2026-03-08 11:54:00
Around the beginning of every month, I try to journal about the albums I've been bumping on repeat recently.
Instead of keeping that locked up in my journal, why not post about it here?
If you're looking for something new to listen to, here's what I would recommend right now1:
Probably a top 5 favorite album at the moment, been on the list for a while, it's so great. It's great British punk/new wave.
Heh, I threw this greatest hits album on as a lark, and I couldn't believe it. Turns out I'm a B-52s fan? They remind me of A Flock of Seagulls and The Rezillos; a bit new wave-y/punk-y in their early years, eventually landing on a delightful early 90s alternative rock sound. They've also got some of the weirdest lyrics and riffs I've ever heard ("Where's my umbrella? Where's my umbrella?").
I’ve been jonesing for some music to be angry at authority with, and this fits the bill.
I came across a last.fm stats website the other day and played with the race chart for a solid 15 minutes. Watching Nirvana climb the charts as it approached current time made me so happy. I love this band. It’s okay to like basic things, right?
This came across shuffle the other day and it scratched my recent itch for emo music.
Still the GOAT for helping me get into flow. Sort of lo-fi, but also sort of jazzy instrumental?
Another top 5 favorite album, slotting into the spot that at one point in my life was dominated by Rilo Kiley. It's smart and emotionally-rich indie rock.
Also a top 5 album. Whenever I'm feeling lonely, this album puts its arm around my shoulder and tells me it's gonna be alright.
More music to get into flow. A great backing track when cleaning the house.
Sometimes, you need some pop punk, man. Anthem Pt. 3 is my anthem for 2026.
Another top 5 album. I learned this week that Anais wrote Hadestown, and I also learned our local high school is performing it in the spring. I can't begin to express how pumped this makes me.
Moar good punk. Makes me so happy to hear such excellent music from the youths.
I’m not 100% sold on this one, but I do like having it come across shuffle when I'm working. If anyone has any recommendations for lo-fi artists, I’m all ears.
When we went to volunteer at Feed My Starving Children this past week, Shan threw on Mumford & Sons’ essential tracks, and both of the kids said they loved this band. That really made our week. We also got tickets to see them in the summer, which means my wife gets to see her favorite band twice in a single year!
New albums from bands I love always worry me because it takes me multiple listens to get used to them doing new stuff. I’m officially past that phase with this album; it’s incredible and perhaps even better than Expert in a Dying Field.
Within the first 15 seconds of hearing this album, I bought it on Bandcamp. Totally brings me to happy times around my college years. It’s an instant jangly indie rock classic.
Much like Straight Line Was A Lie, there was a moment this past month where this Pynch album finally clicked for me. I still prefer Howling at a Concrete Moon, but I am sold. I dig this album.
I came across this two-track release and felt like Ted Leo was speaking directly to me at the moment, so I picked this one up from Bandcamp as well. Definitely looking forward to hearing more from him in the coming year.
Still need to bump this a bit more, but there are several songs on here that the kids absolutely love, which makes me happy that we’ve got an album we all agree on that isn’t by Huntrix.
Brand new release from these dudes. You know what? They still slap.
Oh, and in case anyone's curious: I'm still working on Lunara. I tried building a custom crossfade engine to replicate how songs transition in Plexamp, and it's causing way more issues than I anticipated.
But on the plus side, I didn't write any of this damn code so I am totally on board with having multiple conversations with Claude to get it whipped into shape for me.
My favorite feature that I added since I last posted is a digital gardening assistant. From any album or artist, I can tap a "🌱" button and it pops up a new screen. On this screen, I can type in a quick description or tap a button with preset actions ("Delete", "Fix album art", etc.). This information, along with the album and artist, get sent up to an admin section that I can use to prune my library when I'm back at my laptop.
I'm not gonna link to these albums on any specific platform because they all are pretty terrible and y'all probably use a bunch of different ones. So I guess I'll say if any of these look interesting, listen to 'em first on your streaming platform of choice and if you end up liking it, look 'em up on Bandcamp and buy it. Don't feel obligated to keep paying $15/mo to rent music. ↩
2026-03-07 03:11:00
A lot of technical people got really attached to our identities as smart kids. The software industry tends to reflect and reinforce this preoccupation at every turn, as seen in Netflix’s claim that “we look for the top 10 percent of global talent” or Coinbase’s desire to “hire the top 0.1 percent.” I would like to challenge us to set that baggage to the side and think about ourselves as normal people.
It can be humbling to think of yourself as a normal person. But most of us are, and there is nothing wrong with that. Even those of us who are certified geniuses on certain criteria are likely quite normal in other ways—kinesthetic, emotional, spatial, musical, linguistic, and so on.
Software engineering both selects for and develops certain types of intelligence, particularly around abstract reasoning, but nobody is born a great software engineer. Great engineers are made, not born.
I read this article twice last night. I haven't come across any article that spoke to my massive professional anxieties/impostor syndrome as well as this one.
One of my biggest pet peeves with being around smart people is when people explain things using big words. It feels like it takes so much more effort to understand tough concepts when they are saddled with jargon and ACT words.
