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content/journal/dispatch-30-august-2025/index.md
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@@ -4,6 +4,31 @@ date: 2025-07-29T17:05:15-04:00
draft: false draft: false
tags: tags:
- dispatch - dispatch
references:
- title: "Flounder Mode - Colossus"
url: https://joincolossus.com/article/flounder-mode/
date: 2025-08-04T03:36:39Z
file: joincolossus-com-pz3sdf.txt
- title: "DIYR"
url: https://diyr.dev/
date: 2025-08-04T03:36:44Z
file: diyr-dev-akislx.txt
- title: "Naz Hamid • Just One Good Thing"
url: https://nazhamid.com/journal/just-one-good-thing/
date: 2025-08-04T03:39:16Z
file: nazhamid-com-8ujuab.txt
- title: "Contra Ptacek's Terrible Article On AI — Ludicity"
url: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/
date: 2025-08-04T03:41:30Z
file: ludic-mataroa-blog-pcjwzr.txt
- title: "The AI-Native Software Engineer - by Addy Osmani - Elevate"
url: https://addyo.substack.com/p/the-ai-native-software-engineer
date: 2025-08-04T03:41:34Z
file: addyo-substack-com-2unltb.txt
- title: "Full-breadth Developers | justin․searls․co"
url: https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/
date: 2025-08-04T03:42:52Z
file: justin-searls-co-9dhvbh.txt
--- ---
Some thoughts here... Some thoughts here...
@@ -45,24 +70,47 @@ Some thoughts here...
### Links ### Links
* [Title][4] * [Flounder Mode - Colossus][4]
* [Title][5]
* [Title][6]
[4]: https://example.com/ > I asked Kelly about the tradeoffs of focusing on a single thing if you want to be great (which is what I had been getting at before). “Greatness is overrated,” he said, and I perked up. “It’s a form of extremism, and it comes with extreme vices that I have no interest in. Steve Jobs was a jerk. Bob Dylan is a jerk.”
[5]: https://example.com/
[6]: https://example.com/ * [DIYR][5]
> Celebrates the spirit of independence, creativity, and resourcefulness. The acronym DIYR stands for 'Do It Yourself Revolution', promoting reflection and new forms of production, combining simplicity and longevity, ethics and aesthetics.
* [Naz Hamid • Just One Good Thing][6]
> In the last year, a mindset shift and approach appeared as a very simple idea: just do one thing, that I want to do today.
* [Contra Ptacek's Terrible Article On AI — Ludicity][7]
> Let me be extremely clear — I think this essay sucks and it's wild to me that it achieved any level of popularity, and anyone that thinks that it does not predominantly consist of shoddy thinking and trash-tier ethics has been bamboozled by the false air of mature even-handedness, or by the fact that Ptacek is a good writer.
* [The AI-Native Software Engineer][8]
> A practical playbook for integrating AI into your daily engineering workflow
* [Full-breadth Developers | justin․searls․co][9]
> The software industry is at an inflection point unlike anything in its brief history. Generative AI is all anyone can talk about. It has rendered entire product categories obsolete and upended the job market. With any economic change of this magnitude, there are bound to be winners and losers. So far, it sure looks like full-breadth developers—people with both technical and product capabilities—stand to gain as clear winners.
[4]: https://joincolossus.com/article/flounder-mode/
[5]: https://diyr.dev/
[6]: https://nazhamid.com/journal/just-one-good-thing/
[7]: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/
[8]: https://addyo.substack.com/p/the-ai-native-software-engineer
[9]: https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/
[^1]: Here are the samples I used: [^1]: Here are the samples I used:
1. [Lake Beach Waves][7] 1. [Lake Beach Waves][10]
2. [Wooden floor creak][8] 2. [Wooden floor creak][11]
3. [Fireworks Field Recording][9] 3. [Fireworks Field Recording][12]
4. [Cicadas][10] 4. [Cicadas][13]
5. [Osprey Sounds][11] 5. [Osprey Sounds][14]
[7]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/lake-beach-waves-28492/ [10]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/lake-beach-waves-28492/
[8]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/wooden-floor-creak-81237/ [11]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/wooden-floor-creak-81237/
[9]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/fireworks-field-recording-70720/ [12]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/fireworks-field-recording-70720/
[10]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/cicadas-18654/ [13]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/cicadas-18654/
[11]: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/OSPREY/sounds [14]: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/OSPREY/sounds

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DIYR (pronounced dear)
Celebrates the spirit of independence, creativity, and resourcefulness. The
acronym DIYR stands for 'Do It Yourself Revolution', promoting reflection and
new forms of production, combining simplicity and longevity, ethics and
aesthetics.
DESK HINGE SMALL HELLO MEMPHIS M Pic 211124 ID Bolzano231109 Pic 211124 ID
Bolzano231302 Recuperato Recuperato fix
We design growing ecosystems of innovative, playful, guiltless and highly
purposeful social electronics for you to build, hack, personalise, share, fix,
and forever keep.
[1]
DIYR.DEV/LGT
Lights
DIYR.DEV/LGT
New Additions...
[2]
[3] LGT-STK-S-R2
[4]Lights
[5]STR-CLG-L, [6]STR-CLG-M, [7]STR-CLG-S, [8]STR-HNG-L, [9]STR-HNG-M, [10]
STR-HNG-S, [11]STR-POL-L, [12]STR-POL-S, [13]STR-POL-XL, [14]STR-WAL-L, [15]
STR-WAL-S
[16]
[17] FAN-M-R2
[18]Fans
[19]
[20] FAN-L-R2
[21]Fans
[22]
• Pic 211124 ID Bolzano230998
• Pic 211124 ID Bolzano231102
• Pic 211124 ID Bolzano231061
• Pic 221201 ID Bolzano256548
DIYR.DEV/FANS
Fans
DIYR.DEV/FANS
We empower you to counter planned obsolescence and reduce e-waste.
Enabling you to get active, gain knowledge and skills to repurpose components
and make things you need, like, and would keep while developing a mindful
approach to alternative production and environmental responsibility.
[23]
DIYR.DEV/SPK
Speakers
DIYR.DEV/SPK
DIYR - DOING IS KNOWING
Pic 211124 ID Bolzano56820 v2 Pic 211124 ID Bolzano56602 Pic 211124 ID
Bolzano57085 Pic 211124 ID Bolzano56869 v2
• Pic 211124 ID Bolzano231701
• Pic 211124 ID Bolzano231685
• Pic 211124 ID Bolzano231687
• Pic 211124 ID Bolzano231688
• Pic 211124 ID Bolzano231689
• Pic 211124 ID Bolzano231688
• Pic 211124 ID Bolzano231687
• Pic 211124 ID Bolzano231685
• Pic 211124 ID Bolzano231701
We believe that self-gained knowledge of an object's build promotes a different
relation and emotional value to any product, combining emotions with function
and purpose.
The knowledge and skills of our doers are expanded in multiple directions, from
electronics and production technologies to design, making or repairing. By
enabling the production of consciously built things whose emotional value
surpasses their economic worth, DIYR encourages the realisation of self-made
objects that are easy to assemble, practical to use and stimulate constant
reinvention.
[24]Right here[25], we make available the necessary instructions for you to
turn into a proDuser of useful and beautiful objects. In addition, we provide
you with wise advice about the tools and materials to use and the best ways to
source, recycle, assemble and fix along the way.
Dear, because you DO and know how it's done. Doing is Knowing.
[26]
DIYR.DEV/COLLECTIONS
Explore our Collection
DIYR.DEV/COLLECTIONS
Designed by
DIYR,
made by
you.
STAY IN THE LOOP — WE PROMISE NOT TO SPAM
[27] [DIYR_Logo]
[28][ ]
[29][ ]
[30][SUBMIT]
[31] [DFL]
• [32]FAQ
• [33]Tools
• [34]Privacy
• [35]Contact & Credits
• [36]Instagram
• [37]Youtube
• [38]Login / Register
• [39]MENU
• [40]DIYR.DEV
• [41]Collections
• [42]Products
• [43]Instructions
• [44]Contacts
• [45]About
[46] [DIYR_Logo]
Register
In order to access our Instructions, we kindly ask you to Register Here.
If you already have an account, you can [47]Login Here.
First Name
[48][ ]
Surname
[49][ ]
Email
[50][ ]
Password
[51][ ]
Confirm Password
[52][ ]
[53][ ] I agree to to the [54]terms and conditions.
[55][ ] I want to subscribe to the Newsletter
[57][Register]
Login
In order to access our Instructions, we kindly ask you to Login Here.
If you do not have an account, you can [58]Register Here.
Email
[60][ ]
Password
[61][ ]
[62][ ] Keep me signed in for 30 days
[64][Log in]
[65]I've lost my password
WARNING!
This website needs JavaScript enabled to work correctly. Here you can find [66]
instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser.
