Weeknote #73 (20260215-20260221)

meta

Yet another, yet another week.

did

read

As activists mitigating the harms of “AI”, we need to be well informed, and we need to understand what the specific harms are. Treating it with a hands-clean purist mindset will be extremely difficult and as activism, more alienating than effective. These are genuinely useful tools, and pretending they aren’t will not in fact win many hearts and minds.

All of this discussion, from Jeffrey’s video to 99% of what shows up in forums or Mastodon discussions, is about how all of this will impact “me.” Me, the developer. Me, the person writing code, who may not be writing code now. Me the person who just got laid off because some accountant thinks that Claude means they need only two engineers now instead of 10. Me the person who just had to lay off half my company. Me, me, me.

What I almost never see is the impact of AI code on our society.

To me, the truth is this: between the hucksters selling you a ready-built solution, the doomsayers crying the end of software development, and the holdouts insisting that the entire house of cards is on the verge of collapsing – nobody knows anything. That’s the hardest truth to acknowledge, and maybe it’s why so many of us are scared or lashing out.

  • Also continued reading The 4-Hour Chef; picked up The Apocalypse Codex
  • Unread bookmark queue stands at 199 (progress!)

listened

Caught up on some recent Bandcamp purchases

watched

  • finally finished off Criminal Minds; started in on Landman S2, which has been great so far

cooked

  • Monday: tortellini soup
  • Tuesday: roast chicken, fondant potat
  • Saturday: steaks, side Caesar

looking forward to

still March, i think…