Tim Converse

Agreed about the future not being evenly distributed, and obviously it was an exaggeration to describe humans coding by hand as having ended in 2025 - it will continue for years I'm sure. But this will have the flavor of Wile E. Coyote having skidded off the cliff but not having looked down yet :)

Indeed - more free time (ha ha).

Claude Code: a Midyear Performance Review In March 2025 a friend introduced me to Claude Code around the time of the Sonnet 3.7 release. I was blown away, and after a day or two I…

My reflections on six months working with Claude Code:

medium.com/@timconverse...

Seeing Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts at Shoreline tonight

Sure - we should be collectively incurious about every possible scientific question until we've first solved every pragmatic problem we face. Give me a break.

Just in general in most cities and countries, or did you have a particular city or country that you wanted your readers to be thinking about in this chat that needs to happen?

In my work these days, I'm frequently reminded of that inspirational JFK quote:

"We do these things not because they are easy,
but because we thought they would be easy"

Seeing Metallica at Levi’s stadium tonight

What I like about this judgment shortcut is that it dispenses with the onerous step of reading what is admittedly a very long book :)

Ah, right. Sounds like a particularly stupid version of guilt by association. “Don’t judge a book by (stereotypical associations you might have about) its owners.”

But I’m a fan of DFW and IJ, so I’ve probably already disqualified myself as being that guy. :)

Bad reputation why?

What do the haters say when they talk about it?

In about 1990 in Chicago, I was in a bank teller line and Billy Corgan came to say hi to the woman in front of me in line, who he knew. She asked how he was doing, and he said “Hey, really good, I just got a record deal.” She said “oh, that’s great”

Our home-renovation contractor is a great guy - an immigrant from Mongolia with limited English

Lately we've realized that hist texts to us have been written by ChatGPT or similar. They are effective (just conversations about schedule), but with startling length, fluency, vocabulary, and good cheer

I’ve always been a fan of RZA and GZA. SZA not so much.

Seeing Kendrick Lamar at Oracle Park

Uh, isn't leftist a relative term just like centrist? Aren't you still defining yourself relative to the room you're in? Left of what?

I put the original post in the very popular posting category called Reasons Why People Who Disagree With Me Somewhat Are Not Only Incorrect But Actually Evil

Nah. It can result from assessing your own true beliefs, then looking around the room and noticing that you’re not standing at either edge of the room, then using that one word as a super-concise summary to make it easier for others to roughly locate you

Tribe Called Quest, We got it from here …

Elvis Costello, Brutal Youth

Talking Heads circa 1978

I’ll take:
But if you really want to hear our views
You haven’t done nothing

Bad news for solar today

To my surprise, EIA projects there were will be *less* new utility-scale solar capacity added in the U.S. in the next 12 months than in the prev 12 months. What's up with that?

(See the Solar subtotal row of the Jan 25 - Feb 25 report
www.eia.gov/electricity/...)

Sure. Which is why you see all these “Natural gas drives out coal!” posts with graphs that omit wind and solar … but you don’t. There’s enough real success in renewables to celebrate without this kind of misleading presentation

Why do graphs like this so often leave out natural gas?

Natural gas is more responsible for the decline of coal than wind and solar are

Going to see Kraftwerk at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley

Negative prices in CAISO: What PPA buyers and renewable developers need to know The last few years have seen an increasing trend of negative power prices in the region served by CAISO, particularly in Southern California.

See this piece on negative prices: www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/negati...

Disconnection of renewables source is not that straightforward.

Also, renewables can beat fossil sources on cost in many situations, but not by so much that they still win if you have to discard most of the power

Thanks for the reply. I think you're underestimating the grid operational challenges of solar intermittency and oversupply.

Again: why do negative energy prices exist? Is it because no one had the sense to go out and disconnect the panels for a bit?

Hmm, maybe we should switch languages. Have you heard the Latin phrase “non sequitur”

Thriving actually

Rumors of its demise had been much exaggerated

Yes, ‘rumors’ except for a small minority of its speakers who retained a vestigial ‘u’

English grew up in England, and lived there for several hundred years. But when it came time to put away childish things it grew up and moved out. Soon it was spoken by many more people than those it had left behind, and it even became big in Japan!