Why Bell Labs Worked is a fascinating, evocative read. We live in a metrics obsessed culture that is obsessed with narrowly defined productivity. There’s too much focus on accountability and too little focus on creativity. The reason why we don’t have Bell Labs is because we’re unwilling to do what it takes to create Bell Labs — giving smart people radical freedom and autonomy. The freedom to waste time. The freedom to waste resources. And the autonomy to decide how. ...
Being fat is a trap
Federico Pereiro’s Being Fat is a Trap is, I think, a great piece of advice. Way more people than I wish who are close to me are struggling with eating disorders of all kinds, so I’m sensible about the topic. This sentence, in particular, rings true in an aching way: Judging people inside the fat trap just intensifies their misery and reduces the odds they can get out of it.
Claude Code first impressions
Since yesterday, Claude Code has been included in the Pro subscription we’re signed up for. I’d been wanting to try it for a while, and now nothing was stopping me. Only yesterday (a curious coincidence), I read AI Changes Everything by Armin Ronacher, which gave me a glimpse of the potential and made my hands itch to try it. The initialization of Claude on the repository surprised me; the analysis (reported in CLAUDE.md) is thorough and reveals a good understanding of the project, including both the code and the general functioning, strategies, techniques, technologies and libraries employed. ...
When to leave
Knowing when to leave might be more important than knowing when to show up. – kupajo in When to Leave
AI changes everything
Today’s Armin Ronacher’s AI Changes Everything strongly resonates with me1. I may not be using Claude Code as a daily driver as he now does, but I’ve slowly and steadily introduced large language models (LLMs) into my routine, and I’m reaping the benefits. It wasn’t the purpose of his article, but I wish Armin had gone into the details of how, why, and when he delegates tasks to Claude Code. My AI Skeptic Friends All Nuts, linked in Armin’s piece, is also worth reading. ↩︎ ...
Moving On
In Moving On, Simone Silvestroni recounts how he moved away from the Apple ecosystem. It’s a move I’ve been contemplating for some time. Like Simone, I use Linux at work daily so that the task wouldn’t be too much of a stretch, but I’m probably too lazy (or too old) to execute it.
Run your own AI
Run Your Own AI by Anthony Lewis is a concise tutorial on how to run large language models on your laptop from the command line via llm-mlx. It focuses on Macs M-series, but it’s also suitable for other hardware. Saving it here for a friend.
Eve 2.2.1
Eve v2.2.1 was just released on PyPI. It is a minor upgrade, but it includes a remarkable performance increase contributed by Alexander Urieles. Also, thanks to Svante Bengtson and Pablo Parada for their help with this release.
Serra Pass along the pilgrims' route
From Corezzo, a short hiking loop along the park’s oldest mule tracks. The Serra Pass mule track is one of the most fascinating in the entire Casentino territory, if only for the tangible memory of the millions of feet that have trodden, traveled, and worn it down over the centuries. It connected – and still connects – the upper Savio valley with that of Corsalone, branching off from the Romagna valley floor near the Gualchiere (about 2 km south of Bagno di Romagna) and climbing up the Nasseto ridge to reach the summit ridge at a pass that isn’t exactly low (1,150 m), but evidently “convenient” for other reasons, given that its use is documented as early as prehistoric times and experienced an intense period with medieval pilgrimages directed to Rome and later to La Verna. ...
Foresta della Lama
I went hiking in my beloved Foreste Casentinesi National Park a few weeks ago. This trip has been on my radar for a long time, a circular tour of incomparable beauty among wild environments like very few others in the area. Among the many ways to reach the La Lama, it is undoubtedly the best way to visit the ancient forests surrounding the beautiful, partly marshy plateau between rocky crags. The initial detour to Mount Penna is motivated by the rare panoramic view, perhaps the most beautiful in the entire park, as if from a wide-open balcony overlooking the sea of forests below. ...