The new ThoughtWorks Tech Radar reads like a warning letter. Cognitive debt. Broken productivity metrics. Terms nobody agrees on. If you've been reading my posts, none of it will surprise you. It's always nice to get evidence that I'm not completely crazy and making all of this up.

Fascists will tell you that women shouldn't do science, that they're less good at it, and that they don't even like it. They should be at home tradwifing it up for some dude.🤡

Reality tells you that women are out here curing cancer.

Dr. Doudna, Dr. Kariko & Dr. Türeci (a co-author on this paper👍🏿👩🏻‍🔬)

This is a reminder that you can still ask real people for advice and recommendations. You don't have to ask the robot for everything. In fact there are some things you definitely should not be asking the robot about.

I'm over the moon that my talk "designing software that respects every identity" has been accepted at @agiletdzone.bsky.social
This means that I'll get to share the most common hurdles gender diverse people face in software with the people who can fix them 🥰

agiletestingdays.com/2026/session...

Overview - Agent Skills A simple, open format for giving agents new capabilities and expertise.

So the same devs who previously wouldn't write documentation are now out there writing skill.md files...?

The Waterfall Strikes Back As of when writing this post in the first days of April 2026, the vibe coding community is buzzing about "Spec-Driven Development." Write a perfect specification, let the AI agents loose, sit back, and watch the magic happen. Revolutionary, right? For me, it feels like a déjà vu from the 2000s. Back then, we called it Waterfall or V-Model. The idea was the same: define everything upfront, hand it over to the people who build it, and collect your finished product at the end.

Spec-Driven Development is the hot new thing in vibe coding. Write a perfect spec, let the agent work, sit back. Sounds familiar? We called it Waterfall. We hated it. We sucked at it. Why do we think we're suddenly ready for it now?

How silly this all is:
You can't say "viewpoint diversity" without saying the word "diversity." Which these weirdos banned, remember? "Diversity" is on the list of forbidden words!🤡

Y'all might have the time and the patience to pretend that these far-right losers are acting in good faith. I don't.

"Viewpoint diversity," is just their way of saying, "Let the nazis talk!🤡" It's silly and I don't have time to pretend that it's not.

But when people complain about the left not "being unified" and "always disagreeing with each other?" That's real viewpoint diversity. That's supposed to happen.

Assisted Migration, or Why Forcing AI Into Your Ecosystem Is a Terrible Idea I recently listened to a podcast about "assisted migration." Scientists are helping plants and trees migrate to new areas because climate change is happening too fast for natural evolution. A tree that thrives at a certain temperature profile can't just walk north when its habitat becomes inhospitable. And also the seeds don't spread that quickly. Think acorns. So researchers look up international catalogs, find similar species that already grow in warmer climates, and carefully introduce them to new regions.

I listened to a podcast about "assisted migration" for trees and plants. A fantastic topic for a systems thinker. I listened to an AI podcast just before that. And then a few uncomfortable synaptic connections clicked.

New episode 📢

Ep 172 "SuperBox"

What if there was a device which gave you endless movies and TV shows without ads? Ok great sign me up! In this episode we interview "D3ada55", who found such a device, but as she gazed into it, she discovered it gazing back at her.

darknetdiaries.com/episode/172/

The AI Gold Rush, or It’s Time to Make Money OpenAI just closed a $122 billion funding round, pushing their valuation to $852 billion. Let that sink in. A company that isn't profitable yet, valued higher than most countries' GDP. An IPO (Initial Public Offering, when a company sells shares to the public for the first time) is expected by the end of the year. Big Tech is planning to spend nearly $700 billion on AI this year alone.

OpenAI valued at $852 billion without profit. Sora lost $1 million per day. Big Tech spends $700 billion yearly, and most of it vanishes into chips and electricity. IPOs are coming. Before you buy in, remember T-Online. That was counted as a safe bet, too.

Ecological awe is a thing I’ve mentioned about in a few talks, but I don’t think it has a super solid definition anywhere

@grimalkina.bsky.social introduced me to the idea and I fell in love with it

To me, ecological awe is a deep respect of and ability to articulate the nuances in an ecosystem

If I had to identify a list of skills in high impact engineers, it would include:

- ecological awe
- intellectual humility
- respect for the complexity of unfamiliar problems
- cross functional communication
- resilience engineering
- marketing and sales

(“Technical skills” aren’t in my top ten)

Feel free to share or connect us with the right people 💜 #CyberSecurity #SecurityCommunity #OpenSpace #sponsorship
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There is no fixed agenda and no sales pitches. The content is shaped by the people in the room. To keep it accessible and affordable, we rely on partners who believe in this approach.

Sponsorship Welcome to the Open Security Conference (osco), the people-centred international gathering for everyone interested in cybersecurity. Join us 5-8 November 2026 in Rückersbach, Germany.

