read_list
List of resources (any medium) that caught my attention this year (2025 edition). If curious check also:
- 1. JAN-2026
- 1.1. Prepare for That Stupid World
- 1.2. I Program on the Subway
- 1.3. Understanding Query Execution with the Analyzer
- 1.4. Your Supabase Is Public
- 1.5. Creator of Go Crashes out - YouTube
- 1.6. Legendary Game Dev Jonathan Blow
- 1.7. Assorted less(1) tips
- 1.8. Be Wary of Digital Deskilling - Cal Newport
- 1.9. I’m addicted to being useful
- 1.10. How I estimate work as a staff software engineer
- 1.11. Introduction to PostgreSQL Indexes ::
- 1.12. Bridges - by Kent Beck - Software Design: Tidy First?
- 2. FEB-2025
- 2.1. Opinion
- 2.2. A Step Behind the Bleeding Edge: Monarch’s Philosophy on AI in Dev – Somehow Manage
- 2.3. The future of software engineering is SRE
- 2.4. Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025 – Wiki Education
- 2.5. The gentle obsolescence - by Benn Stancil - benn.substack
- 2.6. When internal hostnames are leaked to the clown
- 2.7. (AI) Slop Terrifies Me – ezhik.jp
- 2.8. I Started Programming When I Was 7. I’m 50 Now, and the Thing I Loved Has Changed
- 2.9. Your Job Isn’t Disappearing. It’s Shrinking Around You in Real Time
- 2.10. AI makes you boring
- 3. MAR-2025
- 3.1. The AI Vampire. This was an unusually hard post to…
- 3.2. How I Use Claude Code
- 3.3. (3) The Iran War: How America, Israel and Iran Got Here
- 3.4. AI Coding is Gambling
- 3.5. (3) we’re so back - YouTube
- 3.6. Opinion
- 3.7. Compacting - by Benn Stancil
- 3.8. Thoughts on slowing the fuck down — Mario Zechner
- 3.9. Rome’s Greatest Enemy Part 3 - Bloodbath in Africa
- 4. APR-2025
- 4.1. JFK: The Road to the White House (Part 1) - The Rest is History
- 4.2. How the KKK Turned the South Into a Terror State - The Rest Is History
- 4.3. Is Iran Winning? - The Ezra Klein Show
- 4.4. The machines are fine. I’m worried about us. - Minas Karamanis
- 4.5. ClickHouse v26.3 Release Webinar
- 4.6. The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess (Aphyr)
- 4.7. Anna Gát: Review of The Drama (film)
- 4.8. An Unfinished Life: JFK biography (Robert Dallek)
- 4.9. Martin Fowler & Kent Beck: Frameworks for Reinventing
- 4.10. SQLite in Production: Lessons from Running a Store on a Single File
- 4.11. Punch-Drunk Love - Wikipedia
- 4.12. DHH’s new way of writing code
- 4.13. I Still Prefer MCP Over Skills — David Mohl
- 4.14. The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: Culture — Aphyr
- 4.15. The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: Information Ecology — Aphyr
- 4.16. The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: Annoyances — Aphyr
- 4.17. Blowback S1E00: Iraqnophobia feat. H. Jon Benjamin
- 4.18. The Moral Cost of Trump’s War — The Ezra Klein Show (w/ Fareed Zakaria)
- 4.19. IDS#03 - Database Storage: Files & Pages (Andy Pavlo, CMU)
- 4.20. Monster SCALE Summit 2026 — Building a Database Replication Platform at Scale by Joy Gao
- 4.21. The Rest is Politics ep.18: Iran War — The Art of the No Deal
- 4.22. Do You Even Need a Database? — DB Pro Blog
- 4.23. The Forever War — Dexter Filkins (Afghanistan 1998, Taliban, Northern Alliance)
- 4.24. The Illusion of American Omnipotence — D.W. Brogan (Harper’s, 1952)
- 4.25. Sherry Turkle — We’re losing the raw, human part of being with each other
- 4.26. Tinybird vs. ClickHouse — What’s the difference?
