My wife took this wonderful photo of our son during their outing at a nearby lake today. She’s always had a knack and talent for photography, she never wanted to pursue it professionally.
All that to say, I’m a lucky bastard to get these from her.
I listened to this Wood Brothers album about 10 times today. I imagine if you did similar you wouldn’t regret it either.
Engineering momentum, with occasional job searching
On Tuesday, August 19th I am officially unemployed. As I dive in to the world of job hunting, I suspect I will need to remind myself of the below regularly. Joan Westenberg writes about The Compound Effect of Consistency, this isn’t secret sauce but it is nice to read it articulated in a concise manner.
So the question becomes: how do you engineer momentum?
Start by identifying the variables that compound. Knowledge, confidence, network effects - these are multipliers. Then strip away friction. Reduce decisions. Automate where you can. Create systems that make doing the thing easier than not doing it.
Following specific YouTube channels in my RSS reader has made life much more manageable.
“Chinese Democracy” by Guns ‘n’ Roses came to mind immediately, which means we are all gonna die.
If ALIENS landed on Earth today…Which album should they choose to judge humanity?
Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast keeps getting better and better. In this episode with Joe Mantegna, I’m just falling in love with Chicago all over again.
There are a handful of albums I really play on repeat regularly and Hail to the Thief is on top of that list.
Radiohead: Hail to the Thief (Live Recordings 2003-2009) kottke.org
Reading about the social features The Verge are building into their site and I can’t help but be reminded how of how Google really screwed up with Blogger (one of many in a long list of screwups). I read somewhere they still have millions of active blogs but you wouldn’t know it through their search I guess.
The Verge, really doubling down on blogging as the social network, here’s a nice thread on Bluesky by Nilay Patel:
Verge quickposts are a bit "fake" today -- they're just Wordpress entries designed to look more or less like tweets. Since the beginning, I've wanted to make them "real" -- to turn our feed into a true social feed, with all of the social features (and interop with Bluesky and Mastodon!) that brings
— nilay patel ([@reckless.bsky.social](http://reckless.bsky.social)) August 6, 2025 at 11:25 AM
A reminder that the hyped math of AI productivity doesn't add up
Colton Voege writes No, AI is not Making Engineers 10x as Productive.
I would extend this conclusion to any profession or craft:
There is no secret herbal medicine that prevents all disease sitting out in the open if you just follow the right Facebook groups. There is no AI coding revolution available if you just start vibing. You are not missing anything. Trust yourself. You are enough.
Oh, and don’t scroll LinkedIn. Or Twitter. Ever.
Also, the math doesn’t compute:
I think sometimes people lose the scale of just how big a 10x improvement is. 10x is the difference between your mini-van and a record setting supersonic land jet. Imagine trying to drive your 10 minute commute down your city streets in a car that goes 600mph. Will you get to the other side of town in one tenth the time? No, because even a single 60 second stoplight will eat up your entire time budget. F1 cars slow down to mini-van speeds in basic turns. It turns out that most of any activity is not spent going at top speed.
(via Tao of Mac)