S2:E5 - An Extravagance of Blandness

Very tempting to the appetite of an invalid

Hello! I’m back in yr email inbox. I meant to send this in June, but now apparently it’s August? So some of these links are a bit old, but all are worthwhile!

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Linus Lee is well worth a follow/subscribe. He’s built, among other things, a universal personal search engine, trained on a variety of sources including his browsing history. It allows him to do things like maintain a knowledge database of everything he’s ever read about a thing, and recall it with a search. He also just built a browser extension that generates an extract of the article he’s currently reading. Enormously inspiring fellow.

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Andy Baio tracks the life of a meme he first fell in love with 13 years ago , that has now found a new home on (where else?) Tik Tok. Reminds me of Robin Sloan’s Flip-flops.

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Technical debt isn’t debt. It’s not even technical. Think about it.

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INTERNATIONAL COFFEE CULTURE CORNER:

This edition of Why is this interesting? starts with some mild criticism of Stanley Tucci’s Italy series but then moves to an examination of the Neapolitan practice of caffè sospeso, the practice of sharing coffee with those in need. This happens informally in a few cafes around where I live (not Naples) and has picked up a bit during the last year, but I love the idea of this becoming a widespread cultural practice.

This reminded of another interesting coffee-related thing I saw in the “intern” section of this edition of Today in Tabs: One-by-Two, the South Indian practice of ordering a single filter coffee and splitting it between two people. Best understood by watching this relaxing video (embedded in that link above).

Pardon the cliche, but before I became a father, I used to be a bit sensitive to caffeine, and would struggle to get to sleep if I had more than one espresso. Now, and particularly in the context of the stressful last year, the coffee does nothing. I wonder if another country does like a 10-by-One?

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Eat a toast sandwich (via Kottke). Don’t listen to the haters, these are actually surprisingly good.

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Until next time,

- Adam

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Today’s song: