girlfriend: did you submit your talk proposal? me: yes! (immediately double checking because I don't trust myself) me: WAIT, I filled the entire CFP out and then forgot to hit the submit button??! NOOOO (its fine, I submitted it, but whew, ADHD strikes again)

I've been mildly stressed about not having my home office yet, so my amazing girlfriend @mara.bsky.social helped me put it together finally and I am so happy to have my ridiculously over engineered audio setup + three monitor rig going on again ❤️ Now I just need a whiteboard... or four...

I showed Gas Town to my business partner Rich and he said “oh it's SOAP/WSDL for agents” and I am still processing that.

This book has been one of my favourites to read and contribute to. I’m really looking forward to seeing the entire book in the flesh! (And speaking of forwards… Be sure to read the forward in this book. I might be biased but I think it’ll be great 👀)

Just read this from @hazelweakly.me. Now, I can't wait to read the rest of Hazel's writing. If you're into #designsystems give it a look...and I'm guessing this line will resonate: "people who become known for seeing systems often become in charge of them." hazelweakly.me/blog/to-be-a...

GenAI tooling is weird. It’s “just” an intervention. Because it’s a tool. Any tool introduction is an intervention. Which means they work the same way any intervention work: 1. Understand the preconditions and culture norms required for success 2. Set people up for success 3. Respond to feedback

How come nylons only rip right before you’re going somewhere you need to look cute? Can they smell excitement or something? UGH

One if the toughest things to judge when considering a new job or a new role is, basically, “Will this crush my soul?” Here’s a simple list of questions you can ask to help improve the odds that your next gig will be less soul-crushing: anildash.com/2026/01/12/w...

Where’s the “they’ll join but muted and with camera off and they’re just there to talk massive shit about the office politics and drama on signal with their other work besties” label? (Disclaimer: I am uhhh not in this picture. Yeah. Totally)

A single observability strategy often fails as companies grow. Discover how to build a meta-strategy that adapts from startup to enterprise. By @hazelweakly.me, thanks to @embrace.io

Me when I just finished an entire book chapter about evaluating the quality of our evidence and designing to measure change and my tech social media is full of people angry at bad measures of change

It’s also, I think, one of the reasons AI is doing so well. There’s legitimate value to be had, sure, but when the vast majority of tech is one flavour of a scam or another, well… It all but guarantees that AI is sold by scammers and to scammers. The utility of it is a happy accident, not an intent

This is exactly what I mean when I say that UX has no value when the business model is not "make a thing people want and sell it for more than it costs to make." The top 10 most profitable tech business models these days are different kinds of scam. You don't need design for that.

There's much talk these days about what's required for "real" intelligence, such as world models and the like. One thing we know about the human evolution of it: it required/requires emotion. That may have been better appreciated in 1938 than today. archive.org/details/in.e...

When a public good is framed as too expensive it's stopped being seen as a public good. The university is so obviously a place and idea that should be owned by and for the public. 💔

My prediction is slightly different. I mean, it’s mostly this, but also there’s gonna be a very weird thing happening over the next few years: AI is horrifically inefficient and too expensive. It’s just subsidised beyond belief. But that’ll end shortly (it kinda has to?). What happens after?

I really do feel justified studying what exacerbates skill and role change identity threat and what protects against it wrt AI in software in 2023

Honestly we were always here, but you can cover up a multitude of sins by keeping humans in the margins just enough for a little plausible deniability. Once you remove that, though, the hard questions *must* be asked They always should’ve been asked, mind you. But now they have to be

I have never run a panel sourced, vendor survey project. I have always done careful and intentional recruitment from inside of communities. I defended this as a research leader when it was baffling to eg marketing and other functions. And meanwhile academics look down a lot of applied work. Well

Unrelated ag fact: there are stingless Melipona bees that make honey! Sometimes people think "I should raise those! Why do we even bother with honeybees, if we can just raise bees that don't sting?" Then they try raising the stingless bees, & find out why almost nobody does that

If I want to give talks on sociotechnical strategy, organisational design, or complex tradeoffs, what conferences might actually appreciate that?

New year, new newsletter! This one's all about the Liskov Substitution Principle and how it applies to more than just object oriented programming! buttondown.com/hillelwayne/...

