An engineer recently sent me some questions about the #productmanagement role. I took a long time to respond because I saw it as a great opportunity to reflect on the role and what it means to me. I decided to share my answers here, in case it’s useful for anyone else! elezea.com/2025/06/prod...

Product Management: The Good, the Hard, and How to Know If It's Right for You

What I like most about the job, what makes me sometimes want to take a break, and how to choose between PM and EM roles.

elezea.com

“MCP Is RSS for AI” is a good analogy, but my analogy would be that MCP is like “Dynamic FAQs”, with the difference being that any question you ask could be considered “frequent” enough to be vetted and correct. thenewstack.io/mcp-is-rss-f...

MCP Is RSS for AI: More Use Cases for Model Context Protocol

MCP's simplicity means that, like RSS autodiscovery and OpenSearch, it can catch on quickly and deliver powerful leverage for developers.

thenewstack.io

I’ve been completely nerdswiped by MCP servers... here’s one I made for Lastfm. Use Claude Desktop to ask questions about your personal listening data. Try it out, let me know what I should add! github.com/rianvdm/last...

GitHub - rianvdm/lastfm-mcp: A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides seamless access to a user's Last.fm listening data and music information for AI assistants like Claude.

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides seamless access to a user's Last.fm listening data and music information for AI assistants like Claude. - rianvdm/lastfm-mcp

github.com

@richeholmes.bsky.social Hey, any chance you’ll ever move off Substack? I stopped giving them money, but will happily become a paid subscriber if you move to something like @ghost.org or @buttondown.com.

Love this take on the “10x engineer”. Ubuntu (the African principle, not the OS) strikes again… “I am because you are.” “It doesn’t matter how fast an individual engineer can write software. What matters is how fast the team can collectively write, test, […] and revise the software that they own.”

Why Great Engineering Orgs Thrive on "Normal" Engineers

Software engineer Charity Majors challenges the "10x engineer" myth, arguing that true productivity lies in team performance, not individual brilliance. She encourages building workplaces where "norma...

spectrum.ieee.org

Any celebration of Reid Miles gets an automatic boost from me. Legend. “Miles fulfilled the Blue Note manifesto. His album covers pushed the envelope of graphic design just as the artists on the records inside continued to break new ground in jazz.”

The history of album art

I speak and write about design, front-end code, leadership, and (occasionally) math.

matthewstrom.com

This is a wonderful thread started by @ftrain.bsky.social, asking what makes your town special—but I’m obviously biased to @antichrista.bsky.social’s response.

Christa Mrgan@antichrista.bsky.social · last yr.

Portland has a lot of silly bike rides: Naked Bike Ride, Bike Prom, Bike Play (a play performed during the course of a bike ride), Pedalpalooza—but the best and silliest of them all is the Ladd’s 500, a relay that takes place around a traffic circle (500 laps is a century) bsky.app/profile/anti...

Every once in a while a preorder shows up before release date and it’s always such a wonderful thing when that happens. Mdou Moctar’s band made a 4-track EP. It comes out on Friday but it showed up today and this thing goes so hard. It’s like post-punk desert blues.

I love this essay so much. I want to be this dad for my kids. “The single-most important thing he gave me, besides unconditional love, was modeling how to use music in my life.“

I Learned to Listen From My Dad

He taught me a crucial survival skill when he passed down his rock’n’roll fandom.

hearingthings.co

Interesting data on which movies aged poorly (and well), but it’s the genre data that stood out to me. “According to our rating-change data, horror movies age notably well, while comedy and drama see a marked decline in appraisal over time.” www.statsignificant.com/p/which-movi...

Which Movies Have "Aged Poorly"? A Statistical Analysis

Which films have not stood the test of time?

statsignificant.com

@taylorlorenz.bsky.social Hey there, just wanted to mention a data point that I would become a paid subscriber the moment you move off Substack, to something like Ghost or Buttondown.

@therealadam.com Hey there, I’m subscribed to your RSS feed and every article title shows up as “Adam Keys is Thinking”. If possible, it would be great to change that to a title That helps RSS readers like me quickly parse the topic. Thanks for considering!

I love this deep-dive on the little interjections we use in everyday speech. One example: “Other interjections serve as ‘continuers,’ such as ‘mm-hmm’—signals that the speaker should keep going. Because ‘mm-hmm’ is made with a closed mouth, it’s clear that the signaler does not intend to speak.”

Huh? The valuable role of interjections

Utterances like um, wow and mm-hmm aren’t garbage — they keep conversations flowing

knowablemagazine.org

I wrote a bit about the importance of “Visibility of System Status” in #productmanagement. elezea.com/2025/03/ack-...