Know a company that genuinely supports community driven initiatives & takes DEI seriously?
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Why I Rant Without Providing Solutions "Why do you only point out problems? Where are your solutions?" It's a fair question. I ask it myself sometimes, scrolling through my own posts. Another rant about AI hype. Another frustrated observation about how we're losing craftsmanship. Another finger pointing at something that's broken. A bit more salt into some open wounds. And then... nothing. No neat five-step plan. No actionable takeaways.

"Where are your solutions?" Fair question. Honestly: I don't have any. What I have is tools for thinking. Systems thinking. Perspective shifts. I can't think for you. But I can show you ways to improve your thinking. I don't want you to share my thinking. That's my contribution. Small, but mine.

Are AI Coding Agents the New Heroes, and Why That’s Not a Compliment Many teams have one. The hero. The person who stays late, works weekends, knows every corner of the codebase, and somehow holds everything together. Management loves them. Colleagues rely on them. But having a hero in your team is not a good sign. It's a symptom. Now, AI coding agents are stepping into that role. And nobody seems to notice the pattern repeating.

Heroes mask a system's weaknesses. When they're gone, things collapse. AI agents are the new heroes, flooding teams with output. But a healthy system doesn't need heroes. It needs balance.

🤔What if the greatest president in US history is a woman that will get elected in the 2040s?

And she reverses climate change, ends world hunger, and leads the multinational effort that saves us from The Comet(tm)?

But she never exists?

Because she dropped out of politics?

Because of harassment?

There. Are. No. Women. Aged. 15.

Girls. You mean girls.

Racists keep trying to spin declining child abuse and the resultant teen pregnancy as a bad thing. It's not.

Biases are Systems, or Why Knowing About Them Doesn’t Make Them Go Away In psychology and cognitive science, cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm and/or rationality in judgment. - Wikipedia on List of cognitive biases We love to treat biases like bugs in our brains. Little glitches in the wetware that we can patch once we know about them. "Oh, that's just confirmation bias," we say, as if naming the demon exorcises it.

Yesterday's garbage run by the river got me thinking. Biases aren't "just" glitches in our brains. They're stable systems with feedback loops. And they all have a social layer that makes them sticky. Find the loop, find the leverage point.

The Asymmetry of Explanation, or Why the Simple Lies Win A populist makes a statement. Eight words. It fits on a bumper sticker. It goes viral. Millions nod along. You know it's wrong. You know it's an oversimplification. You want to counter it. But here's the thing. To explain why it's wrong, you need context. You need to draw out the system. You need several minutes, just to set up the picture before you can even get to the point.

The simple answer wins. Always. Because we wanted it that way. We trained the algorithm, and now it trains us. Keep thinking. Leave the one-liners to the comedians

👴🏻"So are you saying that engaging content can never be harmful?"🤡

🤦🏿‍♂️No. I'm saying that fascists are harmful.

A fascist that knows what I know about make up tutorials and kids' content being more engaging than manosphere bro content, can still use that info in a way that neither you nor I would.

The pre-registration comes with no obligations for you. Once the actual registration opens, you can still decide if you want to register or not. But you will get an email from us when registration opens.
You can learn more about osco on our website.

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#osco #osco26

Registration Welcome to the Open Security Conference (osco), the people-centred international gathering for everyone interested in cybersecurity. Join us 5-8 November 2026 in Rückersbach, Germany.

It's spring in this part of the world. Flowers are blooming, trees are sprouting, bees are buzzing and the osco preregistration is opening...
Yes, you can now pre-register for the Open Security Conference 2026 here: opensecurityconference.org/conference/r...
...

“"Calm down. He won't be that bad." "He won't go after political opponents." "He won't try to overturn an election." "He won't start a stupid, costly war." "He won't purge the military." "He won't use nukes." We're currently here.”

The Blind Confidence of AI-Generated Tests There is a new promise floating around. Let an AI agent write your tests. Let it generate your automation. Let it take that burden off your shoulders so you can focus on the "important things." Sounds great, right? Except that it isn't. Not entirely, at least. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against using AI to support testing. I use it myself.

AI agents promise to write your tests for you. Sounds great until you realize: a test suite you didn't build is a test suite you don't understand. Don't let green checkmarks replace your own eyes.

Very sound advice, no matter how old you are!

The Most Average Codebase You’ve Ever Seen Everyone is excited about AI coding agents. Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Codex, you name it. They write code, they refactor, they even debug. And yes, it's impressive to watch from the sideline. But let me ask you something: have you actually looked at the code they produce? Developers are knowledge workers. Not in the vague, corporate sense of the word. I mean literally.

AI coding agents produce the most probable code. Not the best. Not the most elegant. The most average. Without skill to guide them, you'll get a codebase that works, passes tests, and slowly becomes a maintenance nightmare. Your code deserves better.