We've gotta make the Monorail Simpsons episode required viewing for every city councilor in the country. Every single thing he says here is a lie. A Potemkin Village Imaginarium.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 6d ago

Hassett: "Data centers are very good for towns bc they create so many jobs & bring people in with high incomes that can buy houses & stuff like that. So if you take a sleepy town that hasn't seen much in the last 30 years & put a data center there, there are gonna be a bunch of happy residents."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTeg...

Crash Test Dummies - Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm (Official Video)

YouTube video by CrashTestDummiesVEVO

youtube.com

Becky Tyler@beckytylerart.bsky.social · 2w ago

What song did the Sirens sing in The Odyssey? Wrong answers only.

There is nothing the Desk can't handle. 🤘

NPR@npr.org · 3w ago

Napalm Death's ongoing campaign for musical destruction comes to the Desk. The founding fathers of grindcore speed through a sprawling catalog with manic energy. n.pr/4gFtMYT

Yellow skies, red sun Northern fires intrude with smoke Spring's fresh skies no more

Sacré bleu!

NEW POST LLMs generate code incredibly fast, but to ensure they generate exactly what is intended, they need clear boundaries. Unmesh Joshi shares his experience using abstractions and Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) to provide a strong harness to guide an LLM. martinfowler.com/articles/llm...

DSLs Enable Reliable Use of LLMs

Why Domain-Specific Languages and good abstractions make LLM code generation reliable and reviewable.

martinfowler.com

After four decades as a founding member of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flea goes solo with a stellar jazz band. n.pr/44YC9HN

Flea and the Honora Band: Tiny Desk Concert

After four decades as a founding member of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flea goes solo with a stellar jazz band.

n.pr

Lindsey Graham was one of the main subjects of a @theatlantic.com cover story I wrote in 2020, on why people collaborate with regimes they know are immoral. Here's a gift link: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

History Will Judge the Complicit

Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?

theatlantic.com

People that are new to AI coding often make the mistake of assuming it is just a new form of automation. The truth is that it’s actually delegation, and that distinction is critically important. civic.io/2026/07/01/c... #AI #ChatGPT #Claude #Gemini #Software

Context is King

People that are new to AI coding often make the mistake of assuming it is just a new form of automation. The truth is that it’s actually delegation, and that distinction is critically importa…

civic.io

Bonne St-Jean!

Québec Flag Waving Proudly

ALT: Québec Flag Waving Proudly

static.klipy.com

Bonne fête de la Saint-Jean!

In the first half of 2026, the SpecOps Methodology for legacy system modernization went from theory to practice. With dozens of practitioners now using this approach to modernize critical government system. spec-ops.ai/blog/posts/h...

You can now set a limit for the number of allowed open PRs for users without write access on GitHub repos: github.blog/changelog/20...

Limit open pull requests for users without write access - GitHub Changelog

Maintainers of open source repositories are dealing with an ever-growing volume of pull requests, including repeated low-quality or drive-by contributions that can slow triage and overwhelm review que...

github.blog

Using Claude Code's new code modernization plugin as part of your legacy system modernization effort. spec-ops.ai/blog/posts/s... #Claude #Anthropic #Legacy #Government

SpecOps + Anthropic's Code Modernization Plugin: An Integrated Workflow

How the Anthropic Code Modernization Plugin and SpecOps methodology complement each other to create a complete legacy modernization pipeline, from extraction through governance.

spec-ops.ai

You can now read an *exclusive excerpt* from my debut novel, PRESTIGE DRAMA over at Electric Literature, free to read and preceded by a very sweet and funny letter of recommendation from the inimitable Caroline O'Donoghue. I'm biased but both are very good. electricliterature.com/prestige-dra...

Our Wee Town's Violent History Is Having Its Hollywood Moment - Electric Literature

An excerpt from PRESTIGE DRAMA by Séamas O'Reilly, recommended by Caroline O'Donoghue

electricliterature.com

Interested in #CivicTech, or government tech? Have you wrestled with legacy systems, or are interested in how they work? Thought about or tried spec-driven development? 1/2

Fragments: 34th Thoughtworks Technology Radar, what happens when developers don't read the LLM's code, DirectFile and tech in large organizations martinfowler.com/fragments/20...

Fragments: April 21

fragments 21 Apr 2026

martinfowler.com

I'm a lifelong reader who went through a dry period in my life where I didn't read much. There were reasons why this happened, but here are the things I did to turn that around and become a rejuvenated reader of books. civic.io/2023/01/04/m...

Moar Reading in 2023

In the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to read more books. Here’s what I have done to pick my reading habit back up. Maybe one of these strategies will work for you if, like I on…

civic.io

'Although AI agents are advancing rapidly, human expertise remains essential in software development." cacm.acm.org/opinion/rede...

#AI is changing the way government teams will practice Agile. Are agencies ready for the change? civic.io/2026/04/16/i...

It’s The End of Agile (As We Know It)

AI is changing the way government teams will practice agile. Are agencies ready for the change?

civic.io

Like talking about how AI is changing government software? Interested in legacy system modernization? I built a new community of practice around SpecOps - the spec-driven approach to legacy modernization I've been writing and talking about. Here's the link to join: join.slack.com/t/specopscom...

Me filing my taxes this year. www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0Cz...

The Simpsons - Homer's To Do Pile (Tax Return)

YouTube video by Mostly Simpsons

youtube.com

Hot take: golf is boring.

In Zoom video setting terms, I am this many years old this month.

NEW POST Rahul Garg finishes his series on reducing the friction in AI-Assisted Development with a structured practice that feeds back learnings from AI sessions into the team's shared artifacts, turning individual experience into collective improvement. martinfowler.com/articles/red...

Feedback Flywheel

martinfowler.com

I really like the "npx skills add" user experience - nice flow to add a skill from a GitHub repo, and it'll install either globally or in your project, for your preferred coding agents. https://www.npmjs.com/package/skills

I wrote a guest post for @allthingsopen.bsky.social on how open source projects can adapt for the AI coding era. #AI #ChatGPT #Claude #Gemini #OpenSource allthingsopen.org/articles/ope...

How open source projects need to adapt to the AI coding era | We Love Open Source • All Things Open

A new Carnegie Mellon study shows AI coding tools boost velocity by 281% — then leave codebases harder to work with. Here's what open source communities need to do before the sugar rush wears off.

allthingsopen.org

Treating #AI instruction files as team infrastructure. martinfowler.com/articles/red...

Encoding Team Standards

martinfowler.com

Instead of sharing open source software code (or, instead of _just_ sharing code), governments should share open source software specifications. allthingsopen.org/articles/ai-... #AI #ChatGPT #Claude #Gemini #Coding

How AI Is changing government technology collaboration forever | We Love Open Source • All Things Open

AI-assisted development is changing what governments should share. When code is cheap to generate, domain knowledge and specifications become the valuable assets.

allthingsopen.org

In this blog post, I demonstrate a hands-on example of using AI tools with a legacy technology system to build the foundation for a modern software solution. This is the SpecOps method in practice. spec-ops.ai/blog/posts/r...

Using AI to Reverse-Engineer a Legacy Application into a Modern Software Specification

How we used AI to extract a complete specification from a 25-year-old Microsoft Access application, producing 13 modular documents in roughly 4–5 hours of collaborative work.

spec-ops.ai