Things that I've enjoyed reading this month

Software #

  • If You are Asking for Human Attention, Demonstrate Human Effort, Tom Bedor : I think this captures how this weird new world where we've somehow normalized not reading code.

  • The Tower Keeps Rising, Armin Ronacher : I work on a team, but lately it hasn't felt like that. I think what Armin writes here articulates the loneliness that has crept into the agentic software era. Where skilling up and building used to be exciting there's now a lingering hollowness to it. Being a software practitioner has never felt emotionally worse.

  • Kenn IO : Not an article, but I was wondering what Wes McKinney's been up to. A lot of neat ideas are in here it's clear that some people are thriving in the agentic era. I do think knowledge and learning systems will be one of the prominent durable net-positives that come out of the AI era. Very interesting to look at as a new parent.

    • Learn Vector : Also related - personal learning stack startup from Andrew Ng. Excited to see what this becomes.

  • Why Software Factories Fail, Dex (HumanLayer) : Agents are trained to pass tests, they don't have some other magical oracle that steers to code quality. Code quality has always been a fuzzy concept imo, but I'd like to think it still matters. I'm seeing people use agents to design by prototype so i'm not sure how much front loading review maps to being practical for the average developer.

  • Email explained from first principles

  • Rauno's Field Notes #2 - I'm not great at design or UI, so I love little explainers like this that peel back the curtain on the small things that collectively roll up to "taste".

  • HTMX 4 gameboy release - I don't know how to react to this. Big fan of HTMX in general, but what.

Energy #

  • Inertia’s Roadmap to Commercialize Laser Fusion, Heatmap News, Katie Brigham - Fusion 2030 or bust? Generally skeptical of new nuclear especially for novel nuclear tech, but if the smart people working on the hard problem do the cool thing, I'll be cheering for them.

  • How to Unlock Republican Support for Climate Action, Alex Flint :

    • Climate philanthropists, advocacy organizations, and political action committees should explicitly seek to create Republican allies by committing a more significant portion of their electoral spending to Republican candidates.

    • 🫠 This is certainly a take. I agree with the sentiment. Bold climate action requires non or at least bi-partisan consensus. I don't know if attempting to outspend Chevron is the play here.

  • balcony solar! : Balcony solar still feels pretty novel. Hopefully utility programs pick this up alongside all the other behind the meter programs like EE.