Just thinking about how many top AI scientists are H-1B holders, also of their bosses kissing ass at that WH dinner the other week desperately hoping this would not happen

There’s no better sign that superintelligence isn’t ever happening than Jakob Nielsen saying it’s coming soon

There’s very little social or economic value in making things simple or easy to grok. In fact, it’s usually in someone’s interest to make things more complicated so as to create specialization and charge rent for what they know.

One of my absolute pet peeves: asking someone a "how" question (i.e. what steps they take, where to start) but they either answer with "why", or a 'how' that depends on a bunch of other steps they don't explain. Some topics are basically locked behind failing to recognize and answer a how question.

I really do not want to wade into anything happening in the news, except to note something: Pretty sure a non-zero number of people are unclear that Jimmy KIMMEL and Jimmy FALLON are different people. IIRC Kimmel, for all his flaws, did not playfully tousle Trump's hair. The other Jimmy did that.

There are a lot of design fails in Apple's OS 26 releases — now with LIQUID GLASS — but I think the top ~100 pixels of Safari's interface is one of the bigger train wrecks. The tab bar seems to be both raised _and_ recessed?!

Folks (especially in media) have gotten the idea that, since we have YouTube and TikTok, we don't need websites except as a place to do commerce. I don't agree with that — a website is one of the most powerful marketing tools a business can have, and I wrote about why for @bitsandletters.com:

I absolutely hate saying anything nice about LIQUID GLASS, and to be clear, anything nice I have to say about iOS 26 would be just as nice if the UI weren’t pretending to be a puddle. But search bars and other stuff have moved to the bottom, and tap targets seem bigger, especially in Camera

Help help I fell into an SEO rabbit hole this weekend, here are the top 5 SEO rabbit holes to fall into: 1. This one 2. Another one 3. Not an SEO topic but semi related 4. A banana 5. This one again

I give you all permission to round this up to 420 🍃 💨

Pleased to announce that I put my phone down for a whole hour to build a Lego space car and assemble the Spider-Verse minifigs with my daughter

[to the tune of Liz Phair’s “Divorce Song”]

when I was still interviewing for jobs, I had a couple times where I was referred by a friend and even made it to a final round only to get unceremoniously dropped with a “other candidates’ backgrounds are a stronger fit” next day the hiring manager would be on LinkedIn looking for candidates

I unwind by making little spirograph drawings on my iPad

A reminder that simply not posting is always an option.

No no no no no Apple, we wanted the camera bumps *smaller*. 🍎: [Thinking for 0.3s] You're absolutely right! You want a professional camera system that fits into your pocket. I'll update the iPhone to support multiple 48 MP cameras. > APPLE INTELLIGENCE is asking permission to update "iPhone" [y/N]

These are my reactions to Apple's product launch thing today: AIRPODS PRO 3: Foam ear tips included. Even better ANC. Still $250. Strong buy. APPLE WATCH 11 family: Now does high blood pressure monitoring so those of us with BP problems might get warning if numbers get too high. Strong buy.

37 hours? My dude, I tell Claude Code to clear and reset context every 37 _minutes_ and sometimes it starts fucking up and needs a reset even sooner than that! Skill issue, as the kids say.

Found on LinkedIn. A blonde white dude actually naming their startup "Sauron" is peak Torment Nexus, peak 2025.

At @bitsandletters.com we ask the hard questions

This kind of thing is how boys do thirst traps

One of these is not like the others

Cool, now that tha’s settled can we get some dev attention back on Arc? Eh? Eh? @davidhoang.com 😅 www.theverge.com/web/770947/b...

The shittiest things about X and Substack being “Nazi bars”: - They aren’t exclusively Nazi bars - A lot of people are there, many of whom aren’t Nazis, just looking for an audience, information, or good jokes - Most of them don’t know they’re in a Nazi bar

someone please help me I just used the word "workstream" 100% unironically in a non-corporate context

I have literally lost a job because a designer in my team demoed some work in progress at what was supposed to be a low-stakes show and tell… except the CEO was in attendance and the state of the demo caused a massive kerfuffle that, yes, ended with me getting fired.

