Hark! The golden age of pessimistic optimism arises. Grumps unite!

"Are there any firefighters in here who have Asperger’s? I’m wanting to try and become a firefighter but I have a hard time talking to people or doing things like physical exercise or working out in front of people..." I'm glad you asked... 🧵

Executives don’t want to just sell juice. They want to empower you with an agentic, customizable, and seamless juice experience. But no one has stopped to think about what any of that actually means, so the product becomes shit. Before designing a "solution," you need to design the problem.

Blindly accepting PRs without the prompt is like blindly implementing features users ask for without understanding their underlying needs. Users usually ask for less pain and more pleasure. It's the maintainer's job to dig deeper, read between the lines, and find the cause/utility behind the ask.

It's good! I'm actually reading RSS feeds again which is actually quite pleasant. Workspaces are really well done. It is a complex settings xp, but, much like anything, takes time to find the sweet spot. Mobile app is good as well.

upgrade

The reason I post this phrase is not to say that everyone who works in tech is bad; but the normative mode in tech is not asking critical questions about the products you are making, cashing in, and getting vaguely frustrated when you can’t just focus on “politically-neutral techno-optimism”.

Aaron's good at this. I hate that we're "just getting started" tbh, because the downstream effects of centralizing development through AI companies are going to be "bad", but if we're having to do this, maybe there's a middle path. Aaron's actually someone I'd trust to help navigate that path.

not a weird question! I'm gonna answer it via a quote because others might also find this interesting.

People having success with these tools are failing with them constantly. Running the same prompts in 10 parallel agents. They get a small win here and there and double down on that methodology. The hardest part of this shit is turning on more of a experimental, brute-force mindset. That and faith.

product idea: comfort "ctrl z" keyset for digital artists trying out traditional mediums it doesn't work there's a little speaker and every time you press it, it just says "it's okay"

Spite is a *great* way to get proficient at something!

As a hater: LLMs, when used effectively, are "good" for coding. Easily said. The conversation should not be around whether it works (it does), but around who it is working *for*. We must stop talking past the issues while corporations capture all the value. Get on the B-Line to Hater City! 🚉

this looks like a must watch. @meredithmeredith.bsky.social is one of the best on this topic

The industry is focused on what I'd call SX (Sensory Experience), i.e. attempting to get closer to the meat in controlling sensory experience. I don't think believing the end-goal is ultimately literal mind-control is unreasonable.

We're going to see a lot of "This vulnerability was rapidly remediated..." messages in 2026. The year of exfiltration is upon us!

I published my 2025 year review. It took a bit (they always do as they're actually how I plan my next year). I'd be happy if you even skimmed it. Did you review your year? I'd be delighted to read it.

I hear we're posting our out-of-date AI takes from 2024.

I enjoy artist advice not only because its valuable information, but because there’s a sort of human tenderness in seeing how another was able to synthesize their own frustrations. we’re all slamming our heads into the wall until a small “aha” comes out, and I cherish others’ as much as my own.

Don't hold on to your the artifacts of your expression too dearly. Art/trend/style is ephemeral, yet there is immense value in the observance of its degradation. Give it away, cut it up and make something new out of it, gain perspective in a new medium. Practice in the discomfort of its decline.

This Slack update makes me laugh every time I go to set my status as a volunteer firefighter. Yep, this is what working teams need: seasonal updates.

Gaming is as feudalistic as any industry. Not many successes without funding, yet everyone thinks they'll be the next DIY Balatro. AI co's owning the entirety of production—who makes the income there? Why are people buying apps when they can speak their own into existence? Where is rent being paid?

sort of along my recent repost, the issue at hand has been the same since the dawn of capitalism: when automation increases productivity, who gets to capture the value of that productivity increase? the beef is not with the productivity. it's with the value capture

can't wait for the venjent mix

hobbits → fraggles orcs → gorgs dwarves → doozers elves, maiar → human obviously boober fraggle is gollum archbanger is gandalf basically writes itself

got a new slide-out visor for my helmet! I spent the morning taking the helmet completely apart and soaking all the parts and giving it a good scrub. it is definitely not "like new", but it definitely does smell a whole lot better now. firefighting is kinda gross.

