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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 · 15/01/2026
Status update: 45+ minutes later, glasses recovered. I don’t believe in root cause, but if I did I’d blame the couch cushions, which apparently have an appetite for glasses today.
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Bahaha well played Hazel!!
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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 · 23/12/2025
I love this and want a part 2! How would you go about rating this? What factors would you consider?
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
Truly your guess is as good as mine 🤷🏼‍♀️
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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
Exactly this. *gestures at the boundary to economic failure in Rasmussen’s dynamic safety model*
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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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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
My instant thought was “and what do the seagull friends think?” 😂
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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
😂
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Can confirm presence of a small amount of wax. 🕯️ it is!
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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 · 17/06/2025
Bahahaha this is amazing. You are magic 🪄 I absolutely can’t wait to watch this play out tomorrow
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
PLEASE do this. This would make my entire month. 😂
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Wait what 🤯?! I say I’m “turtl-ing” all the time to describe feeling awkward or stuck. I had absolutely no idea the others came to help! Turtle mutual aid. Best concept I’ve seen all morning. Also apparently I need a new analogy when I feel awkwardly stuck.
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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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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
I thought I was the only one who impulse bought asparagus! … is this adulthood? Impulse buying/growing seasonal produce?
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Sarah Butt @sarahbutt.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
*high fives* day off crew unite! I’m off today too. Playing guitar and taking the big dog (🐴) for a good walk are on the agenda.
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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
This reflection is brought to you by one of the most turbulent, terrifying flights of my life. 10/10 intellectually trust the system. 0/10 felt safe in the process. I’m sure my spouse’s hand will regain feeling eventually. Anyway, shoutout to the ground. Big fan of having my feet back on it.
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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
And yet, some tradeoffs are worth it. Physically a terrible idea. Emotionally a fantastic one.
View from the back of a large dark brown horse in a riding arena. His ears are pricked forward in interest and his mane is blowing in the breeze. Green trees and blue sky are visible in the background.
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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
See also: multiple resources from the lovely @resilienceinsoftware.org community, and also me, circa this morning, when bike jump planning logic v1.0 assumed stick, and post incident retrospective revealed log 🪵
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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 · 13/04/2025
The horror. Not the catnip! That cat is going to stare into your soul until you appease it with a sufficiently good substitute.
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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
1. This is so deeply relatable (is the correct term here “this is such a vibe?”) 2. Was this about what to have for dinner? Because if so this type of conversation is a weekly occurrence in our household and nothing is as difficult as deciding on dinner
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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 · 09/01/2025
Let me just remind you of LFIconf where it got to the teens and I was basically a walking pile of coats and blankets. You and I are not the same 😂
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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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