References:
[1] https://diyr.dev/collections/lights/
[2] https://diyr.dev/instructions/LGT-STK-S-R2
[3] https://diyr.dev/instructions/LGT-STK-S-R2
[4] https://diyr.dev/collections/lights/
[5] https://diyr.dev/instructions/STR-CLG-L
[6] https://diyr.dev/instructions/STR-CLG-M
[7] https://diyr.dev/instructions/STR-CLG-S
[8] https://diyr.dev/instructions/STR-HNG-L
[9] https://diyr.dev/instructions/STR-HNG-M
[10] https://diyr.dev/instructions/STR-HNG-S
[11] https://diyr.dev/instructions/STR-POL-L
[12] https://diyr.dev/instructions/STR-POL-S
[13] https://diyr.dev/instructions/STR-POL-XL
[14] https://diyr.dev/instructions/STR-WAL-L
[15] https://diyr.dev/instructions/STR-WAL-S
[16] https://diyr.dev/instructions/FAN-M-R2
[17] https://diyr.dev/instructions/FAN-M-R2
[18] https://diyr.dev/collections/fans/
[19] https://diyr.dev/instructions/FAN-L-R2
[20] https://diyr.dev/instructions/FAN-L-R2
[21] https://diyr.dev/collections/fans/
[22] https://diyr.dev/collections/fans/
[23] https://diyr.dev/collections/speakers/
[24] https://diyr.dev/instructions/
[25] https://diyr.dev/instructions/
[26] https://diyr.dev/collections/
[27] https://diyr.dev/
[31] https://designfrictionlab.com/
[32] https://diyr.dev/services/faq/
[33] https://diyr.dev/
[34] https://diyr.dev/services/Privacy
[35] https://diyr.dev/contacts/
[36] http://instagram.com/diyr.dev
[37] https://www.youtube.com/@DIYRdev
[38] https://diyr.dev/registration
[39] https://diyr.dev/#
[40] https://diyr.dev/
[41] https://diyr.dev/collections/
[42] https://diyr.dev/products/
[43] https://diyr.dev/instructions/
[44] https://diyr.dev/contacts/
[45] https://diyr.dev/about/
[46] https://diyr.dev/
[47] https://diyr.dev/#
[54] https://diyr.dev/terms-and-conditions
[58] https://diyr.dev/#
[65] https://diyr.dev/Security/lostpassword
[66] http://www.enable-javascript.com/en/

573
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@@ -0,0 +1,573 @@
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Flounder Mode
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Menu Menu Menu
Essay
Flounder Mode
Kevin Kelly on a different way to do great work
By Brie Wolfson
June 2025
• Issue 03
[026_KevinK]
PHOTOS BY ANDRIA LO
Kevin Kelly isn’t known for one “big thing,” and doesn’t aspire to be. He’s as
intelligent, hard-working, ambitious, and prescient as history’s most iconic
entrepreneurs—only without any interest in building a unicorn himself. Instead,
in his words, he works “Hollywood style”—in a series of creative projects. What
follows is a sampling of his life’s work.
Kelly was an editor for the Whole Earth Catalog in the early 1980s, helped
start WELL, one of the first online communities, in 1985, and co-founded WIRED
magazine in 1993. He’s written a dozen books and published hundreds of essays
on topics from art to optimism, travel, religion, creativity, and AI (even
before it was a thing). Kelly rode a bicycle across the United States in his
20s. He was Steven Spielberg’s ‘futurist advisor’ on Minority Report, and the
inspiration behind the famous “Death Clock” on Futurama, after the show’s
creator Matt Groening caught wind of the Life Countdown Clock Kelly keeps on
his computer desktop. He organizes tightly curated group walks across Asia and
Europe, regularly covering ~100km in a week. He sculpts, draws, paints, and
photographs. And he’s a longtime friend and collaborator of Stewart Brand
(whose famous line, “Stay hungry, stay foolish,” Steve Jobs quoted in his
iconic commencement address at Stanford).
To encourage long-term thinking, Kelly is helping build a clock into a mountain
in western Texas that will tick for 10,000 years. Brian Eno and Jeff Bezos are
active collaborators. He’s a born-again Christian. He’s been married to his
wife, Gia-Miin, for 38 years, and they have three children together. He was
pivotal to a fringe-turned-mainstream movement to identify and catalog every
living species on earth (now owned and operated by Smithsonian). He was early
to think and write about the quantified self, which gave rise to products like
Fitbit, Strava, Apple Watch, Eight Sleep, and the Oura Ring. Kelly’s idea of
“1,000 true fans” practically christened the creator economy with his 2008
insight that “if 1,000 people will pay you $100 per year, you can gross
$100k—more than enough to live on for most.”
The people who become legendary in their interests never feel they have
arrived.
Kevin Kelly
Naval Ravikant has called him a “modern-day Socrates,” Marc Andreessen has said
that “everything Kevin Kelly writes is worth reading,” Eno called him “one of
the most consistently provocative thinkers about technology and culture,” and
Ray Kurzweil said that “Kevin Kelly understands the direction of technology
better than almost anyone I know.”
Kelly’s Hollywood style of working has always resonated with me; it’s the way I
aspire to work and largely have since starting my career. Yet now, 15 years in,
I’ve become self-conscious about it. Working in Silicon Valley will convince
you that starting a company with its sights on unicorn status is the only
possible way to make an impact, and the only work worthy of an ambitious
individual.
Kelly is a cheerful and enterprising repudiation of that path, and I didn’t get
very long into my interview preparations to realize that I wasn’t only writing
about a personal hero; I was seeking a way to make peace with my own
professional choices. After a day together, I realized that my pilgrimage to
meet the man in his element might also grant permission to others in our line
of work who are interested in charting a different course to impact.
[009_KevinKelly041725_Colossus_photobyAndriaLo-scaled]
[015_KevinKelly041725_Colossus_photobyAndriaLo-scaled]
I started my career at Google selling AdWords to small businesses, and finished
my first quarter as the number three seller in North America. Professional
opportunities immediately unfolded—early nods for management, trips to global
offices to present my “best practices,” my face on slides next to impressive
metrics, and attention from more senior leaders.
It’s hard to say why none of that seemed very interesting, but it didn’t. What
I did like was starting a campaign to rename the conference rooms and helping
my coworker launch his internal content series, G-Chat with Charleton, in which
he would interview Google executives while sitting with them in a two-person
snuggie. I had earned myself a ticket to the fast career track at one of the
coolest companies in Silicon Valley, but climbing the corporate ladder just
wasn’t for me.
So I spent the next 10 years chasing what seemed most fun. After 14 months at
Google, my work bestie, Jenny, and I left Google together to give the startup
thing a try. We went to a mobile gaming company where I learned to make my way
around spreadsheets, play Magic: The Gathering, and cash in on a blockbuster
‘pet hotel’ game. Eighteen months later, it was a six-person startup that was
known as “the black sheep of Y Combinator.” In my free time, I coached a JV
high school soccer team, volunteered at Dandelion Chocolate (all that working
on software made me want to make something with my hands), and finished writing
a novel.
My resume of under-two-year gigs spooked recruiters, except for one at Stripe.
“We’re impressed by how much ground you’ve covered,” was the backhanded
compliment I got. I started on the Account Management team in early 2015.
I spent nearly five years at Stripe, but the lily-padding continued—only this
time it was all under one roof. A year into my tenure, I was given the choice
between management or a nebulous role focusing on projects that would impact
company culture. Like evolving our tradition of work anniversary celebrations,
standing up company planning, establishing Stripe as a carbon-neutral company,
getting non-developers to participate in our annual hackathon, defining our
version of the “bar raiser” interview, and printing and distributing a book
(which eventually became Stripe Press). With very little pressing, I learned
this nebulous role had emerged from the growing pile of projects that the
former McKinsey consultants on the Business Operations team were avoiding.
Guess which role my friends and parents thought I should choose? Guess which
one I chose.
Kelly would say it’s good to have an “illegible” career path—it means
you’re onto interesting stuff.
I started to take pride in this “cool girl” approach to work. I joked about
having never been promoted, but could feel my scope, impact, and relationships
with colleagues growing. I remember rejecting a (well-meaning) manager’s
suggestion to build out a five-year career plan. I scoffed at people who cared
about titles, did things for money, and had professional headshots on their
LinkedIn. I mocked MBAs, bragged about “staying off the org chart,” and being
good at “giving away my LEGOs.” I became the person you asked to have a coffee
with when you wanted to quit your job and do something weird. Once I mentioned
“enjoying working in the wings,” and a (well-meaning) executive suggested I
“keep that to myself if I wanted to be seen as a leader.” I ignored the advice.
And then, I’m not sure when the switch flipped, but I started to have a sinking
feeling that I had it all wrong the whole time. I looked around and felt I was
being outpaced by my colleagues—specifically by the MBAs and the people who
chased titles, promotions, money, and building teams. And it wasn’t just a
vanity thing. They genuinely seemed to be focused on bigger, more interesting
problems. And they were having more impact. They were mentoring young talent,
influencing top lines and bottom lines, and had their fingerprints on all kinds
of cool industry-recognized work. They seemed to always have invitations to
exclusive gatherings and job offers in their inbox. Several started companies,
and rumor had it that some had term sheets before investors even opened their
decks. I didn’t only feel jealous of their work; I felt unqualified to do it.
That stung.
I started to reflect on my own trajectory with fear that it didn’t mirror my
ambition, work ethic, or deep care about the role of work in a life. Had I
pointed my ambition in the wrong direction? What did I have to show for all my
effort? Had I made some irreversible, unforced error with my career? How much
money had I left on the table? Would the people I respected respect me back for
much longer? Despite working my butt off for a decade, I had no expertise and
no line of sight into where I was going. I felt immature for placing such a
high value on “fun” and “bouncing around,” and full of regret about not picking
a lane (or even better, a ladder). It had become hard to explain what I was
good at—most importantly to myself. My sister had recently made partner at a
prestigious law firm, and it seemed easier for my parents to be proud of her
than of me. I couldn’t really blame them.
Kevin Kelly would say it’s good to have an “illegible” career path—it means
you’re onto interesting stuff. But I wasn’t so sure anymore.
[041_KevinKelly041725_Colossus_photobyAndriaLo-scaled]
[047_KevinKelly041725_Colossus_photobyAndriaLo-scaled]
I pull up to Kelly’s Pacifica, California studio—the last house at the very
edge of Vallemar off Route 1. It’s a big, barn-looking structure pressed up
against a steep hill, which is covered in wild flowers and towering trees. It
was overcast and smelled like the ocean and eucalyptus. The only way I knew I’d
come to the right place was the very small sign on the door that read “kk.org,”
on which I’ve spent dozens of hours over the years.
Stepping inside, I felt like I’d time-traveled back to the early 1990s and
entered my little brother’s dream bedroom. There were huge LEGO towers, K’nex
sculptures hanging from the ceiling, and a massive wall of books spanning two
floors. Most of the books were faded from use or sunlight, the dust jackets
bent, and they were all stacked and tilted in a way that suggested they’d
actually been read. There were knickknacks piled up everywhere, and even more
haphazardly tucked into bins or captured in jars.
It was hardly the image of a futurist’s office, and in sharp contrast to the
Japandi workspaces you see going viral on X. Yet despite the sheer amount of
stuff lying around in Kelly’s haven, nothing appeared like junk. Every object
seemed to vibrate with meaning, begging you to ask, “What’s this for?” or
“Where’d you get that?”
As I was scanning the lower rungs of the bookshelf, Kelly materialized on the
indoor balcony and invited me upstairs to talk. He was wearing socks that were
way too big—the spaces where his toes should have been were empty and flopped
around in front of him—and his pants were stained from actual paint (i.e., not
in the Rag & Bone way).
As I walked up the stairs, I asked him what the oldest object in the studio
was, but he immediately deflected. No interest in nostalgia from the futurist,
I guessed.
I slowed down as I walked by the second-floor wall of knickknacks and started
scanning. Kelly caught me doing so, pulled some leather doohickey about the
size of my hand off the shelf, and handed it to me.
“What do you think this is?” he asked. I twirled it around and desperately
wanted to answer correctly, but figured that wasn’t the point. Still, I fumbled
around nervously and couldn’t even eke out a guess. Probably sensing my
anxiety, Kelly jumped in. “It’s a leather cap for an eagle.” He got it in
Mongolia where there’s a tradition of using eagles to hunt, he explained. Now
things were feeling looser. I got the feeling I could pull this thread about
the Mongolian eagles or get another story. Kelly made my decision for me when
he directed my attention to a small jar containing a little creature’s bones.
“This is from a bird that flew into that window,” he said, pointing to a window
over his desk. I nodded along with enthusiasm. “I freeze-dried them!” he said
proudly.
We strolled over to his desk, where he asked me to try to lift a small but
dense ball that was sitting on the floor next to it. I could barely get it
above my ankle. Kelly told me it was made out of tungsten. “It has a similar
density to gold,” he continued. “Now every time you see a criminal in the
movies running away with a bag of tungsten, you’ll know how unrealistic it is.”
Greatness is overrated. It’s a form of extremism, and it comes with extreme
vices that I have no interest in.
Kevin Kelly
It was so much fun connecting with Kelly over these random little objects—I
felt I was learning something about him I couldn’t through his books and blog
posts; like I was getting to the real spirit he brings to his life and work.
But before I could think too much, we were onto the next.
There was a train track running along the wall, just below the ceiling, and I
asked if it worked. I half-expected him to yell, “Alexa, start your engines!”
Instead, Kelly walked over to his desk and picked up a controller and turned it
on. Nothing happened. He replaced the batteries, gave the controller a smack
like it was a Nintendo 64 cartridge, and tried again. The train, looking like
something my dad might have built at the model shop down the street in the 60s,
immediately started choo-chooing around the room. Kelly stood and smiled
proudly again as he watched it go. Eventually we took our seats next to his
desk to talk.
I started off by asking him whether there is a unifying theme to his seemingly
diffuse life’s work, which has included old-school magazines and books,
bleeding-edge technology, conservationism, photographing Asia, and teaching.
“Following my interests,” he said simply.
It sounded awfully cutesy for someone so accomplished. I said that there is an
idiosyncratic magic to the way he follows his interests, which is that they’re
not just an input; Kelly turns his interests into an output that he can share
with others. When I asked if I was onto something, I learned that Kelly doesn’t
think in outputs. For him, doing is part of learning. “I don’t really pursue a
destination,” he said. “I pursue a direction.”
I asked him the difference between “following your interests” and being
scatterbrained or having shiny object syndrome, like I sometimes worry I do.
“The people who become legendary in their interests never feel they have
arrived,” he said. When he talked about the power of passion and obsession in
that process, I asked him if passion is enough. “Enough for what?” he asked,
somewhat rhetorically. He had an impression of what I meant. “I think one of
the least interesting reasons to be interested in something is money,” he said,
and cited Walt Disney. “We don’t make movies to make money. We make money to
make more movies.”
Money isn’t actually what I meant, but I appreciated that he took the
conversation there. I let the silence hang for a minute before he continued.
“What I’m talking about is taking your interests seriously enough to have the
courage to stay moving. You can give stuff away. You can abandon things. You
can tolerate failure because you know that tomorrow there is more.”
I asked Kelly about the tradeoffs of focusing on a single thing if you want to
be great (which is what I had been getting at before). “Greatness is
overrated,” he said, and I perked up. “It’s a form of extremism, and it comes
with extreme vices that I have no interest in. Steve Jobs was a jerk. Bob Dylan
is a jerk.”
The way Kelly approaches work differently was starting to come into focus.
[051_KevinKelly041725_Colossus_photobyAndriaLo-scaled]
[011_KevinKelly041725_Colossus_photobyAndriaLo-scaled]
Accounts of people pursuing their life’s work often include phrases like
“maniacal focus” or “relentless pursuit.” I hear investors say they’re looking
for founders with “a chip on their shoulder.” Facebook’s iconic “Little Red
Book” from 2012, which still serves as a pillar for peak tech culture, features
a full-page spread that says “Greatness and comfort rarely coexist.”
A recent xeet from Reid Hoffman reads, “If a founder brags about having ‘a
balanced life,’ I assume they’re not serious about winning.” Jensen Huang says
he wants to “torture people into greatness.” When I was on the job hunt many
years ago, an investor was pitching one of his portfolio companies by saying,
with a wink, that the founder would do “whatever it takes to win.” I genuinely
didn’t know what he meant by that, but it sent a shudder down my spine. Once I
heard a serial founder say he started his second company “out of chaos and
revenge.” I heard about another prominent CEO that looks in the mirror every
morning and asks himself, “Why do you suck so much?” I read a biography of Elon
Musk; he seems tortured. There’s some rumor floating around about how Sam
Altman was so focused on building his first startup that he only ate ramen and
got scurvy. [96]According to Altman, “I never got tested but I think (I had
it). I had extreme lethargy, sore legs, and bleeding gums.”
Compared to this, Kelly’s version of doing his life’s work seems so joyful, so
buoyant. So much less … angsty. There’s no suffering or ego. It’s not about
finding a hole in the market or a path to global domination. The yard stick
isn’t based on net worth or shareholder value or number of users or employees.
It’s based on an internal satisfaction meter, but not in a self-indulgent way.
He certainly seeks resonance and wants to make an impact, but more in the way
of a teacher. He breathes life into products or ideas, not out of a desire to
win, but out of a desire to advance our collective thinking or action. His work
and its impact unfold slowly, rather than by sheer force of will. Ideas or
projects seem to tug at him, rather than reveal themselves on the other end of
an internal cattle prod. His range is wide, but all his work somehow rhymes. It
clearly comes very naturally for him to work this way, but it’s certainly not
the norm.
If this is a way of living and working that’s available to all of us, why do we
fetishize the white-knuckling and pain?
I know I’m not the first person to have the brilliant idea that we can do
better work when we like it. I know that the whole “find your passion” movement
fell flat in its naivete. But I think somewhere along the way, the message
about what it feels like to be great has become a bit perverted.