I also enjoyed this point about building teams:
We place too much emphasis on individual agency and characteristics, and not enough on the systems that shape us and inform our behaviors.
I believe a whole slew of issues (candidates self-selecting out of the interview process, diversity of applicants, and more) would be improved simply by shifting the focus of hiring away from this inordinate emphasis on hiring the best people and realigning around the more reasonable and accurate right people.
It’s a competitive advantage to build an environment where people can be hired for their unique strengths, not their lack of weaknesses; where the emphasis is on composing teams; where inclusivity is a given both for ethical reasons and because it raises the bar for performance for everyone. Inclusive culture is what meritocracy depends on.
2026-03-07 03:05:00
Not all borrowing is the same. Copying is often more about power than propriety. When working with archival material myself, I like to think in terms of the stand-up comedy rule: punching up vs. punching down. Picking up visual motifs from a billion-dollar corporation that’s built its empire on copyright hoarding? That’s punching up. Repackaging the work of a living artist from a marginalised background without credit or compensation? Likewise, using found material for an indie zine is a far cry from pulling from the same source for a corporate client that could easily afford to commission something new.
It takes a ton of effort to digitize art whose copyright is expired. This article does a great job explaining why.
I've said it before, but if I could pick any job for myself, it would be to take as many photographs as possible and release all of them into the public domain. Attending as many Comic Cons as possible to snap updated head shots of celebrities would be so much fun. Also, traveling to areas around me that are on Wikipedia but have no photo of them.
It seems like work that would outlive me, y'know?
2026-02-18 02:21:00
At a conference once, I vividly recall my supervisor—a brilliant mathematician—listening intently as a colleague presented his research, using every polished, TED-style public speaking technique imaginable. He leaned over and muttered to me: “We’re not in a theater.”
The impressive public speaking techniques that were meant to captivate the audience had the opposite effect on him. He could see right through them and suspected they might serve to obfuscate the true substance of the research being presented. I’ll admit, my own skepticism was rising as well. “Just show me the model, the assumptions, and the theorems,” I thought.
It’s a curious and sometimes jarring phenomenon that in mathematics departments, it’s often the least charismatic talks that get the most respect. If your research has merit, it’ll stand on its own, without the need for rhetorical flourishes or slick presentations. System 1 Jedi tricks will get you nowhere; mathematicians are trained in the dark arts of System 2.
Meanwhile, outside the math department, our social media feeds are overrun by System 1 masters who, for the first time in history, have quick and direct access to millions of minds. And it makes me wonder whether it’s a good thing that some of our best academics are ill-equipped to engage on a battlefield they haven’t been trained for. The quiet, unadorned pursuit of truth is noble, but in a world where the loudest voices often win, I can’t help but feel a twinge of unease. What happens when the guardians of reason can’t—or won’t—compete in a game where style often trumps substance?
2026-02-18 02:05:00
I often forget my anxiety isn’t caused by a lack of answers to my swirl of questions, but the swirl itself. I frequently operate as if one more Google search will solve everything, circling around and around the internet, mercifully sedated by information I probably don’t need and will forget next week. Sometimes, I really do find the answer I’m looking for, and then I’ll stop, smug and satisfied. The problem with feeding the beast is it’s not the same as killing it. Soon enough, I’m hungry again.
In addition to being a great resource on how to feel like you've got enough, this article taught me a new term:
In Lauren Oyler’s essay about anxiety last week, she referenced a late 19th century diagnosis known as Americanitis, which described “the high-strung, nervous, active temperament of the American people.” Whether incited by advances in technology (causing loss of sleep, excessive worry) or capitalism (causing long work days, fast pace of life), the result was, according to experts of the time, a rattled population unable to relax. A black mirror of the American dream, Americanitis took the same ideas favored by patriots and recast them as depressing. Here is the land of possibilities—so vast in scale you’ll forever be unsatisfied!
Are we all suffering from Americanitis?
2026-02-18 01:52:00
You ask yourself: What would have made me jump off my chair if I had read it six months ago (or a week ago, or however fast you write)? If you have figured out something that made you ecstatic, this is what you should write. And you do not dumb it down, because you were not stupid six months ago, you just knew less. You also write with as much useful detail and beauty as you can muster, because that is what you would have wanted.
I’m not saying [what I wrote] was a great essay; I’m saying I would have loved it. The essay would have answered most of the questions I had, and it would have given me a new more complex understanding of language models that I could have used to get excited by even more obscure things. And because the internet is big, there were a few thousand people who felt the same way—and I felt really deeply for these people.
A search query doesn’t have to be a 5000-word effort post to work (though the internet does reward that amply). Anything that would have been useful to you sometime in the past will do. Alexey Guzey makes lists, half of which are made up of quotes, and they are incredibly useful and have been instrumental in reshaping his network so that he could start New Science. Most good Twitter accounts can be viewed in the same way.
Life's too short to spend your time worrying about how other people are gonna perceive your work.
Just go do the thing. Make your six-months-ago self proud.