This is a good @harper.lol primer on how to “brainstorm a spec, then plan a plan, then execute using LLM codegen.” If you have an idea for a product this is such a great way to get a working prototype out there.

My LLM codegen workflow atm

A detailed walkthrough of my current workflow for using LLms to build software, from brainstorming through planning and execution.

harper.blog

This tracks (lol) and seems obvious, but the data is fun. “Younger listeners tend to exhibit a ‘discovery mindset,’ actively seeking novelty. Older listeners may approach streaming from a ‘maintenance mindset,’ knowing what they want and using a given platform to reinforce established preferences.”

How Do Music Listening Habits Change With Age? A Statistical Analysis

How does music listening change as we grow older?

statsignificant.com

Omg it’s a Gen X dream come true. The original “friend of the show” is back. Subscribed!

Merlin Mann@hotdogsladies.bsky.social · 2y ago

I have begun reclaiming blogging by discussing Hitler and my dead lizard. My blog has a dark theme and an RSS feed, and I hope you'll consider checking it out. merlin.ghost.io/ta-da/

When @andrewliptak.com writes about Lord of the Rings, I pay attention. This is one if his best, y’all. “A critical theme throughout Tolkien’s work is the decline of a once-great people, with weak men failing to live up to the lives and stories of their predecessors.”

Middle-earth disinfo campaigns

Denethor, Palantírs, and propaganda in J.R.R. Tolkien's Return of the King

transfer-orbit.ghost.io

Struggling on new ways to say “no”, #productmanagement? This site might help. https://letsnotdothat.com/

Master the Art of the Product Manager 'No'

Keep your meetings smooth and your priorities on track!

letsnotdothat.com

Went to the Post Office today and get this—thanks to modern technology I got to listen to music on the way there and back! This is a game changer. Imagine always having 12 songs in your pocket!

I finally had a chance to make my way through this well-researched Spotify exposé, and dang it’s infuriating. “A model in which the imperative is simply to keep listeners around, whether they’re paying attention or not, distorts our very understanding of music’s purpose.”

The Ghosts in the Machine, by Liz Pelly

Spotify’s plot against musicians

harpers.org

I wrote a little bit about the unhelpful language we sometimes use when teams "slip" on deadlines.

Regarding "missed" and "slipped" deadlines

One of the issues with quarterly planning cycles and committing to due dates on that cadence is that teams are often asked to commit to dates before they have figured out all the unknowns.

elezea.com

I am trying to read more books in 2025 so I am testing a theory that it’s the Kindle that puts me to sleep as soon as I open it. So here is an actual TBR pile! This year’s non-fiction theme is music. Fiction theme is all SF/F (with the exception of the new Orphan X novel because I love that guy).

@smore.bsky.social Thanks for your music discovery post, very useful! I am also heavily invested in Bandcamp. Also, I find the weekly www.allmusic.com email another good way to keep up with new releases. And the iOS app MusicHarbor alerts you of new releases by artists in your library.

I love reading end-of-year music wrap-ups from the personal blogs I follow, so this year I decided to make one of my own... elezea.com/2024/12/my-2...

My 2024 in Music

The albums I listened to the most this year, and some brief thoughts on the year ahead.

elezea.com

Simon had me at #1 (totally agree that SOALW is such a gift). Going to spend some leisurely time with this excellent list over the next few days. I am also now really committed to get my list done in the coming week.

Simon Collison@colly.com · 2y ago

Here’s my 21st exhaustive (and exhausting) Year in Music roundup. colly.com/journal/twen...

A reminder that we are now officially in Dead Week. Please act accordingly.

All Hail Dead Week, the Best Week of the Year

The week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is a time when nothing counts, and when nothing is quite real.

theatlantic.com

This is a really interesting rebuttal of modern parenting methods. “The job of a parent is not to prevent any potential trauma, it is to love the child even when they are bad, and to punish them, and most importantly to forgive them.”

The cruelty of gentle parenting

unherd.com

I own very few Christmas records, but this one is not only a very pretty splatter pattern, it’s also wonderful (not cheesy!) music. Highly recommended.

I love the Murderbot books, and this Martha Wells interview is a delight. “Of all her characters, Wells has said, Murderbot is the one she’s put the most of herself into. She feels a distance from other humans, even as she’s spent a life trying to relate to them, to understand them.”

How Murderbot Saved Martha Wells' Life

Martha Wells created one of the most iconic characters in 21st-century science fiction: Murderbot, reluctant savior of humanity. Then she faced an existential threat of her own.

wired.com