iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

🎶 I'm a grindstone cowboy 🎶

000

I keep thinking about how Circe transformed Odysseus' men into pigs in the Nolan film. I loved the creepy physicality of it. Magic has been depicted as sparkly concentric shapes in film for so long this approach felt really visceral.

000

I'm catching up on some work at the coffee shop (yay Labor Day) and the kids are playing the Doors at jet-plane volume. I feel 16 again. I still know all the words. I wonder if they'd let me sing along with them.

001

I had a good run going on a silly conceptual art project for Instagram: 90 tiny words. I got busy, but more importantly started to feel gross every time I opened Instagram. So my posting fell off. I've duped those posts here for funzos. I feel like I should finish the series, but the spirit is weak

000

And if it *were true* that one good employee can do the work of 10 with AI, CEOs should be very scared. What's stopping this magical unicorn from leaving? From demanding 10x pay? What's your back up plan when the 10x AI powered employee leaves and sells their services right back to you?

000

Speaking of delusions, there are more delusions on the management side of the house. CEOs believe in AI magic, that AI will 10x the productivity of their best employees and they can fire everyone else. This is false.

100

Using these tools means participating in an unethical system, but so does everything. Yelling at people who are just trying to do their jobs doesn't fix anything.

100

The rampant build-out of data-centers is an arms race and an environmental disaster. If we had a functional government, this would be regulated heavily. We don't, and they are running wild, only meeting pockets of local resistance.

100

That doesn't mean AI coding tools are ethically neutral. While I do think training models on open source code is fair game, training on *everything else* is copyright infringement and the rights holders should be compensated.

100

The abstraction of coding is also a continuum, from assembly, to C, to Python, to JavaScript, insert your favorite high-level language here. It progresses to more and more human-readable, until we have plain English.

100

Many folks have romanticized coding as a craft or an art. In truth, coding is a middle-man. "Talking" to a computer to "tell" it what to do used to require special instructions. Those instructions were difficult to learn and hard to master. Increasingly people can use plain English instead.

100

Software authoring automation is a continuum. Autocompletion, code generation, scaffolding, hot reloading, etc. are part of that continuum with full automation with LLMs at the leading edge.

100

Michael Barrett @abouthalf.com · 03/09/2026

This post is hyperbolic. Let's take down a notch. I agree, that in a professional context, it is very, very impractical to shun AI coding tools entirely. For hobbyists or sole proprietors this may not matter.

100

I don't have a horse in this particular race, but I'm sympathetic to it. It's easy to say "just use something else, lol" but folks have their livelihood and a wealth of experience invested in these tools. That's hard to part with.

000

Michael Barrett @abouthalf.com · 03/09/2026

𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘯 the relative degree of lightness or darkness of a particular color: 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘥𝘫𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘳 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘴. #tinywords #daily #journal #90tinywords #value

iPad painting, portrait study of a young woman looking over her shoulder

000

Reposted by Michael Barrett

Rude1 Haunted Badness. ⁂ @rude1.blacksky.team · 02/09/2026

@blackskyweb.xyz is building an interconnected suite of products reshaping how people connect, participate, organize, and transact online. We’re looking for a Head of Design to lead and shape how our products and brands look, feel, and work. please circulate widely. blackskyweb.xyz/about/jobs/h...

blackskyweb.xyz

Head of Design

Product, brand, and visual identity About Blacksky Algorithms Blacksky Algorithms is building an interconnected suite of products reshaping how people connect, participate, organize, and transact onli...

5231193

will you do a meta video on making videos

130

Thanks for surfacing this. Sent 1Password an email.

000

𝘀𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗰𝗵 𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘯 a rough or unfinished drawing or painting, often made to assist in making a more finished picture: 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘰𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘤𝘩. #tinywords #daily #journal #90tinywords #sketch

000