aworks

This mentions a piece by the guitarist Michael Hedges, dedicated to the minimalist composer Steve Reich. Interesting...

Excessive prompts as ceremony. That's an interesting idea.

It would also be an interesting job, even if off the beaten track.

As a hiring manager, if I saw this on a resume interspersed with various web development work, I would be intrigued.

That's fair.

"Chat is a terrible UX General use needs ‘apps’"

I'm old so my computer career has gone: punch cards => calculators => command-line => GUI => touch screen => voice => chat. Chat seems to be the best blend of expressiveness and utility, with a dose of magic thrown in.

I hope Peter Zeihan lives a long life.

The three surprises for me: NV/Tagalog, AL/Korean, KY/German.

The first two are presumably recent immigration.

Kentucky in particular surprises me despite my German ancestors settling in Indiana during the 19th Century. I had assumed Kentucky had been English immigrants from colonial Virginia/Carolina.

This is why John Cage's 4'33" mentioned above is genius. If you listen to the composition with sincerity and seriousness, you get the full, unadulterated (non-silent) experience as opposed to an interpretation.

Codex has used Power Shell, C# and Python and I[m mostly none the wiser. Ok.

Companies have a long history of mis-management of their acquisitions (and mis-managing their portfolio of projects outside their money-making expertise).

As you suggest, it's good that the alumni seem to be doing fine, although Harry Enten's commentary on CNN is not as thougtful as he was on 538 podcasts.

I, an American, was on a business trip in Sweden then a holiday in Scotland. It was easier to understand the Swedes than the Scots...

I have a computer science degree yet continue to use Windows. Is it because I have 30 years of experiece knowing what to ignore?j I do also use WSL for the command-line.

I lived in Silicon Valley without a car for 2 years. Commuted between Palo Alto and Santa Clara by Caltrain commuter rail. Took the local bus system frequently. Rented a car occasionally. It can be done but it's not easy.

"Even as a child, he had that engineer’s directness, an innate distrust of authority, and the gifted kid’s impatience with lesser mortals."

only safe place to be

Originating from 17th century persecution for their religous beliefs and practices. I can't speak of modern-day mistreatment of the group.

The Fourth Turning argues institutional effectiveness is cyclical and that the US is headeds towards the end of tearing down institutions versus building them up (and towards the end of focus on self versus community).

This does assume the current crisis is successfully resolved as it was for the Civil War and Great Depression/WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Turning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Turning_Is_Here

I had a boss who took his notes on loose-leaf notebook paper and would weed the notebook frequently. He had been involved in litigation in the past.

I have 220k unread items in my feed reader.

I traveled to Wuhan twice a year for business for much of the last decade (until the pandemic).

China was a growing country that clearly knew how to build infrastructure. In Wuhan, they built an entire development intended to employ 100,000 engineers (Huawei + our US company's 50). They built a subway system in a decade that's bigger than New York City's. I took the high-speed rail to Beijing and it was superb. They replaced an old, shabby international airport terminal with a new one with the widest concourse I've ever seen. They subsidized regular flights between Wuhan and San Francisco on China Southern airlines. The Hyatt Regency there was one of my favorite hotels I've ever stayed in (cheap and high quality). In a big commerical district, they had the largest screen I've ever seen that had a Blue Screen of Death :-)

Dazzling yet I'm not bullish on China due to its demographics, among many other reasons.

I forgot it was even a thing.

The price of oil going below zero during the pandemic was one of the most astounding economic events in my life. I wonder if anybody did try to instantly create some storage to take advantage of it.

The thriving counter-culture was a surprise when I visited several times last year.

I've visited various parts of Utah in the last year. It doesn't particularly reflect my life choices and I doubt I would ever move there. But their cultural values seem to have resulted in a prosperous state compared to most other Mountain West states (or even most Midwestern states).

I think it's also doing well re: reproductive rate. I expect it to continue be a thriving place for years to come.

Maybe not related but fascinating: "Annual spending on Delta-branded American Express cards comes out to about 1 percent of U.S. GDP. In 2025, this produced about $8 billion in revenue for Delta, accounting for more than the entirety of its profit."

This argues airlines are undifferentiated. In the aggregate, maybe that's true. Personally, I have a long list of airlines I try to avoid flying.

This is interesting to me. I never had any enjoyment from traditional gambling when I dabbled in it. But I like the idea of being an expert on a little-known company and experiencng the response of my actions. Of course, it would be "for entertainment purposes only."

I was never interested in market timing, though.

As an example, I find the AI-generated "slop images in Jakob Nielsen's UX blog quite annoying and distractng.

https://www.uxtigers.com/post/ux-roundup-20260504

https://www.uxtigers.com/post/ux-roundup-20260504

In the 80s, I implemented the use of VAX Code Management System (CMS) on a large commericial avionics software project. Made me a little more confident when later flying a particular Boeing plane.

I had been at Purdue when Walter Tichy built RCS. I discovered in my first job that businesses lagged the state of the art more than I ever imagined.

On the other hand, I was later at Rational who then bought ClearCase. Argh...

I've had the same experience on approach at night by the river near the Grand Rapids MI airport. And a thrilling non-landing at O' Hare where instead of touching down, we suddenly accelerated like crazy for a go-around in crowded airspace.

No comments on either of those. At least that pilot in Orlando who slammed on the brakes before we actually took off came on and said a cockpit window was open. Ok...

I worked for a company that focused on top-down software sales, albeit to Fortune 500 companies. Align with the highest person you can in the organization, sell them and then support the engineers with high-touch support after the product was forced on them. It kind of worked.