Category: Food for thought

Jim Nielsen arguing that values should drive decision making, not data:

Data tells you what people consume, not what you should make. Values, ethics, vision, those can help you with the “should”.

“What is happening?” and “What should happen?” are two completely different questions and should be dealt with as such.

The more powerful our ability to understand demand, the more important our responsibility to decide whether to respond to it. We can choose not to build something, even though the data suggests we should. We can say no to the data. 

Data can tell you what people clicked on, even help you predict what people will click on, but you get to decide what you will profit from.

There’s a GitHub project called posturr that blurs your screen when you slouch. This comment on Hacker News by avalys explains the inverse relationship between a developer’s posture and their productivity.

You can measure my productivity by how slouched I am.

Sitting up straight at my desk, chair locked, perfect posture? I’m doing nothing, maybe looking through System Preferences to change the system highlight color.

Sliding down in my chair like jelly, with my shoulders where my butt should be and my head resting on the lumbar support? I’m building the next iPhone and it’ll be done by 2 AM.

Ha!

Mark Carney’s speech from Davos 2026:

[…]we aim to be both principled and pragmatic – principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force, except when consistent with the UN Charter, and respect for human rights, and pragmatic and recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share all of our values. 

So, we’re engaging broadly, strategically with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be.

We are calibrating our relationships, so their depth reflects our values, and we’re prioritizing broad engagement to maximize our influence, given and given the fluidity of the world at the moment, the risks that this poses and the stakes for what comes next.

And we are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength.

We are building that strength at home.

Nicholas Carr talking about how instant communication, enabled by telegraph, was one of the catalyst the First World War.

The unprecedented ability of far-flung leaders and diplomats to talk directly with each other without delay spurred great hopes. It seemed obvious that the resulting exchanges would ease friction and encourage goodwill among nations. Nikola Tesla, in an 1898 interview about his work on wireless telegraph systems, said that he would be “remembered as the inventor who succeeded in abolishing war.” His rival, Guglielmo Marconi, declared in 1912 that wireless telegraphy would “make war impossible.”

What actually happened was altogether different. In the lead-up to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, telegraphic communications inflamed tensions rather than dampening them. Writes the French historian Pierre Granet: “The constant transmission of dispatches between governments and their agents, the rapid dissemination of controversial information among an already agitated public, hastened, if it did not actually provoke, the outbreak of hostilities.” 

The start of the First World War in 1914, two years after Marconi announced the end of war, was similarly hastened by the new communication mediums. After the June 28 assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, hundreds of urgent diplomatic messages raced between European capitals through newly strung telegraph and telephone wires. As the historian Stephen Kern describes in The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918, the rapid-fire dispatches quickly devolved into ultimatums and threats. “Communication technology imparted a breakneck speed to the usually slow pace of traditional diplomacy and seemed to obviate personal diplomacy,” Kern writes. “Diplomats could not cope with the volume and speed of electronic communication.”

Same as ever.

JA Westenberg explaining what is effort heuristic:

There’s a concept in behavioral science called the “effort heuristic.” It’s the idea that we tend to value information more if we worked for it. The more effort something requires, the more meaning we assign to the result. When all knowledge is made effortless, it’s treated as disposable. There’s no awe, no investment, no delight in the unexpected—only consumption.

Kent Beck’s thought provoking post on, what he calls, ‘bridge model’ to make connections with others:

Here’s the mental model that finally helped me: a bridge.

I can unilaterally construct a bridge to another person. I can reach out. Make contact. Say something real. The further the distance—emotionally, culturally, socially—the harder the bridge is to build. But it’s possible with almost anyone of positive intent. (It’s also possible with people whose intent toward me is negative or merely transactional. That’s a different problem.)

With the bridge in place, I can walk halfway across.

Half. Way. I can make an investment. Do something a little uncomfortable. Reveal something true about myself. Share an observation that matters to me. Ask a question that shows I’m paying attention.

And then I have to stop.

I have to stand in the middle of the bridge and wait.

Jacob Schroeder sharing his 25 lessons on money and meaning. This lesson regarding raising kids stood out for me.

The cost of children is an admission to adventure, love, pain, joy, despair, loss, fulfillment – all that life can and should be. Then one day it’s over. The ride comes to a stop – hopefully, much later than sooner – and that emptiness is a bittersweet debt. It is a debt that can never be repaid. You are left desperately wishing to repay it only to take it out again so you can relive it all over, desperately wishing to take out a second mortgage on all the spills, the cuts and bruises, the breaks, the heartaches, the tears, the smiles, the hugs, the laughs, the I love yous and the goodbyes, enough to get you angry at the unfairness of it all.

I am still on this adventure.

This comment by nicbou who is sharing their thoughts on the layoffs among technical writers due to AI.

I write documentation for a living. Although my output is writing, my job is observing, listening and understanding. I can only write well because I have an intimate understanding of my readers’ problems, anxieties and confusion. This decides what I write about, and how to write about it. This sort of curation can only come from a thinking, feeling human being.

I revise my local public transit guide every time I experience a foreign public transit system. I improve my writing by walking in my readers’ shoes and experiencing their confusion. Empathy is the engine that powers my work.

Most of my information is carefully collected from a network of people I have a good relationship with, and from a large and trusting audience. It took me years to build the infrastructure to surface useful information. AI can only report what someone was bothered to write down, but I actually go out in the real world and ask questions.

I have built tools to collect people’s experience at the immigration office. I have had many conversations with lawyers and other experts. I have interviewed hundreds of my readers. I have put a lot of information on the internet for the first time. AI writing is only as good as the data it feeds on. I hunt for my own data.

People who think that AI can do this and the other things have an almost insulting understanding of the jobs they are trying to replace.

I would implore you to read the comments in the Hacker News thread. A lot of folks are having a feeling that there’s no going back and it reminds me of this—we are in a market of lemons.

Weimin Chu has documented the scale of renewable energy in China in series of photographs. Yale Environment 360 showcases these photographs along with the energy capabilities of these renewable energy sources.

Last year China installed more than half of all wind and solar added globally. In May alone, it added enough renewable energy to power Poland, installing solar panels at a rate of roughly 100 every second.

The massive buildout is happening across the country, from crowded eastern cities increasingly topped by rooftop solar panels to remote western deserts where colossal wind farms sprawl across the landscape.

“From the ground, it’s hard to grasp the scale of these power plants,” said Chinese photographer Weimin Chu. “But when you rise into the air, you can see the geometry, the rhythm — and their relationship with the mountains, the desert, the sea.”

Matheus Lima sharing his thoughts on processing everything at 2x, just because you can.

Life happens at 1x. Every conversation you’ve ever had. Every walk, every meal, every meaningful experience. None of it comes with a speed dial. We’re biological creatures wired for real-time processing. When someone speaks to you in person, you don’t get to fast-forward through the parts you find boring.

There’s something strange about trying to shortcut how humans communicate. A podcast is just a conversation you’re eavesdropping on. The pauses, the rhythm, the way someone builds to a point. That’s all part of it. Speed it up and you get the words, sure. But you lose the texture.

Your brain needs empty space too. This is the part we’ve collectively forgotten. Boredom is a feature, not a bug. It’s where our best ideas — like starting this blog! — come from. It’s where you actually process what you’ve learned, make connections, have original thoughts. Constant consumption, even sped up, leaves no room for any of that. You need to be bored.

The irony is that consuming faster often means processing less. You’re optimizing for throughput when you should be optimizing for understanding. All those 2x podcasts blur together into background noise. What did you actually retain? What changed how you think? It’s empty calories. It’s fake productivity.