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 ☕️

  • Never Enough. I've been really enjoying the posts up on Dark Thoughts as of late. I'm not particularly pessimistic, but Armin has been articulating in really thoughtful posts what most people are going through in 2026. 'Two recent stories about Silicon Valley are hard to read without wondering if everyone involved has lost their mind. Once a place that celebrated the crazy ones, the misfits and rebels who saw things differently, it now seems to have found a new kind of crazy that isn’t born of rebellion but fear of falling behind. Everyone is chasing the person ahead of them, with little time to remember where they meant to go.' Stop. Breathe. Focusing in on what really requires your attention. In my small corner of the world, getting smaller, more local (for me at least) seems to be the path to finding more meaning. 'If the valley shows us what it means to live in the future, perhaps falling behind is not the worst thing that could happen. Maybe we need the misfits who know when to stop. Who leave a conversation unrecorded. Who play with their children without agents running in the background. Who can admire another person’s success without feeling diminished by it. Who find peace not by getting ahead, but by no longer needing to.'
  • Artificial Constraints. Through constraint comes freedom has been a tenet of mine for some time now, and in a similar vein to the previous link, it feels more important than ever to just slow the fuck down and stop saying yes to everything. For my own sanity, I keep telling myself the old mantra that you can do anything, you can't do everything.
  • Nirmal Purja Is Found Dead After Pakistan Avalanche (Gift Link). Last week I was saddened to learn about the passing of 10 climbers, including Nirmal Purja, known as Nimsdai, after an avalanche struck Pakistan's Broad Peak. I first became aware of Nimsdai after watching the Netflix film 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible, and have been inspired by his spirit of adventure and exploration since. 'Sometimes when you feel like you are fucked, you are only about 45% fucked' is a great reminder that nothing is impossible, and if you want a great kick in the pants on self-discipline and motivation, watch his speech on forward thinking.
  • Are You Good at Mowing Lawns?. One of the reasons I don't have a lawn anymore is that I hate mowing it. However, this was a fascinating read about coverage path planning, and why some humans are better than others at this and how it all relates to cognitive load. 'Humans turn out to be pretty good mowers, especially those who take their time and have played some video games (including, one would assume, Dig Dug, Pac-Man, Mr. Do!, and any other game where you need to worry about dead-ends).' If you're curious about how you fare at this, try this interactive version.
  • Being Bald is Better?. In 416 A.D., Synesius wrote an essay, In Praise of Baldness: 'bald men were wiser, nobler, healthier, more virtuous, and generally superior specimens of humanity.' I'm not trying to defend my own lack of hair as I hit mid-fifties. That said, I thought the post had some interesting ideas to think about regarding 'human beings have an extraordinary talent for confusing looking different with being dangerous.'
  • RecipeTables. This compact, visually creative way to show recipe cards just clicked for my brain. (Originally seen on Cooking For Engineers years prior.)
  • 2 Families Transformed a 19th-Century Virginia Lighthouse Into a Summer Hangout. This is so cool and is the type of uplifting story we need more of these days. Twenty years ago, two couples purchased the Middle Ground Lighthouse in Newport News, Virginia, and put in more than 7,000 hours renovating it into a family vacation spot. They are passing the torch and have recently listed it for sale if you have $995,000 to spare. You can read all about the renovation work they did here.
  • Convenience Can Be a Collective Trap. 'Email is an unparalleled tool for responding rapidly to a large volume of messages, but then again, if it weren't for email, you wouldn't be receiving all those messages in the first place. The technologies we use to try to get on top of everything always fail us, in the end, because they increase the size of the everything of which we're trying to get on top.' There's got to be some theory or psychology behind why, when humans create a tool for utility, we simultaneously create environments that individuals cannot escape from. (Side note: some research indicates this is close to Ivan Illich's 'radical monopoly' theory)
  • How Not to Forget What Matters. We all get distracted by the day-to-day noise, and this post was a good reminder of how to bring back the important things front and center. 'The most important ideas we need to return to weekly, even daily' nails it, and while I've generally taken a break from my own forced daily journaling, I still think that the Spanish Fighter Pilot method feels like it's the best path for me to remember those important things.
  • Being Good at Things. 'If you want to be good at what you do, do the hard, little things that others gloss over. Do them consistently and well, with discipline and perseverance. If you do, then I’d say you’re good at what you do because good isn’t a number. It’s quality. A disposition. A way of being.' Words to live by.
  • Less of an Object, More of a Place: Oio's Mur Mur. This ... is kinda wild. I don't even know how to describe it. 'The Mur Mur is technically a portable speaker, but it’s a lot more, the device generates ambient soundscapes from a tiny world in which AI agents live inside of it. These aren’t your typical, mind-numbing agents like Siri or Cortana, but more like virtual critters.' You really need to just watch the video, err, listen to the video to see what this thing is. But it is one of the most creative uses of AI that I've seen.
  • Storing vs. Mortgaging Energy. 'It is important to store up energy during major life transitions. People rarely store up energy; almost everyone today has their energy mortgaged way into the future.' I need to sit and think about this one for a bit, but it makes sense. I often talk about the idea of time banks along with the deposits and withdrawals, but I really never considered energy in that equation. 'We only think this way about money and fail to protect one of our most important resources: our energy. And when we think about energy we associate it with physical energy, without realising the impetus to do significant things require more of psychological energy.'
  • Towards a Personal Online Third-Space. I dig the idea of a 'digital sanctuary' and how personal websites are a wonderful creative commonplace book for your own content. I reference my own writing, regardless of whether anyone is reading it, often as 'cheaper than therapy'. The added value is that my blog is a living document for thoughts and ideas.
  • Nobody Wants Your Newsletter. You Should Write It Anyway.. Speaking of that, JA Westenberg makes the case here for writing on your personal site, and who cares if anyone is reading it or not - it's good for your brain. 'Nobody asked you to write a newsletter; and as a baseline, nobody gives a shit whether you do or you don’t. But in my fairly qualified opinion, you should go ahead and write on anyway. Write it how you want, write it where you want, and publish it no matter how much it might feel like screaming into the void. Because the best newsletters in the world were written by folks with a bone to pick and an itch to scratch, who had no actual evidence that the world wanted it. And they did it anyway.'
  • Another Symptom of Growing Isolation (Gift Link). A sobering study that found people are talking less and spending more time than ever alone. This is perhaps another example of how the technology that was supposed to make the world smaller has had the inverse effect and is making us grow farther apart than ever. For Life 2.0, I've been trying to do the opposite lately: enjoy the farmers market, focus on problems that face a small island community, or just get together with folks for more mindful dinners. It's slower. It's also the only part of my week that doesn't feel like it's happening through a screen.

Amor Fati ✌🏻