Competence Theater

I have worked at many places. Without exception, the biggest challenge every one of them faced during my time there was either: That’s it. When we addressed these things, we did better. When we didn’t, we did worse. Heck, even my own company was like this! I continually refused to address the first problem, and […]

Work is Weird, Weird is Hard

One cool thing about life, or at least my life, is that as I’ve gotten older and moved around, I’ve gotten to know some people who do jobs that I’ve always been aware of, but actually know very little about. The challenge with these kinds of jobs (and there are a lot of them) is […]

Wholly Lawless

This is an insane sentence to read in a story on a federal court ruling: There is little to no evidence to support a “vague, uncorroborated” allegation that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was once in the MS-13 street gang, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis wrote. And in any case, she said, an immigration judge had expressly barred the […]

Intentionally Spread Thin

OpenAI is shoving more stuff out the door that seems very early, very ambitious, and very janky. OpenAI is releasing a “research preview” of an AI agent called Operator that can “go to the web to perform tasks for you,” according to a blog post. “Using its own browser, it can look at a webpage […]

The Employees You Want

Max Read has a secondary potential motivation (other than sucking up to an incoming Presidential administration) for Mark Zuckerberg suddenly reinventing himself as the least intimidating, least plausible right-wing tough-guy reactionary ever conceived: “News on Friday that Meta is ending its D.E.I. program should be seen in this context–as not just another way to cozy […]

Year in Review (sort of)

This isn’t quite an end-of-year post, but technically, we are approaching the end of the year, so why not. At present, there are some things I’m high on (ideas, not substances), and some things I’m a lot lower on. In an attempt to stay positive, I’m going to counter each of my lows with a […]