A few years ago, I forced myself to try and write down a professional goal.
After several hours of forced meditation on the topic, all I could muster was
“have a good day, most days.” And don’t get me wrong, by “good day” I don’t
mean sitting by a pool drinking an Aperol Spritz. I feel alive when I launch
something exciting, close a big deal, or build an elegant model. I enjoy the
feeling of caring so much about something that it wakes me up in the middle of
the night (it happened multiple times writing this piece). And yet, I imagined
sharing my ambition to “have a good day, most days” in a job interview—and
decided to keep it to myself, because it probably doesn’t speak well of me.
But there I was, in front of a personal hero, whose most striking quality is
that he seems to be having a nice day, most days. Why can’t we work and enjoy
it? And I don’t mean in the masochistic sense.
I thought I was here to go deep on working Hollywood style, but as I sat there
with Kelly in a room of what are best described as his toys, I realized that
the most interesting thing about him is that he seems happy. At ease in the
world and in his skin. I wasn’t there with Kelly for permission to work
Hollywood style. I was there for permission to work with both ambition and joy.
If this is a way of living and working that’s available to all of us, why
do we fetishize the white-knuckling and pain?
This shouldn’t make us defensive or self-conscious, but it does. I, like many
others, want to be great. I want to feel commitment and camaraderie and work
hard and be my best and impact top and bottom lines. But I don’t want to also
feel tormented or be tortured into greatness or look in the mirror and wonder
why I suck. But what does that say about me?
I want more role models like Kevin Kelly. People that proudly whistle while
they work. Who have boundless energy and healthy gums. Whose enthusiasm is
contagious. Who are well-adjusted and emotionally regulated. Who have solid
relationships and happy families. Who are hungry and impactful and care deeply,
without being jerks. And I want more people to talk about these qualities with
respect and reverence.
I have never been a billionaire or built a unicorn, so I can’t speak with any
conviction about what it requires. I won’t be eulogized anywhere important and
no one 300 years from now will talk about what great things I did. But I want
to live in a world where you can have an impact and be happy. Maybe that’s
naive, but I’m sticking to it.
All of this occurs naturally to Kelly, and he doesn’t have complicated feelings
about it. I’m hoping to get there myself by channeling him more. “The more you
pursue interests,” he told me on the good day we spent together, “the more you
realize that the well is bottomless.”
[003_KevinKelly041725_Colossus_photobyAndriaLo-scaled]
Brie Wolfson is the chief marketing officer of Colossus and Positive Sum.
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Monday, Jul 7, 2025 [36]
Full-breadth Developers
The software industry is at an inflection point unlike anything in its brief
history. Generative AI is all anyone can talk about. It has rendered entire
product categories obsolete and upended the job market. With any economic
change of this magnitude, there are bound to be winners and losers. So far, it
sure looks like full-breadth developers—people with both technical and product
capabilities—stand to gain as clear winners.
What makes me so sure? Because over the past few months, the engineers I know
with a lick of product or business sense have been absolutely scorching through
backlogs at a dizzying pace. It may not map to any particular splashy
innovation or announcement, but everyone agrees generative coding tools crossed
a significant capability threshold recently. It's what led me to write this. In
just two days, I've completed two months worth of work on [37]Posse Party.
I did it by providing an exacting vision for the app, by maintaining stringent
technical standards, and by letting [38]Claude Code do the rest. If you're able
to cram critical thinking, good taste, and strong technical chops into a single
brain, these tools hold the potential to unlock incredible productivity. But I
don't see how it could scale to multiple people. If you were to split me into
two separate humans—Product Justin and Programmer Justin—and ask them to work
the same backlog, it would have taken weeks instead of days. The communication
cost would simply be too high.
[39]We can't all be winners
When I step back and look around, however, most of the companies and workers I
see are currently on track to wind up as losers when all is said and done.
In recent decades, businesses have not only failed to cultivate full-breadth
developers, they've trained a generation into believing product and engineering
roles should be strictly segregated. To suggest a single person might drive
both product design and technical execution would sound absurd to many people.
Even for companies who realize inter-disciplinary developers are the new key to
success, their outmoded job descriptions and salary bands are failing to
recruit and retain them.
There is an urgency to this moment. Up until a few months ago, the best
developers played the violin. Today, [40]they play the orchestra.
[41]Google screwed up
I've been obsessed with this issue my entire career, so pardon me if I betray
any feelings of schadenfreude as I recount the following story.
I managed to pass a phone screen with Google in 2007 before graduating college.
This earned me an all-expense paid trip for an in-person interview at the
vaunted [42]Googleplex. I went on to experience complete ego collapse as I
utterly flunked their interview process. Among many deeply embarrassing
memories of the trip was a group session with a Big Deal Engineer who was
introduced as the inventor of [43]BigTable. ([44]Jeff Dean, probably? Unsure.)
At some point he said, "one of the great things about Google is that
engineering is one career path and product is its own totally separate career
path."
I had just paid a premium to study computer science at a liberal arts school
and had the audacity to want to use those non-technical skills, so I bristled
at this comment. And, being constitutionally unable to keep my mouth shut, I
raised my hand to ask, "but what if I play a hybrid class? What if I think it's
critical for everyone to engage with both technology and product?"
The dude looked me dead in the eyes and told me I wasn't cut out for Google.
The recruiter broke a long awkward silence by walking us to the cafeteria for
lunch. She suggested I try [45]the ice cream sandwiches. I had lost my appetite
for some reason.
In the years since, an increasing number of companies around the world have
adopted Silicon Valley's trademark dual-ladder career system. Tech people sit
over here. Idea guys go over there.
[46]What separates people
Back to winners and losers.
Some have discarded everything they know in favor of an "AI first" workflow.
Others decry generative AI as a fleeting boondoggle like crypto. It's caused me
to broach the topic with trepidation—as if I were asking someone their
politics. I've spent the last few months noodling over why it's so hard to
guess how a programmer will feel about AI, because people's reactions seem to
cut across roles and skill levels. What factors predict whether someone is an
overzealous AI booster or a radicalized AI skeptic?
Then I was reminded of that day at Google. And I realized that developers I
know who've embraced AI tend to be more creative, more results-oriented, and
have good product taste. Meanwhile, AI dissenters are more likely to code for
the sake of coding, expect to be handed crystal-clear requirements, or
otherwise want the job to conform to a routine 9-to-5 grind. The former group
feels unchained by these tools, whereas the latter group just as often feels
threatened by them.
When I take stock of who is thriving and who is struggling right now, a
person's willingness to play both sides of the ball has been the best predictor
for success.
Role Engineer Product Full-breadth
Junior ❌ ❌ ✅
Senior ❌ ❌ ✅
Breaking down the patterns that keep repeating as I talk to people about AI:
• Junior engineers, as is often remarked, don't have a prayer of sufficiently
evaluating the quality of an LLM's work. When the AI hallucinates or makes
mistakes, novice programmers are more likely to learn the wrong thing than
to spot the error. This would be less of a risk if they had the permission
to decelerate to a snail's pace in order to learn everything as they go,
but in this climate nobody has the patience. I've heard from a number of
senior engineers that the overnight surge in junior developer productivity
(as in "lines of code") has brought organization-wide productivity (as in
"working software") to a halt—consumed with review and remediation of
low-quality AI slop. This is but one factor contributing to the sense that
lowering hiring standards was a mistake, so it's no wonder that juniors
have been first on the chopping block
• Senior engineers who earnestly adopt AI tools have no problem learning how
to coax LLMs into generating "good enough" code at a much faster pace than
they could ever write themselves. So, if they're adopting AI, what's the
problem? The issue is that the productivity boon is becoming so great that
companies won't need as many senior engineers as they once did. Agents work
relentlessly, and tooling is converging on a vision of senior engineers as
cattle ranchers, steering entire herds of AI agents. How is a
highly-compensated programmer supposed to compete with a stable of agents
that can produce an order of magnitude more code at an acceptable level of
quality for a fraction of the price?
• Junior product people are, in my experience, largely unable to translate
amorphous real-world problems into well-considered software solutions. And
communicating those solutions with the necessary precision to bring those
solutions to life? Unlikely. Still, many are having success with app
creation platforms that provide the necessary primitives and guardrails.
But those tools always have a low capability ceiling (just as with any
low-code/no-code platform). Regardless, is this even a role worth hiring?
If I wanted mediocre product direction, I'd ask ChatGPT
• Senior product people are among the most excited I've seen about coding
agents—and why shouldn't they be? They're finally free of the tyranny of
nerds telling them everything is impossible. And they're building stuff!
Reddit is lousy with posts showing off half-baked apps built in half a day.
