269 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
269 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
[1]Tom MacWright
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2025@macwright.com
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[2]Tom MacWright
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• [3]Writing⇠
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• [4]Reading
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• [5]Photos
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• [6]Projects
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• [7]Drawings
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• [8]Micro
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• [9]About
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Auto Light Dark
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2025 Year in Review
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Well, nearly another year in the books. How did it go?
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Books per year chart
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It’s genuinely surprising to me how consistent my reading stays year-over-year.
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I don’t set reading goals or have a predictable pace, and every year has at
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least a month in which I’m reading nothing, my momentum growth to a halt. But
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at the end of every year, it’s range-bound between 19 and 22 for the past five
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years.
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The count is 19 at the moment, but I’m reading a [13]fast-paced sci-fi so it’ll
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probably be 20 by the end of the year.
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[14]A Confederacy of Dunces was easily the most entertaining book this year -
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an absolute riot, funny and unique. [15]Things Become Other Things, from [16]
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Craig Mod, was the most affecting book of the year, the only one that made me
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cry a little. And [17]The Fort Bragg Cartel was the most engaging,
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can’t-put-it-down book. If you can stomach the difficult material - detailed
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descriptions of war crimes and domestic abuse - I highly recommend reading it.
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Race times
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This was a decent year for running, too. I ran five 5ks and two half-marathons
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in 2025, and achieved my simple goal of running sub-20 in the 5k. The thing
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about running a mediocre 19:13 PR in high school and then running mid-19s
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twenty years later is that now I’m in the top 10% of my age group! On a
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relative basis, I keep getting faster.
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Mostly I blame the extreme summer heat for some of the higher times: many of
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the races had warnings about high humidity, high heat, and bad air quality,
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warning people from overexertion. A sample from their pre-race email:
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The weather forecast is for temperatures in the low 90s. Please dress and
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hydrate properly, and avoid overexertion. The Air Quality Index is
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predicted to be over 100 at race start, members of sensitive groups may
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experience health effects. Limit outdoor exposure if you are sensitive to
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ozone. This might be a great night to run easy or tempo effort, please
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adjust your pace expectations!
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That said, I think I could still do better. Running low 19 minute times would
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be lovely and I think within my abilities. I’ve been following an ‘intuitive
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training plan’ this whole time, which in other words means not having a plan.
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2026 I plan to have a plan, and probably the cornerstone of that plan is
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logging many more easy miles.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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How’s work been going? I can point to the [18]Val Town Retrospective that I
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wrote for most of the answer to that question. 2025 for [19]Val Town was a year
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of big ups and downs. Simultaneously, the job became both more demanding and I
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became more adjusted to it: it’s remarkable how adaptable people and
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organizations can be.
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On a day-to-day level, as an engineer, the codebase has grown to the point
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where it’s a bit difficult to keep all in my head, and there are important
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components that I shamefully haven’t directly worked on. For a ‘CTO’, needing
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to have the system memorized might feel like an no-no, but for an organization
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of this size my job is really to be a general-purpose builder, fixer, and
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understander.
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I was really into rhythmic instrumental music: SML’s take on jazz in [20]Small
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Medium Large and [21]How Have You Been are amazing, the kind of music that
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works for focused coding, a dinner party, or a long drive.
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[22]Septet by John Carroll Kirby
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I loved John Carroll Kirby’s alternative take on jazz too - which can sound
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cheesy, like elevator music, until you get a minute in.
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[23]Low on Foot by Slow Mass
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Slow Mass’s [24]Low on Foot was probably my album of the year: almost every
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song is marked with five stars in my music library in [25]Swinsian.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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I feel unsatisfied with my productive output in 2025. But this is a permanent
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condition I think.
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First bike bag
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Sewing was the big new thing. I sewed about five bags, including three for my
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bicycle, and rode almost 1,000 miles with them.
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Bag 2
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It’s a fantastic hobby. Designing the bags exercises my brain in just the right
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ways, it’s tactile and low-tech. My sewing machine was manufactured around
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1970, and works great. I love the learning process involved: my first attempt
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at sewing a bag for the front rack of my bike yielded clear lessons for bag 2,
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things like using stiffer fabric where the bag needs support and trying to
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minimize seams in areas that are on the top, to preserve waterproofing.
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Pending another bike, I’m pretty much done with bike bags, but there are plenty
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more projects on the horizon for the sewing machine.
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Besides the flashy bags-from-scratch, it’s been useful for simpler things like:
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• Restuffing my couch cushions and sewing them back closed
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• Repairing the pocket in some running shorts that had developed a hole
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• Hemming some jeans that were too long, and an oversized shirt
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It’s been really rewarding, and sewing goes really well with instrumental jazz.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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That said, my free-time coding projects have been fewer. I implemented [26]
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indiepixel, a pixel-art rendering layer in Python for my Tidbyt display. And I
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maintained [27]Placemark, putting time into simplifying it and adding a handful
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of new features, like [28]drawing lines with automatic routing.
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But that’s about it? The coding I’ve done on weekends has mostly been
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work-related, and not much of that either. I still have fun coding, but I have
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to say that it’s changed for me. The tech industry just feels bad in so many
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ways, from its open embrace of fascism to the nihilistic startups that
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advertise via rage-bait. LLMs have changed things a lot too: it’s hard to tell
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what people value anymore, and how people have fun. I’ve [29]written a lot
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about LLMs, so won’t repeat it all. See: [30]Would LLMs democratizing coding be
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a pyrrhic victory?, [31]Hallucination City, [32]LLMs pivot to the aesthetics of
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thinking, and more.
