Where does the “it’s not x, it’s y” come from? It’s not only training data: LLMs are trained to use language to arrive at “answers.” Whatever we’re incentivizing and disincentivizing in our use of language when we resist “sounding like AI” has big implications for students, and for human thought.

“I’m here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI,” said Chieng. news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

I'm running my presenter workshop on Zoom next month, on a West Coast / AU / NZ friendly (well, friendlier) schedule. It is AWESOME, and you should TOTALLY JOIN IT and LEARN HOW TO DO KICK-ASS PRESENTATIONS. £50 off tickets with the code BSKY50: www.eventbrite.com/e/1987043570810/?discount=BSKY50

If you were on a high bridge with a guardrail, but the guardrail was connected to a million monkeys with typewriters, and every time one of the monkeys types "IPTHEFT" the guardrail retracts and is replaced by a conveyor belt pulling you into the chasm... would you still call it a guardrail? 🤔

"Based on the dataset you shared, US and UK responses differ mainly in tone, intensity, and wording style, even though they express similar emotional states" New post on what happened when I got Copilot to do some data analysis: kucharski.substack.com/p/real-signa...

Some reflections on frequently unasked questions about stochastic parrots (the phrase and the paper): medium.com/@emilymenonb...

Preprinted! Been working on this for ~1 year w wonderful coauthors Nancy & Mark: > Understanding Artificial Neural Networks: Mysterianism about Known Mechanism is Mysticism doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Have you noticed many experts say they don't understand AI? What's going on? 🤯 Let us tell you... 1/

TDD + DDD sound great in theory… But how do they actually work together in real systems? 👀 @chrissimon.au breaks it down from the ground up — from tests to domain models to real-world design decisions. Watch here 👉 youtu.be/o3--D6ydS4o?... #TDD #DDD #SoftwareEngineering #CleanCode #Programming

The most disturbing aspect of the AI era is realizing how many people have only ever valued others for their labor and not their humanity.

Some people should never have access to students. “AI requires no ramp-ups, no meetings, and absolutely no emotional support…The issue is not whether my students are valuable. In long run, they are invaluable. The issue is that their value emerges slowly, whereas AI delivers immediate returns.”

Choosing between event streams & queues for EDA often leads to head-of-line blocking & complexity. @chrissimon.au will clarify options to build resilient systems. Get info & RSVP:

When Anthropic stopped training on books that were literally pirated, they managed to hit on the one way of buying books that means no money goes to authors: buying used books. 🧵 1/n

🚨NEW INQUIRY! - Behind the Face of AI🚨 In this short comic, two data workers describe their work impersonating an “AI” chatbot for a major social media platform. Sleepless nights, penalties for sounding “too human,” and emotional drain are just a few of the job hazards. ➡️ data-workers.org/france

When men refer to themselves as "alpha males", I hear that in the context of software, where alpha versions are unstable, missing important features, filled with flaws, and not fit for the public.

This is about people, about systems, what it takes to make progress, and why being difficult is so important. From fire alarms to hospital beds. From music apps to cars. From climate change to education. Our systems are not serving us well, and it's time to push back. adsei.org/2025/11/17/t...

Starting @newcrafts.bsky.social with @chrissimon.au on stage for the opening keynote: A Defense of Technical Excellence

I once gave a talk called "AI is not what you think it is unless you think it is hot garbage" I've just enjoyed and highly recommend @chrissimon.au's "AI is a hype-fuelled dumpster fire that will burn down the planet and get you thrown in jail" www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bF_...

"They're lies. These companies are lying to people." @chrissimon.au on the idea of infinite storytelling from an AI Dungeon Master, and how a creative human can prompt them away from the mean.

What happens when we outsource to enterprise LLMs for storytelling, & the inherent biases they were trained on start compounding over many quests? 🤔 @chrissimon.au has researched the LLM supply chain and believes its biases will unavoidably creep into game stories & dialogue.

Finally got around to watch the "AI is a Hype-Fuelled Dumpster Fire" talk by @chrissimon.au. It is really good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bF_...

Really enjoyed chatting with @thejunglist.bsky.social about LLMs and games - although I'm no game dev expert, I do love playing and so it was a natural topic to explore. Thanks for your generous and warm hosting, @thejunglist.bsky.social!

Lots of folk who went multicloud for reliability are today realising how independent their cloud deployments aren't.

Have been looking forward to this talk coming out - had so much fun playing with the loopy causal loop diagrams, check it out 😀 Special thanks to @paulrayner.bsky.social for feedback and advice the night before this one! @dddeu.bsky.social #systemsthinking

At ADAConf 2025, Andrea Magnorsky is running a pre-conference workshop on Building a Decentralised Architecture Practice. Learn to diagnose your org, spot patterns, and spread architectural thinking beyond silos. 📅 12–13 Nov | Melbourne 🎟️ Tickets: adaconf.org #ADAConf #SoftwareArchitecture

Speaker Spotlight: Susan Brander What do you do when your startup’s data model is duct-taped together, but you still have to ship? At ADAConf 2025, Susan shares how Kaleida pulled off a zero-downtime pivot to a One Table design, mid-flight. Nov 14 | Melbourne Get tix now: adaconf.org