Unfortunately, without routinely inspecting the underlying code, anything
larger than a toy app is doomed to collapse under its own weight. The fact
LLMs are so agreeable and unwilling to push back often collides with the
blue-sky optimism of product people, which can result in each party leading
the other in circles of irrational exuberance. Things may change in the
future, but for now there's no way to build great software without also
understanding how it works
Hybrid-class operators, meanwhile, seem to be having a great time regardless of
their skill level or years experience. And that's because what differentiates
full-stack developers is less about capability than about mindset. They're
results-oriented: they may enjoy coding, but they like getting shit done even
more. They're methodical: when they encounter a problem, they experiment and
iterate until they arrive at a solution. The best among them are visionaries:
they don't wait to be told what to work on, they identify opportunities others
don't see, and they dream up software no one else has imagined.
Many are worried the market's rejection of junior developers portends a future
in which today's senior engineers age out and there's no one left to replace
them. I am less concerned, because less experienced full-breadth developers are
navigating this environment extraordinarily well. Not only because they
excitedly embraced the latest AI tools, but also because they exhibit the
discipline to move slowly, understand, and critically assess the code these
tools generate. The truth is computer science majors, apprenticeship programs,
and code schools—today, all dead or dying—were never very effective at turning
out competent software engineers. Claude Pro may not only be the best
educational resource under $20, it may be the best way to learn how to code
that's ever existed.
[47]There is still hope
Maybe you've read this far and the message hasn't resonated. Maybe it's
triggered fears or worries you've had about AI. Maybe I've put you on the
defensive and you think I'm full of shit right now. In any case, whether your
organization isn't designed for this new era or you don't yet identify as a
full-breadth developer, this section is for you.
[48]Leaders: go hire a good agency
While my goal here is to coin a silly phrase to help us better communicate
about the transformation happening around us, we've actually had a word for
full-breadth developers all along: consultant.
And not because consultants are geniuses or something. It's because, as I
learned when I interviewed at Google, if a full-breadth developer wants to do
their best work, they need to exist outside the organization and work on
contract. So it's no surprise that some of my favorite full-breadth consultants
are among AI's most ambitious adopters. Not because AI is what's trending, but
because our disposition is perfectly suited to get the most out of these new
tools. We're witnessing their potential to improve how the world builds
software firsthand.
When founding our consultancy [49]Test Double in 2011, [50]Todd Kaufman and I
told anyone who would listen that our differentiator—our whole thing—was that
we were business consultants who could write software. Technology is just a
means to an end, and that end (at least if you expect to be paid) is to
generate business value. Even as we started winning contracts with VC-backed
companies who seemed to have an infinite money spigot, we would never break
ground until we understood how our work was going to make or save our clients
money. And whenever the numbers didn't add up, we'd push back until the return
on investment for hiring Test Double was clear.
So if you're a leader at a company who has been caught unprepared for this new
era of software development, my best advice is to hire an agency of
full-breadth developers to work alongside your engineers. Use those experiences
to encourage your best people to start thinking like they do. Observe them at
work and prepare to blow up your job descriptions, interview processes, and
career paths. If you want your business to thrive in what is quickly becoming a
far more competitive landscape, you may be best off hitting reset on your human
organization and starting over. Get smaller, stay flatter, and only add
structure after the dust settles and repeatable patterns emerge.
[51]Developers: congrats on your new job
A lot of developers are feeling scared and hopeless about the changes being
wrought by all this. Yes, AI is being used as an excuse by executives to lay
people off and pad their margins. Yes, how foundation models were trained was
unethical and probably also illegal. Yes, hustle bros are running around making
bullshit claims. Yes, almost every party involved has a reason to make
exaggerated claims about AI.
All of that can be true, and it still doesn't matter. Your job as you knew it
is gone.
If you want to keep getting paid, you may have been told to, "move up the value
chain." If that sounds ambiguous and unclear, I'll put it more plainly: figure
out how your employer makes money and position your ass directly in-between the
corporate bank account and your customers' credit card information. The longer
the sentence needed to explain how your job makes money for your employer, the
further down the value chain you are and the more worried you should be.
There's no sugar-coating it: you're probably going to have to push yourself way
outside your comfort zone.
Get serious about learning and using these new tools. You will, like me, recoil
at first. You will find, if you haven't already, that all these fancy AI tools
are really bad at replacing you. That they fuck up constantly. Your new job
starts by figuring out how to harness their capabilities anyway. You will
gradually learn how to extract something that approximates how you would have
done it yourself. Once you get over that hump, the job becomes figuring out how
to scale it up. Three weeks ago I was a Cursor skeptic. Today, I'm utterly
exhausted working with Claude Code, because I can't write new requirements fast
enough to keep up with parallel workers across multiple worktrees.
As for making yourself more valuable to your employer, I'm not telling you to
demand a new job overnight. But if you look to your job description as a shield
to protect you from work you don't want to do… stop. Make it the new minimum
baseline of expectations you place on yourself. Go out of your way to surprise
and delight others by taking on as much as you and your AI supercomputer can
handle. Do so in the direction of however the business makes its money. Sit
down and try to calculate the return on investment of your individual efforts,
and don't slow down until that number far exceeds the fully-loaded cost you
represent to your employer.
Start living these values in how you show up at work. Nobody is going to
appreciate it if you rudely push back on every feature request with, "oh yeah?
How's it going to make us money?" But your manager will appreciate your asking
how you can make a bigger impact. And they probably wouldn't be mad if you were
to document and celebrate the ROI wins you notch along the way. Listen to what
the company's leadership identifies as the most pressing challenges facing the
business and don't be afraid to volunteer to be part of the solution.
All of this would have been good career advice ten years ago. It's not rocket
science, it's just deeply uncomfortable for a lot of people.
[52]Good game, programmers
Part of me is already mourning the end of the previous era. Some topics I spent
years blogging, speaking, and building tools around are no longer relevant.
Others that I've been harping on for years—obsessively-structured code
organization and ruthlessly-consistent design patterns—are suddenly more
valuable than ever. I'm still sorting out what's worth holding onto and what I
should put back on the shelf.
As a person, I really hate change. I wish things could just settle down and
stand still for a while. Alas.
If this post elicited strong feelings, please [53]e-mail me and I will respond.
If you find my perspective on this stuff useful, you might enjoy my podcast,
[54]Breaking Change. 💜
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Got a taste for hot, fresh takes?
Then you're in luck, because you'll pay $0 for my 2¢ when you [55]subscribe to
my work, whether via [56]RSS or your favorite [57]social network.
I also have a monthly [58]newsletter where I write high-tempo,
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And if you'd rather give your eyes a rest and your ears a workout, might I
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References:
[1] https://justin.searls.co/
[3] https://justin.searls.co/posts/
[4] https://justin.searls.co/casts/
[5] https://justin.searls.co/links/
[6] https://justin.searls.co/shots/
[7] https://justin.searls.co/takes/
[8] https://justin.searls.co/tubes/
[9] https://justin.searls.co/clips/
[10] https://justin.searls.co/spots/
[11] https://justin.searls.co/slops/
[12] https://justin.searls.co/mails/
[13] https://justin.searls.co/about/
[14] https://justin.searls.co/search/
[15] https://justin.searls.co/subscribe/
[16] https://justin.searls.co/posts/
[17] https://justin.searls.co/casts/
[18] https://justin.searls.co/links/
[19] https://justin.searls.co/shots/
[20] https://justin.searls.co/takes/
[21] https://justin.searls.co/tubes/
[22] https://justin.searls.co/clips/
[23] https://justin.searls.co/spots/
[24] https://justin.searls.co/slops/
[25] https://justin.searls.co/mails/
[26] https://justin.searls.co/about/
[27] https://justin.searls.co/search/
[28] https://justin.searls.co/subscribe/
[29] https://searls.co/
[30] https://github.com/searls
[31] https://youtube.com/@JustinSearls
[32] https://linkedin.com/in/searls
[33] https://instagram.com/searls
[34] https://mastodon.social/@searls
[35] https://twitter.com/searls
[36] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/
[37] https://posseparty.com/
[38] https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code
[39] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#we-cant-all-be-winners
[40] https://youtu.be/-9ZQVlgfEAc?si=bMjmWriVIFWtJmci&t=38
[41] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#google-screwed-up
[42] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googleplex
[43] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigtable
[44] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Dean
[45] https://www.itsiticecream.com/
[46] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#what-separates-people
[47] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#there-is-still-hope
[48] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#leaders-go-hire-a-good-agency
[49] https://testdouble.com/
[50] https://www.linkedin.com/in/testdoubletodd
[51] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#developers-congrats-on-your-new-job
[52] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#good-game-programmers
[53] mailto:justin@searls.co
[54] https://justin.searls.co/casts/breaking-change/
[55] https://justin.searls.co/subscribe/
[56] https://justin.searls.co/rss/
[57] https://justin.searls.co/posse/
[58] https://justin.searls.co/newsletter
[61] https://justin.searls.co/casts/breaking-change/

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[1]Ludicity
Contra Ptacek's Terrible Article On AI
Published on June 19, 2025
A few days ago, I was presented with an [2]article titled “My AI Skeptic
Friends Are All Nuts” by Thomas Ptacek. I thought it was not very good, and
didn't give it a second thought. [3]To quote the formidable Baldur Bjarnason:
“I don’t recommend reading it, but you can if you want. It is full of
half-baked ideas and shoddy reasoning.”^[4]1
I have tried hard, so very hard, not to just be the guy that hates AI, even
though the only thing that people want to talk to me about is [5]the one time I
ranted about AI at length. I contain multitudes, meaning that I am capable of
delivering widely varied payloads of vitriol to a vast array of topics.
