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 ☕️

  • Why Is Everyone In Tech So Sad?. Looking back, I think it started during the pandemic, when I quipped, 'the longer it goes on being home, the clearer it’s becoming that lots of people don’t want things to go back to the way they were before. I am in way more control in creating a life that I want to live, and not being forced to live the life that is my current reality.' As we hit the midpoint of 2026, I'm questioning if the introspection was more about age and perspective, the wacko discord around AI, or just the state of the world in general. I've definitely noticed a theme of something eating at pretty much everyone I interact with. I found myself nodding in agreement with this post: 'I am hearing this more and more often: people who want to pick up pottery, painting, crochet or other old-timey analog hobbies... These aren’t fantastical daydreams; they are visions of escape shared in a tone that betrays an underlying existential angst, a fundamental doubt about work and careerism inspired by a seemingly increasingly common experience: waking up one morning at an existential precipice, struck with a sudden sense that knowledge work is, and perhaps always has been, pointless.' And, maybe that's just the key takeaway: so many find value and purpose through their job. Their core identity is molded from work. Maybe the -real- win through a disruptive time is to take a step back and ask, 'who are you?'
  • Finger: The 1971 Social Network That Never Died via rknight.me. Ever heard of .plan files or the finger protocol? Before the days of social networking, you could put a simple text file in your home directory (your plan), and it would be displayed to anyone who tried to query you with the 'finger' command. Easy, simple, and it just worked without any algorithm shoving something down your throat. I never knew the history before, but it's a fun read. 'Les Earnest one of the lab's engineers, wrote a program that returned that information in a human format: real names, locations and, most importantly, how long each terminal had been idle. He was a practical engineer who preferred talking in person to talking through the computer. He wanted to know whether it was worth getting up and walking down the hall to find someone. As a side effect, he had invented network presence, or the social network.' Funny though, in reading this, I do remember the Coke machine that you could query to detect how many bottles were left. I yearn for the days of simple, joyful solutions like this that made the early Internet fun and exciting. (On that, check out Kagi's Small Web).
  • Dashboard Touch. One gap that I'm surprised Apple hasn't released is a simple external Touch ID sensor. 'Automatically type in your password at the tap of your finger, anywhere your Mac asks for it. For those of us who use our own keyboards, but miss the convenience and ease of Touch ID on Apple devices, Dashboard Touch lets you build your own solution from parts that you can get for about $30.' What's important here, besides it being a cool project, is when a big company doesn't solve a personal itch, the barrier to building hardware and software that's incredibly personal is dropping to the floor.
  • Stop Making TUIs. This year I've definitely been building more and more command-line interface tools, but I like what this post throws down. 'The truth is, I barely think about these things as “apps” (I have no intention to distribute them). They’re artifacts of me making my computer do stuff for me, the way I want it to. As a Unix nerd, I’ve always been able to do this, in the language of the command line. Now, it's just as easy to do that kind of work with graphical interfaces. We build terminal interfaces because we have to, not because we should.'
  • Building Without Predicting. 'All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong. How do you build without predicting? Defer decisions. Start using what's there. Discover actual needs.' There are so many interesting places to go with this blog post as a mental framework for crafting, well, anything. It's a brilliant systems-thinking mindset on what you really need, and what is just friction and noise.
  • Apple Watch Alerted Runner to Serious Heart Problem. I've seen quite a few of these videos about the Apple Watch's health-tracking and early-alert benefits. So, I guess I'll pile on: my Apple Watch alerted me to atrial fibrillation about 2 days before my first heart attack. I shook it off with 'well, that's weird', and went on my way. Full disclosure, atrial fibrillation doesn't increase risk of heart attack; more likely it can cause a stroke. But I should have listened and gotten checked out early; perhaps they would have detected the floaty cholesterol that would cause a 92% blockage of my LAD 48 hours later. Think what you will of the watch, but it remains the centerpiece in my health tracking to this day.
