Sometimes I try to do actual work on my Windows machines, mostly because I hate the idea of having fancy NVIDIA GPUs around just so I can have prettier skies in Starfield. macOS on Apple Silicon is still the best all-around environment, but here are some things I truly appreciate about Windows 11:

And Matt Damon is, canonically, pasty, so makeup or CGI would only make things worse. They had one job — cast Oscar Isaac, for he is the go-to actor who is not pasty — and they blew it

Claude drugs will be enormous horse pills, but mostly placebos, because the real drugs are too dangerous for anyone but a select list of partners.

Know what bothers me about Claude Design? It's not just the generic, template-y look, the obsession with eyebrow headings and numbered cards, the same warm grays everywhere… It's that, if you give Claude copy, you can't trust it not to rewrite stuff.

This is a great question and also a great example of how marketing hype has mixed up technical and practical terms such that nobody knows anything Here's my rubric 🧵

Sara Joy ☠️@sjoy.lol · last mo.

Are live subtitling and image description powered by LLMs also considered generative AI? Or can we separate them out as "descriptive" AI? And another branch is "agentic" AI, right? Or do they all overlap? Descriptive AI is an accessibility win. Maybe agentic, too. Generative can get in the sea.

Shake Shack has a special BBQ baby back rib sandwich right now. Conceptually it’s their version of a McRib, except the pork is juicy and crispy, like pork confit on a potato bun. There’re also special spicy fries served with a ranch mayonnaise, and a wooden fork like street cart frites in Europe.

It’s always so exciting visiting NYC from New Jersey because you can never be sure how long it’ll take to get home on the train. Sure, usually it’s about 35-45 minutes. But some days it’s 3-4 hours! You never know!

Some things about online content creation and self-promotion I don't love: 1. You need to post a lot. There's so much stuff out there. People who rise above the transom tend to be folks who are posting constantly — "maximizing turns at bat", you might say.

The wolf-crying AI safety rhetoric presumed that nobody would ever try to regulate the tech industry, because so far no one has. They didn’t count on the Trump admin noticing that the industry claiming to have information nukes relies on a lot of foreign workers.

Dare Obasanjo@carnage4life.bsky.social · last mo.

OpenAI has shared the system card for GPT 5.6 and the key message is it’s dangerous but not THAT dangerous. I expect all the major AI companies will pivot their safety messaging in this direction now it’s clear the Trump administration is willing to block their broad release.

I'm at @typographicsnyc.bsky.social today — if you follow me on here or know me IRL, flag me down! I will likely be very reserved and autistic, but I will give you @bitsandletters.com pencils and a warm hello. 😅

I spent a chunk of today using @mattpocock.com’s AI skills — especially `/grill-with-docs` — to flesh out two apps I’ve been trying to make progress on. For most of the day I was excited by the progress I seemed to be making. But:

circle back next quarter

CNBC Make It@cnbcmakeit.cnbc.com · 2mo ago

Add these 4 words to your vocabulary right now, experts say: They can make you more influential at work

I’m seeing more discourse about how AI has made it almost free to build an MVP or write a first draft, but no easier (and probably harder) to find customers or audiences. Good. But that AI makes what passes for creation so cheap has still probably ruined people’s sense of effort being valuable.

"Welcome to Kansas City, where Ecuador has struggled to score against Curaçao." Meanwhile, across town, Samantha was also struggling with curaçao, and she, too, was trying to score

In a product newsletter I subscribe to, the author recently shared a link to a chat with Claude _three times_ in <500 words. He says this chat with an AI is more valuable than a Harvard MBA for understanding brand and marketing. Given space for actual insight or a real CTA, he linked to Claude.

One problem with calling things “slop” is that you have to have taste to identify slop. A lot of people lack good taste; this is where the slop comes from. But everyone wants to get in on the latest word trend, so they just start calling things slop, diluting the power of the word.

This is a good thread, and it’s worth naming _why_ companies fall into this kind of stupidly huge ambition: shareholders.

Cyd Harrell@cydharrell.bsky.social · 2mo ago

going to sound cranky & old af, but I actually think this kind of monstrous, undifferentiated, unsupported ambition is a huge part of our problem everyone doesn't just want to be *a* platform, most of them want to be *the* platform everyone wants to "transform" something (improve is not enough)

legitimate question

Brandon Williams@stupidartpunk.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Omph

It's giving Theranos.

AI design be like

Peaches come from a bag They were put there by a hag In a room beneath the town And if I had my little way I'd move to Widow's Bay And make a covenant with a deeeeeeemon

Installed a local LLM on my Framework laptop, unfortunately, it's useless garbage that can't answer The Question

Fun fact: They tried for years to replicate GBBO in America and finally just started flying Americans to England to be judged by Paul & Prue for the Roku-exclusive American Baking Show

Laurie Voss@seldo.com · 2mo ago

Great American bake off, but polite and supportive and low stakes like the British version but more so.

Wonderful thread about managing and taking care of one's team during times of change. I'll just add: whatever you think is the point of human existence, it involves living and experiencing the world. But AI as currently framed treats humans as an annoying cost center. This is hard to reconcile.

Nicole Sullivan@nicolesullivan.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I want to talk about being a software engineering manager in a world where AI is changing everything all at once. First, change is hard on humans. Even good change is stressful. People are built for survival, which means: if you aren’t dying, keep doing whatever already “works”

Pondering the fact that "website agency" can mean a room full of cool folks making silly, pretty brochure sites full of heavy videos and React fuckery. "Content operations consultancy" is more like what I'm trying to do — and what most clients need — but no one knows what that is.

New pastime: making the most expensive and powerful AI model research its own limitations

WE'RE DOING IT LIVE! Tomorrow at 1pm EDT I'm going to livestream building a new feature for my Astro + Sanity website using Codex and various other tips and tricks. Should be fun! Sign up here: btslttrs.com/codex-astro...

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Bits&Letters // Codex + Astro + Sanity Demo. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Bits&Letters // Codex + Astro + Sanity Demo. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

us06web.zoom.us

New blog post looking at the big differences in outcomes between teams that are excitedly diving in to try out new AI tools, and teams who are having AI forced on them by managers. Check out the post and let me know what you think: www.bitsandletters.com/ideas/ai-an...

Thoughts and prayers to anyone who had money on “macOS 27 Big Bear” in their office WWDC predictions pool

Lest you think Google's the only search engine peddling AI slop, here DuckDuckGo is mistaking a bug asking for WSL support in Codex for that feature existing already