Cool Things - May 13, 2026

Let’s clean up some phone tabs. We’re finishing up 2023 and 2022 here.

From Phone

• SaaS Lens – I thing the AWS Well-Architected Framework is super handy. Since I specialize in SaaS, this is useful. Even if some is for a scale I don’t operate at.
• Fermi ROI: Fixing the ROI rubric – An interesting approach to a hard problem
• The Fascinating Stories Behind 5 of the World’s Big Currency Symbols – In completely alignment with my collection of useless facts interests
• Chinese Etiquette: Fist and palm salute – I’m amused that so many greeting rituals evolved to show that they are not attacking you
• 30 Of The Funniest Menu Translation Fails Ever – This is very much Asian menus getting English wrong, but ‘white people getting characters’ is as equally funny variant of this
• Guard rail (rail transport) – In case you ever wondered why there are sometimes extra rails on the track
• The shape of the new 1E9E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S – Ligature nerdiness
• What’s Inside The Bean? Photos Show Construction Of ‘Cloud Gate’ – A) Did you know that is what is is actually called, B) So cool.
• Kit spent over $1 million on AWS in 2021 – An old (now) breakdown, but still useful. Understanding your cloud spend is part of senior tech leadership’s responsiblity
• The 50 Best Quotes About Men’s Style & Fashion
• Make Boring Plans – I aspire for boring. Except for shoes. (Of course!)
• Sending weekly 5-15 updates – I accidently do this with my “What’s New” posts every Monday
• Data diffs: Algorithms for explaining what changed in a dataset – Science has a reproducability problem. This is part of it.
• Growth and Power – Understanding Big-P Power is important as you ladder up
• Deconstructing a Waterpark – if you want a more technical name for ‘the pink slide’ or ‘the yellow one.’