Occasional Observations

Occasional Observations

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Scapegoating-as-a-Service

Here's a pernicious loop: A Hot New Thing™ comes alongExperts™ tout it as the silver bulletTeams ask too much of itHot New Thing™ crumples under the weight of unwarranted expectationsThink pieces abound, announcing the death of Hot New Thing™Hot New Thing™ becomes a Cold Dead Failure™ Design systems. Agile. Design thinking. Design Sprints. MVPs. And so on. We tend to blame a methodology, externality, or technology rather than examine our own contribution to dysfunction. [The topic deserves a ...

Blog iconOccasional Observations
May 5

Occasional Observations

Sporadic collection & connection of dots.

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Written by
thehilker

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Implications of AI-enabled software

Feb 11, 2025
Implications of AI-enabled software

Shoes, Spiders, & Cities

Feb 24, 2025
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Just dominant enough

Apr 16, 2025
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Scapegoating-as-a-Service

May 5, 2025
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Hello world

May 2, 2024
Hello world

Most Popular

Just dominant enough

Apr 16, 2025
Cover image

Scapegoating-as-a-Service

May 5, 2025
Cover image

Hello world

May 2, 2024
Hello world
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Necessary destruction

Blog iconOccasional Observations
May 1

Despite its reputation as a quiet, peaceful pastime, golf is a destructive sport. Finely-manicured divots flying down the fairway. Corduroy sands scattered onto the greens. Bent clubs at the bottom of the lake. It all happens as part of the game. As a groundskeeper, it can be easy to fall into the distraction that the quality of the course is my end-all. But the course is there for the game of golf. The purpose of a pristine tee box is not to remain as such, but to enable quality drives. Dest...

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Just dominant enough

Blog iconOccasional Observations
Apr 16

Meta's deck from the FTC proceedings is interesting because of how simple it is. It's made for a non-tech audience focused on a single story with major movements and just a couple data points to digest at a time. Because the audience (presumably) uses Facebook, the business of Meta feels familiar. So the deck needs to inform the audience of a certain reality without losing — or angering — them altogether. (Just as interesting is what they don't say, of course — that's strategy.) The slides on...

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Shoes, Spiders, & Cities

Blog iconOccasional Observations
Feb 24

For no particular reason, here are three mental models that I often use in thinking through a situation. ShoesWhen you’re looking for a shoe online, there are a number of attributes you could start from: color, size, style, usage, ratings, materials, retailer, typical buyer, price, availability, and so on. On a website, this is called faceted navigation; a facet is a side of something, so faceted navigation allows you to browse options according to the “side” of an object. So when I’m trying ...

Implications of AI-enabled software

Implications of AI-enabled software

Blog iconOccasional Observations
Feb 11

Bearing a whole bunch of assumptions, these are some implications I've been collecting & exploring. There's more to add for sure — holler if you've got any — and I intend to add some commentary at some point. We'll see. Independent tinkerers↑ Ease of a low-tech savvy individual making their own tools ↓ Cost of a low-tech savvy individual making various tools they need to do their job ↑ People making what they, and only they, need to do a job in a way that’s uniquely suited to themJump startin...

An Intelligence Age

An Intelligence Age

Blog iconOccasional Observations
Sep 24

This is probably an important piece of writing, we just don't exactly know why yet. Not because he’s necessarily right about everything, but because he’s running one of the most consequential companies of our time. In some way or another, we'll have to deal with his perspective. First of all, publishing what amounts to a blog post on a subdomain rather than a folder is pretty interesting. That's suggests a certain level of importance; it's not one post among many, but a standalone piece in a ...

Where does work happen?

Where does work happen?

Blog iconOccasional Observations
Sep 4

This thread from Jonathan Courtney of AJ&Smart was an interesting spark I hadn't considered before: Slack's tagline is literally "Where w...

Intel didn't see the potential of OpenAI

Intel didn't see the potential of OpenAI

Blog iconOccasional Observations
Aug 9

Intel is taking some heat for not investing in OpenAI in 2017. It's easy to look back on that from 2024 and prompt ChatGPT to write a sca...

Google Who?

Google Who?

Blog iconOccasional Observations
Aug 8

A bit ago, I noticed that my kids have never said, "google it". They say, "search it up" and then use whatever built-in search tool is on...

Hobbies as Journeys

Hobbies as Journeys

Blog iconOccasional Observations
Jun 13

Author David Bland — who is excellent at crossing the business-culture meme divide, btw — shared this video with the caption, "This would make an ama...

AI Can't Fix Your Organizational Overhead

AI Can't Fix Your Organizational Overhead

Blog iconOccasional Observations
Jun 11

According to this PwC report, "roughly 40% of the time spent on [emails, meetings and administrative processes] is inefficient."Sorry, but that's pro...