Espresso Shots 7-12-26

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 ☕️

• Google Is Making Us Less Curious (gift link). Only a few people I know of saw this one coming regarding the enshittification of search when big tech started to integrate AI-generated summaries into the answers. At first, it was kinda funny to watch Google miss the mark so badly, telling us that we should eat at least one small rock per day. But Anne-Laure Le Cunff points out a deeper problem: it short circuits our own biology. 'People in a state of curiosity, while waiting for an answer to an intriguing question, remember unrelated information they encounter during that time far better than they otherwise would. They found that waiting for an answer activates reward circuits in the brain and readies the hippocampus to help create memories. When an A.I. summary answers your search query in three seconds, the window closes before curiosity can deepen. You get what you came for, but you also lose what would have turned curiosity into learning: the adjacent article you might have read, the resulting tangent you might have followed, the connection between two ideas with no obvious relationship.'
• Nearly Half of America Is Experiencing a Fun Drought. 'This report reinforces something we see every day — fun isn't just entertainment, it's an important part of people's overall well-being. As life becomes increasingly busy and digitally driven, people are looking for places where they can connect in real life, share experiences, and simply enjoy being together. We see a real opportunity to create those moments through experiences that feel social, exciting, and easy to say yes to.' I've been feeling a lack of FUN for some time now, and despite my best efforts, this year has seemed to have even less fun than what I wanted to add back in. It's a good reminder for my own awareness that I need to go out and do a thing, because why the hell not?
• How The Watchmen Inspired Comic Sans. I still have (in sealed bags/cases) some of my favorite comics that I collected when I was in high school - they represent a formative part of my growing up in the 1980s. V for Vendetta, Akira, Sandman, Dark Knight Returns, Killing Joke, etc., are all in there, but Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen is one of my all-time favorites. What I didn't know until this week is that the typeface used in the comic heavily inspired the font Comic Sans. Remember, nothing ever ends.
• Built for Exactly One. This concept has been circling my head lately, and I'm glad someone wrote about it. I've been spending the last few months building more and more personal software - tools that I have always wanted but didn't have the time to build when I had to write it all using traditional coding methods. Traditionally, when I relied on the App Store for what I needed, it would often just hit 80%, and I had to either wait for a feature or bend how I worked to fit the tool. Now, I build the thing I need, quickly, for me. It feels like this is the beginning of a new trend in software. 'When I build an app for myself, I have full control over the privacy aspect. There are no data harvesting worries I have to live with. I no longer have to think about hidden trackers or activity loggers. It's no secret that in the modern age, free software almost always comes with a privacy compromise. Or, as the tech adage goes, if it’s free, you’re probably the product.' And, it will be interesting to see what happens to the value of software.
• Turning an iPad Pro into the Ultimate Classic Macintosh. Put this one in the fun drawer - running classic Macintosh apps on an iPad. A good look at Mac emulators and how keyboards, file systems, and even the Apple Pencil work.
• Suncoast Motion Picture Company. When people have nostalgia for video stores, most think of Blockbuster Video, but there was also Suncoast. 'Suncoast was more than a place to buy movies. The tapes and discs were the center of the store, but the merchandise around them was part of the business. That made it broader than a simple video shop, and probably more useful as a mall store. Having selection was part of the appeal and a core of the business. Suncoast wanted to catch the person who came in for a title, then keep them looking at everything else connected to it.' This retrospective was interesting, as it reminded me of what I used to love about going into those stores - it was for people who loved movies. 'What I remember most about Suncoast is not its corporate timeline. It is the feeling of having a job that kept me close to movies after my time in rental stores, but in a different way. At Suncoast, I was not checking tapes in and out. I was helping stock a store built for people who wanted to own movies, talk about them, find them, and sometimes just stand there looking at what was new.'
• Your Life Is Not a Story: Why Narrative Thinking Holds You Back. It may sound a bit left-of-center, but come with me on this journey. Lately, I've been thinking about how a maze can be used as a metaphor for life - it branches, you can get lost, there's no clear path, and no promised exit. Mazes are interesting because of the dead ends, the wrong turns, the possibility of never finding the center - it's a recognition that you're going through a thing that you didn't necessarily design. You can't see the shape of it, but you can find a way through it. In this post, the author explores how narrative thinking (storytelling) shapes your interpretation of life by organizing events into linear sequences. 'Seeing yourself as the main character in a story can overly simplify the fullness of life. Think of the way in which people talk about their 'journey' through life. Through this narrative, certain events become more significant while others are overlooked, and random events can be reframed as being part of some grand plan. Yet viewing our lives in such a narrow way hinders our ability to understand the complex behaviour of others and ourselves.' I thought the whole piece was an interesting exercise to think through. 'We might never fully escape the narratives that surround us, but we can learn to change the perspectives behind them. And so, we are never bound by stories, only by our ability to understand how our beliefs and values shape the way we perceive and engage with the world. We don’t need better narratives; we need to expand and refine our perspectives.'
• If You're a Button, You Have One Job. A well-articulated essay on situational disabilities which 'are caused by environmental factors or specific situations that affect an individual's abilities. Examples of situational disabilities include people holding a baby, wearing headphones or have glare affecting the screen on their device.' In this case, the responsiveness of a button while an animation is occurring.
• Feel Like You Never Have Anything to Talk About? Try This. A good read on purposefully learning something that you aren't particularly interested in, but has popular buzz, so you have something to talk about. And, I'll admit something that comes from my own extroverted introvert behavior: I have a list on my phone of 300 or so 'interesting questions' to ask if I get stuck in a group setting.
• Why The Best Player Alive Barely Runs. With the 2026 World Cup almost wrapping up, I thought it would be good to include this week. The post points to a new video from David Epstein (author of Inside the Box - highly recommended to read) that talks about "anticipatory skill" and "chunking" that players such as Messi, Ronaldo, and Pujols all share. 'They’re chunking positions of people and angles of legs and spins of balls in order to understand immediately what’s going on and what might happen next. The more patterns you absorb in any domain, the less effort it takes to read what’s happening and to predict what’s coming next.'
• Switzerland Bolted 5,000 Solar Panels Onto a Dam Wall 8,000 Feet Up in the Freezing Alps. The place is the Muttsee dam, in the canton of Glarus, about an hour from Zurich, and what makes it interesting is that 'the plant sits above the fog line, in thin, clear air that lets far more sunlight through. The higher you go, the stronger and cleaner the sunlight becomes.' Running since 2022, it produces about 3.3 million kilowatt-hours per year, enough to power around 700 homes.
• The Healing Power of Gardens. Wrapping up this week with the healing power of gardens. 'I cannot say exactly how nature exerts its calming and organizing effects on our brains, but I have seen in my patients the restorative and healing powers of nature and gardens, even for those who are deeply disabled neurologically. In many cases, gardens and nature are more powerful than any medication.'

Amor Fati ✌🏻