Best soundtrack ever. #nowspinning

I just shipped an internal software tool to our team that would have taken me a month before Claude Code. I spent maybe half my spare time over the last week on it. Wild stuff.

A general thought, as I work on revisions to a paper: I do think this holds up, and it's not that Gemini/etc. isn't good at doing exactly what it's trained to do. It's that, at least in part, Gemini has nothing to say. It makes no arguments, no claims, nothing that gives food for thought.

That is to say, it’s a tricky problem but not more difficult than other things they do. And I think this falls squarely on the companies providing these services to make sure their tools are good at this

Short interview about my dissertation on Michel Serres and its applications to sport ethics: www.eur.nl/en/esphil/ne...

Can we care for AI companions in any meaningful sense? Interesting new manuscript responding to Lott and Hasselberger (who answered this question "no" last year). #aiethics

Really good post from Tim on why state fuel agents are different from the underlying LLMs. As an aside, the language of cybernetics feels really useful here. No metaphors about consciousness, souls or morality. Just information processing systems.

This is a good take on Moltbook: a low stakes safety experiment we can learn from. Funny that a bunch of high-powered ELIZAs reacting to each other is freaking some people out. Chatbots are machines that are really good at mimicking human speech and thought patterns.

Not to make light of this, there are areas of software development where this will matter a lot. But my minority(?) opinion is that Claude Code feels like a basic jump in level of abstraction. The development of abstract compiled languages also degraded programmers’ understanding of assembly.

I really appreciate Claude for assuming that my note about aliens landing near Greece in droves was a "creative story idea" instead of my actual, unhinged beliefs about extraterrestrial infiltration.

How to build an autonomous agent, and what @village11.bsky.social learned in the process. I've been reading this slowly since yesterday and processing it. Informing an agent that it needs to balance tensions as opposed to commanding compliance with rules work best--fascinating insight.

Coding is many processes. AI-driven development still requires the parts of “coding” I like, without endlessly scrolling, grepping, checking StackExchange, toggling between terminal windows, etc.

My favorite acronym is YBH: Yes, But How? I ask that question a lot about AI hype. For that reason, I'm really enjoying Justin Norris's very practical blog, especially this post on Claude Code for knowledge workers. Anthropic already filled in the gaps discussed in this post with Claude Cowork.

It’s still technically Christmas(tide) till Candlemas, so we are watching the best Christmas movie.

Claude Code may transform non-coding knowledge work jobs faster than "agents" and "chatting to solve a problem" can automate them away. Because it'll transform us all into software developers. As in, it's transforming (a segment of) my CFO job that way right this minute.

I finally figured out that the AI-enabled coding environment that I needed was GitHub Codespaces + Claude Code command line. Portable across work/home laptops and looks like I can use it on an iPhone with some work. I was promised a rocket-fueled future but this is all very clunky!

I learn something and think challenging thoughts every time I read one of Eli's papers on trust. Highly recommended based on that alone! #philsky

Can wait to dig into this data. It is already practically difficult to hold sellers/curators of genAI technology accountable for their behavior, this suggests it’s also psychologically difficult for users to do so. #aiethics

This paragraph is a doozy. Software, wiser than humans since 2026?

Really interesting thread, lots of adds to the reading list.

Our normally sweet 6 yo daughter making good on her promise to “give the Rams a bad report.” (She is a Ravens fan, no idea where the animus comes from except she decided to root for the Panthers.)

Every rational being needs emotion. We won't meet emotionless aliens, because *something* beyond reason needs to determine what reason pays attention to. Just a footnote, but it might be my favorite part of Korsgaard's Sources of Normativity. Implications for "intelligence" in AI, too. #aiethics

I tried to get up on my grandmother’s organ bench when I was little and instead pulled it down on my face, breaking my nose and giving myself two black eyes the day before Easter.

28 years ago, but that is still really stressful to contemplate. This entire list is the soundtrack of my high school years.

One page of rough draft written on my dissertation, which added to the one page I wrote before Christmas makes two pages! Good energy to start 2026. #PhDsky

My New Year’s resolutions are to wear my thick fuzzy robe anytime I’m the slightest bit cold (why front in my own house?) and read more Greek drama and Nietzsche for fun.

New Year's text from a philosopher

Quote with a GIF that depicts the energy you’re going into 2026 with.

Manny Diaz covered in Frosted Flakes and hugging Tony the Tiger: the modern bowl setup is absolutely bizarre but I love it.

I have a 6yo who has just become an (American) football superfan snuggled up with me watching Duke in the Tony the Tiger Bowl. Highly recommend.

Happy Christmas to me, a few days late. Looking forward to my first weighty dissertation reading of 2026! #philtech

Sheeeeeeeeitt. What a bummer.

Mayo is the correct answer, not ketchup.

Also some lovely grouchy owls at the Frost Museum.

The Frost Science Museum in Miami was pretty incredible. I’m a bit of an aquarium snob, maybe smart to brand as a science museum vs go up against Georgia and Tennessee, but a fantastic visit!

Probably true. Whereas chilling with my running buddies on a long run at 10+ minute pace while chatting about life is immensely more helpful to my mental health personally. Not many other places where middle aged dudes (and dudettes) mutually support on parenting, relationships, career.

Not mad about today’s current situation either. Ft Lauderdale might be more our family’s speed.

Not hating our current situation. Miami is hard to figure out but a really interesting town.

This is about right, and it’s why I think reliable AI could be a thing (domain-specific, *maybe* generally) but trustworthy AI is not — unless we develop much stronger capacities to distrust as well.

Your daily reminder that AI slop is everywhere and models improve quickly. The decorations at the Miami cafe we had breakfast at were so obviously AI-generated like a year ago that it stood out to our 12 yo. “Wait for outputs to be good, not passable” is a good rule if you’re committed to using AI.

I just got a great idea for a piece of writing, went for a run, and wrote the opening hook. Best Christmas present possible!

This is a lovely story for Christmas morning. www.bbc.com/news/article...

My top 3 non-fiction for this year starts with an older book about old tech: David Edgerton's The Shock of the Old. Technology is used and tinkered with more than "innovated" with. Singer sewing machines and condoms over high tech in this use-centric history.

Help I'm in Billions season 4 and I have no one to root for.

Today I learned that Bentham introduced the panopticon in a work called "Pauper Management Improvement" and I think that tells you a lot of what you need to know about utilitarianism.

This. One of my pet peeves in trust is that everyone cites Baier and then many show they haven’t read her. One scholar actually calls all three-part trust “contractual” and Baier’s main point is that trust is not a contract. Way to go, us.

What new norms do we need to cope? I.e., if the author is more capable of producing an authoritative version than the AI “production team,” do we start citing to as-published manuscripts on PhilPapers instead of the faulty published version?

This is an interesting deep dive into an important question. My hot take is that it would be much weirder if they didn’t use ‘I’. Can you imagine a language-user that always referred to itself in 3rd person? I suspect this is both useful and tends toward deceit. Hard to unpack.

These zebra-stripe cookies seem like they worked out! Nice bite and a little salty. Success for my new cookie roller gadget.