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I’ve long aimed to diversify my joys: part of finding a love of music, art,
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sewing, running, and so on is that they can serve as backup ways to feel happy
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when the world’s tough. I see some of what’s happening now - people using
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computers to do art, automating the skillful work they used to do, and I wonder
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what this leaves time for them to do: in the excess time, where do you find
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joy?
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I’ve been finding most of that joy away from the keyboard, this year. I hope I
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rediscover some of that spark in 2026. I have been having fun learning [33]
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Effect and writing some Rust, and there are plenty of ideas left.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Brooklyn continues to be good to me. Living here delivers on my priorities in
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life: things like never drive and live near friends. By those metrics, it does
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great, and always surprises me with just how much of the world is packed into
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the 97 square miles of the borough, and Manhattan and Queens nearby.
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And yeah - the [34]election of Zohran Mamdani makes it even better. This year
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was the first time that I knocked on doors for a mayoral candidate, and so did
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a majority of my friends. It’s pretty exciting. I think that the next few years
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will be great for the city, and though it’ll be really tough to deliver on all
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of his promises, even just having a mayor in office who shows up to the job and
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wants the best for his constituents will be a welcome change from the previous
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administration.
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I [35]started this blog in 2011 with a vague photo of San Jose and some
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non-committal prose. So 2026 will be the 15th anniversary of the blog.
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Blogging has been, for me, an unalloyed success. It has connected me to people,
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given me a place to develop my thoughts, made some of my work on the internet -
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a place always decaying and forgetting - a little more permanent. I absolutely
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recommend everyone do it.
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I know why most people don’t do it: not enough time and too much fear of
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publishing ‘bad writing.’ Maybe ‘nothing to write about,’ too, though this
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never seems that real to me, given how the average person I meet has
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interesting thoughts and ideas to share.
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I forget exactly when I removed analytics from the blog, but it was a long time
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ago. Since then I don’t know what ‘takes off’ or ‘goes viral’ and it’s mostly
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fine with me. Lately though, I have been discovering other indie blogs with
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articles that reference or respond to mine, and I really want a way for this to
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be slightly more social. Not fully social of course - no comments and this is
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not part of any network - but I want to know about link-backs. That’s probably
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the focus for 2026.
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I think this idea has been going around - my friend [36]Waldo was discussing it
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the other day, and [37]webmentions came up as an option. I’ve tried webmentions
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in the past with little success - not many blogs supported them and I got a lot
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of spam - but it’s worth another shot. It’s hard not to get a little
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discouraged off the jump because webmentions have spam, their predecessor [38]
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pingbacks were ripe with abuse, [39]trackbacks had even more spam, and even if
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I try to find backlinks with [40]ahrefs.io, there are plenty of spam domains
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there too or SEO schemes. The internet is an adversarial place.
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In meta-blog news, this blog has been hosted on [41]Netlify since [42]2017 and
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I can’t find a strong reason to switch off. It’s been rock-solid. I’ve been
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using [43]Jekyll since I started in 2011 and it continues to work great, though
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if I started from scratch I’d probably use [44]11ty. It would be nice to have a
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little more power over server-rendering and deploy on [45]Hetzner, but it seems
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like it’d be a step-up in complexity.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Riding the C&O Canal
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Photo from riding the GAP trail + C&O Canal this year
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every strange thing you’ve ever been into, every failed hobby or forgotten
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instrument, everything you have ever learned will come back to you, will
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serve you when you need it. No love, however brief, is wasted. - [46]Louise
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Miller
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December 7, 2025 [47]Tom MacWright
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[48]@macwright.com on Bluesky, [49]@tmcw@mastodon.social on Mastodon
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References:
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[1] https://macwright.com/
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[2] https://macwright.com/
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[3] https://macwright.com/writing
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[4] https://macwright.com/reading/
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[5] https://macwright.com/photos/
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[6] https://macwright.com/projects/
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[7] https://macwright.com/drawings/
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[8] https://macwright.com/micro/
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[9] https://macwright.com/about/
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[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Antimemetics_Division
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[14] https://macwright.com/2025/01/25/a-confederacy-of-dunces
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[15] https://macwright.com/2025/06/29/things-become-other-things
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[16] https://craigmod.com/
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[17] https://macwright.com/2025/12/02/the-fort-bragg-cartel
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[18] https://macwright.com/2025/11/11/val-town
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[19] https://www.val.town/
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[20] https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/small-medium-large
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[21] https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/how-you-been
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[22] https://johncarrollkirby.bandcamp.com/album/septet
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[23] https://slowmassmusic.bandcamp.com/album/low-on-foot
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[24] https://slowmassmusic.bandcamp.com/album/low-on-foot
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[25] https://swinsian.com/
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[26] https://macwright.com/2025/04/12/tidbyt-second-life
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[27] https://www.placemark.io/
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[28] https://mastodon.social/@tmcw/115595261706919222
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[29] https://macwright.com/2023/04/15/ai
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[30] https://macwright.com/2024/07/18/llms-democratizing-coding
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[31] https://macwright.com/2025/11/07/hallucination-city
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[32] https://macwright.com/2025/11/05/llms-thinking-pivot
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[33] https://effect.website/
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[34] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zohran_Mamdani
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[35] https://macwright.com/2011/07/04/hello-internet
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[36] https://mastodon.social/@waldoj/115670295623060834
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[37] https://indieweb.org/Webmention
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[38] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback
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[39] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback
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[40] https://ahrefs.com/
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[41] https://www.netlify.com/
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[42] https://macwright.com/2017/05/08/https
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[43] https://jekyllrb.com/
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[44] https://www.11ty.dev/
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[45] https://www.hetzner.com/
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[46] https://x.com/louisethebaker/status/1379961867922239497?lang=en
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[47] https://macwright.com/about/
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[48] https://bsky.app/profile/macwright.com
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[49] https://mastodon.social/@tmcw
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