Zohran Mamdani is the first mayor I can recall, in my lifetime, who appears to be having the time of his life being mayor.

Like most people, I sometimes quickly turn to my phone and search for the answer to a question. But when the search engines come back with AI results, and I choose to share them, I always say “AI SAYS:” … it’s important to maintain the flimsiness of an attribution.

I love it when I blow customers’ minds, and they let me know. For almost 20 years I have treated every crash report as a customer service incident. I don’t get all that many incidents … I wonder why? ;)

When I was a kid, “NO NUKES” was a popular rallying cry against nuclear power. It was so successful that, in the US, we continued to burn massive amounts of coal and oil to avoid widely adopting it. All technologies have downsides and upsides. With AI, I think the upsides will prove out.

After I posted about my vibe-coded water quality site, it occurred to me that it only benefits English-speaking people. I asked Claude to localize it into the top 10 spoken-at-home languages in Massachusetts, including Khmer, Haitian Creole, and Arabic. The state site doesn’t cater to these people.

I used AI to provide real value in a similar way to my town’s democratic legislative body. These are small changes that empower people to be more “real” than anybody would expect AI of all things to empower. townmeeting.app

I stated my water site is “vibe-coded” both because I can’t take credit for all of it, and because I think it’s important to emphasize where AI systems are empowering people to create real value. This site is helping real people enjoy nature more confidently. It’s not all smoke and mirrors.

I vibe-coded a site that may be of interest to anybody who enjoys public swimming waters in Massachusetts. It’s a site that scrapes the hideous, impossible to navigate state site and shows concise water safety and beach closure info. water.mysticmerfolk.org/beach/wal…

I was gutted to learn that Dolly Parton died. I also had my last softball game of the season. Several of us on the team were heartened by the fact that, even though we lost, the final score was 9-5.

Oh, Dolly! :(

Brent has always been one of the most humane people in the developer community. He reminds us how to be better. inessential.com/2026/08/2…

Something I’m genuinely confused about is what AI antagonists hope the world would do at this point. When world-changing technologies emerge, people are drawn to them because they provide real value. These aren’t empty calories. AI is real. Could we outlaw it? No. Could we regulate it? Probably not.

I wonder if the emergence of AI technology can be compared to the emergence of fire technology:

“HOLY SHIT I JUST BANG THESE STONES TOGETHER AND I’M WARM.”

“HEY DIPSHIT YOU’RE GONNA BURN THE WHOLE FOREST DOWN.”

Pros and cons.

After all the years of public embarrassment, I think my kids might finally appreciate, in a world filled with AI, that I simply cannot be replicated.

I recently drove my 18yo to college. It took about 11 hours. The best takeaway from the trip is: “If you don’t know who the Ringo in the room is, it might be you!”

Donald Trump is the 98-pound High School freshman whose big brother assured was the strongest boy in the whole school.

Another win for Trump and his deportation crusade.

The best thing about working for yourself is never having to worry about what some external “boss” thinks about you, what you do, how you do it, or why you do it. The worst thing is that your internal “boss” just won’t shut up about any of it.

Thank you, @gruber, for saying something that nagged at me so persistently that I had to actually blog again. “AI Can’t Adulterate its Own Writing.” bitsplitting.org/2026/08/1…

A lot of people like to make things, and making things is great. But if you want to be a software developer, you have to enjoy fixing things. If you don’t enjoy fixing things, you’ll never be good at software.

Karoline Leavitt is leaving the White House, reportedly to spend more time with her shame.

The Siri interface on macOS Golden Gate betas still looks like a 3rd party app where the developers never got the memo about how Mac apps work.

Just posted MarsEdit 5.4.5 with “A Heck of a Lot of Bug Fixes”! redsweater.com/blog/4287…

My 14yo tried to stream a video game on Twitch, and the quality was horrible, so he asserted he “needs a new computer.” I said “Twitch has been around for 15 years, so I’m sure it works on old computers.” Flipped a few switches, turned a few knobs, and boom! Dad’s still got it.

Iran: “We’ve waited 50 years for this! A moron who believes everything we say. BAHAHAHAHA. Wait, hold my tea. BAHAHAHA. America?!? BAHAHAHA”