Four Tet — Live at Sydney Opera House. I came to Four Tet pretty late, and this set was my introduction. It's one of those performances I keep coming back to — just put it on and let it run. There's something about the setting, the sound, and the way the whole thing builds that makes it feel less like a DJ set and more like a single long piece of music. A perfect starting point if you've never listened.
Small fragments. Things I read, heard, or couldn't stop thinking about. These are too short for essays but too good to lose. Sort of like commonplace book meets tumblelog.
524 bits, and counting.
Limit everything to the essential but do not remove the poetry.
— Dieter Rams
This is the hardest balance in any craft. Stripping things down is easy — you just cut. But knowing what to protect, the parts that give something its soul, that takes real taste. The best products, the best writing, the best code — they all feel simple, but there's a warmth to them. Something human made it through the editing process.
It occurs when the model produces outputs that are less diverse than expected, effectively "collapsing" to generate only a few modes of the data distribution while ignoring others. This phenomenon undermines the goal of generative models to capture the full diversity of the training data.
A few things that stand out to me about this:
- It's not just a model problem — people mode collapse too. You settle into the same patterns, the same solutions, the same responses to situations, and stop exploring the full range of what's possible.
- The most interesting work comes from the edges of the distribution, not the center. When a model (or a person) only produces "safe" outputs, you lose the unexpected ideas that actually move things forward.
- Diversity of input matters. If you only consume the same sources, talk to the same people, and work on the same kinds of problems, you're training yourself toward collapse.
As everything around us has become more complicated our understanding of technology has diminished. It used to be that we needed to understand our tools deeply but today we understand them in a shallow, abstracted way.
What an incredible and beautiful resource.
Jealousy in technicolor
Fear by name, love by numbers
Street lamp amber, wanderlust
Powder in a blunderbuss
— Arctic Monkeys - "That's Where You're Wrong"
These four lines are so evocative — "jealousy in technicolor" and "fear by name, love by numbers" pack so much into so few words. There's something cinematic about the imagery too. Alex Turner makes it sound effortless.
Rado True Square by Tej Chauhan.
Winter in Seattle has me missing Los Angeles. Soon.
Back at home and enjoying Pantheon.
Altitude sickness is not fun. It's been a long week in Boulder.
Reminds me of my childhood.
Just came back from a 4.5 mile walk in the rain. I feel alive.
Got a haircut – feels good. 💇♂️
I wish Feist released a bunch of covers.
Weekend goal: get some rest after non-stop vibe coding and debugging.
The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events. A stone is prototypical 'thing': we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow. Conversely, a kiss is an 'event.' It makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones. On closer inspection, in fact, even the things that are most 'thing-like' are nothing more than long events.
— Carlo Rovelli
Even the things we think of as permanent and solid are really just slow-moving events. Makes you pay more attention to what's happening rather than what you think you have.
That Self within you is without senses, yet it functions through the senses. It is beyond time and form, completely independent; and it supports all things and enjoys the play of creation. It is indivisible yet appears divided into many parts. It is creator, preserver, and destroyer all at once. It is the object and source of all wisdom.
— The Bhagavad Gita (translation by Edward Viljoen)
The roles we play (creator, preserver, destroyer) aren't separate identities but different expressions of the same thing. Easy to forget when you're deep in the day-to-day and each responsibility feels like its own world.
Coded so much over the last few days. This holiday season has been incredible with all of the new AI tools — being able to vibe so many ideas into existence has been awesome. It feels like everyone I know is doing the same thing. I keep refreshing X every few hours and there are more amazing apps, games, and scripts that people are building. What a time to be a software engineer.
Software that is actively used has the best opportunity to be improved.
Skrillex performing his Quest for Fire record from his basement — and the whole thing is just awesome. Still amazed at how the lighting was triggered throughout the performance.
A lovely cover and voice.