Last year I bought a remarkable. I've used it for writing and focusing my thoughts. Before I work on a system design or a feature, I'll often hand write the design. This ends up feeling like a "stream of thoughts" more than an organized spec, but it does just the same. When I do this, my results are far higher quality than if I shoot from the hip or ride the vibes. Thinking about this more, it makes sense: writing is thinking. We used to write code by hand (some of us still do, but not much anymore). And now we may prompt agents, but if you outsource your thinking, not only is this dangerous, but it is lazy. 

When you write your system design or solution by hand, it does a few things;

- Typing is faster than writing (I type a lot faster than I write)

- There are less distractions (no computing device/web browser)

- It forces you to slow down. You can't hide from the problem.

- If you can focus your thoughts into "contiguous thought streams", it's easier to follow, and there is less ambiguity.

So in other words, you're basically naked. You'll quickly realize where your gaps are. If you're using coding agents, this matters a bit more. Context matters the most. If you direct it where a part of the architecture lives, it doesn't have to waste turns finding it, or tokens on understanding the system. And you also understand the system, so your feedback loop will be faster, because you need less turns. 

This is a summary of what I read recently. 

1.) Anthony Bourdain - A Cook's Tour : This is a biased review: Make no mistake about it. I'm a fan of Anthony Bourdain and have watched all of his shows. But I can see his brilliance in his writing, and every word written I imagine him saying. Therefore, I find this to be one of his best books: he articulates the places he's visited and how the food tastes and the quirks of the region with amazing accuracy. It's almost as if you're there with him. He's witty and he doesn't give a shit. You should watch the show. 10/10.

2.) Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential : Also a great read. This struck me as one of his first books, so his writing was very precise, but he goes into more detail about his background. To me, this was unapologetic and very raw. It's him saying, "I don't care about the way things have always been done". 8.75/10.

3.) Aaron Bastani - Fully Automated Luxury Communism : At the start it was thought provoking, introducing a post scarcity world through the lens of previously explored ideas and I saw what it was going for. But I must to admit: I couldn't finish it. It started pretty strong, but towards the middle felt a little unfocused. But I appreciate that it challenged some of my existing thoughts about economies of scale, post scarcity, and meaning. For someone that can tolerate the build up, I think it has potential. 6.5/10.

4.) Charles Stross - Accelerando : For being written in 2005, this attacks a technological singularity in an interesting way. I could appreciate "Venture Altruism", post scarcity, and parts. But it was a little strange, from cloning human brains into neural structures and then having those spawn off and do their own tasks and measuring the entirety of the solar system with compute power, this casted a wide net. 7/10. 

If you look at tech broadly as it stands today and you listen to a "loud majority" of voices coming from X, reddit, and other media, you'd get the impression that there are some ground truths that if you don't follow them you're going to fall behind.

Not only is this wrong, it's dangerous advice. Their incentives are misaligned: they want engagement and they masquerade it with content that is designed to elicit a stronger reaction for you to put your eyeballs on it. If you asked some of these people, they'd tell you, "I'm building in public or trying to spread the good word of this new thing." 

How about this;

- Since the bar has raised, the level of quality required to make something good has as well. 

- Acting from first principles will get you farther. Sometimes you need to go analog before you go digital. 

- Read quality blogs widely, learn from the source, don't outsource your understanding, if you do outsource some thinking, it better be intentional.

- The loud majority isn't always right. People optimize for engagement over truth.

So, some* are cosplaying and aren't worth listening to. The signal to noise ratio is off the charts. They're not building something valuable, they are acting as if they are, but what they have produced is dubious and unproven at best. If you listen to those voices, you'd hear "Try my new framework: it's giving X, Y, and Z metric that isn't positively correlated with quality outcomes and did I mention it solved this problem that I didn't appropriately spec out or understand?".

If you're evangelizing about some bullshit concepts to improve your velocity but you've produced a newsletter or glorified todo-list, maybe you should reevaluate your strategy. If this is your first step in your journey, that's fine. But if it isn't and you're using it as a milestone, think harder.

If you want to keep your sanity, filter 95% of the noise and only accept things that pass your filter. If you let anything else in, be careful.

This is a summary of what I read recently.

1.) C. Robert Cargill - Sea of Rust : Set in a reality after machines have defeated and outlasted humans, this was an interesting story to continue my sci-fi trek, but I found it depressing. It is well written and accurately conveys the despair of its robot main character, which is to say she is trying to survive. To me, it paints humans as stupid meatbags who were greedy and selfish (perhaps this is trying to say something). 6/10. 

2.) George RR. Martin - The Hedge Knight : After watching Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, I wanted to read the novels. This is a great read. It reminded me of the original A Song of Ice and Fire. The two main characters, Dunk and Egg, work well together. Ser Duncan is a underdog, but he plays so well into the righteous character. GRM's world-building is amazing, even in a small book you can visualize the world and what is happening in immense detail. I must acknowledge my bias a bit, I did watch the first few episodes of the series before reading the book. 8.5/10.

3.) Andy Weir - Project Hail Mary : If you've read the Martian, this is a different book. I found it more humorous than the Martian and less serious. It made me laugh and it was analogous to The Deep Sky in the critical mission that was undertaken, where humanity needed to send a group to solve a mass-extinction threat. There's a movie being made about this book; I'm curious to see if it's at parity with it, or what liberties they take. If you like a hard-sci-fi that is light hearted, this is a good read. It doesn't pull you in as hard as The Martian, but it does a great job. 9/10.

After reading some current scifi and older scifi, I can't help but look for newer reads that have tied in mechanics and philosophical issues of a post scarcity world. I'm looking for reads that tie in those questions and involve machines that we collaborate with.

This is me describing what I've read recently in short sentences, take it as you will.

1.) Neil Stephenson - Seveneves : Of all the sci-fi I've read, I didn't expect the ending. Humanity survives a near species ending experience in space, thousands of years later almost kills themselves, but thrives. When I started I hoped that there would be some logical conclusion to open it up for a sequel, but it is wrapped well. 8/10.

2.) William Alexander - Sunward : A quick read; humanity has progressed well into space and lives with robots / autonomous machines. Most humans work as "couriers" to deliver messages. They have colonized most of the solar system, but there remains challenges in delivering messages and accomplishing base tasks. Machines are sentient, human-like. 7/10.

3.) Yume Kitasei - The Deep Sky : Facing significant climate and political problems on Earth, humanity raises a 80-person multi national team of women who are trained and educated to navigate a spaceship to another planet. It's a murder mystery and it isn't immediately obvious who is the culprit. They're frozen for 10 years and awaken to navigate some problems on their journey. I enjoyed this a lot, it felt like a stream of consciousness as it flashed back and forth between the past and present. 9/10.