Enough claims. Let’s get some data from the field. Agilist Gervais Johnson has been leading enterprise initiatives moving AI pilots to production. He’ll lead an interactive talk this Wednesday night. Virtual and free. www.meetup.com/enterprise-a...

Agile & AI Strategy: From Experimentation to Real Value, Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 5:00 PM | Meetup

Here's the premise: **AI adoption is stalling at most organizations** — not because of the technology, but because of how teams approach it and how value is measured. Imple

meetup.com

Play Wordle? Friend Gil Broza’s daily digital word puzzle Letterage was recently acquired by Canada’s leading paper The Globe and Mail! Gil has 3 more puzzles - each “snack-sized” - each with a new challenge every day - all available free on his portal PlayingWithLetters.com (no app to install).

Playing With Letters: Original Daily Word Games & Puzzles

Forage, Rungs, and Threads: word games and puzzles for your daily routine. Original, snack-sized, easy to start, hard to put down.

playingwithletters.com

Nate aggregated a few of our most salient points to make them the first minute and a half (including my analogy of execs and AI to teenagers and sex), then the entire half hour of our conversation runs. The topic was leading technology teams in the era of AI. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDWT...

Leading Technology Teams in the Age of AI

YouTube video by Form100 Consulting

youtube.com

Just back from cycling the Foothills Trail: Orting -> South Prairie -> Buckley -> Enumclaw (and back). 32.7 miles, 2:52. One of my favorite trails.

Tonight’s movie, based on Philip K Dick’s “Adjustment Team”: On Peacock: The Adjustment Bureau. Predestination vs Free Will. Intriguing. Worth watching. Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie, John Slattery, Michael Kelly, Terence Stamp.

Today's July 4 ride, Redmond to Kenmore's Log Boom Park (and back, of course).

Just finishing fascinating storyteller Ben Zotto’s book Go Computer Now!, the dawn of the personal computer in 1975 – the Sphere, the first to come with keyboard and monitor, not just a bunch of switches and LEDs on the front, not just hobbyists. shop.gocomputernow.com/products/go-...

Go Computer Now! — The Story of Sphere Corporation

The incredible, newly unearthed story of the lost personal computing pioneer from Utah. Beautiful, full color hardcover book featuring deep reporting.

shop.gocomputernow.com

Tell your state leaders to hold utility companies accountable and bring down energy costs. Join me and Consumer Reports: action.consumerreports.org/nb-20260512-...

Tell state leaders to hold utility companies accountable

Tell state leaders to hold utility companies accountable

action.consumerreports.org

“We had to learn how to live in a world with guns, nuclear weapons, cigarettes, fentanyl and bitcoin. Now we need to figure out how to live in a world with AI.” Charity Majors, “You can't fight fundamentalism with fundamentalism…. Okay, so what DO we do?” charitydotwtf.substack.com/p/make-ai-bo...

Make AI Boring Again

On the ethics of engagement, the problem with purity politics, and a world worth fighting for

charitydotwtf.substack.com

“Spec-driven development (SDD) improves whether the code matches the spec. It does nothing for the more impactful and risky matter of whether the spec matches what users actually need….” Gil Broza hits the nail on the head. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

"Spec-driven development" fixes a real problem. It also brings back one we'd mostly solved. In case you missed it: write a clear spec, let your coding agent build against it, then revie...

"Spec-driven development" fixes a real problem. It also brings back one we'd mostly solved. In case you missed it: write a clear spec, let your coding agent build against it, then review what comes b...

linkedin.com

I had the joy of chatting with Nate Amidon last week about leading technology teams in the era of AI. His first question was a good one: What aspects of leadership become more important as AI becomes more capable? I had a few observations and thoughts. Take a look. www.linkedin.com/events/74676...

Why are developers unique, & why is managing software people & teams different? - the 1st two chapters of Managing the Unmanageable. www.managingtheunmanageable.net, managingtheunmanageable.net/polish.html, managingtheunmanageable.net/chinesesimpl..., managingtheunmanageable.net/chinesetradi...

I first watched this 15 years ago. Just re-watched, and my face hurts from laughing so hard. Timeless. Happy Thursday. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmd...

Hardly Working: Start-up Guys

YouTube video by Dropout

youtube.com

Delighted to be chatting with Nate Amidon about technology leadership in this AI era at noon PT Friday! Tune in! www.linkedin.com/events/74676...

“By the start of the Iran war, short A.I. footage was essentially indistinguishable from real video. Now North Korean operatives.... ‘You might think you can look & tell the difference while you’re sitting there doom scrolling,” he said. “Believe me, you can’t....’” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/u...