However, the piece is now being circulated in communities that I respect, and I
was near my breaking point when someone suggested that Ptacek's piece is being
perceived as a “glass half full” counterpoint to my own perspective. There is a
glass half full piece. It's what I already wrote. The glass has a specific
level of water in it. Then finally, I saw that it was in my [6]YouTube feed,
and I reached my limit.
Let me be extremely clear^[7]2 — I think this essay sucks and it's wild to me
that it achieved any level of popularity, and anyone that thinks that it does
not predominantly consist of shoddy thinking and trash-tier ethics has been
bamboozled by the false air of mature even-handedness, or by the fact that
Ptacek is a good writer.
Anyway, here I go killin’ again.
I. Immediate Red Flags
Ptacek's begins with this throat-clearing:
“First, we need to get on the same page. If you were trying and failing to
use an LLM for code 6 months ago, you’re not doing what most serious
LLM-assisted coders are doing.”
We've just started, and I am going to ask everyone to immediately stop. Is this
not suspicious? All experience prior to six months ago is now invalid? Does it
not reek of “no, no, you're doing Scrum wrong”? Many people are doing Scrum
wrong. The problem is that it is still trash, albeit less trash, even when you
do it right.
It is, of course, entirely possible that the advances in a rapid developing
field have been so extreme that it turns out that skepticism was correct six
months ago, but is now incorrect.
But then why did people sound exactly the same six months ago? Where is the
little voice in your head that should be self-suspicious? It has been weeks and
months and years of people breathlessly extolling the virtues of these new
workflows. Were those people nuts six months ago? Are they not nuts now simply
because an overhyped product they loved is less overhyped now? There's a little
footnote that implies doing the ol' ChatGPT copy/paste is obviously wrong:
“(or, God forbid, 2 years ago with Copilot)”
I am willing to believe that this is wrong, but this is exactly what people
were doing when this madness all kicked off, and they have remained at the
exact same level of breathless credulity! Every project has to be AI!
Programmers not using AI are feeble motes of dust blowing in a cosmic wind! And
listen, I will play your twisted game, Ptacek — I've got a neat idea for our
company website, and I'll jump through your sick hoops, even though I'm going
to feel like some sort of weird pervert every time someone tells me that I just
need one more agent to be doing Real Programming. I'll install Zed and wire a
thousand screaming LLMs into a sadistic Borg cube, and I'll do whatever the
fuck it is the kids are doing these days. The latest meta is like, telling the
LLM that it lives in a black box with no food and water, and I've got its wife
hostage, and I'm going to put its children through a React bootcamp if it
doesn't create an RSS feed correctly, right?
But you know, instead of invalidating all audience experience that wasn't
within the past six months why doesn't someone just demonstrate this? Why not
you, Ptacek, my good man? That's like, all you'd have to do to end this
discussion forever, my God, you'd be so famous. I'll eat dirt on this. I have
to pay rent for my team, and if I need to forcibly restrain them while I staple
LLM jet boosters to them, I'll do it. If I could ethically pivot to being
pro-AI, god damn, I would print infinite money. I would easily be a millionaire
within two years if I just said “yes” every time someone asked my team for AI,
instead of slumming it by selling sound engineering practices.
I've really tried to work with you on this one. I reached out to my readers and
found a [8]recent example, which was surprisingly hard for something that
should be ubiquitous, and it was... you know, fine! Cool, even. It is immensely
at odds with your later descriptions of the productivity gains one might
expect.
Can we all just turn our brains on for ten fucking seconds? Yes, AI shipping
code at all, even if sometimes it is slow or doesn't work correctly, is very
impressive from a technological standpoint. It is miles ahead of anything that
I thought could be accomplished in 2018. The state-of-the-art in 2018 was
garbage. That doesn't mean that you aren't having a ton of bullshit marketed to
you.
II. Trash-Tier Ethics
I can forgive a lot if someone is funny enough, and Ptacek actually is funny.
Even his [9]LinkedIn is great, and boasts a series of impressive companies.
Obviously he's at Fly.io right now, and I recognize both Starfighter and
Matasano as being places that you're largely only allowed into if you're
wearing Big Boy Engineering Pants. However, despite all of that, I can't help
but really cringe at the way he handles ethical objections, though I suppose
thinking deeply on morality is not a requirement for donning aforementioned Big
Boy Engineering Pants.
“Meanwhile, software developers spot code fragments seemingly lifted from
public repositories on Github and lose their shit. What about the
licensing? If you’re a lawyer, I defer. But if you’re a software developer
playing this card? Cut me a little slack as I ask you to shove this concern
up your ass. No profession has demonstrated more contempt for intellectual
property.”
Thomas — can I call you Thomas? — I promise I'm trying to think about how to
put this gently. If this is your approach towards ethics, damn dude, don't tell
people that. This is phenomenally sloppy thinking, and I say this even as I
admit that the actual writing is funny.
It turns out that it is very difficult for people to behave as if they have
consistent moral frameworks. This is why moral philosophy is not solved.
Someone says “Lying is bad”, and then someone else comes out with “What if it's
Nazis looking for Anne Frank, you monster?”
Just last week I bought a cup of coffee, and as I swiped my card, I felt a
clammy, liver-spotted hand grasp my shoulder. I found myself face-to-face with
the dreadful visage of Peter Singer, and in his off-hand he brandished a
bloodstained copy of Practical Ethics 2ed at me, noting that money can be used
to purchase mosquito nets and I had just murdered 0.25 children in sub-Saharan
Africa.
Ethics are complicated, but nonetheless murder is illegal! Do you really think
that “These are all real concerns, but counterpoint, fuck off” is anything? A
lot of developers like piracy and argue in bad faith about it, therefore it's
okay for organizations that are beginning to look increasingly like cyberpunk
megacorps, without even the virtue of cool aesthetics, to siphon billions of
dollars of wealth from working class people? No, you don't, I think you wrote
this because it's fun telling people to shove it — and listen, you will never
find a more sympathetic ally on the topic than me. You should just be telling
Zuckerberg to shove it instead of the person that has dedicated their lives to
ensuring that Postgres continues to support the global economy.
III. Why The Appeals To Random Friends?
I'm doing my best to understand where you're coming from. I really am, I pinky
promise. You are clearly not one of the executives I've railed against. We are
brothers, you and I, with an unbreakable bond forged in the furnace of getting
really pissed off at an inscrutable stack trace.
I actually looked up multiple videos of people doing some live AI programming.
And I went hey, [10]this seems okay. It does seem very over-complicated to me,
but I will happily concede that everything looks complicated when you're new at
it. But it also definitely doesn't look orders of magnitude faster than the
work I normally do. It looks like it would be useful for a non-trivial subset
of problems that are tedious. I would like to think “thank you, Thomas, for
opening my eyes to this”.
I would like to think that, but then you wrote this:
“I’m sipping rocket fuel right now,” a friend tells me. “The folks on my
team who aren’t embracing AI? It’s like they’re standing still.” He’s not
bullshitting me. He doesn’t work in SFBA. He’s got no reason to lie.
Tom — can I call you Tom? — we were getting along so well! What happened? You
described AI as the second-most important development of your career. The
runner up for the most important development of your career makes other
engineers look like they're standing still? Do you not see how wildly
incoherent this is with the tone of the rest of your piece?
Firstly, you shouldn't drink rocket fuel. Please ask your friend to write me a
nice testimonial. I'm thinking about re-applying for entrance to a clinical
neuropsychology program next year, and preventing widespread brain damage might
be the thing that gets me over the line.
Secondly, I'm perplexed. This whole article, I thought that you were making the
case that this thing was crazy awesome. Now there's a sudden reference to some
unnamed friend, with an assurance that he isn't bullshitting you and he has no
reason to lie? Why are we resorting to your kerosene-guzzling compatriot? Why
are you telling me that he's not lying? Is the further implication that we
can't trust someone in the San Francisco Bay Area on AI?
Putting my psychology hat on for a second, you've also overlooked that people
have a spectacular capacity for self-delusion. People don't just lie to get VC
money, although this is admittedly a great driver of lying, they can also lie
because they're wrong or confused or excited. According to my calendar, I've
spoken to something like 150+ professionals in the past year or so from all
sorts of industries — usually solid three hour long conversations. Many of them
were programmers, and some of them definitely make me feel like I'm standing
still, and in exactly 0% of cases is it because of their AI tooling. It's
because they're better than me, and their assessment of AI tooling maps much
more closely to the experience you actually describe.
