Close to last call if you need some festively appropriate (mostly) music for the next few days!

Boon Sheridan v2.6@boonsheridan.com · 9mo ago

It's time for my 22nd(!) annual Xmess mix. Construct your own tiny, festive reality with the sonic equivalent of finding a half-eaten candy cane in a coat pocket from 1987. Confuse your in-laws or use it to soundtrack a festive mental breakdown in a mall parking lot. Happy Holidays!

It's time for my 22nd(!) annual Xmess mix. Construct your own tiny, festive reality with the sonic equivalent of finding a half-eaten candy cane in a coat pocket from 1987. Confuse your in-laws or use it to soundtrack a festive mental breakdown in a mall parking lot. Happy Holidays!

Xmess 2025 A Diorama of Cheer

Construct your own tiny, festive reality with this mix, the sonic equivalent of finding a half-eaten candy cane in a coat pocket from 1987. We kick off with Sammy Davis Jr. selling heartburn relief,

soundcloud.com

Proposing a new principle - Tyrell’s Law: Any person that can be synthesized, will. Preferably at scale.

We have some news to share with you. 🥄 Today we took legal action to challenge our termination, filing an appeal with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. We did this because we believe the elimination of 18F violated safeguards that exist to protect a nonpartisan civil service.

18F files legal challenge

A statement about 18F’s appeal filed with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.

18f.org

This week I learned the band Trio intentionally put “skips” in one of their songs. The songwriter thought the song was ‘too beautiful’ and needed to be ‘destroyed’ a bit. It took me going through digital copies and buying and LP to figure it out. www.stephan-remmler.de/dokuwiki/dok...

“You may have love You may have hate You may be the President Of The United States But even you, you can't sit and hide While the world's resources die” m.youtube.com/watch?v=9l8b...

The Alarm - Absolute Reality (Official Music Video) [2018 Remaster]

YouTube video by The Alarm

m.youtube.com

RIP Mike Peters. The Alarm were a staple of early mixtapes. ❤️ youtu.be/1tw_hbYYbbE

Fun fact, it's possible the domain "climatecore" was established because some folks might not have known the pronunciation of the word "corps" was "core." Just slightly possible.

Federal US domain bot@fed-us-domain-bot.bsky.social · last yr.

❌ NOTICE Federal US website newly deleted. https://climatecore.gov Action taken by the Corporation for National and Community Service (AmeriCorps) at or around 2025-04-25 06:11:08.

The Urn reversed, gonna be one of those days, I guess.

This one stings a bit. Building and launching ACC's site was a stressfest, but going from zero to site in a few months was a highlight of my time at 18F. I learned so much about building with constraints, limited resources, bubble gum, scotch tape, adrenaline, and caffeine.

Federal US domain bot@fed-us-domain-bot.bsky.social · last yr.

❌ NOTICE Federal US website newly deleted. https://acc.gov Action taken by the Corporation for National and Community Service (AmeriCorps) at or around 2025-04-25 06:11:08.

This is perfect. I hadn't heard of "vibe coding," but it's precisely the thing I'm worried about with government development and AI. Coding with "vibes" is the approach that gets people dropped from benefits (or worse).

Vibe coding - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The ultimate goal of a market intentionally drowning itself in AI and SaaS methodologies is a camera that costs nothing to own, but scans each photograph you take for copyrighted logos or phrases, then charges a dollar for each such photo you wish to keep, and another for each you wish to share.

I didn't know I needed a sun and steel-drenched dancefloor reedit of Bruce Hornsby and the Range's "The Way It Is," but my day is already so much better for it.

The Way It Is, by Psychemagik

from the album Undercover Lovers Vol.5

psychemagik.bandcamp.com

The new Walt McClements album, On a Painted Ocean has been a welcome companion the last few weeks. It's full of minor disturbances in the surface of the day that spiral out into the wee hours.

On a Painted Ocean, by Walt McClements

7 track album

waltmcclements.bandcamp.com

Honestly, I expect this sort of project any day now.

My new paper describes why the “business ontology” is a fallacy, and how the business-centered technocratic approach to digital service delivery made agencies like USDS uniquely vulnerable to takeover under a malicious regime. journals.library.wustl.edu/pollib/artic...

