Espresso Shots 5-10-26
From the boring internet, empty calories, and botified social media to Everest, Bourdain, conversations that surprise you, and why writing is still the most important skill you can have.
espresso-shots
A weekly brew of interesting finds
Espresso Shots 5-3-26
Entertainment-pervading politics to Pixar's three-pitch rule, AI's Jevons Paradox, Game Theory's Prisoner's Dilemma, and swapping doomscrolling for comic books
Espresso Shots 4-26-26
Fault-tolerant computers, cosmic perspective, Shazam's sound fingerprints, Coyote vs. ACME, prediction markets, authority, music, sleep, and turning 55.
Espresso Shots 4-19-26
AI's boiling frog effect on cognition, resurrecting a 1992 MUD, agentic systems and bottlenecks, secret recordings of 10,000 concerts, and why a project will save you.
Espresso Shots 4-12-26
Corporate chaos, dopamine chasing, health rabbit holes, locker dives, a Civil War submarine mystery, and Mr. Brightside.
Espresso Shots 4-5-26
AI augmentation and generative AI vegetarianism to the resilience paradox, chocolate heists, the slow death of new music, mazes and labyrinths, and doing what you want.
Espresso Shots 3-29-26
From inner life to stupid ideas, the magic of streaming radio, the case for slowness, and why automating broken things just breaks them faster.
Espresso Shots 3-22-26
Quiet things, optimized selves, AI psychosis, sync music, lightning strikes, beautiful questions, and why making has always been about mattering.
Espresso Shots 3-15-26
Claude Code, phantom fluency, gut instinct, block universes, and the noble path of building things for each other.
Espresso Shots 3-8-26
Zen motorcycles and David Lynch's Star Wars to Earth's secret soundtrack, philosopher thinking, MacGyver creativity, and the river of endless scroll.
Espresso Shots 3-01-26
zagging creators and omoiyari to curating people, Sunday self-meetings, NYT games dominance, and satellites enshittifying orbit.
Espresso Shots 2-22-26
Writing sharpens thinking, incremental growth, intentional scarcity, omnipotence and cognitive debt, and how organizations get sick.
Espresso Shots 2-15-26
The creative power of walking, agency, brains vs computers, the small web, publishing imperfection, mixtapes, teleporting and why chewing sounds drive you crazy.
Espresso Shots 2-8-26
childhood dreams, remembering what we do, looking for what's true, addicted to being useful, better meetings as secret weapons, and the 500-mile email mystery.
Espresso Shots 02-01-26
Bermuda Triangle mysteries, obscure sorrows, phantom obligation, game theory, internet radio, and why kindness matters now.
Espresso Shots 1-25-26
Velocity and attention becomes a war, habits hinge on the single stick, life insisting on 1x speed and thriving through experiments instead of failures.
Espresso Shots 1-18-26
Defining the problem, curiosity tours, intellectual rigidity, choosing boredom over optimization and valuing time more than money.
Espresso Shots 1-11-26
Café solitude, gray area magic, the devotion-friction matrix, reinvention on demand, rewilding digital presence, BowieNet's prophetic legacy, atmospheric computing, and the Moylan Arrow's unexpected brilliance.
Espresso Shots 1-4-26
"Do Lipton employees take coffee breaks?" — Steven Wright
Espresso Shots 12-28-25
'Coffee – it’s the lifeblood that fuels the dreams of champions!' – Mike Ditka
Espresso Shots 12-21-25
'You did it! Congratulations. World's best cup of coffee. Great job, everybody. It's great to meet you. Hi.' - Will Ferrell as Buddy The Elf
Espresso Shots 12-14-25
"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." - T. S. Eliot
Espresso Shots 12-7-25
"I orchestrate my mornings to the tune of coffee." — Terri Guillemets
Espresso Shots 11-30-25
'Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised. It's got me through the worst of the last three years. I beat the Borg with it.' - Captain Kathryn Janeway (Star Trek Voyager: Hunters)
Espresso Shots 11-23-25
'What goes best with a cup of coffee? Another cup.' - Henry Rollins
Espresso Shots 11-16-25
"Without my morning coffee, I’m just like a dried-up piece of goat." – Johann Sebastian Bach
Espresso Shots 11-09-25
'Mornings are for coffee and contemplation.' - Jim Hopper (David Harbour) in Stranger Things
Espresso Shots 11-02-25
'I like cappuccino, actually. But even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all.' — David Lynch
Espresso Shots 10-26-25
"Coffee is the answer, but I don't know the question." - Unknown
Espresso Shots 10-19-25
"But even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all. New York has great water for coffee." - David Lynch
Espresso Shots 10-12-25
"If it wasn’t for coffee, I’d have no discernible personality at all." ― David Letterman
Espresso Shots 10-05-25
"Without my morning coffee, I'm just like a dried-up piece of roast goat." - Johann Sebastian Bach
Espresso Shots 9-26-25
'I don’t need an inspirational quote. I need coffee.' -- Unknown
Espresso Shots 9-21-25
'The magic of espresso is that it's only made with 50 beans.' - Andrea Illy
Espresso Shots 9-14-25
"Coffee! Because anger management is too expensive." – Unknown
Espresso Shots 9-7-25
"If it wasn’t for coffee, I’d have no discernible personality at all." - David Letterman
Espresso Shots 8-31-25
"Coffee is a language in itself." - Jackie Chan
Espresso Shots 8-24-25
"My doctor told me to give up coffee. But I told him, I’m a writer, not a suicide bomber." – Jerry Seinfeld
Espresso Shots 8-17-25
"As long as there was coffee in the world, how bad could things be?" - Cassandra Clare
Espresso Shots 8-10-25
"Without my morning coffee, I’m just like a dried-up piece of roast goat." - Johann Sebastian Bach
Espresso Shots 8-3-25
"Way too much coffee. But if it weren't for the coffee, I'd have no identifiable personality whatsoever." - David Letterman
Espresso Shots 7-27-25
"I never laugh until I've had my coffee." - Clark Gable
Espresso Shots 7-20-25
"Life without coffee is like a broken pencil – pointless" - Unknown
Espresso Shots 7-13-25
"A yawn is a silent scream for coffee" - Unknown
Espresso Shots 7-6-25
"Everybody should believe in something. I believe I’ll have another coffee." - Unknown
Espresso Shots 6-29-25
"We met at Starbucks. Not at the same Starbucks, but we saw each other at different Starbucks across the street from each other." -Meg Swan (Parker Posey), Best in Show
Espresso Shots 6-22-25
"Even if you tell yourself 'Today I'm going to drink coffee the wrong way ... from a dirty boot.' Even that would be right, because you chose to drink coffee from that boot." - Chuck Palahniuk
Espresso Shots 6-15-25
"I'm staying. I'm finishing my coffee. Enjoying my coffee." - Walter Sobchak (John Goodman), The Big Lebowski.