Depends: am I evaluating for progress or betterment? Few seem to be having "yes and..." discussions from either direction. Folks get really defensive if they are made aware of some of the knock-on effects. Yes, tools are objectively useful for coding! And? Any downsides? Nah? "Works for me"?

Here's one of the tracks I released this year after my first album. Cover is a photo I took in my backyard.

We ran 102 live events in NotionMastery.com last year! Grand total of ~500 live events all-time. At this point you can drop me into a Zoom chat of any number of viewers and I can on-the-fly design a @notion.com training for any audience, from beginners to advanced. Advantage: live-on-air elasticity!

Just received mine in the post today. Can't wait to hang this in our new gallery I've been working on over the holidays!

tired: correlation is not causation wired: correlation is not cognition

I think the ultimate reason many of us older people feel like everything is broken and terrible is that we remember when we had access to general purpose computing devices

Finally have some energy this week to work on my yearly review. I love uncovering all the joy I felt all year again, especially when I feel pretty miserable about the year. Going to start doing quarterly reviews this year to try to capture this remembrance. Got a 2025 review? I'd love to read it!

5 days into 2026 and 5 fire calls so far including a fully-involved structure fire. Could be an interesting year at this rate! 🚒

Love this, great idea, definitely adopting these rules myself. Super kind rules of engagement for talking about AI. "Ethics Are Not Optional" is fundamental to the discussion.

"Constellation Therapy" sounds really interesting/useful. Always exciting to discover new modalities in therapy.

One year since I've had any alcohol today. Figure I'll store that with smoking and go for the rest of my life at this point.

born to be a quirky artist forced to stay informed about surveillance technology

Describing ChatGPT voice mode as “probably” therapy highlights a real-world symptom: people map care onto AI systems without clinical training, no duty of care, no safeguards, no understanding, and no accountability. I unpacked the harms and design consequences here: jgcarpenter.com/blog.html?bl...

Another great add to the @notion.com public API to close out the year. You can now move pages into other pages and data sources. I've written a quick guide for you since the docs aren't updated yet. Includes a Make example as well.

A lot of this is based in tech people's belief that nothing is truly NP=hard intractable, that everything is both achievable and controllable, and that arguing otherwise is arguing for the existence of a preexisting God, rather than the self evidently correct belief that they can create/become God

The problem is not AI per se—it's the obligate psychopathy of corporatism, and the emboldening of the same. My longer-term bet is we see a marked increase of sociopathy by playing into the multi-polar trap of the progress narrative. Only a few years to get to this mad-max-style resource competition.

Apparently I'm doing this -- my open letter to that open latter about AI in writing and publishing. I emerged from Hibernation Week to write it, so god only knows how much sense it makes. But at least a human wrote it, so that's nice. Bonus: picture of my "cat," sweet baby Boomba.

crass

Finished the alpha of my new course Released my first album Got my other arm fully tattooed Hosted over 100 live events in Notion Mastery program Completed Emergency Vehicle Operator certification Renovated our kitchen

I did an EV safety course as a firefighter recently and, yeah, next time you ride in a tesla, see if you can find the mechanical overrides. Aren't always where you think and these things burn so hot you will literally be pulverized (like your skeleton burns) before you'll find 'em. Good luck!

"The body claims its survival." is one of the most beautiful lines I've ever read. Sheesh.

Well, this article convinced me to buy and read Devon Price's "Laziness Does Not Exist", post-haste. "The data does not support the assumption that all burned out people can 'recover.'” is a shocking wake-up call.

Got glassesfor the first time and I lose them every time I wear them. I'm always confident they're gone forever every time, but so far they've turned up again. I'm on day 3 of not finding them now though. So much pressure to keep an inanimate object safe all the time, ack! How do y'all do this?