- 4.27. JSON Lines — On The Web
- 4.28. Dave Rupert — When moving fast, talking is the first thing to break
- 4.29. The 1000x faster financial database — Joran Dirk Greef (TigerBeetle) on The Changelog
- 4.30. Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History 62 — Supernova in the East
- 4.31. Laws of Software Engineering
- 4.32. Trump Fought The Pope, And The Pope Won? — The Rest Is Politics
- 4.33. xkcd 1172 — Workflow
- 4.34. Opinion — Does Israel Want to Be Saudi Arabia? (NYT)
- 4.35. Index Sharding in ClickHouse Cloud — Petabyte-scale data indexing
1. JAN-2026
1.1. Prepare for That Stupid World
- https://ploum.net/2025-12-19-prepare-for-that-world.html
normalising the fact that “even if it is completely stupid, AI will be everywhere, get used to it!”
1.2. I Program on the Subway
- https://www.scd31.com/posts/programming-on-the-subway Creative use of time. Like Ryan Holiday’s suggestion to be extremely careful about interstinial/do-nothing time.
1.3. Understanding Query Execution with the Analyzer
- https://clickhouse.com/docs/guides/developer/understanding-query-execution-with-the-analyzer Something I’m learning by heart these days. Combining with https://roundup.getdbt.com/p/the-evolution-of-databases-w-wolfram
1.4. Your Supabase Is Public
1.5. Creator of Go Crashes out - YouTube
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9i3VTFxd_Q Prime’s contrarian take. +1
1.6. Legendary Game Dev Jonathan Blow
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHfdUqLmPNU The only reasons why games may ever be interesting again and this is because of rants in The Future of Code podcast.
1.7. Assorted less(1) tips
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46464120 Learning less!
1.8. Be Wary of Digital Deskilling - Cal Newport
- https://calnewport.com/be-wary-of-digital-deskilling/
- I keep coming to this concept, it’s memorable and somewhat valuable
1.9. I’m addicted to being useful
1.10. How I estimate work as a staff software engineer
- https://www.seangoedecke.com/how-i-estimate-work/ Sean again :) The standard way of thinking about estimates is that you start with a proposed piece of software work, and you then go and figure out how long it will take. This is entirely backwards. Instead, teams will often start with the estimate, and then go and figure out what kind of software work they can do to meet it.
1.11. Introduction to PostgreSQL Indexes ::
- https://dlt.github.io/blog/posts/introduction-to-postgresql-indexes/ Bookmarking for later, because we started PG managed service starting 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpBA13nQxAk
1.12. Bridges - by Kent Beck - Software Design: Tidy First?
- https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/bridges important
2. FEB-2025
2.1. Opinion
2.2. A Step Behind the Bleeding Edge: Monarch’s Philosophy on AI in Dev – Somehow Manage
- https://somehowmanage.com/2026/01/22/a-step-behind-the-bleeding-edge-monarchs-philosophy-on-ai-in-dev/ Looking at what a quick smartphone adoption done to the genZ, I’m not adopting AI too quickly. Only where it sharpens the old skills.
2.3. The future of software engineering is SRE
- https://swizec.com/blog/the-future-of-software-engineering-is-sre/?utm_source=changelog-news robustness, robustness, robustness
2.4. Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025 – Wiki Education
- https://wikiedu.org/blog/2026/01/29/generative-ai-and-wikipedia-editing-what-we-learned-in-2025/ Bookmarking pangram.
2.5. The gentle obsolescence - by Benn Stancil - benn.substack
- https://benn.substack.com/p/the-gentle-obsolescence Interesting re-framimg and trashing the “Intern” frame around AI. Timely?
2.6. When internal hostnames are leaked to the clown
2.7. (AI) Slop Terrifies Me – ezhik.jp
- https://ezhik.jp/ai-slop-terrifies-me/ A series of journey(code) enthusiasts accepting the end of engineering as we knew it since the birth of hFortran. This is the end, beautiful friend.
2.8. I Started Programming When I Was 7. I’m 50 Now, and the Thing I Loved Has Changed
- https://www.jamesdrandall.com/posts/the_thing_i_loved_has_changed/ Another in the series of mourning/grieving and ACCEPTING the end of death of coding as the essence of software engineering. New chapter’s here. Death deserves grief.
2.9. Your Job Isn’t Disappearing. It’s Shrinking Around You in Real Time
- https://newsletter.jantegze.com/p/your-job-isnt-disappearing-its-shrinking The adaptation strategy is to use new technology as an enabler or doing things previously unforeseen. Not fight it. Not learn it. Kind of “Gas Town” move? Still, it’s too amorphous to spend time with, in my opinion. Rather, read the structure of scientific revolution by TS Kuhn again and other histories of technologicial revolutions. This is not the first time, it’s going to rhyme.