Espresso Shots 6-8-25
"May your coffee kick in before reality does." -Unknown
Espresso Shots 6-1-25
"I need a coffee to go with my coffee." - Zooey Deschanel
Espresso Shots 5-25-25
"The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce." – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Espresso Shots 5-18-25
"Life’s too short to drink cheap coffee." - Unknown
Espresso Shots 5-11-25
"Without my morning coffee, I’m just like a dried-up piece of goat." - Johann Sebastian Bach, 1732
Espresso Shots 5-4-25
"'Live like you're already dead, man. Have a good time. Do your best. Let it all come ripping right through you." - Jeff Bridges
Espresso Shots 4-26-25
"People like to cry over spilled milk, but I cry every time I spill my coffee." ― Anthony Liccione
Espresso Shots 4-20-25
"The most dangerous drinking game is seeing how long I can go without coffee." - Unknown
Espresso Shots 4-13-25
"More espresso. Less despresso." - Unknown
Espresso Shots 4-6-25
"Seven days without coffee makes one WEAK." - Unknown
Espresso Shots 3-30-25
"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." - T.S. Eliot
Espresso Shots 3-23-25
"Decaf? No, it's dangerous to dilute my caffeine." - Unknown
Espresso Shots 3-16-25
"A yawn is a silent scream of coffee." - Unknown
Espresso Shots 3-9-25
"Strong coffee, much strong coffee, is what awakens me. Coffee gives me warmth, waking, an unusual force and a pain that is not without very great pleasure." — Napoleon
Espresso Shots 3-2-25
"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole" - David Lynch
Espresso Shots 2-23-25
"Coffee knows no borders, only warm mugs and familiar aromas." - Unknown
Espresso Shots 2-16-25
"I want someone to look at me the way I look at coffee." - Unknown
Espresso Shots 2-8-25
"It’s all in the grind. Can’t be too fine. Can’t be too coarse. This, my friend, is a science." - Grimes (Ewan McGregor) in Black Hawk Down.
Espresso Shots 2-1-25
"Back when I was picking beans in Guatemala, we used to make fresh coffee — right off the trees, I mean. That was good. This is shit. But, hey, I'm in a police station." - Verbal (Kevin Spacey), The Usual Suspects
Espresso Shots 1-17-25
"I learned that just beneath the surface there's another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn't find the proof. It was just a kind of feeling." - David Lynch
Espresso Shots 1-2-25
"It is true that whisky improves with age. The older I get, the more I like it." - Ronnie Corbett
Espresso Shots 12-8-24
"I'm staying. I'm finishing my coffee. Enjoying my coffee." - John Goodman as Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski
Espresso Shots 11-25-24
"I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time." - Steven Wright
Espresso Shots 11-10-24
"I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell." - Christopher Walken (as fictional music producer Bruce Dickinson on SNL)
Espresso Shots 11-3-24
"If it wasn’t for the coffee, I’d have no identifiable personality whatsoever." - David Letterman
Espresso Shots 10-20-24
"As long as there was coffee in the world, how bad could things be?" ― Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes
Espresso Shots 10-6-24
"Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind - even if your voice shakes." — Maggie Kuhn, The Socratic Method
Espresso Shots 9-22-24
"I am not an optimist. I’m a very serious possibilist." - Hans Rosling
Espresso Shots 9-14-24
"Mornings are for coffee and contemplation." - Jim Hopper, Stranger Things
Espresso Shots 8-25-24
"It means setting small reasonable goals for yourself one day at a time. One tiny step at a time. Baby steps." - Dr. Leo Marvin, What About Bob?
Espresso Shots 8-18-24
"The most sophisticated people I know - inside they are all children." - Jim Henson
Espresso Shots 7-27-24
"I’m staying. I’m finishing my coffee. Enjoying my coffee." - Walter Sobchak (John Goodman), The Big Lebowski
Espresso Shots 7-20-24
"It’s all in the grind. Can’t be too fine. Can’t be too coarse. This, my friend, is a science." - Grimes, Black Hawk Down
Espresso Shots: 7-14-24
"Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom." ― Terry Pratchett