Here's a puzzler: Why would the State Department take down all its policy pages, positions, and reports on AI at the beginning of April of this year? Wipe the slate clean of all previous AI work. 🤔

Artificial Intelligence (AI) - United States Department of State

Together with our allies and partners, the Department of State promotes an international policy environment and works to build partnerships that further our capabilities in AI technologies, protect ou...

web.archive.org

Tonight’s entertainment: Tommy Lee Jones’ 4th best movie. Linda Hamilton, Robert Vaughn and THE Bubba Smith in a small role. The only criticism is the soundtrack is missing the John Carpenter synth vibes. (I know it’s Lalo Schifrin but it needs more high energy vibes.)

Black Moon Rising (1986) ⭐ 5.5 | Action, Crime, Thriller

1h 40m | R

m.imdb.com

Also consider this a full-throated, blue-ribbon, star on the fridge, high-five endorsement for @arnicas.bsky.social's newsletter at arnicas.substack.com.

Things I Think Are Awesome | Lynn Cherny | Substack

Twice a month recs on creative AI, games and narrative tools, fun NLP and data science, generative art and text, SF/fantasy books & tv, poetry, oddities & folklore. Click to read Things I Think Are Aw...

arnicas.substack.com

Lynn Cherny@arnicas.bsky.social · last yr.

OLMoTrace, from A2I, is really useful-- see the source training documents that contain strings from the output of the LLM. Doing it with generated stories is especially enlightening (even when we know it's often regurgitating). playground.allenai.org

I love this SO much. Traceability to source documents is the sort of feature I dreamed about when thinking about government AI tools. The ability to help identify, amplify, or de-emphasize docs in the training data? Swoooon.

Lynn Cherny@arnicas.bsky.social · last yr.

OLMoTrace, from A2I, is really useful-- see the source training documents that contain strings from the output of the LLM. Doing it with generated stories is especially enlightening (even when we know it's often regurgitating). playground.allenai.org

Bad AAPL

Sharing a story from 2021 for no real reason. It was an interesting take back then. Wonder how it's aged?

How Biden’s infrastructure plan may fracture the nation’s colleges

Where community colleges love seeing the administration push for free education, some four-year schools see an "existential threat."

politico.com

It HAS been nice to go back through 7 years of bookmarks and see what I was reading, watching, and listening to. Remember "peak tech conference" of the 20-teens? A company called Fetch posted a Google sheet of all the events they were tracking in 2018! Warning: This may cause a wave of nostalgia.

Fetch Events — A curated list of the best design and tech events

docs.google.com

It's wild to remember the days when we thought the internet was forever. In 2010, Eric Schmidt discussed the right to change your name when you came of age to avoid your "youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites." It was so "this is going on your permanent record!"

Google CEO Suggests You Change Your Name To Escape His Permanent Record

Google CEO Suggests You Change Your Name To Escape His Permanent Record

huffpost.com

The cult of velocity certainly has the upper hand of late. There's also something in the expectations for digital tools and services has been downgraded to "practically disposable" so time and care are ditched.

Ron Bronson@ronbronson.com · last yr.

Design is being reshaped by people who no longer (never) believe in maintenance, only in momentum.

I still can’t get over there’s a paint color called “Dorian Gray.”

Dorian Gray SW 7017 | Neutral Paint Colors | Sherwin-Williams

SW 7017 Dorian Gray paint color by Sherwin-Williams is a Neutral paint color used for interior and exterior paint projects. Visualize, coordinate, and order color samples here.

sherwin-williams.com

RIP Dave Andrews, the man behind my favorite basslines. So many Gang of Four and Shriekback tracks to think of, but I always had a soft spot for Low Pop Suicide. LPS filled playlists nicely with funky and angry soundtracks to those early 90s weekends. (Rick Boston was also such a great gent).

Low Pop Suicide - Kiss Your Lips

YouTube video by badtracking

youtube.com

A while back I mentioned I helped to build a government AI tool. DOGE "deleted" (fired) my whole org (@alt18f.bsky.social) and took the tool to become their "AI-first strategy." But what is the strategy? What are they actually planning to do? I’m trying to piece it together. Here’s what I think 🧵

Life is all about finding comfort in the most surprising places.

Elon Musk’s DOGE is gutting the US Digital Service and its citizen-focused approach to tech development is going with it. This week Kate Green and Milo from @altusds.bsky.social join @parismarx.com to discuss how government can build technology differently. Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/269_...