Inspired by Fogus, here are the great things I read, watched, discovered in 2025.
Highlights from 2024
Favorite Articles
-
in the belly of the MrBeast: Comment on HN is perfect: This idea – that meaning is replaced by intensification – helps me understand a lot about the world today.
-
_**[Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State BillMoyers.com](https://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/)**_ -
_**[The year I didn’t survive Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43020983)**_ -
_**[ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web)**_ -
Everyone knows all the apps on your phone - by peabee: (When people say why do you need any regulation, let there be open markets. This is why. Even with regulation these corporations will go to unethical lengths to gain revenue. )
-
_**[But what if I really want a faster horse? exotext](https://rakhim.exotext.com/but-what-if-i-really-want-a-faster-horse)**_ - I’d rather read the prompt (Hacker News): The result is simple: with no theory, the produced code is practically useless. In Naur’s terms, such a program is dead; in our case, it’s stillborn. Every time one generates code by prompt, they create a new stillborn program; vibe coding is the art of stitching together their corpses into Frankenstein’s monster.
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/05/13/if-ai-is-so-good-at-coding-where-are-the-open-source-contributions/ https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/72413!!!
https://flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html
https://betterthanrandom.substack.com/p/if-you-are-useful-it-doesnt-mean
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44163063
Jason Koebler’s Teachers Are Not OK
https://www.forbes.com.au/covers/magazine/where-im-putting-the-money-michael-every/
https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/trusting-your-own-judgement-on-ai/
https://www.quantamagazine.org/when-did-nature-burst-into-vivid-color-20250627/
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/07/06/AI-Manifesto
https://www.theatlantic.com/photography/archive/2025/07/photos-china-solar-power-energy/683488/
https://nodaysoff.run
https://www.osnews.com/story/142956/vibe-coding-yourself-into-irrelevance/
https://alex.party/posts/2025-05-05-the-future-of-web-development-is-ai-get-on-or-get-left-behind/
https://julsimon.medium.com/why-mcps-disregard-for-40-years-of-rpc-best-practices-will-burn-enterprises-8ef85ce5bc9b
https://morrick.me/archives/10137
https://davidcel.is/articles/rails-needs-new-governance
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/memo-to-australia-and-england-honour-the-format-that-has-elevated-you-1517475
Favorite Books
It was another good year of reading for me.
Favorite Movies
- Sinners
- One Battle After Another
- Kishkindha Kaandam
- Jaws (If Things had perfect screenplay, this had best direction)
- Manjummel Boys
- Constantine
- 28 years later: The bone temple 20 minutes was great!
Favorite TV Shows
- Severance + Damon Lindelof
- Andor (Give Tony Gilroy all the money in the world.. anti-fascist art)
- Adolescence
- Pluribus
Favorite Videos
-
It’s Not Your Fault You’re Behind In Life – A Software Engineer’s Struggle - YouTube
-
Tradeoffs in the Software Workflow - Titus Winters - ACCU 2022
Keynote Speaker - Cory Doctorow - Amazing!
SIGCOMM’25: Keynote by Bruce Davie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntf6wXx2Phs
| [It’s not your job to fix the internet | The Vergecast](http://youtube.com/watch?v=pwq1oNgrKN8) |
Favorite Software
-
Ghostty + p10k + z + fzf
State of plans for 2025
Plans for 2026
In 1971 Lewis Powell came out with a memo about how big business should take over the US government (Powell did not uses those exact words but it was clear to the wealthy what he meant). Later that year Powell was put on the Supreme Court (this began the rise of many of the right wing think tanks like The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society). In 1978 the Republican majority on the Supreme Court ruled that businesses could start contributing to elections (First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti). In 1980 Reagan was elected and changed the internal economic policy of the US from a Keynesian economics (Social Democracy) to Neoliberalism (Trickle-down economics). Since that time the national debt has exploded, an estimated $60 trillion has flowed from the lower 90% to the top 10% of the population, the average working citizen has NOT gotten a raise over inflation in more than 40 years, and income inequality is at an all-time high. Lastly, a 2014 Princeton University study found that the US in now an Oligarchy and no longer a democracy. For those that are wondering about the media in the US, the media here is owned by the wealthy and large corporations and they set the narrative. The US used to have a law called the Fairness Doctrine that kept propaganda to a minimum but that was repealed during the Reagan administration. Propaganda is widespread in the US now, most of it right wing. The only news outlets that are publishing anywhere close to the truth are ones that are publicly funded and two of those handful of outlets are soon to be defunded by the government because Trump and the Republicans don’t like that they tell the truth. Look at democracies throughout history and how they fall. Overwhelmingly, they fall when the wealthy take power of the government against the will of the people. In most of those cases a figurehead is put in power (a dictator if you will) that does the biding of the wealthy. This is what has happened in the US.
Tags: