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 ☕️

  • On Adaptation, Again. In a follow-up to last week's top link, 'Why is Everyone in Tech So Sad?', I thought this post tickled a really important idea: you don't know who you were until you're already changed. He writes, 'I find myself in the dilemma of adaptation: If I don’t change, if I try to remain the same, I’m going to disappear. If I do change, in a certain sense I’ve also disappeared because now I’m something else.' It reminded me a lot of the siren scene in the Odyssey, where Odysseus is describing their song: 'It told you that what you most want is what you can’t have. And what you most can’t have is what you already had, and lost.' As a long-time software engineer, I recognize where many of these feelings are coming from. But (and perhaps it's just perspective), I feel like there are only a few times in life where you can blow up the system, rethink how you do things, and always be learning. Focus on the opportunity (not a blind trust), but most importantly: don't be static.
  • Meat Proxy. A few weeks back, I had mentioned 'people want to throw AI at a problem, and smear it like peanut butter without fixing the root underlying problems with their data.' This term is by far my favorite new one of 2026 that I've gotten plenty of use out of the last week. The quick definition: 'A person who forwards AI-generated text, code, or other output without reading, understanding, or validating it. The person acts only as a relay between the AI system and the intended recipient.' I'm feeling a strong urge to make a new t-shirt soon for this.
  • A 450-Year History of Blogging. More about the origin of logs than you ever cared to know, but I still found it to be an interesting look at the origin of weblogs and 'log-ins'. 'In April 1999, when programmer Peter Merholz jokingly shortened the word on his site Peterme.com by breaking it into the phrase 'we blog.' This seems like it would be the origin point of the word, but that's far from the case. I would be remiss if I began the history of blogging somewhere in the 1980s, because that only explains the "web" part and not the "log" part. For that, we need to go back much further. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this begins in the maritime tradition with a literal, wooden log.'
  • Denormalizing Hypernormalization. 'Hypernormalization is what happens when something is obviously broken, everybody knows it's broken, and yet everybody carries on as if it isn't. Some people can't see what's wrong. Others see it perfectly well but feel powerless to change it. So they shrug. They adapt. They learn to work around the dysfunction instead of confronting it. Eventually, what once seemed absurd becomes expected.' Oomph, that's a mouthful, and this goes way beyond normal sunk-cost fallacies that play out time and time again in corporate cultures. For me, this is an obvious place where you can start to blow shit up. I see teams grinding through Mr. PotatoHead processes that exist, for no other reason than they have always existed and continuously keep getting more cruft lumped on top. Burn the ships.
  • How To Be Charismatic. I always enjoy a video or podcast that references some CIA-handbook style psychology handbook. This video, from Supercommunicators author Charles Duhigg, talks through 3 habits you can learn about to help improve not only your conversations, but your charisma. 'In 1982, the CIA had a case officer named Jim Lawler who couldn't recruit a single spy — four years later, he was one of the best recruiters in agency history. Same guy, same personality. What changed is something most of us are told you can't learn: charisma. I spent years interviewing CIA recruiters, hostage negotiators, and the researchers who study connection in brain scanners, and it turns out charisma comes down to three specific, almost boring, completely learnable habits.'
  • Mini-Personalities: Why Carl Jung Believed Your Complexes Lead Their Own Inner Lives. 'The basic idea, that our lives can be influenced by a cluster of emotions and thoughts orbiting around a psychological theme is something many people already treat as reality. You hear it in everyday conversations, like when someone says that a power-hungry short person has a "Napoleon complex," or when someone jokes that the real reason a man leased a big, flashy car is to compensate for a natural, compact-class endowment. But what’s less intuitive about complexes is the high degree of autonomy that Jung believed they can possess — as if they function like mini personalities.' I need to sit with this post for a bit, but there's something interesting in here to think about humans having our own internal army of psyche-based AI agents in our heads.
