Espresso Shots 7-05-26

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 ☕️

• How I Bought a Private Jet By Selling $10 Subscriptions. A fascinating look at the grift known as LARPing across social media influencers. Derived from the term Live Action Role Play (LARP), it's when 'you're not talking about the literal game, you are saying that they are role-playing in their actual real life. Pretending to be rich, pretending to know about a topic, pretending to have a certain lifestyle, etc.' I guess 'fake it until you make it' takes on a whole new meaning in 2026 with AI slop and social media. And it's also a reminder of how "There are no shortcuts to any place worth going." (Beverly Sills)
• People Don't See You. They See What They Need. Two of my favorites, Brené Brown and Trevor Noah, in an incredibly honest conversation about how people project their expectations onto others. More importantly, how 'quickly admiration can turn into disappointment when someone no longer fits the story you've created about them.' The full video (warning, it's over 2hrs) can be watched on YouTube.
• My Dog Learned How to Text Me. I Really Wish She Hadn't. My wife usually laughs (clearing throat) when I pretend to talk as my 8-year-old Golden Retriever. But apparently, there's a new product out called PetPhone, which costs $90 (and requires a $10/mo data plan). 'It combines a GPS tracker, a health monitor, a speaker, a microphone, and a collection of A.I.-powered features that are supposed to let owners track pets' location and monitor their activity. Calls from the pet's side are triggered by a specific gesture: three jumps within six seconds. To text me saying that she wants some water, Clover must tap her dangling collar. To tell me she's bored, another series of jumps. There is an instructional video demonstrating how to teach this behavior.' Please no, I already can't stop him from begging for food, and the last thing I want is him texting me.
• The Hilarious Way Mel Brooks Taunted the Nazis on the World War II Battlefield. While I thoroughly enjoyed 2005's remake of The Producers, I never knew that Mel Brooks was drafted in 1944 and had a long history of ridiculing Hitler. 'You have to bring him down with ridicule. Because if you stand on a soapbox and you match him with rhetoric, you're just as bad as he is. But if you can make people laugh at him, then you're one up on him.' I need to rewatch To Be or Not to Be; it's been far too long.
• You're Weirder Than You Think. A fun survey to see how many Americans share your exact combination of traits, based on data from the General Social Survey. My answers revealed that only 0.690% of US adults (1 in 150) share my unique combination of traits.
• Rebuilding The Computer Room. I remember growing up with a computer room in the house, powered by early Commodore computers (VIC-20, then a more powerful C-64). This homage to the days when 'computers weren't a ubiquitous feature of our lives; they were bulky appliances with a fixed location, and you had to go somewhere to use them' really struck a memory for me. The post continues, 'But this trend isn't all good, and recently I've been more aware of the downsides. Making computers more portable didn't just make it easier for us to get to digital services; it made it easier for digital services to get to us.' Today's technology is described as a dopamine hit, and I really appreciate, despite the conveniences of tech, the suggestions in this post to rebuild the walls. 'Since I started making these changes, I've felt calmer and more relaxed, especially when I'm at home. I can focus on the things that actually deserve my attention – cooking a meal, reading a book, chatting with my friends, playing on the sofa. I'm less worried about the distraction of my digital devices or the effect they have on my life.'
• Noise as Information and Information as Noise. You probably weren't aware (I wasn't) that random 'noise' used in video games is often real information. Sometimes even real source code. 'If we used a low-resolution texture (64x64) to save memory, the static would be blurry and not crisp. One engineer on the team came up with a great idea: what if we just use the memory holding the Metroid Prime code itself! We quickly tried it out, and it looked amazing. When you see Samus's visor affected by electrical noise in-game, you're actually seeing the bits and bytes of the Metroid Prime software code itself being rendered on the screen. Turns out machine code is sufficiently random to work great as a static noise texture!'
• Your Power Tools Got Worse On Purpose. I wasn't aware of the enshittification of Stanley Black & Decker or Craftsman. 'The 2010 merger of Stanley Works and Black & Decker created a company that already owned DeWalt. From there they went on an acquisition spree that should have built an empire. Instead it built a bloated holding company drowning in debt and leadership turnover. They bought so many brands they were competing with themselves on the same store shelves, then starved the weaker ones to feed DeWalt.' The important lesson in this one isn't about tools, but the pattern, which is also happening (according to the author) now in eyewear. 'This is what happens in every industry once the conglomerates and private equity firms show up. Acquire the brand. Consolidate the operations. Cut costs. Extract value. Move to the next one.'
• Write What Only You Can Write. 'I believe the magic lies in how completely the author commits to only writing about what delights and interests him. Whenever we write something, there’s a chance that others will read it, and we often curtail our trains of thought to conform to what we imagine others will find acceptable.' A good reminder on never letting AI take over the creative process, but rather, 'If you’re going to write, write something worth reading.'
• The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm a big fan of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, so it really bummed me out when I read this. Apparently, the entire site was plagiarized by a web design and marketing agency using 'ai-powered image libraries' without consent. 'This is a more flagrant form of plagiarism than you typically see these days, where human-authored works are laundered with an AI model into something that’s different enough from its sources to avoid legal issues.' A good read for anyone who publishes online.
• In Memory of the Man Who Put Red and Green Squiggles Under Words. I remember sitting in a few meetings with Raymond Chen in the early 2000s when I was a software engineer early in my career at Microsoft. I've always enjoyed his site "The Old New Thing", which he describes as a place 'to tell stories which convey no useful information.' But this post on the legacy of Tony Krueger (who also ported Chip's Challenge to Windows) points out that he also invented an 'unobtrusive spell checker, so that it didn’t interfere with your foreground work. And when it found a problem, instead of waiting for you to trigger a spell check, it immediately drew red squiggles under potentially-misspelled words (and later green squiggles under potential grammatical errors).'
• My Mortality and My Writing. I talked about the passing of Om Malik last week, and I've continued reading online tributes to him since. It's amazing how many lives he touched. This post stood out to me about psychological deaths. 'But mortality has this ultimate clarifying effect. We talk a lot about physical death, but psychological deaths have a huge impact too. When I think about what I wish to accomplish if I knew I was going to die, apart from spending time with my loved ones, I think only writing is left. It is a way of emptying myself, I guess, a way of sublimating my sad existence. I wouldn't pretend that my writing is useful, but at least it will be a window into an interior world that doesn't exist anywhere else.'
• The Extreme Is the Easy Way Out. I had to re-read this one several times, and it's now earned a spot in my commonplace journal. 'The middle path is the exhausting work of noticing - today, in this hour, in this moment, in this body, in this season of your life and your work - what moderation actually means; knowing the answer may be different next month, and knowing the responsibility for that moderation is yours and yours alone.' Joan posits that the extreme is the easy option, and explains why the middle is harder. 'It’s not stillness. It’s balance, in a sense, closer to riding a bicycle: you can only stay upright by staying in motion, continuously and minutely correcting your trajectory and your center of gravity - and the moment you come to a stop, you must fall.'
• The Answer to Every Problem. 'Do what has to be done, when it has to be done, and do it that way every time.' Kinda simple, but dead on.

Amor Fati ✌🏻