2.10. AI makes you boring
3. MAR-2025
3.1. The AI Vampire. This was an unusually hard post to…
- https://steve-yegge.medium.com/the-ai-vampire-eda6e4f07163 On the dark side of Agentic Engineering, it being too exhausting. But is not everything in the amorophous/berserk mode?
3.2. How I Use Claude Code
- https://boristane.com/blog/how-i-use-claude-code/ A bit waterfall-y, but better than berserk. Waiting for AIAgile.
3.3. (3) The Iran War: How America, Israel and Iran Got Here
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKWMrpQOh7Y Good, sobering, not as deep into Islam as The rest is history series on Iranian revolution from early this year but awesome.
3.4. AI Coding is Gambling
3.5. (3) we’re so back - YouTube
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DP0az1q_8M Mitchel Hashimoto’s wowed by latest Codex - another ‘its so over’ moment and Primes skepticism. We shall see said the zenmaster.
3.6. Opinion
- https://archive.is/r9Dkt As-of-now, the most essential piece on the impact of AI on the quality of mind
3.7. Compacting - by Benn Stancil
3.8. Thoughts on slowing the fuck down — Mario Zechner
- https://mariozechner.at/posts/2026-03-25-thoughts-on-slowing-the-fuck-down/
- AI agents create compounding complexity without friction; slow down, keep humans in the loop
3.9. Rome’s Greatest Enemy Part 3 - Bloodbath in Africa
- https://youtu.be/Wd-3I9qqLbc
- Second Punic War: Scipio’s African campaign, fire attack, Battle of Zama 202 BC, fall of Hannibal
4. APR-2025
4.1. JFK: The Road to the White House (Part 1) - The Rest is History
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb5M3ax9cxg
- JFK’s Irish-Catholic origins, Joe Kennedy Sr., PT-109 heroism, health struggles, rise to politics
4.2. How the KKK Turned the South Into a Terror State - The Rest Is History
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpPkpTc5xJs
- Rest Is History KKK pt.2: voter suppression, Colfax massacre, Compromise of 1877, Birth of a Nation
4.3. Is Iran Winning? - The Ezra Klein Show
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUhi5b8aj7U
- Suzanne Maloney on Iran’s time strategy, Hormuz toll booth, failed decapitation, no Plan C
4.4. The machines are fine. I’m worried about us. - Minas Karamanis
- https://ergosphere.blog/posts/the-machines-are-fine/
- AI tool-use vs cognitive outsourcing, Alice vs Bob, Schwartz experiment, Dune quote
4.5. ClickHouse v26.3 Release Webinar
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bY0ucNB1lQ
- ClickHouse 26.3 LTS: materialized CTEs, sharded maps, WASM UDFs, 31 SQL dialects, async inserts default, ALP codec, data lake 40-100x speedup, chDB v4 zero-copy pandas
4.6. The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess (Aphyr)
- https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess
- Kyle Kingsbury (Jepsen) on LLMs: improv machines, jagged competence frontier, bullshit with confidence
4.7. Anna Gát: Review of The Drama (film)
- https://x.com/TheAnnaGat/status/2041911589851345080
- Kierkegaard meets American self-creation: love begins where social roles end
4.8. An Unfinished Life: JFK biography (Robert Dallek)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Unfinished_Life:_John_F._Kennedy,_1917%E2%80%931963
- Dallek’s biography — first access to sealed medical records, PT-109, Cuban Missile Crisis
4.9. Martin Fowler & Kent Beck: Frameworks for Reinventing
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZs8J1ZD0CE
- TDD more valuable in AI age, skepticism about skepticism, craft shift from code perfection to domain understanding
4.10. SQLite in Production: Lessons from Running a Store on a Single File
- https://ultrathink.art/blog/sqlite-in-production-lessons
- Rails 8 + SQLite WAL on Docker, lost orders during blue-green deploy, file lock limits
4.11. Punch-Drunk Love - Wikipedia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch-Drunk_Love
- PTA’s 2002 absurdist romance, Tati + musical influences, Sandler’s dramatic turn
4.12. DHH’s new way of writing code
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiWgKRgdgpI
- agent-first workflow, aesthetics is truth, peak programmer, centaur mode is transitional
4.13. I Still Prefer MCP Over Skills — David Mohl
- https://david.coffee/i-still-prefer-mcp-over-skills/
