Hello again! I realized I messed up my automated email schedule up a bit and last week’s newsletter was sent out this evening, a full week late. Sorry for that! As an apology to my O(10) newsletter subscribers, you’ll see two posts in 24 hours — going forward the newsletter will get sent out Monday mornings rather than Sunday evenings to account for any late editions.

What I’m listening to

Normally I write this post in a coffee shop where I try to enjoy the barista’s playlist rather than put my own music on, but this week I’m writing from home while a few inches of snow come down outside. I’m listening to Lawrence , Couch, Ripe and other similar bands on a Spotify mix.

Miscellaneous reading

• You should get a blog (Hugh Rundle): “Motivational meta-posts” might be over-saturated on newsletter now, but I do always enjoy reading these.
• On the Gracchi, Part I: Tiberius Gracchus (Bret Devereaux): This was a great essay about how the Gracchi’s norm breaking behavior shaped the century-long fall of the Roman Republic.
• Why is Git Autocorrect too fast for Formula One drivers? (Scott Chacon): Some really fun programming archaeology here. I hadn’t learned about deciseconds before and it was fun to hear another way text-based config languages can bite you.

AI

• An “oh fuck” moment in time (Geoffrey Huntley): A similar realization to my blurb about Cursor last week. Data wall or not, it’s going to be an exciting few years while we all figure out where LLMs fit into productivity workflows.
• AI’s Uneven Arrival (Ben Thompson): From one angle, it’s a restatement of Christiansen’s disruption theory. From another angle it’s another piece by Thompson that helps frame current events in tech in a historical context.