Intro
Spend a few days in Madrid this week and spent those days exploring the city rather than reading so a light one this time. I did read a lot of the book “Dead in the Water” and though I haven’t finished it yet it is really interesting. Reads something of a thriller though based on a true tale. I’ve read a few books on shipping and it seems like an awful industry for almost everyone involved. Little to no laws for the workers, margins are cutthroat for those at the top. It really seems to only benefit those of dubious morals who can and will take whatever shortcuts necessary to benefit the bottom line. Or just do the insurance as this book points out which seems to be a great business if once again you’re okay with turning the blind eye to a bit of fraud every now and again as a cost of doing business.
Highlights of the Week
Carney, Trump and the power of a good speech
https://www.ft.com/content/1b23eeb6-03a2-42c8-9d02-60c672ad6298
An underrated part of being a good leader is that you shouldn’t have to tell people what to do all the time. Instead, they should be able to anticipate what you want and what doing a good job looks like. There are lots of ways to do this — leading by example is one — but the bigger and more complex the organisation you lead, the more important it is that people know what you want without having to ask.
The speech itself was very good, from my limited experience of speeches of this type where most are a bit boring. This one was good. How much I agree with or think is actually possible or reflects reality is a different story but the speech is good. And I guess the point is to make sure your intentions are known so that you can hopefully influence other people’s decisions to do what they think you will want them to do. So maybe it will make things happen, or maybe not. This article compares this with the current UK government and the fumbling around they seem to be doing in a complete contrast, where they get others to write the speeches and it apparently shows
A Few Random Notes From Claude Coding Quite a Bit…
https://x.com/karpathy/status/2015883857489522876
Leverage. LLMs are exceptionally good at looping until they meet specific goals and this is where most of the “feel the AGI” magic is to be found. Don’t tell it what to do, give it success criteria and watch it go. Get it to write tests first and then pass them. Put it in the loop with a browser MCP. Write the naive algorithm that is very likely correct first, then ask it to optimize it while preserving correctness. Change your approach from imperative to declarative to get the agents looping longer and gain leverage.
This tweet went a bit viral this week and lots of good relatively pragmatic stuff in it. Again, nobody knows where this goes or what will happen but you have to take part at some level.
I do still see lots of pushback from other places where developers hang out where they do not trust these systems and don’t want to even go there. There’s no doubt an atrophy of skills that happens that nobody can argue with, but talk of just not taking part I feel is somewhat misguided
AI and the Human Condition
https://stratechery.com/2026/ai-and-the-human-condition/ via https://registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-curiosity-71
In fact, I have great optimism that one potential upside of AI is a renewed appreciation of and investment in beauty. One of the great tragedies of the industrial era — particularly today — is that beauty in our built environment is nowhere to be found. How is it that we built intricate cathedrals hundreds of years ago, and forgettable cookie-cutter crap today? That is, in fact, another labor story: before the industrial revolution labor was abundant and cheap, which meant it was defensible to devote thousands of person-years into intricate buildings; once labor was made more productive, and thus more valuable, it simply wasn’t financially viable to divert so much talent for so much time. Perhaps it follows, then, that the devaluing of labor Patel and Trammell warn about actually frees humans up to once again create beauty? Yes, robots could do it too, but I think humans will value the work of other humans more. Indeed, I think this is coming sooner than you might think: I expect the widespread availability of high quality AI art to actually make human art more desirable and valuable, precisely because of its provenance
An optimistic though I think a bit misguided take on this. Modern society has a lot more to do now than to be creating things, let alone ones of extreme beauty. AI can now do things better than the vast majority of humans so thinking that people will once again create magical things of beauty just because I don’t know about. I think there’s great potential in AI but the downsides are very real and “diverting labour” is a recipe for disaster
The week ahead
I guess get back into reading more again this week is the plan. There’s so much that I come across and never get to reading but so is the way it all goes.