- MCP as API abstraction vs Skills as CLI wrappers; hybrid: Skills as cheat sheets atop MCP connectors
4.14. The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: Culture — Aphyr
- https://aphyr.com/posts/413-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess-culture
- Aphyr on how LLMs reshape culture — missing mythologies, new AI aesthetics, corporate content arbitration
4.15. The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: Information Ecology — Aphyr
- https://aphyr.com/posts/414-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess-information-ecology
- Aphyr on LLM-driven trust erosion — web pollution, spam economics, propaganda at scale, democratic consensus collapse
4.16. The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: Annoyances — Aphyr
- https://aphyr.com/posts/415-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess-annoyances
- Aphyr on LLM customer service erosion — replacing humans with unreliable chatbots, cognitive atrophy
4.17. Blowback S1E00: Iraqnophobia feat. H. Jon Benjamin
- https://youtu.be/3mpyfw-RySg
- Blowback podcast S1 intro — Iraq War counter-history, cast of characters, cultural amnesia thesis
4.18. The Moral Cost of Trump’s War — The Ezra Klein Show (w/ Fareed Zakaria)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5hU0VHM1-M
- Fareed Zakaria on Trump’s Iran war, predatory hegemony, and liberalism’s exhaustion
4.19. IDS#03 - Database Storage: Files & Pages (Andy Pavlo, CMU)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSxV5Sob5V8
- Storage hierarchy, heap files, slotted pages, Neon flash talk (Heikki Linnakangas)
4.20. Monster SCALE Summit 2026 — Building a Database Replication Platform at Scale by Joy Gao
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnYQe2wcNSQ
- ClickPipes internals: no Debezium/Kafka — S3 buffer + Temporal orchestration + ReplacingMergeTree dedup, CTID-based parallel snapshots, error classification system
4.21. The Rest is Politics ep.18: Iran War — The Art of the No Deal
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoP-oHVTWrs
- Campbell & Stewart on Trump/Vance blowing up Iran negotiations after 21 hours vs Oslo (9mo), Dayton (5mo), Good Friday (22mo), JCPOA (10yr)
4.22. Do You Even Need a Database? — DB Pro Blog
- https://www.dbpro.app/blog/do-you-even-need-a-database
- FS vs DB: ACID gap (only D, and shaky), Greenspun’s 10th rule for databases, concurrency myth
4.23. The Forever War — Dexter Filkins (Afghanistan 1998, Taliban, Northern Alliance)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War_(Filkins_book)
- Filkins’ ground-level account of US wars, Taliban origin myth, Massoud, Afghanistan 1998, Forever War vs Permawar
4.24. The Illusion of American Omnipotence — D.W. Brogan (Harper’s, 1952)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Brogan
- 1952 essay naming the American exceptionalist fallacy — if we are supreme we can’t simply lose, so failure must be treachery (fuelling McCarthyism).
4.25. Sherry Turkle — We’re losing the raw, human part of being with each other
4.26. Tinybird vs. ClickHouse — What’s the difference?
4.27. JSON Lines — On The Web
4.28. Dave Rupert — When moving fast, talking is the first thing to break
4.29. The 1000x faster financial database — Joran Dirk Greef (TigerBeetle) on The Changelog
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr8Y2EYnxJs
- TigerBeetle founder on why general-purpose SQL tops out at ~1000 TPS (rowlocks across network latency), why OLTP is multi-row-major, batched debit-credit interfaces, LSM forest, and deterministic simulation testing (DST) giving ~2000 years of test time per day.
4.30. Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History 62 — Supernova in the East
4.31. Laws of Software Engineering
- https://lawsofsoftwareengineering.com/
- Collection of software engineering laws, including premature optimization (Knuth)
4.32. Trump Fought The Pope, And The Pope Won? — The Rest Is Politics
4.33. xkcd 1172 — Workflow
- https://xkcd.com/1172/
- <Hyrum’s Law illustrated: user depends on CPU overheating as a feature>
4.34. Opinion — Does Israel Want to Be Saudi Arabia? (NYT)
4.35. Index Sharding in ClickHouse Cloud — Petabyte-scale data indexing
- https://clickhouse.com/blog/index-sharding-clickhouse-cloud-petabyte-scale-indexing
- <ClickHouse blog: index sharding for petabyte-scale workloads>