/now/

/now/[1] is a monthly updated page that lists some of the projects I'm working on, media I'm engaging, and hobbies or other activities I'm doing.

Updated 2026-09-30

🏔️ Hiking & Mountaineering

Misc. Projects

Media

Books

Music

Movies

Podcasts

🎮 Video Games

Articles I clipped:

The Real Luxuries In Life by Brad Feld

The real luxuries in life:

  1. Time
  2. Health
  3. A quiet mind
  4. Slow mornings
  5. Ability to travel
  6. Rest without guilt
  7. A good night’s sleep
  8. Calm and “boring” days
  9. Meaningful conversations
  10. Home-cooked meals
  11. People you love
  12. People who love you back

Einstellung effect by Wikipedia Contributors

Development of a mechanized state of mind.

Einstellung (German pronunciation:[ˈaɪ̯nˌʃtɛlʊŋ] ⓘ; German: Einstellungseffekt [1]) is the development of a mechanized state of mind. Often called a problem solving set, Einstellung refers to a person's predisposition to solve a given problem in a specific manner even though better or more appropriate methods of solving the problem exist.

The Einstellung effect is the negative effect of previous experience when solving new problems.

7 Lessons from Yukio Mishima's Sun and Steel by Brett & Kate McKay

Living entirely inside your head can also breed anxiety and despair as thought loops back endlessly on itself. Mishima found an antidote in shifting his attention outward and pushing against something that wasn’t him: the barbell. Science has since confirmed the broader point that physical activity is one of the best ways to get out of your head and improve your mood.

VC isn’t VC anymore - understanding the rise of Cancer Capital by Anil Dash

Many of the trends in society and politics that people are most angry about, from data centers being forced down everyone’s throats, to all of our favorite apps and services being enshittified, to politicians being paid to ignore the will of the people, are all being supercharged by these cancer capitalists. They have warped the structure of venture capital into a form of oligarchy that answers to no market, no regulators, and no voters.

Mastodon Post on hachyderm.io by Suzanne Aldrich

LLM is like autotune for words

Deep Blue by Simon Willison

We coined a new term [...] covering the sense of psychological ennui leading into existential dread that many software developers are feeling thanks to the encroachment of generative AI into their field of work.

We’re calling it Deep Blue.

How to keep enjoying programming in a world of LLMs by Manuel Bärenz

As a Haskell programmer, I enjoy writing Haskell. Yes, I like the product we make at work a lot, I like what you can do with my open source libraries, but I really enjoy just the process of expressing my thoughts in this language. I’m assuming this to be true for most of you, and also it not to be true in many other languages, which explains to some amount why enthusiasts of different programming languages have different opinions on how bright or dark the LLM-assisted future is.

When I generate code, a lot of that enjoyment is at risk. So, don’t, maybe. I want to keep writing (at least the enjoyable parts of) Haskell programs, and not having to read and review (too much) generated code. At the same time, I want to put those tokens to some good use that doesn’t slowly burn my brain away.

I want to show you a way to keep enjoying programming, and at the same time becoming moderately more productive with LLM, instead of appearing to be much more productive and losing all the joy.

Advice to a beginning software engineer by Sean Goedecke

The advent of LLMs and AI agents is the largest change to software engineering in my professional lifetime, and possibly the largest change ever. That said, here’s my advice:

  • Don’t trust senior engineers who are telling you to pick political fights
  • Don’t play games. Keep your head down and be helpful
  • Be conscientious and try hard to actually understand what you’re working on
  • Don’t panic about AI, and don’t delegate your judgement to it
  • Don’t avoid AI — keep thinking!
  • Don’t lose hope

Senior Engineers Are the Next DRAM Shortage by Greg Herlein

There’s a shortage coming that nobody’s put on a slide yet: senior engineers. Every company on earth is about to want one who can drive a fleet of agents with judgment — and almost nobody is making new ones anymore, because AI ate the entry-level work juniors used to learn on. You cannot conjure a senior in a quarter. We just watched this exact movie with memory: DRAM prices went vertical because demand exploded and you can’t build a fab overnight. Senior engineers are next, and the only hedge is to build your own, starting now. The best thing you can build in the agentic era isn’t your product — it’s another Engineer.

Researchers create DNA computer that performs 100-bit calculations without electricity by Etiido Uko

Traditional silicon computers use transistors to switch electrical voltages between 1 and 0. On the other hand, the molecular computer uses the binding and unbinding of genetic base pairs (A, T, C, and G) to process information. The researchers write the program into the DNA sequences themselves before putting them into the test tube and applying heat. The thermal energy kick-starts chemical reactions, causing the DNA strands to rearrange. As the molecules naturally shift toward their most stable structural state, they mathematically solve the programmed algorithm, with the final structure representing the mathematical answer.

  1. This Now page is inspired by Derek Sivers, who began nownownow.com. ↩︎