Ok somebody on Reddit just referred to this administration as constantly “writing the book report on the bus” and it’s just too perfect.

Hot take: “dynamic range” settings on cameras should instead be referred to as “compression”.

Claude is amazing, but sometimes it feels like the promise of AI coding is that you'll save hours of coding in exchange for days of troubleshooting. (Guess which I like less.)

So excited that the administration is finally rolling out the healthcare plan!

The manner in which trans issues are being used as a wedge so closely mirrors the way gay/lesbian issues were used 30 years ago - which is both predictable and depressing.

As stupid and horrible as the Iran war is, the fact that the regime has, in so doing, created unprecedented demand for EVs and renewables is delicious.

Maybe the most frustrating thing about the current moment, in the US at least, is that while it feels like the end of the world, it is well within our power to turn it all around. We have the technology to address the climate and meet everyone's basic needs - and we choose not to.

Happy March 15. Here is my favorite Ides of March meme:

Gotta hand it to Republicans for speed-running the "start a war and crash the economy" maneuver they're known for. Looking forward to picking up the pieces like we always do.

Most people don't know Santa also keeps a place in Antarctica. He's bipolar.

I love my AppleTV but, to the team that decided to make the primary UI interaction button also a touch sensitive way to change the focus - what the hell.

“Something is bound to happen.”

The second edition of Designing Data-Intensive Applications, by myself and @chris.blue, is finished and sent off to the printers! Ebooks should be available in the next week, and print books in 3–4 weeks. Sigh of relief. 😅 (BTW, this is a good opportunity to support your favourite local bookshop!)

While GenAI models are undeniably getting very good at coding; code is bad, actually. Code is debt. *Coding should hurt*. We're going to build mountains of spaghetti implementing every single dumb idea. Much smarter systems are going to be needed to constantly untangle our mess.

the core issue is that good faith is vanishingly rare on the right, because explicitly acting in bad faith has been elevated as a virtue and rewarded with money and prestige there for decades it’s not “polite” to say you should treat all right wing pundits as bad faith actors, but it’s true

Some terrifically titled papers from a discovered collection of NASA research documents found in a skip (with thanks to @juliarez.placid.horse)

Jeremiah Wright was entirely too generous.

It really is insidious the way the three horsemen of AI, climate change, and the age of Trump truly create the feeling of apocalypse. AI destroys the economic order, climate change destroys the natural world, and Trump destroys any ability we had to cope with the first two.

“I don’t even wait. And when you’re a President, they let you do it. Grab them with the military; you can do anything.”

Next week, probably.

That feeling of unease is the realization that we are actively manifesting a world that we are not, as humans, built to live in.

One thing that I try to remember is that nearly every person was, for a time at least, a child that somebody loved with their whole being. Sometimes hard to square that with the adults they become. But worth treating people with this in mind - as a default position anyhow.

"there's a new serif in town"

Every time I listen to Peter Gabriel’s i/o I’m blown away anew at the engineering and mix. Immaculate.

In keeping with the theme, this year’s developers keynote by Vogels will be authored with AI.

“Queueing at scale; my time at Reinvent.”

To the people who dismiss AI as autocomplete, I can only say that sufficiently advanced autocomplete is indistinguishable from AGI.

"Your approach controller into SFO this evening will be Steven, father of two; his GoFundMe is RealSteveATC74."

For everyone worried about the AI takeover (myself included), it is perhaps comforting that enshittification is coming for AI, too, in the form of selling "ads" that no doubt will be subtle and sway AI responses one way or another without being obviously ads.

“Authoritarians always target art first. They do so, because art and history are enemies of the myths a regime needs to survive." From my new TIME piece on Donald Trump’s campaign to defund the arts and rewrite our history. The stakes could not be higher.

More like a topical allusion

“We want to reserve the right to rule differently should a different party come into power.”

A rare sighting of a thoughtful and persuasive essay in the wild. Hopefully it catches the attention of decision makers.

Just in: FCC demands Disney remake all Star Wars movies with very different endings.

This freedom feels funny.

It completely tracks that the biggest technological breakthrough of these times is an algorithm for telling plausible lies.

Seems like if we just had gun laws for dudes under 30 we’d get 90% of the way there.

Mike Judge found this plot point too implausible.

I genuinely think one thing that trips up folks on the left is that they can't imagine not sharing certain core values. Lemme explain. Here's an intuition pump: Say you're in negotiations with counterparty X. And there are two possible deals on the table ...

Ruin a book by adding "Tom Clancy's" Tom Clancy's Inferno

Make no mistake, the people shaping our future as a country right now owe at least some of their dysfunction to James Dobson. It’s hard to overestimate the harm he did to every single one of us.

Yeah, I mean, what's up with those downtrodden anyway? Why didn't they just, like, do more? 🤦

Trump has announced his new commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I just can’t even.

America is beautiful, contradictory, unfinished. I am proud of our country even as we constantly strive to make it better, to protect and deepen our democracy, to fulfill its promise for each and every person who calls it home. Happy Independence Day. No Kings in America.

In my next life/job I’m coming back as an FP zealot and it’s going to be amazing.

Great thread from Dr. Volts himself.

Donald gets his hands on the money supply; what could go wrong!

Group sports pulls together two of my least favorite things: sweating, and other people.