a text from @quinnypig.com describing his layover at the Denver International Airport:

I really wish everyone could experience a group of 8 year old girls sing-yelling about their ‘napalm era’ while they hold hands roller skating KPop Demon Hunters-themed parties at the roller rink are a vibe

I wonder if anyone has ever joined the PTA just because they want to have input on the fonts used for flyers?

AI tools have made it easier than ever to feed the snake. But until the rest of the system learns to digest as quickly as it swallows, speed gains stay stuck in the middle. redmonk.com/rstephens/20...

I have the ducktales theme song stuck in my head thanks to @kateholterhoff.com and I'm bringing you all down with me. wooo-Ooo!

London is amazing. Love this city so much. The incredible diversity is a feature, not a bug. Always has been.

having autism is actually fine. the Tylenol and vaccination stuff is bullshit, obvi, but also: it’s okay to have autism. to all my friends and loved ones on the spectrum feeling attacked by this discourse, please remember you are gifts to the world. ❤️❤️

While @mongodb.bsky.social AMP doesn’t represent vertical integration between the database and the app platform in the direct sense, it’s absolutely a move towards database players taking more ownership of the application stack. redmonk.com/rstephens/20...

My willingness to share gift links on articles is almost entirely outweighed by my extremely strong preference for only sharing clean URLs that have all the tracking data stripped out.

as a parent I’ve had a lot of depressing things-my-kids-left-on-their-plates meals, but “I guess I can just eat these Lucky Charms that had all the marshmallows picked out for dinner” is particularly bleak

I wish I could convey the absolute power the axolotl has over the K-5 demographic in our neighborhood. Axolotl shirts. Stickers. Toys. Stuffies. Axolotl drawings gifted to friends. I truly couldn’t count how many axolotl coloring pages my kids have done. All hail the all-powerful axolotl.

Age 4 is a very tricky for determining whether something is a legitimate question or a joke. When someone asks out of the blue “Mom, why can you never eat a starfish?” it really is unclear whether this is a setup for a punchline or the start of a jillion whys.

They should sell couches like they sell cars, with performance stats. But instead of horsepower or MPG It’s just stats about how many loads of laundry waiting to be folded that it can comfortably hold.

Our industry has moved from ‘still defining an agent’ at the start of 2025 to ‘building things that can actually build things’ by mid-year. Here are some of the agentic demos that impressed me over the year, including @augmentcode.com @kiro.dev and @systeminit.com redmonk.com/rstephens/20...

does anyone else sing "Remember Me" from Coco every time they click that box during a log in flow?

"I should make myself real food for breakfast instead of just eating a handful of pretzels" > begins the process of making real food > get hungry while cooking > eat a handful of pretzels to tide me over until the omelette is ready

Dad: “we need to learn to go with the flow” 4 YO: “I don’t know what that means” Dad: “it means we handle things no matter what happens” 4 YO: “BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN!” (a child has never been more mine)

Every week that goes by without a 'Cake Pop Demon Hunters' collab makes me increasingly annoyed: give us a Rumi-themed cake pop with a purple icing braid down the middle. Normally I don't explicitly cheer for blatant capitalism, but there are so many dollars to be made here!

Read this while you drink your coffee this morning

Did you hear about the new AWS free tier? With all the AI announcements coming out of the @awscloud.bsky.social NY Summit last month maybe you missed it, but the "no surprise billing" change is a big enough deal that it's worth resurfacing. redmonk.com/videos/the-n...

Just in case anyone else's iphone randomly started replacing "the" with "Theresa": Settings > General > Transfer or Reset Phone > Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary Theresa colleagues you email about Theresa meeting will thank you. :)

Wrapping paper tube sword fights with your kid, choreographed as dance battles, set to your favorite songs from high school

Great episode from @rstephens.me and @kat.lol. Takeaways: - your OSS project is not k8s - you need to market your OSS project - not dealing with jerks is a great way to avoid burnout and so much more! Watch/listen here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOB3...

Not sure my 4 year hears a difference between “K-Pop” and “cake pop.” Not gonna lie, I would watch Cake Pop Demon Hunters.