The World’s Leading Deepfake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes

nytimes.com

Heaven. Lychees have arrived at our local fruit and veggie market.

Tonight' movie: Janis: Little Girl Blue ...streaming on Kanopy, the public library free movie streaming service. Sweet.

Paige Watson wrote brilliantly about managing software development, “Every shortcut is a loan against your future velocity, and the interest rate is brutal.” softwareascraft.com/posts/compou... Worth tuning in Thursday (6/18, 5:30p PT) to hear Paige on this topic. www.meetup.com/enterprise-a...

Compound Interest Works Both Ways

Every shortcut is a loan against your future velocity, and the interest rate is brutal.

softwareascraft.com

Rich Mironov: "Market-facing teams like to imagine we can put 90% of R&D into shiny new things. Sorry. We’re selling software, not hammers. My default... 35-40% for keeping us in the software business. I’d consider shorting companies putting <30% into care and feeding." www.mironov.com/inevitable/

The Inevitable Failure of One-Shot Project Funding

Organizations that fund the building of software as one-time projects  ("once we ship v1.0 of Product X, we move everyone onto Thing Y") will inevitably be frustrated, fail to deliver outcomes, oversp...

mironov.com

√ Tonight's movie: Bandslam, streaming on Kanopy, 2009 intelligent teen coming of age musical romantic comedy drama. Plot: the characters basically preparing for a high school battle of the bands competition, with a scene at CBGB, after it had just closed. Enjoyable. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandslam

Bandslam - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you haven’t yet experienced Liberating Structures (or you have and just want more practice), the talented Anna Jackson & Fisher Qua are offering two free two-hour sessions this month. www.eventbrite.com/o/lucky-hunc...

Lucky Hunch (Anna Jackson & Fisher Qua)

Anna and Fisher run online and in-person gatherings using Liberating Structures, a repertoire of participatory methods that can be applied with groups of any size, for basically any purpose. Anna Jack...

eventbrite.com

39 years ago, Tom Crosley and I made the cover of A+ magazine for our crafting Apple’s demo for its Apple IIGS launch. The IIGS Sales Demo ran in every store selling Apples. The Sales Demo was widely lauded for showcasing the new model's graphics and sound (the "GS" of IIGS).

Described as “intellectual science fiction,” The Man From Earth, streaming on Amazon Prime, turns out to be in the genre of “what if?” science fiction I like a lot! www.amazon.com/gp/video/det...

Watch The Man From Earth | Prime Video

An impromptu goodbye party for Professor John Oldman becomes a mysterious interrogation after the retiring scholar reveals to his colleagues he has a longer and stranger past than they can imagine.

amazon.com

Mark Zuckerberg’s massive $300 million, 387-foot yacht happens to be stationed just a few blocks from the Meta's Seattle offices, where hundreds of people just lost their jobs. www.kuow.org/stories/mark...

Mark Zuckerberg’s mega yacht docks in Seattle in the wake of Meta layoffs

Mark Zuckerberg’s enormous yacht is moored near Meta’s Seattle office, where hundreds of people just lost their jobs.

kuow.org

By rushing to power Big Tech's data centers & increase profits, utility companies are missing a rare opportunity to shift our energy system towards proven, low-cost solutions. State leaders have the power to stop these unaffordable rate hikes. Sign w/ me. action.consumerreports.org/nb-20260512-...

Tell state leaders to hold utility companies accountable

Tell state leaders to hold utility companies accountable

action.consumerreports.org

45 years ago, I pivoted from journalism to programming: I began refactoring Tom Crosley's popular word processor, PIE Writer, from 6502 assembly (which I'd never seen before) to SPL/M (a "small" version of PL/M "close to the metal", but also a language I'd never seen before). Thrilling times.

Remarkable, fascinating, thought-provoking piece! drinkwisely.substack.com/p/i-was-wron...

I Was Wrong About Barack Obama

A confession, a reckoning, and a question I should have asked myself years ago

drinkwisely.substack.com

Java is 31 years old today. I was intro'd to Java in '95. We were just shifting our online animated virtual world, WorldsAway, from proprietary networks (CompuServe & QuantumLink/AOL) to the new World Wide Web. Sun invited us to consider Java. A language for the Web. Yay! #java #anniversary

Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams: English, Polish, Chinese. www.managingtheunmanageable.net, managingtheunmanageable.net/polish.html, managingtheunmanageable.net/chinesesimpl..., managingtheunmanageable.net/chinesetradi...