We’re excited to welcome Contextive as a Gold Sponsor for ADAConf 2025! Contextive supports our community and helps teams get on the same page, with business-specific glossaries that are embedded directly where work gets done. Learn about ADAConf sponsorship here: adaconf.org/sponsors/

It's only a few days until we welcome @chrissimon.au to #DDDLondon online on Sept 4th. All attendees will receive a code to get 20% off Chris' or my workshop (and conference tickets) at @gotocon.com #Copenhagen: dddlondon.com/events/imagi... #sofware #softwareDevelopment #softwareArchitecture

Highly recommend spending half an hour on this talk by @chrissimon.au on the bulshit that LLMs produce. Yup. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bF_... #AI #LLM #ChatGPT

The #ADAConf 2025 speaker lineup is here! Diana Montalion Linda McIver Andrea Magnorsky Dan Prager Fadila Fidina Hannah Browne Martin Chesbrough Matt Goldman Matthew Gillard Paul Rayner Rahul Trikha Susan Brander Join us on 14 Nov 2025. Tickets on sale now: adaconf.org

Loved @codefrenzy.bsky.social 's keynote at #yowtls25 about the dualities of AI in software engineering! For everything we gain in adopting AI, what are we giving up? Learning? Intuition? Quality? Identity?

Meet our keynote speakers for ADAConf 2025: Diana Montalion and Dr Linda McIver! Both are pioneers in their fields: Diana in systems thinking and architecture; Linda in data and computer science education. Get early bird tix now and join us on 14 Nov: adaconf.org

⏳ It is time to order your tickets for Strategic Domain Driven Design, a domain-focused, collaborative learning process. Come and collaborate with us to find out more about Strategic DDD: buff.ly/t2pqpd3 We start on June 10, 2025!

From a performance perspective, one user has > 120,000 terms synchronised from a data governance platform spread out over 12 glossary files. As of v1.17.0, Contextive works almost instantly for autocomplete and hover, even with such large datasets.

e.g., if your term is Père, but you use `pere` in the code, Contextive will still show you the definition.

There is dedicated support for the German umlaut and eszett. e.g. ö will match with ö, o or oe. ß will match with ß or ss.

Contextive v1.17.0 is out now with a focus on better internationalisation and much better performance, especially with very large glossaries - release notes here: docs.contextive.tech/community/ch... Details in thread... #domaindrivendesign #ubiquitouslanguage

Another #ThrowbackTuesday! Ross MacIntyre’s ADAConf 2024 talk gets into the roots of sociotechnical thinking. Post-war coal mines? Conway’s Law? Team Topologies? 📺 If it sounds intriguing, give it a watch: youtu.be/Kwrb7rWNtI0 📣And our CfS closes 30 June: sessionize.com/analysis-des... #ADAConf

DDD, TDD, living documentation, ... work, but are rarely used. Chris Simon will show how you can use Systems Thinking for technical excellence, at DDD Europe 2025:

While we are working on the schedule ... We have already added most of our talks, labs and speakers: 2025.dddeurope.com/program/

Contextive v1.15.0 is out! A big change to how we manage glossary files - you can now split your terms into multiple glossaries and put them in the folder hierarchy near the files they are relevant for - check out docs.contextive.tech/ide/guides/s... for details!

Loved the keynote from @chrissimon.au at #Programmable2025 intriguing titled "AI is a hype-fuelled dumpster fire that will burn down the planet and get you thrown in gaol" discussing #AIethics, #AIbias, and #AIrisks

Love this talk about AI ethics and risks by @chrissimon.au at Programmable. Where do the risks of - factually incorrect outputs - embedded bias - psycho-social harms sit in your risk matrix? Have you started this kind of conversation yourself?

Celebrate International Women's Day by interrupting men with your unsolicited opinions and taking credit for their work. If they get upset about it, be sure to tell them that they sound hysterical and should smile more.

Learn how to decompose large problem domains into cohesive, autonomous, domain-aligned bounded contexts and how to continue from there: buff.ly/3RHZ9FD Take advantage of our Early Bird discount!

A friendly reminder that so-called "reasoning" models are not actually "thinking". They are extruding a series of tokens that look like "thoughts" before extruding a series of tokens that looks like "answers". Once you internalise this, all the scenarios in which they fail make much more sense.

@chrissimon.au kicks off our first workshop of the day with “event storming for beginners”! We’ve got over 40 people in this jam-packed workshop exploring the domain of ticket sales and jumping right into event storming.

Lovely gesture for speakers from @dddmelbourne.bsky.social - by the end of your talk they already have a framed picture of you speaking!

I have a new blog post up: "Corporate 'DEI' Is An Imperfect Vehicle for Deeply Meaningful Ideals" charity.wtf/2025/02/10/c... I know a lot of people are feeling incredibly scared and demoralized right now. I get it; I am too. (Who knows if my marriage will still be valid in two years?)

ADAConf 2025 is here! 🗓️Save the date: Fri, 14 Nov 2025 📍 Rydges Melbourne This year’s theme is Change – exploring evolutionary practices, responding to challenges, and novel techniques that rethink ‘best practice.’ Stay tuned for more exciting announcements! #ADAConf