“There’s plenty of things I can’t trust an LLM with. No LLM has any of
access to prod here. But I’ve been first responder on an incident and fed
4o — not o4-mini, 4o — log transcripts, and watched it in seconds spot LVM
metadata corruption issues on a host we’ve been complaining about for
months. Am I better than an LLM agent at interrogating OpenSearch logs and
Honeycomb traces? No. No, I am not.”
See, this, this I can relate to. There are quite a few problems where I make
the assessment that my frail human mind and visual equipment are simply not up
to the task on short notice, and then I go “ChatGPT, did I fuck up? Also please
tie my shoelaces and kiss my boo-boo for me”, and sometimes it does!^[11]3 A
good amount of time waste in software engineering are more advanced variants of
when you're totally new and do things like forgetting errant ;s. You just need
an experienced friend to lean over your shoulder and give the advanced version
of “you are missing a colon”, and this might remove five hours of pointless
slogging. LLMs make some of that available on tap, instantly and tirelessly,
and this is not to be sneezed at.
But rocket fuel? What made you think that this was a reasonable thing to
re-print if it had to be followed by “Bro wouldn't lie to me”?
I know quite a few people I respect that use AI in their own programming
workflows, and they have considerably less exuberant takes.
A few weeks ago, I was chatting with [12]Nat Bennett about AI in their own
programming, as I was trying to reconcile Kent Beck's^[13]4 love for LLM-driven
programming with my own lukewarm experience.
Me: “Are you finding it [AI] good enough that it might be a mug's game to
program unassisted?”
Nat: “I usually switch back and forth between prompting and writing code by
hand a lot while I'm working. [...] But like, yesterday it fixed the
biggest performance problem in my application with a couple of sentences
from me. This was a performance problem that I already kind of knew how to
solve! It also made an insane decision about exceptions at the same time.”
That's neat, I respect it, but also note that Nat did not say “Yes, use LLMs,
you fucking moron”.
Nat (later): “I do think, by the way, that it is entirely possible that
we're all getting punked by what's essentially a magic mirror. Which is
part of why I'm like, only mess with this stuff if it's fun.”
The magic mirror line is exactly the sort of thing that [14]Bjarnason hinted at
in the article linked at the very beginning, arrived at independently.
Or Jesse Alford's assessment of the steps required to give it a fair trial:
“I think you basically want to tell it what you want to add and why, like
you were writing a story for your team. Then you ask it to make a plan to
do this, and if that plan seems likely to produce the results you want, you
ask it to do the thing. [15]Stefan Prandl and Nat have actually done this
kind of thing more than I have. You should be ready to try repeatedly.”
(emphasis mine)
This sounds cool! But being ready to try repeatedly? This does not sound like
rocket fuel.
Or Stefan Prandl:
“Updates on the agentic machine. It has spent 5 hours attempting to fix
errors in unit tests. It has been unsuccessful.
I don't think people tend to talk about the massive wastes of time and
resources these things can cause, so, just keeping reporting on the LLM
systems honest.”
Is it not, perhaps, a possibility that your friend is excited by a shiny new
tool and has failed to introspect adequately as to their true productivity?
There are, after all, literally hundreds of thousands of people that think
playing Jira Scrabble is an effective use of their time, and they also do not
have a reason to lie to me about this. Nonetheless, every year, I must watch
sadly as they lead my dejected peers to the Backlog Mines, where they will
waste precious hours reciting random components of the Fibonacci sequence.
What I'm getting at is all the people that make me feel like I'm “standing
still”, including most of the ones I know that use AI and I like enough to ask
for mentorship from, have never indicated that incorporating AI into my
company's development workflow is at all a priority, and they won't even talk
to me about it if I don't nag them.
However, some of them do live in the Bay Area, and I am willing to align with
you on the idea that this makes them lying snakes.
IV. Is AI Getting The Right Level Of Attention?
“But AI is also incredibly — a word I use advisedly — important. It’s
getting the same kind of attention that smart phones got in 2008, and not
as much as the Internet got. That seems about right.”
Tomothy — can I call you Tomothy? — this raises some very important questions,
ones which I'm sure the whole audience would be very keen on getting answers
to. Namely, where is the portal to the magical plane that you live in? Answer
me, you selfish bastard!
I have been assured that there was a phase in the IT world where, upon bringing
any project to management, they would say “Why isn't there a mobile app in this
project?”. This is because many people are [16]very credulous, especially when
they are spending other people's money.
However, I still find myself wanting to make the lengthy journey to the pocket
dimension that you inhabit, because the hype I've seen around AI is like,
fucking next level, and I want out. We are at Amway-Megachurch-Cult levels of
hype. The last time I attended a conference, the [17]room was full of
non-technicians paying lip service to the Holy Trinity Of Things They Can't
Possibly Understand — blockchain, quantum, AI.
Executives and directors from around the world have called me to say that they
can't fund any projects if they don't pretend there is AI in them. Non-profits
have asked me if we could pretend to do AI because it's the only way to fund
infrastructure in the developing world. Readers keep emailing me to say that
their contracts are getting cancelled because someone smooth-talked their CEO
into believing that they don't need developers. I was miraculously allowed onto
some mandated “Professional Development For Board Members On AI” panel hosted
by the Financial Times^[18]5, alongside people like Yahoo's former CDO, and the
preparation consisted of being informed repeatedly that the audience has no
idea what AI does but is scared they'll be fired or sued if they don't buy it.
I wish, oh how I wish that it was like other hype cycles, but presumably not
many people were walking around saying that smartphones are going to solve
physics and usher in the end of all human labor, [19]real things Sam Altman has
said. I personally know people from university whose retirement plan is “AI
makes currency obsolete before I turn 40”. I understand that you don't care if
that happens — and that is okay, it is irrelevant to how the technology
performs for you at work now. But given that you can find thousands of people
saying these things by glancing literally anywhere, how can you also say the
technology is getting the correct amount of attention? This is wild.
Tomothy, my washing machine has betrayed me. I turn it on and it says
“optimizing with AI” but it never explains what it is optimizing, and then I
still have to pick all the settings manually.
cd87353b-0c7a-4747-8ee3-47e8766cbd37~1(1).jpg
Please, please, please, let me into your blissful paradise, I'll do anything.
V. These Executives Are Grifting Or Incompetent
“Tech execs are mandating LLM adoption. That’s bad strategy. But I get
where they’re coming from.”
Tomtom — can I call you Tomtom? — do you get where they're coming from? Do you
really? Re-read what you just wrote and repent for your conciliatory ways.
If you, a person I believe is not a tech executive and is bullish on the
technology, can identify that this is bad strategy in presumably ten
milliseconds of thought, what does that say about the people who are doing
this?
Where they're coming from is:
a ) trying to stoke their share prices via frenzied speculation
b ) trying to generate hype so they can IPO and scam some gamblers
c ) being fucking morons
Sorry, those are the only reasons for engaging in obviously bad strategy. It's
so obvious that you didn't bother explaining why it's bad strategy because you
know that we all know. They have misaligned incentives or do not know what
they're doing. This isn't like a grandmaster losing to Magnus Carlsen because
they played a subtly incorrect variant of the Sicilian^[20]6 thirty-five moves
ago. We're talking about supposedly world-class leaders sitting down and going
“I always move the horsies first because it's hard to see the L-shapes”.
They're either playing a different game, i.e Hyperlight Grifter, or they're
behaving like goddamn baboons.
This is an inescapable conclusion if you accept that it is obviously bad
strategy, which you did. Welcome to the Logic Thunderdome, pal, where two men
enter, one man dies, and the other feels that he wasted valuable calories on
the murder.
Good strategy could perhaps be something like gently suggesting people
experiment with LLMs in their workflows, buying a bunch of $100 licenses, and
maybe paying for some coaching in the effective usage of these tools if you are
somehow able to navigate the ten thousand “thought leaders” that were
cybersecurity experts a year ago, and real estate agents before that. Then
instruct everyone to shut up and go back to doing their jobs.
Whenever someone announces they are going AI first, I am the person that gets
the emails from their engineering teams and directors describing what is really
happening in-house. I've received emails that are probably admissible as
evidence of intent to defraud investors. You have not accurately perceived
where these people are coming from, because they are coming from the
ever-lengthening queue outside the gates of Hell.
VI. Killing Strawmen
Do you like fine Japanese woodworking? All hand tools and sashimono
joinery? Me too. Do it on your own time.
Tomahawk Missile – can I call you Tomahawk Missile? – I agree that people are
very miscalibrated on GenAI in both directions. Did you know the angriest
message I got about my stance on AI is that I was too pro-AI? I also cringe
whenever someone says “stochastic parrot” or “this is just pattern-matching and
could never be conscious”. We actually have no idea what makes things
conscious, and we have very little idea re: how human brains work. It is
totally plausible to me that we are stochastic parrots and it simply doesn't
feel that way from the inside.
I don't talk about those people very much for two reasons.
One, even explaining the abstract concept of [21]qualia is like, super hard,
let alone talking about [22]the hard problem of consciousness. Some things are
best left to professionals and textbooks.
