Is the tech debt metaphor still useful? This conversation drove toward a consensus that the metaphor is still applicable but it’s meaning is shifting. We wound up talking securitization, financial literacy, and more.

the hard parts of building a business are - solving a real problem for real people - ignoring shiny ideas that are fun but distracting - prioritizing boring stuff that moves the needle - connecting with customers if anything, AI makes it *harder* to build a successful business

my toxic engineer trait is that I'm basically allergic to code all code is bad. the less code the better. why are you writing new code stahp *sprays devs with squirt bottle*

Temporal Ruby is GA ♦️ Build durable Ruby Workflows with native APIs, a Rust core, and a deterministic fiber scheduler. Read the post: https://temporal.io/blog/temporal-ruby-crash-proof-fibers

Ruby SDK is General Available!

Did you know? A typical tardigrade is about 0.5 mm (0.02 inch) long, and even the largest ones are less than 2 mm (0.07 inch) in length.

temporal.io

A reminder that you can always check out eight years worth of video from XOXO Festival, steadfastly and defiantly held in the war-torn city of Portland, Oregon. xoxofest.com/videos/

Video Archive · XOXO

XOXO was an experimental festival for independent artists who live and work online.

xoxofest.com

I finally read computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum’s 1976 classic “Computer Power and Human Reason.” This book deserves a massive revival in our current age of grotesque and largely thoughtless AI creep into everything:

We need to know what humans do before we argue that machines can do it just the same. There can’t be AI literacy without a literacy in being human: how we make meaning in work and life, distinguishing the artificial from the imaginary from the true. mail.cyberneticforests.com/human-litera...

Human Literacy

Something I Can Tell Students Now That I Am Not Teaching You and I probably both keep hearing that students should be working toward AI literacy. They should know what to type into prompt windows, ...

mail.cyberneticforests.com

As we mark the 80th anniversary of WWII's end, I’ve come to believe that in losing that Greatest Generation, we are losing more than just the memories of combat. We are losing the memory and experience of what it means to fight fascism and authoritarianism. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/what-we-lo...

What We Lost When We Lost the Greatest Generation

It's no coincidence that democracy is backsliding in the US exactly eighty years after the end of World War II.

doomsdayscenario.co

In my gloomier moments, I suspect we don't want to think about systems because we would have to acknowledge connections we would rather ignore.

Rachel Coldicutt@rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · last yr.

Something I don't really understand atm is that we really are at peak "everything is connected, this one thing is bad and getting worse because of these six other things that are related" but much policymaking still seems doggedly single issue, stuck in a linear "if this then that" mode

As Weizenbaum lays it out here, the whole idea that “intelligence” is measurable and quantifiable is bullshit

Basing your moral understanding of resisting authoritarianism on a Star Wars is the same picture as tech billionaires basing their ideas of a techno-utopia on an Asimov story

Nobody likes talking about the real issue here, being that trying to structure your understanding of reality on fictional plots (or rhetorical quotes) is not an effective way to make sense of reality or of how we ought to participate in a society

Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist@nameshiv.bsky.social · last yr.

Luke Skywalker: blows up an entire ship with all hands including cooks and cleaners as an act of rebellion mfs on this here app: Luke refused to hate

I operate from the belief that the White House is largely run by people who are not the president and that’s one reason I spend a lot of time more concerned about what they are up to and who gets to choose them

@molily.de consistently captures nuance without pulling any punches

On the environmental impact of AI – Stop with individual carbon footprints already.

Stop with individual carbon footprints already.

molily.de

Great post by Andy here. Designing in the browser forces you to consider state. Recently I've seen things like cart buttons with no design for what happens when you click it. Does it open a modal? Navigate away? Prototypes in the browser bring this to the fore. piccalil.li/blog/the-tim...

The time for designers to learn to code is now

With design tools further commoditising and sanitising expected creative output, the time for designers to be able to stand out is very much here. I think for some, learning to code is a good route fo...

piccalil.li

… never been efficiency: it’s been the dismantling of US Govt infrastructure and expertise, as well as as data mining, to better control opposition etc. Think of it as ‘doing a Twitter’ to the US Govt: Musk bought Twitter to destroy it as a tool for opposition. It worked!

What if you took the core abstractions of Plan 9 from Bell Labs and put them in a WebAssembly module? progrium.xyz/blog/2025/sp...

The Spirit of Plan 9 on the Web

Homepage and blog of hacker/builder Jeff Lindsay, aka progrium

progrium.xyz

There's a strong case that Eric Schmidt is the most dangerous actor in the AI world. He sells a zero sum, Sinophobia-infused vision of an AI arms race and preaches relentless data center expansion—and is happily received in the halls of power. @parismarx.com and I break it all down in this ep:

System Crash@handle.invalid · last yr.

Eric Schmidt is using China’s threat to US power as a marketing device to get the Pentagon to buy AI. In a new bonus episode, @parismarx.com and @bcmerchant.bsky.social pull back the curtain on Schmidt’s evolution. Become a Patreon supporter to listen: www.patreon.com/posts/eric-s...

In short: I think Rails fell from dominance in no small part because of DHH’s disdain for JavaScript. This directly led to key failures on both sociological and technical grounds. Hating technology blinds you to the good parts of tech you don’t personally care for.

I think we downplay the role of social media algorithms and targeted disinformation campaigns in drawing voters to Trump and away from Democrats at our own risk — it’s frankly a refusal to reckon with reality. Social media has created a matrix-like info control environment.

I cannot emphasize enough how much I miss street dining and am furious so many outdoor spaces that reduced the risk of Covid-19 were taken away for PARKING SPACES

Hayden Clarkin@thetransitguy.com · last yr.

The NYC council voting for this downgrade was just such an own goal.

Do not let James Lindsay (or Richard Hanania) into our tent. They are not new allies, they haven't changed their ways, they are committed Nazis who see the tide turning and want to take the uniform off so they can hide among the winners.

Jon Phillips@jowiph.bsky.social · last yr.

No. I'm sorry, I know we need a big tent or a popular front or whatever you want to call it, but jimmy concepts doesn't get to be a part of it. If he's genuinely recognized the error of his ways, he can atone by shutting the fuck up forever

This tracks with the proliferation of eugenics in the early-20th century, where many eugenicists advocated for sterilization precisely because public health measures allowed the “unfit” to survive longer and consequently have a greater chance of having their own kids

jamelle@jamellebouie.net · 2y ago

RFK believes that he is one of the genetic elect and that it is a violation of the natural order to either impose on the genetic elect with public health OR prevent nature from taking its course with those who are predestined to biological damnation.

I think Brian points to something important: pop culture representations of Nazism showed it as something existing outside of history and politics, which did a massive disservice to understanding it as a political force that could emerge in other polities.

Brian Hioe@brianhioe.bsky.social · 2y ago

Not to be Zizek, lol, but I had the misfortune of watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier on a plane once, it makes me realize Americans have this imagination of fascism taking over institutions that turned out to be true but the grasp of fascism is curiously ideology-less

A piece of collateral damage in this new age is lack of understanding of the value of infrastructure. Quality infrastructure takes creativity, it’s fascinating, it’s crucial. We’ve lost the plot, relegating it to being described as a cost center. Infrastructure is muscle, infrastructure is bone.

Haha! Love this letter from Douglas Adams to his US editor about not Americanising the text of Hitchhiker's Guide. 🐋🌸

I think scientists who assume that brains work (only) by making deterministic calculations are making a categorical error; maybe similar to scientists who thought physics are purely Newtonian.