Tuesday is THE LAST DAY Virginians can vote on redistricting. If you haven't yet, please make the time! And vote yes too, please.

A picture of the front cover of the second edition of building successful communities of practice

Wow - that was fast! I only ordered this yesterday and it’s arrived already - very excited to get stuck into this and see how it’s evolved since the first edition. Thanks @ewebber.bsky.social!

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?

If you've read something you disagree with but don't understand well enough to rebut, and you ask an AI to generate a rebuttal for you, you still don't understand it well enough to rebut it. You haven't generated a rebuttal: you have generated a blob of plausible sentences that may or may not constitute a valid critique of the work you're upset with - but until a human being who understands the issue goes through the AI output line by line and verifies it, it's just stochastic word-salad.

Wonderfully said by @doctorow.pluralistic.net

pluralistic.net/2026/03/02/n...

Let's have a pope who's strong on nuclear weapons. Full 40k, a gilded baroque nuke in St. Peters. Replace that obelisk with an ICBM launcher, and call it the Holy Sword of Azrael. Jesuits with rangefinders.

"Transubstantiate this," mutters Leo as he turns the Key of St. Peter. "Fiat fucking lux."

YUP. Terrible scorebug. Not a fan of NBC/Peacock’s either.

Original post: zeppelin.flights/@jsnell/1162...

No Kings Freedom Fest Saturday March 28 @ 1 pm. Guest speakers Daniel Rezai, Ghazala Hashmi, and Jennifer McClellan. Guest artists Deau Eyes, Brookhouse, Dead Billionaires, and Mighty Joshua. Sign contest, music, 25 community organizations offering opportunities to translate your anger into positive action.

NO KINGS FREEDOM FEST Monroe Park Saturday March 28 @ 1 pm

AMAZING LINEUP OF SPEAKERS AND ARTISTS!

Bring your best signs for the SIGN CONTEST!

Costumes and dancing shoes encouraged!

Invite 3 new friends and make sure to RSVP on Mobilize so you are counted!

www.mobilize.us/nokings/even...

This is why I unapologetically tell the economics students to change their major to something respectable.

Yes, have some.

I was on IRC before I was on the web. Bringing ATproto to IRC is amazing.

It's quite surprising, 3+ years after ChatGPT launched, how many software developers still don't realise that interactions with LLMs are stateless.

The LLM doesn't "read" your system prompts once "at the beginning of the session". To an LLM, every interaction is "the beginning of the session".

I'm a big believer in observability in business processes with a significant s/w component. The sooner we know something's amiss, the smaller the impact.

But what about observability in software development processes?

e.g. How soon would you know that someone on the team isn't running the tests?

Because software engineering is where GenAI is currently having the most visible impact, the AI commentary class have converged on it and are now suddenly experts in SWE productivity, despite little to no experience of actually building and maintaining software.

Had to be at least a decade ago that a NPR show hosted a historian who had published a book on the Stasi and the SS. It turned out the SS et al., had not been the magical intelligence machines at all but had relied almost entirely on neighbors lining up to rat out each other.

Wow.

Rev. Jesse Jackson's "I *am* somebody..." remains one of the all-time great pieces of 20th century rhetoric / agitprop

And he could deliver it at a Black separatist meeting, the Democratic National Convention, or on god-blessed Sesame Street (see below 🥹)

RIP to the Voice of the Voiceless

It’s the result not of losing, but of not enforcing the consequences of loss.

Shame. Penalties. Constant, vigilant reminders of their fundamental wrongness, at every opportunity, in every conversation.

The consequences of tolerating intolerance.

There is a fundamental belief that they are the silent majority, whether it’s religious or racial or cultural. That with a few key inflection points yet to come, their view will again be seen for the righteous truth that it is.

Grew up in very Confederate country. The disconnect I think most people have is that there’s a shared understanding around winners and losers.

To them, they didn’t lose the war. The Civil War was just “a battle” in the even longer span of history.

“The South will rise again!”

Okay cool enough can we do BASEBALL NOW

For the first time, in a very long time, I’ve hit Inbox Zero at work AND have an actionable plan to stay that way.

Prompt ⇾ shortcut gets built for you ⇾ resume session ⇾ improve shortcut.

Added full support for session resume to my generative shortcut, which I'm calling Shortcuts Playground.

Going to be free, open source, and out soon for everyone on @macstories.net.

A tee shirt with arrows through a descktop computer and the words BUTLERIAN JHAD NOW! Send computers to hell. If you make a robot l will kill you.

The biggest risk in this moment is something sociologists call “symbolic compliance.”

That’s when an institution that is violating civil rights gives the public just enough symbolic victories that accountability efforts lose steam before there has been any meaningful change.

Today’s retreat is absolutely an attempt to take pressure off of Congress to rein in ICE so that a funding package can get through.

That pressure has been effective. We can celebrate Minneapolis’ win but we need to keep the pressure on. They’re not going to stop forever.

For any elected official who needs to hear this, I impart a lesson learned from the NFL:

When the other team is tired and on the back foot, you don’t call a timeout so they can catch their breath. You grind their fucking face into the dirt until the final whistle blows and you’ve won the game.

Still, after all these years, "Can you show me?" remains the most effective bullshit filter in software development.

From Scientific Management To Outcome Leadership

#BVSSH

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
A-telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down

Mood in minneapolis right now