Perhaps vibe coding can scaffold code quickly or spin up small projects, but at scale it has significant limitations. Spec-driven development has emerged as a potential response to this gap. redmonk.com/rstephens/20...

'why is my computer so slow?' activity monitor > it's your browser, dummy 'which of these tabs is the problem?" close many things activity monitor > it's still your browser, dummy 'oh no... I had a second secret browser window full of 80% the same tabs that were open in the other one'

“THEY’RE MY FEET! I DO WHAT I WANT!” It’s nice to know that no matter what the work day throws at me, nothing else today will be harder than getting my 4 year old to wear his shoes.

I was instructed to find a ~1 minute long promotional soundbite of my conversation with @kat.lol, but I feel pretty confident I can sell you with just 5 seconds. Come hear the whole thing, it's a delight: redmonk.com/videos/kat-c...

Just had to console my four-year old because “Jupiter has more moons than us and that’s not fair!”

The exact opposite of “fresh clean clothes from the dryer” is “your kid’s beloved shirt pulled out of the freezer, where you put it to try to harden the bubblegum before you try to scrape the goop off with a butter knife.”

Caught the end of the WBNA Fever-Aces game and wanted to make sure everybody (and by everybody I mean @sogrady.org) knows the Fever had Stranger Things jerseys on tonight. www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/202...

I was just getting a toehold post-college when the 2008 recession hit, and I had job after job fall out from underneath me over the span of 2 years. It was rough at the time, but now I'm really glad that my first major career lesson was: you can love your job but THE JOB DOES NOT LOVE YOU BACK

It would be awesome if the word 'bashful' meant what it sounds like it should mean, and we find out all these seemingly timid, shy people are secretly just destroying people left and right. "I'm so bashful - I just bashfulled three people in that meeting."

High Way To The Mangerzone

I regularly think about the part of Where the Red Fern Grows where Billy traps the raccoon in the log with angled nails. He lures the raccoon to reach in for something shiny and then the raccoon can’t get its arm out again. The book says it could get unstuck if it dropped the shiny treasure, but

Two truths and a lie answer revealed!

Would you like to play Two Truths and a Lie with my four-year old? The topic is “our commute to daycare” You ready?

I legitimately love watching all the passenger reunions happening at the gate right now as everyone from our diverted flight tries once again to make it to Newark. All the strangers from yesterday's flight became single-serving friends.

The last time my flight was delayed I ended up seated next to William Shatner. Today my flight is delayed and another passenger two seats away from me in the lounge decided to start practicing the flute. You win some you lose some.

I have a longer piece coming with my thoughts about playing with @awscloud.bsky.social's new IDE while it was in private beta, but for now wanted to share that it's live and available for you to kick the tires in preview.

“Wear dresses with pockets!” they said. Well I just found a partially eaten lollipop that my four-year old apparently stashed in my pocket for later, and maybe there‘s something to be said for the pocketless patriarchy.

I really need to start attaching an AirTag to my coffee cup

I love everything about this essay from @charity.wtf charity.wtf/2025/07/09/t...

Hear @bobquillin.bsky.social, CEO & Co-Founder of @controltheory.bsky.social, chat with @rstephens.me on the MonkCast. They discuss #observability including the importance of feedback loops & how ControlTheory aims to democratize instrumentation through @opentelemetry.io redmonk.com/blog/2025/06...

Pre- @redmonk.com Beer tacos in the Mission District 🌮 See you at Shotwells w @rstephens.me @monkchips.com @sogrady.org

Nemeses unite! #redmonkbeers

I picked the middle of the national heat wave to remember how much I love soup. I've eaten soup every day this week.

There are few things that bring me little jolts of delight quite like the epic talk entrances that @reconditerose.bsky.social orchestrates for her Valkey talks at LF events.

Update: we are going to need a lot of magic eraser, and possibly even trim touch up paint, but I refuse to color drench

I have read this entire paper - unlike, I assume, most of the RTs of it on this platform - and the claims it is making about the measurement of internal processing are absolutely baffling to me.