Hacker culture survives because it's the culture that optimizes for contact with reality

Democratisation doesn't eliminate specialists. It just ensures the specialists arrive later, under more pressure, with more to unwind.

Lowering the barrier doesn't reduce demand, it increases attempts

I don't think the recurring failure is that we haven't found the right abstraction yet. It's that abstraction is often mistaken for understanding

The dream of replacing developers may be less about developers at all, and more about a recurring hope that complex socio-technical systems can be reduced to a one-time translation problem

The rhetoric around "energy independence" always sounded like it was pointing exactly toward renewables, and it's hard not to see the missed opportunity in hindsight

I vividly recall an episode of Dallas where Bobby was rationalizing to his brother JR about investing in renewables.

For a brief window of time our consensus for decarbonization extended all the way to (the most) popular media.

Can’t power the military with renewables. Need nuclear and fossil fuels for that. One doesn’t want to be dependent on foreign nations to power their military.

What are you talking about? Renewables don't require fuels, unlike the fossil fuels that the US has invaded several countries for (most recently taking actions against another country just this month).

Criticism is healthy. False equivalence isn't.

On the one hand, the geometry is beautiful and almost serene; on the other, it's a reminder that decarbonization at this scale is still an industrial transformation of landscapes

Literally anything a terminal command can do to your machine. Delete things, install malware, send your data to the FBI, start a fire by overheating (ok, now I'm just kidding... or not)

This is one of those stories that just keeps escalating into "am I in a dream or a side quest?" territory... Also, "sushi you’d order from KFC" is going to haunt me