looked at failure patterns or trouble spots, the more it always comes back to the system. 'Burnout is rarely a personal failure. It is usually a design failure. When capable, committed people are exhausted, the issue is not resilience; it is work engineered without regard for human limits and systems that quietly reward overextension. Poor workflows create constant urgency. Misaligned incentives normalize exhaustion. When burnout persists despite individual effort, it signals a breakdown in how power, risk, and reward are structured.' Systems over goals, always.
Why I Quit 'The Strive'. Speaking of systems, there's a dangerous one with the hedonic treadmill. In this thought-piece, Joan calls it The Strive, but the concept is the same. 'It's the obsession with making it, going viral, founding a billion-dollar company, becoming the next TBPN, raising millions of dollars, getting profiled in Wired, landing on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list (or, for those of us who aged out, the Forbes 40 Under 40 list that doesn't exist but should).' Heck, I've seen myself fall into the same trap, whether it was at work or while running a marathon: you achieve a goal, and then you immediately fall into what's next. 'Your brain's ~wanting system and your brain's ~liking system are separate circuits, and the wanting system is bigger and louder and more connected to everything else. As it turns out, dopamine fires for the chase, not for the catch.' Great read with some real tangible ideas on how to get past it.
Brian Eno's Remedy for Burnout and Despair. I've mentioned Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies previously, but hadn't known about his book, 'A Year with Swollen Appendices'. 'It goes like this: me thinking, 'What's it all for?/What's the bloody point?/ I haven't done anything I like, and I don't have a clue what to do next/I'm a completely empty shell.' This lasts two days or so... Then I suddenly notice — apropos of something very minor, like the way a plane crosses the sky, or the smell of trees, or the light in the early evening, or remembering one of my brother’s jokes — that I am thoroughly enjoying myself and completely, utterly glad to be alive. Not one of the questions I asked myself has been answered. Instead, like all good philosophical questions, they’ve just ceased to matter.' I keep finding, in these crazy times, laughing and taking a moment to experience joy goes a long way.
Orkney Banana Bonanza After Tesco Store Orders 38,000 by Mistake. In a major 'oops', a supermarket accidentally ordered an estimated 38,000 bananas, double the entire population of their island. They are giving the boxes away to community groups, schools, and other islands across the area.
More Evidence Short Form Video Is Rotting Your Brain. 'Both groups were put into fMRI machines and given a memory test while their brains were scanned in real time, the imaging capturing blood flow to reveal which neural regions were actually firing during recall. This matters because short video is essentially constant context switching: one topic, setting, or style bleeding into the next with no time for your brain to breathe.' I'm seeing a similar effect to people who spend a ton of time with AI tools - cognitive overload. I've often warned of the ill-effects of social media; I have a suspicion this will be a major health care issue in the next 5-10 years.
Continuous Glucose Monitoring Made Me Continuously Crazy. This one hit hard - I have always been a bit of a health data junky, especially after having multiple heart attacks. More data, more informed, right? Well, like anything, there's an interesting rabbit hole that you can fall into being a slave to the data. 'I bounced from doctor to doctor trying to figure out if there was actually something wrong with me — or the devices I was using.'
Solitaire's Many Flavors: I Suck at Them. But That's Ok. 'Solitaire is quiet. It's slow. It wants nothing from me. There's a challenge to solving it that can be both frustrating and rewarding. So many different versions of the game make for unique experiences and variety. The cost of entry is low: all you need is a deck of cards, a table, and a little bit of patience. I like to tell people that if they give me a guitar and a deck of cards, they probably won't see me for about 12 hours.' I found this post absolutely fascinating on the history and the number of variations of Solitaire. If you enjoy cards, a must read.
A New Jersey Teen Finds Treasure, and More, in Abandoned Storage Units. I had never heard the term locker dives before this article. The idea is simple: Buy abandoned storage lockers at bargain prices and flip them by selling the contents for profit. What this 17-year-old discovered was something much deeper. 'I think he's learning about human paths, about human nature. People's lives are in these lockers. Belongings can tell you a lot about a person. When you meet someone, you might think you know them, but you don't know." Some of the stories are downright tragic, but also, contains so many life lessons. 'You can see his hopes and dreams in this locker.'
When the Navy Found This Sunken Submarine, the Crew Was Dead. Why Were They Just Sitting There?. It took over 100 years for researchers to find the H.L. Hunley, a Confederate submarine that was sunk during the Civil War. (Side note: I didn't know that subs were that old, but this was apparently the first combat submarine to sink a warship). When they discovered the sub, the crew members were still seated at their stations after sinking, a discovery that totally puzzled researchers. Now they know why.
The Illusion of Clarity. 'In a study, psychologists asked participants to rate how well they understood everyday devices like sewing machines, zippers, or cell phones and then asked them to write detailed explanations. After attempting the explanation, self-ratings dropped sharply. The act of actually trying to explain revealed how little people actually knew.' Lots of wisdom in this one, and something that I see all the time: People confuse familiarity with understanding.
You're Not Winging It Wrong. Some would call it basic imposter syndrome, but I liked the framing here around Pluralistic ignorance. 'As a result, we draw the wrong conclusion that everyone else has it together except us. A classic example is when a professor asks if anyone has questions. Nobody raises a hand, and even if you don’t understand something and do have a question, you assume everyone else understood, but they’re all thinking the same thing you are. The silence is a mutual conclusion pretending to be confidence. We assume everyone else has it together, and we’re the only one who feels like we’re winging it.' Everyone is dealing with this in some form, whether they are being honest with themselves or not.
The Reframing Theory: The Solution to 95% of Your Problems. You've heard people say, 'instead of problems, they're opportunities'. In a similar vein, 'Discipline is just acting in accordance with your goals or your agreements with other people, despite the strong impulse you may have to act otherwise. Discipline is simply setting goals and sticking to them.' Reframing problems can absolutely change the way you think.
How Constraints Led to Two Michelin Stars. A trick I learned a long time ago: 'Through constraint, you can find freedom'. This story was particularly interesting in how constraint reframed an entire restaurant. 'The kitchen's ventilation hood sucked warm air out in winter and cool air out in summer, making the tiny dining room miserable for guests. The only solution was to shut the ovens off almost entirely in summer and build menus around cold preparations, then run them full blast in winter with every dish built around warmth. The result, Chang told me, was more interesting than anything he would have designed with unlimited resources.'
The Killers: How We Wrote 'Mr. Brightside'. I've been somewhat obsessed with Mr. Brightside on repeat rotation as of late, so I figured I'd dive into how the 2003 hit song by The Killers came to be. Called the 'Song of the Decade', its lyrics tell the story of 'a man who is obsessed with a woman who's romantically involved with another man'. The narrator begins to feel sick, wallowing in envy as he imagines what the couple are getting up to on a night out*.' The truth, though, is that the story is based on fact, about Brandon Flowers, lead singer of the band, and his first relationship that ended poorly.

I'll wrap this one up with my favorite rendition of Mr. Brightside -

Amor Fati ✌🏻

The Latest Drippings ☕️

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