Recently

The snow has been tough for my running schedule in February but it's starting to clear and temperatures have started to lift. Yesterday got in a solid 45 miles of cycling, including up to this point near the George Washington Bridge, and back on the Tappan Zee.

Listening

I didn't add any new music to my collection this month. My Swinsian library has 15,562 tracks already so there's plenty to explore in the back catalog. I listened to The Private Press and The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly.

I did find a new podcast that I've been really enjoying: Know Your Enemy - another podcast covering the wrongs of American conservatism, but from an interesting perspective. One of the hosts is an ex-conservative gay Catholic, and both are very touch with modern philosophy and political theory. Their book reviews especially are satisfying and deep.

Reading (the AI section)

Skip this if you don't want to think about AI. I don't want to think about it that much either! My goal is for there to be no AI section next month.

There are two main themes that I noticed this month.

1. Some people have never taken joy in manual creation and find it impossible to conceive of being attached to the particulars of a task. I want to call these people "ideas guys" but I'm trying to be nice!
2. Some people who do have some applied skills have been automating away the parts of their jobs that require those skills, and are surprised that they are losing the skills and not feeling the satisfaction of actually doing the work. We could call these people "gullible rubes" who "fell for it again" but I'm trying not to be mean!

Anyway, articles:

It did not seem like a good idea to me that some of the richest people in the world were no longer rewarding people for having any particular skills, but simply for having agency, when agency essentially meant whatever it was that was afflicting Roy Lee. Unlike Eric Zhu or Donald Boat, Roy didn’t really seem to have anything in his life except his own sense of agency. Everything was a means to an end, a way of fortifying his ability to do whatever he wanted in the world. But there was a great sucking void where the end ought to be. All he wanted, he’d said, was to hang out with his friends. I believed him. He wanted not to be alone, the way he’d been alone for a year after having his offer of admission rescinded by Harvard.

Child's Play, by Sam Kriss, in Harpers. This is really worth reading end-to-end.

If whatever I was doing on the kitchen counter is now called “software engineering,” then ordering food at a restaurant should be called “cooking.” As much as I marvel in this new and (dare I say) magical way of manifesting products and services from thin air, I question whether it is truly a creative process anymore.

Ben Sigelman

I think maybe the synthesis comes from Thorsten Ball's Register Spill, which is positive on AI but well-written:

I’ve had quite a few conversations with programmer friends over the last year that ended with someone wondering: do I still enjoy this? Is this the programming I want to do? Some answer with yes, others with no. I understand both answers and the “code was never important” comments are not helpful to those who really, really enjoyed writing code. If you’re in sales, that might be because you love negotiation, or the product you’re selling, or making money, or, hey, because you love talking to people, love finding out what their problems are, love to visit them. If your job suddenly changed from that to never talking to a human again, I bet you’ll find it hard to take solace in “it was never about the people, it was always about closing the deal.”

Yes: this is it! I totally understand how some people can't sit at a computer all day long and think of it as "pushing rectangles around." Extroverts and people with ADHD are nice! And there are other jobs available that involve more social interaction, physical activity, etc. If those jobs paid more then this conversation would be different.

But for a lot of people, the actual details of the craft matter, and the quiet hard work of it is the reason why we're here, not an inconvenience. I have whatever the opposite of ADHD is: I have ridden a bicycle through the woods in a straight line for 8 hours by myself with no headphones and felt completely fine. I have spent days making watercolors for a stop-motion piece, just for fun. For some people this kind of long, tedious work is necessary for survival.

I knew from a young age that I didn't want to have a phone job, I wanted a craft job. Difficult, quiet crafts are the roughage that my mind needs to stay happy. Work is a partially social place but you don't go there to party, or to make social media content. I don't know man, at the risk of going out over my skis I think there could be a quadrant here:

Is it crazy to think that the oft-repeated loneliness crisis is putting pressure on work to take up more of the social quadrant? Or that the disintegration of other jobs has forced programming to become a job for everyone instead of a self-selecting niche?

Reading (the non-AI section)

Bike Weight Doesn't Matter was a great read, partially because I have a very nice but not particularly light bicycle. I like that modern bicycles are good enough that you actually get one that is nearly as good as the pros, and the rest is just becoming better as a rider, and the best way to become better is to ride more.

I internalized the significance of externalities in a far more profound way. I mostly picked up this frame up reference through more plain old life experience and recognizing more instances of positive/negative externalities in day-to-day life.

It's old, but Devon Zuegal's post "On There Being More Than Liberty" was interesting to revisit after listening to Know Your Enemy's podcast about Ayn Rand, reviewing Jennifer Burns's Goddess of the Market.

I keep searching for the source text of opinions that I hear in real life that are usually received wisdom. Like why do people say 'taxation is theft'? Probably Murray Rothbard, but most of the people saying that aren't directly taking it from Rothbard.

Rand is the source of a lot of libertarian thought bubbles, inspiring at least some part of Zuegal's list. I really appreciate that Devon took the time to write about her opinions changing - seems good!

Also revisiting an old article, Iroh's Async Rust Challenges: I wonder if updating this in 2026 would yield different results! It mostly confirms my impression that if I were to try and implement a web server in a non-TypeScript language again, it would be Go or Elixir, not Rust.

Watching

It's total craft propaganda but I adore this quick video about Quirk Cycles, a very small bicycle builder in Hackney, London. I'm sure that the actual work is hard and less beautiful but this gives you a window in the feeling of focusing and building something beautiful that gives others joy.

Bonus bike build, from ultra-high end titanium builder Weis. Weis bikes are a true status symbol in New York, whenever I notice one I see other people also noticing it.

Adam Neely's coverage of Suno is fantastic, and worth watching all the way through. He asks users of the tool that lets you "generate" music through prompts these three questions:

1. What have generative AI tools like Suno empowered you to do that you cannot do with DAW's or traditional musical instruments?
2. Do you feel like you have a unique voice with your music, when you create songs with Suno?
3. Who are some of your favorite AI musicians who have influenced you? What about them inspires you?

It's thoroughly sourced, beautifully produced, and bringing in Dr. Mariana Noé, a virtue ethicist and platonic scholar, brought it up even another level.