link.dump.3.31.2026
gambling, oil, bourbon, and doctor's advice
I read a lot of random stuff. Link Dumps are the things I think are worth remembering. You can always check out my Link Dump Tag if you’re looking for even more to read and please forward to anyone else you think might find these interesting.
I love Rohit Krishnan’s idea that eventually running businesses and working in IT will become like playing a game because of AI agents. I’m sure part of this framing appeals to me because of my gaming proclivities but I think, also, he has some generally solid points and those very same gaming proclivities (not to mention the science fiction reading habit) have helped me with this world we’ve found ourselves in for the past 3.5 years or so.
Noah Smith has a fascinating conversation with Claude about where Claude thinks Claude will be able to help with the future of science. It is a very interesting read and I learned a number of things, but one of my other take-aways was just how similar Claude talks to Noah. I’ve never been privy to someone else’s long drawn conversations other than my own and this was an eye-opening experience that fits when I take a step back but still put me in the uncanny valley.
Noah Smith also has a fantastic argument for Democrats to embrace some pragmatism and come to the center. While the far left drift is way way less problematic than what’s happening on the right the independent middle shouldn’t be struggling to choose and, frankly, they are.
Popehat has an older take on free speech and the NYT Editorial Board that I enjoyed reading again today.
Squirt hates I-Ready and, honestly, I can understand why having read this piece about how dystopian it is.
Parents refusing to listening to doctors’ advice for babies is more extensive than I realized. Natural isn’t better. Good quote: “Nature will allow 1 in 5 human infants to die in the first year of life,” Hill said, “which is why generations of scientists and doctors have worked to bring that number way, way down.”
Jury finds Instagram and YouTube liable in landmark social media addiction trial reports the AP. This is something that Squirt and I have discussed more and more. I think Jonathan Haidt has done some really good work in this area too and I highly recommend The Amazing Generation for kid level intro. I have drawn parallels to smoking and how it wasn’t considered so horrible back in the day and I like that metaphor more and more.
Nobody is coming to save your career. This was an incredibly hard lesson to learn, but painfully true.
Solid meditation on the advent of gambling and the new prediction markets. Very worth reading. “It is now the market that tells us what things are worth, what events matter, whose predictions are correct, who is winning, who counts. Money has, in a strange way, become the last moral arbiter standing—the final universal language that a pluralistic, distrustful, post-institutional society can use to communicate with itself.”
The Dispatch asks Are We Approaching an Unprecedented Energy Crisis? I worry quite a bit that we may be because the world is not nearly as “in control” as some folks may think.
I love this point about developers not being “compilers.” I have a painful number of programming languages and syntax in my head and bringing any particular one out of the vault to answer things like interview questions is not the best way to judge how much I can impact your organization.