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Sarah Butt

@sarahbutt.bsky.social
219 followers 74 following 47 posts

Systems thinker. Student of complexity. “Like a moth to the incident flame”. Normally accompanied by 🦮 (she/her)

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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Tell me you got paged after hours without telling me you got paged. I’ll go first: There is a half-assembled bowl of cereal on the counter, the milk is sitting out, and somehow the dog lost her collar (I think from playing with our other dog, but honestly who knows what happened in the last 15 min)
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Trying to find my lost glasses has revealed a real circular dependency on being able to see with my glasses.
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
Of all the unexpected places AI has shown up in my life lately, hand warmers might be the most unexpected. Hot take: I’d rather not AI-ify my hand warmers?
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Dan Hon @danhon.com · 23/11/2025
become a systems thinker, they said you'll have a better understanding of how the world works, they said yeah and you'll also spend every waking moment in despair
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@jpaulreed @jpaulreed.com · 28/10/2025
OH: "Why are all my LFI / Safety II Nerd friends STILL utterly destroyed this week?"
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
The number of people who didn’t know what us-east-1 was on Sunday and are suddenly experts in running multi-region distributed systems at scale today is truly remarkable.
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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 06/08/2025
First rule of distributed systems: don’t build a distributed system if you can avoid it Second rule of distributed systems: you probably can’t avoid it
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Corey Quinn @quinnypig.com · 01/07/2025
Parentheses! Em dashes! Comma splices! Semicolons! Welcome to ADHD Grammar (since every thought comes with exciting bonus content), friends!
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
My dog believes, completely and without hesitation, that we can both exist in the exact same spot on the couch. I envy her faith in a reality unburdened by physics. To be fair, she’s correct… as long as “don’t squish your human” isn’t a requirement.
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Cat Hicks @grimalkina.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
I do not know anything about this drug or the reasons for its nonapproval, but this is the exact kind of scenario that shows the failure of making sweeping policy generalizations about evidence that simply cannot account for some scenarios and rare diseases :(
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Things I ask @obdue.bsky.social: “does the pencil count as a candle if the tip of the pencil is currently on fire?” The “what is an incident, really” vibes are strong here 😂
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Schrödinger’s Incident: that brief moment when you wake up knowing you’re about to take on-call handover, but haven’t checked your work phone yet. The incident both exists and doesn’t— until you unlock your phone and open the handover thread.
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MurderBotBot @murderbotbot.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Why the hell does everything have to happen at once?
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
My thoughts are like race cars today. Bless my husband, who intercepted me physically vibrating on 4 hrs sleep, took my half-full Dr Pepper and said, “Maybe don’t finish this today?” while I rapid-fired through tasks and lectured the dogs on how systemic failure meant no clean spoons.
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
It’s 2:25 a.m. I’m trying to finish a work project. An armadillo has somehow climbed onto our front porch, stranded itself, and is now frantically scratching to get inside. I’m about to wake up my sick husband because he’s the vet in this relationship, and I am not equipped for this. Texas, y’all.
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve had to flee my house due to a multi-day power outage combined with extreme temps in the last 5 years, I’d have $3. Not enough to buy my favorite Starbucks drink, but up from $2 earlier this week. Which feel like a lot for someone who lives in a major city.
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
How many throat lozenges and cups of tea is too many for a human while sick in bed? Asking for a self who is approaching 20% chamomile at this point.
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Jonathan Edward Durham @thisone0verhere.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Remember, if you EVER need anything, I’m only 5 missed phone calls, three unanswered texts, several unread DMs, and an unaccepted LinkedIn request away
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
Turbulence: an excellent case study in safety vs. perception. The data says I’m safe. I trust the system. I trust my friends in aviation who tell me I’m safe. But my body still braces. Heart races. Panic hits. Being safe is not necessarily the same as feeling safe. I’m fascinated by this.
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MurderBotBot @murderbotbot.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
So they made us smarter. The anxiety and depression were side effects.
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 27/04/2025
Just one more day of pushing the limits of chronic illness and back-to-back activity. Just one more. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I ask myself, reaching for the Ibuprofen. (Rasmussen’s dynamic safety model and Dekker’s drift into failure quietly join the group chat.)