  • The Antithesis Principle. This was a new way to think about Inversion, and I had never heard it framed as The Antithesis Principle. A really interesting take on how to apply observations on yourself to eliminate your own behavioral biases. 'Some truths about human nature can be pointed two ways: outward and inward. Pointed outward, such a truth gives you a tactic: it tells you how people work so you can be effective with them. Pointed inward, it is a warning: it names the default you must eliminate in yourself until you are the antithesis of what it describes.'
  • Giving University Exams in the Age of Chatbots. I loved this post, in which a professor gives his students a choice about whether to use AI. 'Option A: I will not use any chatbot, only traditional web searches. Any use of them will be considered cheating. Option B: I may use a chatbot as it's part of my toolbox. I will then respect the following rules: 1) I will inform the professor each time information comes from a chatbot. 2) When explaining my answers, I will share the prompts I've used so the professor understands how I use the tool. 3) I will identify mistakes in answers from the chatbot and explain why those are mistakes.' If you don't follow those rules, it would be considered cheating. And it emphasized an important mindset: if you use a chatbot, you will be held accountable for the output. Accountability by design.
  • Celebrating 21 Years at Microsoft with 21 Lessons for Product Builders. 'Ditch the career ladder. Learn to surf the right waves' echoes what I tell every fresh-out-of-school-new-hire. Some great advice in this post.
  • A Dao of Web Design. A post from 2000, but still relevant today. 'When a new medium borrows from an existing one, some of what it borrows makes sense, but much of the borrowing is thoughtless, ritual, and often constrains the new medium. Over time, the new medium develops its own conventions, throwing off existing conventions that don't make sense.' There's so much goodness to the thinking in this post, but the one that continues to stick with me is how to navigate when the world is reshaping itself. Often, most people lean into what they know (probably due to fear) and apply it to something new, rather than taking a healthy step back, leveraging some creativity and being a curious nine-year-old to rethink the system.
  • A Conversation With Rick Rubin. The Creative Act is the book I can easily say I've recommended the most over the last two years, so anything that comes my direction with Rick Rubin, I make time to read or listen to. This conversation with Steven Pressfield, writer of The Legend of Bagger Vance and The War of Art, bounces around several topics related to the creative process. What I really liked was the idea of chasing things that excite you, versus what you think will be a hit. And of course, treat that voice of 'self-doubt' as a sign you're onto something really interesting. Great listen.
  • How to Spot a Stupid Person With Carlo Cipolla's Golden Law of Stupidity. 'Stupidity isn’t a fixed trait but a temporary action that causes harm to yourself and others without any benefit.' I really liked how this was broken down into something simple: everything you do leads to one of four outcomes. 'It gives you a benefit, it gives you a loss, it gives others a benefit, or it gives others a loss. Most actions are small, simple, and self-concerned.'
  • Visiting and Staying Present. 'I don't explore a place or discover something, unless what I am exploring and discovering is something about myself. Instead I am very clear that when I am away from home I am visiting a place, which places upon me a burden of respect for what is there. I try to learn enough of the language to be understood. I try to familiarize myself with places that visitors are not welcome, because many communities have fragile refuges from the influx of visitors and, living on an island that is a busy summer tourist destination, I know there are some places that the community needs to have for itself, for sanctuary and calm.'
  • What Happens When You Bet on Yourself with Ted Lasso's Brendan Hunt (podcast version). I don't know why season 4 of Ted Lasso is getting so much noise online; we've been really enjoying it. Dare I say, more than last season? Anyways, I really liked this interview with Coach Beard on how 'the detour turned out to be the path all along.'
  • A Beginner's Guide to Writing Snail Mail. There are few things as powerful as writing a handwritten note to someone, so I thought I would close this week out with this great writing guide to snail mail. From pens to printing to stamps and wax seals, this reference is a great analog to the email-slop-o-rama we all get every day.

Amor Fati ✌🏻