People use a ton of tools already. Convincing them to add something you built to their stack means fighting uphill Wrote about how creating drop-in replacement tools can level that playing field "Rewrite in Rust to make tool go fast" is only part of the story!

The unreasonable effectiveness of drop-in replacements

Building a better tool is not enough

buttondown.com

If you write code for a living you've probably heard a lot about "taste" This newsletter post dives into what to do if everyone is talking about something but no one quite agrees what it means

Cat Hicks@grimalkina.bsky.social · 5d ago

I promise I was looking for the share button before I realized you linked my post @mcmullarkey.bsky.social I really liked this one. Provocative! buttondown.com/datadash/arc...

I promise I was looking for the share button before I realized you linked my post @mcmullarkey.bsky.social I really liked this one. Provocative! buttondown.com/datadash/arc...

Coding taste is like depression

And we should stop pretending otherwise

buttondown.com

Fun post by @randyau.com on the delicacies of testing balance + creating narrative in a world-building game

More fun with world generation

Hi subscribers, I've spent much of this week chipping away at the worldgen game in the small gaps of free time that I have, so here's an update on this bit of silliness. It's gotten to a surprisingly ...

counting-stuff.com

The idea that there's an easy abundance of free resources to learn to code is laughable once you've done what I've done and been a VP of research at a company that helped thousands of people break into tech careers. There's an abundance of *beginner tutorials*

Programming tip: never type out a 10-character command when you could instead press the up arrow for 5 minutes until you find that command in your history

This week on Counting Stuff, how does locating lightning work? There's sensor networks, some run by volunteer hobbyists, that are able to pinpoint where lightning strikes to within a few hundred meters. I dug into how they do that #dataBS www.counting-stuff.com/so-how-does-...

So how does lightning locating work?

Between advanced math and radio sensors, it's possible to locate where lightning strikes from hundreds to thousands of kilometers away. It's wild.

counting-stuff.com

Great thread People focused only on the "irrationality" of talking a guaranteed $50,000 over a 50% chance at $1,000,000 underrate the risk of ruin imo

rain 🌦️@sunshowers.io · 2w ago

One of the things strategy games like slay the spire teach you is that the last HP is the only one that truly matters. More allows you to take on greater risks. Something to think about re the coin flip question

@mcmullarkey.bsky.social has been expanding on comprehension techniques here bsky.app/profile/mcmu...

Michael Mullarkey@mcmullarkey.bsky.social · 2w ago

If you're lucky enough to follow @grimalkina.bsky.social (buy The Psychology of Software Teams!) you've probably bought into self-quizzing as a learning technique My newsletter today gives a little heuristic to improve self-quizzing questions

I'm happy to share `ir`, a new command-line tool for running portable R scripts and Quarto documents. It's inspired by my two favorite parts of `uv`: self-describing scripts and tools you can run without installing first. opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-07...

ir 0.1.0: self-describing R scripts and Quarto documents

`ir` is a new command-line tool for running portable R scripts and rendering Quarto documents whose package requirements, and optional R selection, live inside the file itself.

opensource.posit.co

Not every open-source project wants more contributors right now, and that's fine. Four shapes maintainers run — walled castle, clique, university, hippie commune — and your `CONTRIBUTING.md` is saying the quiet part out loud. No wrong answer, just an honest one. blog.stdlib.io/do-you-want-...

Do you WANT contributors?

Four ways to run an open-source project—castle, clique, university, commune—and which one you're really running.

blog.stdlib.io

I like htmx. I like Rust. I'm going to have to keep myself from using this framework everywhere

AstraKernel 💫@astrakernel.bsky.social · 2w ago

🦀 Topcoat: a framework for building full-stack reactive web apps with Rust - By Tokio team - entirely server-rendered - HTML snippets in the server and adding "reactive instructions" as metadata (similar in idea to HTMX) tokio.rs/blog/2026-07... #rustlang #programming

If you're lucky enough to follow @grimalkina.bsky.social (buy The Psychology of Software Teams!) you've probably bought into self-quizzing as a learning technique My newsletter today gives a little heuristic to improve self-quizzing questions

Quiz yourself on concepts

Why asking yourself "why" will improve your learning process

buttondown.com

Scores of promising projects rot at the bottom of the sea, wrecked by the jagged rocks of measurement error

conputer dipshit@davidcrespo.bsky.social · 2w ago

this is like the rosetta stone for how I went from philosophy to UI development. what people think they believe is very different from what they act like they believe and is highly sensitive to how you ask

when i’m in too deep into a new side project

Jeff Weiss@passionweiss.bsky.social · 3w ago

Herbie Hancock literally in the studio

When I said I was writing regularly again, I meant it! New newsletter where we all admit together that the sensation of "I'm learning everything all at once!!" ≠ actual learning As a 2x+ video tutorial enjoyer, I am kind of devastated

