As far back as 2006 I saw people doing some strange things for attention on these platforms. Things like collecting “friends” on Facebook like they were Pokémon just to see number go up.
I’m an introvert, and like the exposure to ideas the socials give (eh, mostly) but hate drawing attention to myself.
I now find myself squarely in the attention economy though and need to figure it out
My wife is wicked smaht. She has degrees from some of the best schools in the world, but my favorite alumni community is Stanford.
I often join her at Stanford alumni events. Even though I didn’t attend Stanford myself, I’ve never felt like an outsider. The conversations flow easily, though I can tell the alumni have a deeper reservoir of intellectual stamina than I do.
Last night we went to an event on the new Stanford president’s world tour. This was the second presidential tour I’ve attended. Like before, everything was top-shelf—the food, the drinks, the company.
The evening began with remarks from the new president, who struck me as more in tune with the energy of the alumni and student body than his predecessor. His choice to host the event in an engaging, open style set the tone for the night.
We then heard 15-minute, TED-style guest lectures ranging from bioengineering innovations that reduce pesticide use to the legal frameworks of fashion—fittingly, during New York Fashion Week. Every talk was sharp and thought-provoking.
After a short break, the program resumed with a live taping of The Future of Everything podcast. The panel featured Neale Mahoney (Economics), Susan Athey (Business/Law), and Fei-Fei Li (AI).
The panelists were broadly optimistic about AI. They compared it to electricity or personal computers—general-purpose technologies that touch every industry. Neale Mahoney, however, stressed that optimism shouldn’t blind us to risk. He argued that society is still in John Rawls’s “veil of ignorance,” unsure who will benefit and who will be harmed. He suggested unemployment could hit 10% during the transition, unless governments strengthen the social safety net.
I agree with his framing but question his numbers. During the industrial revolution, mechanization of farming displaced millions of workers, pushing unemployment as high as 19% during the Great Depression. Back then, machines replaced human muscles. Now, AI threatens to replace human brains. And unlike before, we don’t have another economic “trick” to fall back on. My prediction is that AI could drive unemployment back to Great Depression levels. No government is ready for that scale of disruption. If it comes, nations may respond by restricting or even shutting down AI development.
I wish I’d had the chance to press Neale further, but a long line of actual alumni queued up to speak with the panelists. I stepped aside.
I don’t have much pride in my own alma mater. I was the first in my extended family to graduate college, and I only keep in touch with one classmate. When I hear Syracuse alumni boast about their school pride, it mostly comes across as sports talk—and honestly, a little cringe.
By contrast, the camaraderie among Stanford alumni feels genuine. It isn’t about sports; it’s about shared curiosity and intellectual energy. I’m grateful I get to experience it through my wife.
Today I’m launching readmebio.com – a site and social network dedicated to professional READMEs.
A professional README is your personal “owner’s manual” for collaboration—a short, living guide that explains how you like to work, not just what you’ve done. It captures your working style (e.g., upfront design vs. iterative), communication and availability preferences, motivations, energy drains, and clear do/don’t expectations so teammates know exactly how to partner with you.
It replaces unwritten rules with explicit guidance → fewer misunderstandings, faster onboarding, better alignment.
Professional README = clarity on day one, alignment every day after.
Here is my README for example: https://readmebio.com/profile/0199435d-09b7-74ce-b694-75c3d848ad05
Fine-grained privacy settings built in from the beginning. With Readmebio, you’re never forced into “all or nothing” sharing. Instead, you control visibility at the exact level you’re comfortable with:
This “privacy ladder” makes it simple to start small and expand as your comfort grows. Whether you’re a new hire writing your first README or a manager aligning expectations across teams, you can be confident that your work style is being shared with the right audience—and only the right audience
AI generated art causes artists of the past to roll in their graves. Attach dynamo to said artists to power AI data centers which generate more AI art with the power!
For the first time in human history we can run real experiments on software engineering processes where we have the same project, implemented by the same team of agents, where only the process differs to see which software engineering techniques actually work 🤯
https://ground.news/article/ai-poses-greater-threat-to-entry-level-jobs-new-study-finds_8224d5?utm_source=mobile-app&utm_medium=article-share
The amount of sleep I actually need has been completely rejected by society writ large 😭
Sometimes I think I hate people. At least, that’s the knee-jerk reaction when I’m tired and the world feels impossible. But if I step back, I realize it’s not people I hate. It’s complexity.
Our society has become too complex to navigate without falling into traps. There are costly landmines everywhere, set up by teams of smart people whose entire job was to design a maze where, if you slip once, you lose — and they keep your money.
Think about health insurance. Or trying to actually execute on that “100-day sleep guarantee” from a mattress company. Or, most recently, my adventure in getting a CPAP machine — a process that nearly drove me insane.
Here’s how it went:
Each appointment was time off work because they’re only available 9am-5pm, Monday through Friday. When I finally asked him the one question I had, he sent me a YouTube video. Not a specialized resource. Not even his own explanation. A YouTube video.
The machine itself? It cost my insurance $2,000. Then they handed me off to a “CPAP provider” who wanted me to set up more appointments with them (again, only during work hours, 9–5, Monday through Friday) to “go over” the device — a device I had already set up myself by reading the manual. Meanwhile, you can buy the exact same machine on Facebook Marketplace for $500 with all the accessories, no prescription, no hassle, no appointments.
That whole charade? That’s America today.
Everything is like that now. Health, retirement, car maintenance, even just buying the right phone plan — the responsibility keeps getting pushed down from corporations and institutions onto individuals. You’re expected to be a part-time financial analyst, construction foreman, IT manager, lawyer, and doctor just to avoid getting screwed. It’s exhausting, and it’s breaking us.
Peter Turchin has argued that empires collapse under the weight of their own complexity. That’s what’s happening here. America isn’t failing because we don’t have enough resources or talent. It’s failing because everything is too damn complicated.
And when life feels like that, it’s easy to misdirect the anger. We lash out at other people. At immigrants, at the poor, at “the elites.” But the real enemy isn’t people. The real enemy is the crushing complexity of systems that no individual can navigate alone.
This is why I’m an unapologetic AI hype boy. Not because I believe in some sci-fi AGI future, but because right now, even in its current form, AI actually helps. It can cut through the bullshit, do the research, explain the fine print, and give me answers without me wasting hours or getting conned.
AI is, finally, a tool that helps lift the burden. And if we don’t figure out ways — AI or otherwise — to radically simplify life in this country, then we’re heading straight for a revolution. And it won’t even be for the right reasons.
I know this sounds like the setup to an off color joke but I’m not joking. This really happened. I was worried for her and how cowed her posture got when he was blowing up at her for no reason. She hadn’t done anything but stand there. She was used to this
Over the weekend I pushed a new branch to a project on GitHub. It asked me if I wanted copilot to do a code review. Sure! Why not?
Copilot found 2 critical issues, that Claude then fixed and resubmitted the PR
We’re here folks