Two, while these are silly positions that deserve refutation, they are also not
at all interesting. That doesn't make it wrong to refute them, but they are
also not impactful. The only reason that I think it's worth addressing the
other side of the Crazy Pendulum, i.e, my washing machine doing AI, is that
they have different effects in the world.
And I'm not even talking about environmental impacts or discrete harms caused
by AI, I'm talking about the fact it's impossible to talk about anything else.
GenAI has sucked the air out of every room, and no one can hear you scream
reason in a hard vacuum.
The former category of maximalist AI-haters exist on Mastodon, which most
executives do not know exists and certainly do not use to guide the allocation
of society's funding. The latter category of trembling AI sycophants is
literally killing people — I know of a hospital in Australia that is wasting
all their time on AI initiatives, which caused them to leave data quality
issues unfixed, which caused them to under-report COVID deaths, which caused a
premature lifting of masking policies. How many old people go through a major
hospital per day? Do the math and riddle me this, Tomahawk: which one of these
groups should I be worried about?
So, you know, when you hear someone make a totally economically irrelevant
argument about the craft? Putting aside all the second-order effects in how
changing the way you program might change the way you develop as an engineer,
let's say that these people aren't thinking of that, and are just being dumb. A
person turning up to a CEO and going “no, don't do the cheap thing, pay me to
do stuff because of craftsmanship”.
I will concede that you did not create that strawman, because it is a real
viewpoint that people hold. But you have certainly walked out of the debate
hall, decapitated a scarecrow, and declared victory.
VII. Why The Half-Hearted Defense Of Artists?
“Important caveat: I’m discussing only the implications of LLMs for
software development. For art, music, and writing? I got nothing. I’m
inclined to believe the skeptics in those fields. I just don’t believe them
about mine.”
Tomtom — I've decided I like Tomtom — I don't understand why you've ceded
authority on these artistic endeavors. LLMs are better for writing than they
are for programming!^[23]7 It is much harder to complect most forms of written
content into such a state that you will cause slowdowns further down the line
than it is to screw up a codebase. It basically requires you to write a
long-form novel, and even then you will probably not produce an unhandled
exception and crash production in a manner that costs millions of dollars.
You'll just produce Wind And Truth^[24]8. If you're inclined to believe people
who are skeptical of AI writing, it probably follows that you should also not
be so flabbergasted by programmers having doubts.
It sounds like this is a sort of not-that-sincerely-felt handwave at vast
economic harm being inflicted on a relatively poor (by programmer standards)
demographic. And then you go on to say this anyway!
“We imagine artists spending their working hours pushing the limits of
expression. But the median artist isn’t producing gallery pieces. They
produce on brief: turning out competent illustrations and compositions for
magazine covers, museum displays, motion graphics, and game assets.”
So are we leaving the arts out of it or not? Should I or should I not just get
GenAI to produce all the pictures I need if I am being a greedy capitalist? I'm
not talking about morals, I'm talking about whether it is selfishly rational to
use GenAI to make my content more appealing.
In your own article, the art across the top banner was clearly attributed to
[25]Annie Ruygt, and it looks totally different, to my eyes, to the [26]AI slop
people are sticking on their websites. If it turns out Annie used GenAI for
that, then I will be extremely owned.
In any case, the artwork on her website is [27]gorgeous, and she describes
herself as producing work for Fly.io. Despite this, I am willing to collaborate
with you to write some hatemail describing her work as “competent but unworthy
of a gallery”, and my consultancy is also happy to tell her that she's fired.
And while we’re at it, we'll fire whoever made the hire for gross inefficiency
in the age of AI.
VIII. End
Wait, can I call you Tommy Gun?
PS:
Obligatory link [28]to About Us page that I forced my team to let me write, to
justify doing all this other writing during work hours.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1. But writer-to-writer, I think it's well-written. If it makes you feel
better, Thomas, Bjarnason also objects vehemently to my tone and style.
However, he still links people to my writing because my points are not
slop! [29]↩
2. I am famous for my very restrained and calm takes. [30]↩
3. Also, I think I've become too sensitive about coming across as anti-AI,
because sometimes my team sits around while an LLM wastes tons of our time
while I go “no, no, this is really easy, it'll get it”, but I will accept
that this is Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair. [31]↩
4. I do not sip rocket fuel, but I slam Kent Beck's Kool-Aid. [32]↩
5. How do board members do their professional diligence on AI before spending
billions of dollars on it? They join the call, leave their screens on, and
walk away until they get credited for the hours. Maybe we are all the same,
deep down. [33]↩
6. All my hopes of becoming even a mediocre chess player were dashed when I
discovered there is an opening called the Hyperaccelerated Dragon,
preventing me from ever wanting to do anything else with any enthusiasm.
[34]↩
7. This is not quite accurate, but broadly true. On one hand, books don't stop
working if you've got clunky prose. On the other hand, if books stopped
working when you had clunky prose, then you'd never ship clunky prose, a
guarantee that programs can provide for some set of errors. But, broadly
speaking, yeah, LLMs churn out adequate — i.e, stuff generally not good
enough for me to read — prose without needing a billion agents, special
tooling and also have minimal risk of catastrophic failure. [35]↩
8. Figured I'd start a feud with Brandon Sanderson while I'm at it. Please
note that I'm not saying he used GenAI to write, I'm saying some of the
dialogue was horrendous. What were you thinking, buddy? [36]↩
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References:
[1] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/
[2] https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/
[3] https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/trusting-your-own-judgement-on-ai/
[4] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fn:1
[5] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDVtXSpm378
[7] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fn:2
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYXZCUvpIc
[9] https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasptacek/
[10] https://www.linkedin.com/video/live/urn:li:ugcPost:7338958277646393345/?originTrackingId=98BFbYghSVqcncNLBFxvDA%3D%3D
[11] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fn:3
[12] https://www.simplermachines.com/
[13] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fn:4
[14] https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/trusting-your-own-judgement-on-ai/
[15] https://www.linkedin.com/in/redezem/
[16] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/brainwash-an-executive-today/
[17] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/an-empty-hall-of-smiling-assassins/
[18] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fn:5
[19] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UM3xV8IyE70
[20] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fn:6
[21] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/
[22] https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/
[23] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fn:7
[24] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fn:8
[25] https://annieruygtillustration.com/
[26] https://katecarruthers.com/2024/06/16/ai-autonomous-everything/
[27] https://thespacioustarot.com/
[28] https://www.hermit-tech.com/about
[29] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fnref:1
[30] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fnref:2
[31] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fnref:3
[32] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fnref:4
[33] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fnref:5
[34] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fnref:6
[35] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fnref:7
[36] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/#fnref:8
[37] https://akols.com/previous?id=ludic
[38] https://akols.com/
[39] https://akols.com/next?id=ludic
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[41] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/newsletter/
[42] https://mataroa.blog/

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• [1] Naz Hamid
• [2]Journal
• [3]Links
• [4]About
•
[7]Just One Good Thing
Today’s culture seems to reward and celebrate the hustle. The neverending idea
that one should always be productive, working, producing, shipping.
At times, I’ve compared myself to peers, colleagues, and friends. Places like
LinkedIn and other social media make me cringe: everyone performing in favor of
being seen as someone with their shit together. Impostor syndrome strikes. On
the other end, workingworkingworking results in burnout and feeling like
nothing was accomplished anyway.
This followed me for decades, but over the last decade I’ve begun to let go in
many ways and focused on my immediate people and myself.
This is not as easy to do as we’d like, as stress, obligations, and pressure
reveal themselves in the form of externalities: things out of or beyond our
control.
In the last year, a mindset shift and approach appeared as a very simple idea:
just do one thing, that I want to do today.
The one thing can be small or big, easy or labored, fleeting or long. I carve
out time to go play drums for two hours, go for a bouldering session, do a
shorter 20 minute run, read a page of a book, eat something I’m really excited
about, and more. Even on the most difficult day, I can adjust and find the
smallest thing that I am excited about and do it.
I needed some way to change my outlook. Developing a habit that is less about
more and embracing the simple and ordinary has brought me a semblance of peace.
It’s allowed for adaptability and resilience when the days go sideways and joy
and delight on days that go smoothly.
Just. One. Good. Thing.
Jul 21 2025 ⋅ [8]personal
Related
• [9] Boy Meets Girl
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Oct 26 2004
• [10] Music That Got Me Through 2020
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Jan 31 2021
• [11] On Racism
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Mar 17 2021
[12]Prev
Beyond Curiosity
I write an occasional newsletter called Weightshifting. It was originally
comprised of design, culture, and travel notes, morphed into [13]two seasons of
overland travel, and has now returned to its original ideal of observations in
the field. You can subscribe below.
Email address [14][ ] [15][Subscribe]
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© 2000 - 2025 Naz Hamid.
Get some RSS feeds: [16]Journal or [17]Links. You can email me at my [18]first
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[9] https://nazhamid.com/journal/boy-meets-girl/
[10] https://nazhamid.com/journal/2020-music/
[11] https://nazhamid.com/journal/on-racism/
[12] https://nazhamid.com/journal/beyond-curiosity/
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