Quiz yourself sooner

Look, I don't want to either There's nothing quite like tearing through a bunch of learning material. Maybe you're a sicko like me and watch video tutorials...

buttondown.com

Two big announcements: 1. I'm looking for my next job. 2. My website is now one of the most "Atmospheric" websites to date, going beyond just @standard.site to include @teal.fm, @anisota.net, custom lexicons, a status bar, data inspector, and more. If you want to work together, get in touch!

I’m looking for my next job — dame.is

Over the past 12 months I designed, built, and launched a dozen apps and experiences on the AT Protocol, including anisota.net, a calmer user interface for Bluesky, and Aturi, a toolkit for navigating...

dame.is

It's launch week for The Psychology of Software Teams and to pour even more jet fuel into your personal launch I have written a full BOOK CLUB GUIDE which can be used by either solo readers or groups :) Free for you to use, share, remix, adapt catharsisinsight.com/book-club-gu...

I'm writing about data, software, and learning regularly again! Come along for the ride as I grapple with not knowing in public

Make beginning less weird

Never easy, and also You can learn a lot about a group by how they treat beginners. Pro-tip, if "beginner energy" reads as an insult that's a bad sign....

buttondown.com

Pre-ordered an exciting book written for my exact weird mix of experiences! Why did it take me until the last day? I point back at that exact weird mix of experiences

Cat Hicks@grimalkina.bsky.social · 3w ago

'Tis the last day to preorder The Psychology of Software Teams! By ordering today you'll join the POST advance squad which comes with benefits like a) I remember every early post forever b) bragging rights c) enormous increases to your persuasion d) a faint glowing aura www.drcathicks.com#book

Game speedruns come in two categories: "holy shit I saved so much time by shooting at this dudes head so fast" and "ok so by performing these 26 buffered inputs I can break through the firmament and traverse through the multiverse and reemerge at a different point skipping this swimming section"

I've worked across a wide variety of organization types and roles, so I feel comfortable saying this with love No one writes as many "I've also cced" emails with no one cced as academics

Linear models are often all you need, and when they're wrong they're *so wrong*

Ashley Watts@ashleylwatts.bsky.social · 4w ago

Along those lines, we shouldn't assume at the outset that the linear model is appropriate for psychopathology data. Applying linear regression in this context resulted in systematic overprediction of associations at both extremes.

Clinical psych grad students learn how to design rigorous studies, master advanced statistics, craft reproducible code, and deliver effective therapy. All at once. A bunch of people work hard to support that learning, and whew what a hard series of asks

Anti-AC discourse is anti-vax discourse in another guise. The data is clear, the objections are rooted in some kind of vague naturalism disguised as principled argument, and real lives are at stake www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

Deaths in France surged 30% during hottest week of record June heatwave

Public health authority says 2,025 excess deaths probably an underestimate and that it expects toll to rise further

theguardian.com

I love what I do now, and diving into this thread took me back to my symptom level research days

Aaron Fisher@aaronjfisher.bsky.social · last mo.

Exciting day. My set-theoretic reconceptualization of the DSM (w/ MDD, GAD, and PTSD as empirical examples) is out today in JPCS, along with four invited commentaries and my response. I'm biased, but I recommend all six papers. I was really jazzed by all four commentaries. 1/25

I'm also taking this approach now and it *rips* polytoken looks great but so far I'm sticking with OpenCode + my customizations as a harness

hailey@hailey.at · last mo.

so, using GLM 5.2 on Umans, this is the first time I am experiencing "oh yea, that's the stuff" feeling using these things. like i've had this feeling before about output quality, yes. but i've never had tps this high _with_ good output quality.

Officially a GLM 5.2 believer Went to test my new harness setup by adding a feature in a forked repo. It surfaced that someone already merged that feature in the upstream repo last week A tool that prevents me from writing unnecessary code >>> a tool that's just "good at coding"

A lot of models have very different people with the same name in their weights, but here I am in Opus 4.8 I'm not sure how to feel about this!

Zeta Of 1@zetaof1.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Guys I'm in the weights (although somehow many models say I'm a TikTok Content Creator or YouTube Streamer?)

I went to American University and live in Mountain Time, none of my life sounds plausible to people outside the US

Paul Ford@ftrain.bsky.social · 2mo ago

mountain time is kind of bullshit. pick a coast and make up your mind.