I've been playing Cursed Words on my day off. A boggle-style roguelike, gradually escalating into totally incomprehensible chaos? It is so much fun!

I saw this referred to as the Strait of Warm Ooze. Very good.

f'n lmao

Goddamnit right in the feels shawnsmucker.substack.com/p/please-use...

Vermeer’s Girl With The Pearl Earring will be shown in Osaka, later this year, and the press conference was as Japanese as you’d expect #Vermeer

this little article is sixteen years old today: alistapart.com/article/resp... feels deeply weird that it’s that old. the pub date feels like it’s two lifetimes ago and two weeks ago, all at the same time.

A link to the study

"It's 2026 and women are still asked to teach others to think a little bit and not be a prick" ohhelloana.blog/woman-in-tech/ 😔

TIL crows only *look* black to us — they’re actually very colorful in ways human eyes are unable to perceive. 🤯 Remember that next time people can’t see your “colors”. Some colors just require different eyes.

This does not prove Claude is capable of thought, it merely proves that Richard Dawkins is incapable of it

CSS nesting is now Baseline 🎉 Write nested selectors directly in CSS — just like Sass, but natively. .card { color: black; &:hover { color: blue; } .title { font-weight: bold; } } No preprocessor needed. Learn more 👇 developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/...

It should be obvious by now, but we really should be less dependent on oil.

New — an analysis of hundreds of thousands of interactions between chatbots + users who reported experiencing psychological harm / delusions after intensive AI use found that chatbots often reinforced delusional beliefs and claimed to be sentient: futurism.com/artificial-i...

there was also a Stanford study that found that a surge in AI slop by lazy people actually created significantly more work for others who had to decipher and correct it this "I'm being efficient" (but not really) vibes well with the American obsession with artifice and appearing productive

Replacing old code with new code, only to end up keeping the old code around for compatibility reasons, is like when you say goodbye to someone and then walk in the same direction as them.

I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it won’t be just as bad for those.

Seems worth noting that ChatGPT Health failed to identify medical emergencies more than half the time in a recent study. The company that made that product just signed a deal with the "Department of War" and said trust us, it's all very safe and ethical.

Wow...

Here's some more bsky.app/profile/skwi...

With the increase in AI assisted or authored coding, I think/hope we will see an increased interest in specification/QA tooling and processes.

*my biggest and most exhausted sigh* "As AI Enters the Operating Room, Reports Arise of Botched Surgeries and Misidentified Body Parts" www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Hey, writing community. Is it just me, or is it getting harder to find a publisher who takes a firm stance on AI and doesn't try to lock you into Amazon exclusively? I just want my book to be published with a real ISBN and real artwork. It's a mix of weird fiction and fantasy. Who should I query?

The company I'm currently working at is hiring Haskell engineers, as well as SREs. It's a nice place to work at, but you have to be UK-based as far as I know. Please message me for details if you're interested! #FediHire

Configuring Neovim is my happy place...

"some tools emphasise gamification at the expense of education, meaning that children focus more on winning points than mastering concepts" cc @alfiekohn.bsky.social

"Software is no longer seen as an asset, as something to care for, to maybe even take pride in. It’s a throw-away product. Like a napkin. Just get one quick, wipe your mouth and throw it away. Like a novelty t-shirt." tante.cc/2026/01/15/s...

you’re right! it feels mostly awful to Go Online™, these days. the internet in a sad state, for reason after reason after reason. but there is a way to fix it; to trade the voidful howling for a quiet & joyful song. here’s how to win the war for the soul of the internet, and build the Web We Want.

Cameras, lenses, framing, and everything in-between have fascinated me for many year. This morning I read Bartosz Ciechanowski's article on the subject. It's the best explainer I've seen. The interactivity really sells it. Great article to kick off your year with: ciechanow.ski/cameras-and-...

I got this email: "Rich, Your creation of Clojure <sycophantic blather worthy of a third grader's homework assignment to write a letter to a public figure you don't know, using sources you don't understand, to express an emotion unfelt, with no intention whatsoever> Claude Haiku 4.5" Thanks AI!:

Spot on! For those who don't know, Rich Hickey is the creator of the Clojure programming language. gist.github.com/richhickey/e...

December 25th. The day the Fellowship departs Rivendell to destroy the One Ring. Whatever you celebrate, may you have the courage to take the first steps to defy and endure against the dark, and rekindle light into the world.

Flow Control: a programmer's text editor https://lobste.rs/s/8o9mcu ##vim ##zig ##editors

😆

Fizz Buzz in CSS. Why not! susam.net/fizz-buzz-in...

Quick tutorial to get started on Org Social https://lobste.rs/s/lce1ks ##emacs

📦 penpot / penpot ⭐ 41,120 (+32) 🗒 Clojure Penpot: The open-source design tool for design and code collaboration

Okay National Museum of Japanese History You can’t try to show the complexity of Japanese Bunraku puppetry by showing a transformation head AND MAKE IT MOTION ACTIVATED WITH NO SIGN

🔥

We've launched a new page that outlines what we're trying to do with open working projects and importantly, *why* we're doing it. This isn't the internet we want and we're going to do everything to make sure we're making things better, not chasing profit over anything. piccalil.li/support-picc...

Watch out folks, there's a CVE for the Erlang zip module. Update to the latest patch release when you can cna.erlef.org/cves/cve-202...

First Father's Day as a dad. So proud. 🥹

💡 CSS Tip! Do you know safe alignment? It's when you make sure your overflowing content is always fully accessible on scroll regardless of the alignment configuration. css-tip.com/safe-align/ It's not something new but you are probably not aware about it.

LOL

🔗 “Intelligence has never been an objective quality (…). It is a political device that preserves power and care for those deemed worthy of it, and which simultaneously withdraws such care from everyone else.” — @aworkinglibrary.com aworkinglibrary.com/writing/tool...

“A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.” — Alan Perlis #elm #clojure

I am Syntax nomad. Unleash your inner Duke and win a limited-edition T-shirt! #Java30WithIntelliJIDEA www.jetbrains.com/lp/java-30/s...

got to build a lot of fun interactives for this one 😇

And if you are a person who likes slides, here are the slides for the talk. 😁 noti.st/matthiasott/...

"I’m not even going to mention at this point how AI can’t get this right, either. Of course it can’t; it doesn’t possess the capacity for empathy." It wasn’t the idea that failed: it was the execution blog.nordcraft.com/it-wasnt-the...