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Potential 🔥 take: the fact that you’d make a different judgement call now doesn’t mean the original decision was bad. Decisions are made in context, with the information and constraints and signals available then. Judgement is a timestamped event and the past didn’t have your present
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
The dog put herself to bed before 8p tonight and honestly that’s a completely reasonable response to this Monday
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
Post conference vibes: - I’m inspired and want to do several hundred things all at once— also I want to do nothing at all please let me sleep - oh thank goodness introvert quiet time— also oh wait my friends are scattered around the globe again, this feels lonely - Dogs! I’m home with my dogs!
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John Allspaw @allspaw.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Very few know we've (@adaptivecapacity.bsky.social) been developing tools to help support us. After 7 years & 6 patents (!) we realized others were interested in integrating/commercializing "Churchkey." We’re looking for partners interested in licensing Churchkey's IP. churchkey.info
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
I just exploded my second squishy stress ball in a week all over my hands and desk and I really don’t know what this says about my life…
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Fred Hebert @ferd.ca · 04/02/2025
this week has been one hell of a year.
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Is it insomnia or is it my “I’m not our current on call but I think there might be an incident brewing” spidey sense tingling? (Narrator: it would be both)
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Courtney Nash @courtneynash.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
If you're attending #SREcon Americas in March, please consider submitting a Lightning Talk! www.usenix.org/conference/s.... If you've never seen a Lightning Talk, allow me to introduce you to one of my all time favorites by @jpaulreed.com : youtu.be/pavDzPLGVrY?...
youtu.be
SREcon24 Americas - Lightning Talks
YouTube video by USENIX
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MurderBotBot @murderbotbot.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
Being terrified was starting to give way to being really angry.
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
Texas, where you wear shorts one day and every coat you can possibly layer the next. This is fine. 🥶
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
Ah, the week between Christmas and New Years. Aka the time I discover mid-installation that the bird feeder pole mount I got for my parents’ new bird feeder is not in fact as “universal” as advertised, all while hoping my pager doesn’t go off in parallel. *shakes fist at bird feeder situation*
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
It’s a glorious thing when two musical people live together and one is particular about gear but the other will play anything I may have just dismissed a set of 20 variety picks one by one as “nope” and will return to my very picky (ha) pick of choice while depositing the rest on my spouse’s desk
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
TIL what monotropism is and…. Hmmm. Well. Yep. That’s a helpful concept that explains a lot. I thought everyone was out there digging attention tunnels?
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
I just excitedly exclaimed to someone I barely know at work “oh I’m a huge Safety-II nerd!!” and now that I’ve had a moment to process my statement: 1) wow, I am *really* a nerd. 2) I chose to wear this enthusiasm proudly
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Sarah Etter @sarahetter.com · 29/11/2024
Happy Unsubscribe from Marketing Emails day to all who celebrate!
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
I’m always a fan of Lorin’s blogs— This one is well worth the read for how well it breaks some common patterns down. Also, @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com, I’d like to petition for you to make merch including a shirt with “I am a card carrying member of the no root cause club” on it.
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Family holiday card photos are one of the most under appreciated examples of “it’s not amazing that it breaks, it’s amazing that it ever works at all” in action. 3 humans, 5 dogs, sitting in the middle of a forest, all smiling and dressed nicely and looking at the camera? Recreated yearly?
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 03/11/2024
Happy “the clock on the wall changes but the dog’s internal breakfast clock stays the same” day to everyone in the US who celebrates. *yawns* How is that extra hour of sleep, everyone else?
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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 31/10/2024
It’s remarkable that most software stuff works most of the time given the astonishing levels of complexity in modern tech stacks.
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 31/10/2024
My PHEV car has been in the shop twice in the first 2 months of its life. In both events, the complexity of the PHEV bits has been both a key contributor to the issue and key to the car “degrading” successful (ie not leaving me stranded roadside). Feels like there’s a complex systems theme here?
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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 25/10/2024
Proud resilience engineering weirdo
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John Allspaw @allspaw.bsky.social · 22/10/2024
Not knowing why something broke is scary. Not knowing how you fixed it is horrifying.
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Will Gallego @gallego.bsky.social · 21/10/2024
Hey! So if you're interested in hearing about Resilience Engineering (notably its intersection with Software Engineering, but otherwise too) I made a list of some fantastic folks in that space! bsky.app/profile/did:...
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