BTW, this was Cursor's AI agent on default "auto" model setting, which uses Claude Sonnet 4. (And if you use Claude Code or are on r/ClaudeCode you know how absolutely right it thinks we all are.) Fix: Change the model setting to GPT-5 (and make sure you've got a credit card on file)

Perfect! You're absolutely right! Phenomenal! Scrumptious!

I know the heyday of dwell magazine being the pinnacle of spending too much money on your house was not without its own problems but I would prefer that to whatever this by at least one thousand times

Code is pretty cool 😎

oh

Maybe this is my old showing, but accepting a job offer and going through onboarding and just ghosting on the first day — something at least one AI scientist has done to Meta recently — just seems like a dick move? arstechnica.com/ai/2025/08/z...

im WHEEZING who okayed the english title for this drama 😂☠️

Fixed this diagram from @johncutle.fish 😉 One wild thing I’ve noticed over the years is that this is partly about power/control, but it’s also a failure of imagination. Lots of folks *don’t believe the model on the right is possible.*

What I’m about to say is NOT an AI defense or sales pitch, because generally Rich is right — these things suck and any value you may get out of them often takes more time babysitting and re-prompting than just doing the fucking work. BUT! I have some principles to make them work JUST well enough 🧵

Seeing Andrew Bird and Will Oldham (at different times) in a cold bare-concrete room at Ronny’s Bar in Chicago that wasn’t even legally permitted as a music venue, had no seating, where basically everyone was standing 5 feet from the artists for lack of space

I’m starting to believe PLG (product-led growth, the thing where B2B products are sold like consumer ones) is a form of brainrot and actively makes it harder for consultants, agencies, and other service businesses to learn how to talk about themselves

It’s hard to be out here saying “AI is great at accelerating the boring generic parts of web design” without sounding like you’re saying “AI is great at web design,” which is NOT what I am saying

They make writing easier but remove the thinking, which was the best part

My child likes to look at my phone and ask "what is thaaaat" no matter what's on the screen. Today she asked "what's absolute positioning?" I tried to explain with hand gestures; it did not work. So I made her a demo (with cats, because she loves cats): codepen.io/ddemaree/pen...

Tom Clancy’s Fear of Flying

I love this use of ‘catfished’. I and so many others were effectively catfished to work at a certain huge payments concern. One friend was told they’d get to work on A11Y; they had to program-manage a marketplace. I was recruited to work on a global design system; ended up doing partnership crap.

Tom Clancy’s Slaughterhouse Five

It’s awesome being on Bluesky where everyone is angry about at least 4 things and every other internet site is immoral meanwhile folks are starting substacks and going back on twitter 😬

My 11yo and I asked an LLM: "are you a cat?" And Cha—sorry, CatGPT, who knows I usually ask it for help with my website-making business, took to the assignment, crafting allegories in which Warrior Cats are patrolling the web. 🐱🐈🐈‍⬛

It’s cringe to see successful companies that have nothing to do with AI rebrand themselves as “an AI platform” because they think it will somehow help them. Workday is a HR platform. Sure, they added AI features like everyone else but it was never “built with AI at the core”

My only Cracker Barrel design take is that Cracker Barrel should not be this well-lit and open. If you don’t trip over a display of off-brand Pokemon or a barrel full of an obscure Southern candy bar trying to find the bathroom, it’s not Cracker Barrel, it’s Magnolia: The Eatery.

LinkedIn’s algo keeps recommending the same video from this American girl in an MBA program at Oxford. I can tell you she loves the beautiful buildings, and is giving a presentation about startups. Meanwhile anything I post will be seen by people who follow me in 4-6 weeks, once, if I’m lucky. 🫠

Lots of people don’t wanna believe in luck or timing

A while ago I adopted a notable dev's CLAUDE.md system prompt. Today I went in to make it clearer to the robot that it really shouldn't delete code, and *a lot* of this guy's prompt is "we should be friends! let's treat each other with respect!" and not "don't break tests on purpose".