  • The Science of Cognitive Load: How Do We Know?. Continuing along the theme on how the mind works, Lee posted a great article on the dissection of cognitive load, paired with a study that broke it down into measurable mechanisms. Great tip in here as well when you're doing a talk: 'Cognitive Load Theory tells us that a new idea may look like a puzzle to the audience. Their mental resources are used for fitting pieces together instead of remembering the big ideas. Instead, we should consider showing them the finished puzzle and then the steps it took to assemble it. This helps remove the extraneous load and allows their working memory to be used for something more productive: developing new chunks that can be employed in the future.'
  • AliExpress Caught Using Silent Audio to Fingerprint Visitors' Browsers. Well, this is bullshit. A totally creepy violation of privacy, in which AliExpress was using audio-fingerprinting to track users' devices. One thing you can do is use a tool like Micro Snitch to notify yourself when some app or website turns on your camera or microphone. This is just gross.
  • The Guy That Wants to Live Forever. I first learned about Bryan Johnson's immortality project from the series, 'Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever.' While I find that most of his efforts to extend his life are, for lack of a better word, insane, I did find his take on saunas interesting. 'Physical exercise and saunas are the only two lifestyle health interventions with significant replicable longevity results. The largest study of a sauna practice found that men who participated 4-7 times per week had a 40% lower risk of death from all causes than men who did sauna only once per week. Sauna practice seems best at helping to reduce or prevent cardiovascular and neurological degeneration. So basically, if you don’t want a heart attack or dementia, this is the easiest thing you can do to reduce risk.' And, a reminder from Seneca: 'no man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.'
  • I'm Not Fighting Aging or Aging Gracefully — I'm Just Enjoying Life. As I get older, I've realized that I am spending (probably too much) time thinking and re-evaluating things. Some great advice in this post, especially around some of the scams that circle around the anti-aging crowd: 'Aging gracefully means supporting your health in a way that helps you physically and mentally enjoy your life, and not necessarily trying to look younger.'
  • I Only Do Anything Once. 'I only do anything once. The goal is to never have to do repeat work. And I'm talking about not just in the system, but in life in general.' I feel seen here, as I've spent an extraordinary amount of time over the years trying to optimize flow and burn the ships. Busting up systems, like I pointed out in the link above, can be a great way to think differently and gain speed. But, it's important to also know if the juice is really worth the squeeze. Always keep in mind the famous 'is it worth the time' chart from xkcd.com; sometimes spending 10 hours automating a 15-second task just isn't worth it.
  • I No Longer Care. 'Here’s the thing: I no longer care about a surprising number of things. This is a good thing, as it’s left me with much more room to care about the things that matter.' I really loved this post, clearly a nod to Essentialism and it echoes many of my feelings towards morbid math. 'That's fine when you think you have an endless supply of time but one of the things that changes as you get older is that you start to understand that you don't.'
  • Apple Used to Be Weirder and Maybe More Fun. I really love these nods back to the days when computers were uniquely interesting. The culture was filled with lots of little joyful jokes, and it's always great to read little reminders like this one on how much fun it was. One myth they busted from the newsletter: 'Those of you who have been around for a while probably know that Apple’s power cords have changed color along with the products. Long ago, when we just weren’t very stylish, all Apple power cords were black. Eventually, they turned beige to match our products, and now, of course, they’re platinum, just like all our other stuff. Contrary to popular belief, though, you don’t need a platinum cord just because the product is platinum.' And it's a great reminder to consciously put some curiosity and play back into things.
  • Einkorn Flour: An Ancient Wheat for Baking Modern Desserts. Hat tip to my amazing wife, Liz, who introduced me to Einkorn flour last week. I had never had it (or even heard of it before), but it's an ancient grain that not only has loads of nutritional value, but freaking tastes amazing. 'Einkorn wheat was one of the first plants to be domesticated and cultivated over 10,000 years ago, and grew wild even long before that.'

Amor Fati ✌🏻