Slept in my bed instead of on a random IKEA mattress on the floor for the first time in months. I missed this 😭

Oh look its a visualisation of me in a solo project that gets turned into a “group” project

Recommended read: off-the-shelf governance models for small FOSS projects. antonin.delpeuch.eu/posts/off-th...

"What is the ROI of UX?" is shaped like a question, but it is actually two hostile premises: 1) that UX is sufficiently marginal for its value to be openly questioned 2) that the asker has the authority to judge this question, and practitioners are merely consulted on it, as a matter of courtesy

If you've missed this piece about the different modes of empiricism in computer science versus the social sciences, I can highly recommend it. doomscrollingbabel.manoel.xyz/p/the-empiri...

A few years ago, I read an article from @johncutle.fish and @tomdkerwin.bsky.social on how leaders navigate uncertainty and ambiguity. It inspired me to write my answers down to a new section of questions every few years. This is part two! It's been fun to look back and see my thinking mature

this does help

A few years ago, I read an article from @johncutle.fish and @tomdkerwin.bsky.social on how leaders navigate uncertainty and ambiguity. It inspired me to write my answers down to a new section of questions every few years. This is part two! It's been fun to look back and see my thinking mature

My wish for 2026 for academia specifically, is to push back against fascist framings, reasoning, and industry capture in our universities. My suggestions are below. But please do anything you can if you're an academic. 🌿 Even if it's tiny. 🐁 Every pebble helps build a damn against fascist forces. 🪨

Y’know, the recent discussion about the US world dominance relying on the petrodollar has me thinking: it sure is a coincidence that, since 2012, we’ve rocketed from one horrifically energy inefficient techno-fascist bubble to another without pause. Each outpacing renewables like clockwork Huh 👀

“The neuron teaches us something uncomfortable: computation isn't a lens revealing neural truth—it's a filter that shows us only the biology that looks like a computer. Everything else gets discarded before we even begin our analysis.” Fascinating read.

I don’t want generative AI I just want my phone to be able to use context for good instead of just evil. You already know what grocery stores I go to and can predict fucking pregnancies, but “remind me to get eggs at the grocery store” is beyond the limits of advanced human technology? Skill issue

This is so real. One of my most unwavering beliefs is that humans are, at the core, good and want to do good things in the world I know it can be hard to believe. Especially given the news right now, but it’s true. A few clowns don’t change the majority

For the record, active learning strategies help people do most of the things people are fearful developers won't do if they code with AI: - make plans for testing solutions - get exposure to diverse examples - question your own thinking - deliberate practice within small worked examples

I want a giant fuckin treehouse with a massive parkour play structure in it going straight through the living room and second storey, and I also want a secret underground tunnel that goes to my laboratory where I do awesome laboratory things Practically speaking: A ballroom for hosting swing dances

Waiting for my follower count to hit 8765 so I can write the most millennial post ever (just the numbers “309”)

"Well, now China can just invade people!🤡" is the wrong take, and is again, completely US-pilled. It's centered on the idea that China can't think of what to do on its own, or considers itself limited to the set of rules determined by the US. It does not. China gained in much more important ways.

We this, we that. You know what, fuck that. The US has never been a united country. It’s a place built with the sole purpose of enabling white supremacy in the most destructive ways possible. Black, Brown and Native folks have been screaming this for centuries. Fuck outta here with ‘we.’

New Year’s Eve was a lot of fun! 🥰

We really need to come up with better metaphors for AI agents than junior developers and interns. It’s far more of a reflection of how disrespectfully we treat those roles than it is a useful metaphor for how agents behave

This is one of the nightmares of modern security. We need to know where every single one of those is, what we're trusting it to do and not do, and how to make it stop *immediately*. And every time someone wants to use a new one we need to figure out whether we can trust it as far as we can throw it

I need a deep read about how society faceplanted into as much ableism as they could justify, with individualistic brain rot narratives, IMMEDIATELY after a disabling pandemic, as a just world hypothesis piece of bullshit

today is for the ladies to have fun. its new years eve not new year's steve

Accidentally wrote a mini essay on LI: Carrot-eaters and the psychological essentialism that's smuggled in when we divide people into technical and not-technical www.linkedin.com/posts/drcath...