Espresso Shots 6-29-25

Here's my weekly update with a few interesting random findings that I came across the last week or two. I am going to try to make sure they're here in time for you to enjoy with your morning coffee (or beverage of choice) every Saturday or Sunday, and include some of my thoughts around them.

Shopping 🛍️

I do have a bit of a sweet tooth, so when I saw Omar's post about MUMs Candy, I knew I had to give these treats a try.

I went with the sweet and sour mix and - whoa - they are something awesome. Not that I'd say these are "healthy", but they have no parabens, no gluten, no artificial colors, no GMOs, and no dairy. They are made from pure, natural ingredients.

Highly recommended.

The Latest Drippings ☕️

• V&A Museum Icon System. I recently discovered Jon Hicks blog, so I was fascinated to read about his 'audit of usage' for a system he was tasked with redesigning. His entire blog is a treasure for design geeks.
• Bullshit Advice. I'm a huge fan of the 'Everything is Bullshit' blog, and his piece on bullshit advice is brilliant. 'You don't need my advice anyways. If you're reading these words, you're probably living in a relatively well-off country with access to electricity, the internet, and plenty of leisure time to read blogs about bullshit. Which means things are going pretty well for you. So, dear reader, it's time to get out there and do what you do best: whatever you were going to do anyways.'
• On Complaining. I find I keep having to lean into the Dichotomy of Control, where I wrote, 'I dunno; I don't think Epictetus was just saying fuck all to everything, but rather, each individual is responsible on how they react. It's primarily up to us to change'. So when I came across this post about complaining, it struck me as another thing in the long list that's up to us: 'for the vast majority of the things that are annoying and frustrating out there - things and people are not frustrating: we are frustrated by them. The feeling and the sensations are coming from us, not from them.' I liked the vibe that 'perception can significantly alter our feelings about a situation.'
• I Deleted My Second Brain. Another great read of the week, 'I deleted everything. Every note in Obsidian. Every half-baked atomic thought, every Zettelkasten slip, every carefully linked concept map. I deleted every Apple Note I'd synced since 2015. Every quote I'd ever highlighted. Every to-do list from every productivity system I'd ever borrowed, broken, or bastardized. Gone. Erased in seconds. What followed: Relief. And a comforting silence where the noise used to be.' I just went through a similar effort with my quotes journal, and Apple Notes is next on the list. The PKM is dead.
• Software 3.0 vs AI Agentic Mesh: Why McKinsey Got It Wrong. Like most I talk with lately, I'm over all the hyper-pro and hyper-negative talk about this thing called 'AI' that we are now faced with. The constant consultant promise of a 'magic unicorn' that AI will give you is just intellectually lazy at this point. 'AI as brilliant interns with perfect recall but no judgment — powerful tools requiring human oversight. His vision acknowledges critical limitations like jagged intelligence (excelling at complex tasks while failing at simple ones) and anterograde amnesia (no memory between conversations). The focus is on augmentation through human-AI collaboration, not replacement' seems to align with my current experiences with it.
• Automate the Boring. I'm one of those crazies who will spend hours writing a small script or tool to automate a task (my dotfiles obsession), so this post spoke to me. "You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is? Wrong direction. I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.". Hat tip to this comic from XKCD, entitled 'Is it Worth The Time?'
• What the Eagles' Hotel California' Really Means. I always thought the song had some demonic backstory, but its real meaning is a bit deeper. 'The hotel itself could be taken as a metaphor not only for the myth-making of Southern California, but for the myth-making that is the American Dream, because it is a fine line between the American Dream and the American nightmare.' How appropriate for 2025.
• People Don't Keep Secrets. 'You trading off every time you share a secret' is a good way to view secret trade - and, more importantly - why the best route is often not to.
• Taika Waititi's Akira is No Longer Happening. While Taika Waititi's movies are a few wild swings of hits and miss for me, I was looking forward to his take on the anime classic Akira. Now we'll have to see where this lands, if ever.
• Reasonably Unreasonable. Great advice for anyone pursuing a higher goal.
• Tony Fadell on Learning from Failure. A great quote from Tony Fadell on failing: 'I learned more from my first colossal failure than ever did from my first success.'
• A Group Of Researchers Tracked Down The Original Photo Used In The Shining. This piece was remarkable in how they tracked down the real person in the infamous picture. It's super interesting if you're a fan of the film.

Amor Fati ✌🏻