Aji

If I have to explain to you why it's a bad idea to use a machine that makes shit up 15-80% of the time AND destroys the environment AND contributes to rising fascism and genocide AND puts brilliant skillful creatives out of work by stealing their work, then we're already speaking different languages

Imagine walking into an established writers room with a list this vague and acting like you just saved TV.

www.yahoo.com/entertainmen...

I’d want to hear about *that part* of the codebase nobody will touch because it’s important and no one understands enough to tackle it. The skeletons in the closets.

Stretch goal: how did it get that way…as long as we can remember everyone was doing their best with what they had.

Once again I am asking people writing these sorts of posts under what rock they are living that they don't just say "Golden" and then do a "mic drop" motion

This brings us full circle:

- There may well be useful practical applications of gen AI

- The sphere of such useful applications is likely much smaller than is currently being marketed

When I tell a learner to put away a tool and reject their arguments for why it's necessary it isn't because they're too stupid. It's because tools of convenience are inherently less powerful and flexible than their own minds and inhibit their ability to reach the point where they can achieve that.

CEO pay is up 1,085% since 1978, while typical worker pay is up just 24%. 

Why do we always hear "we can't afford to pay our workers more" but never "we can't afford to pay our CEO more"?

Ex-CIA Whistleblower: "The NSA Audited The 2024 Election, Kamala Harris Won" Math doesn’t lie—people do. A buried NSA‑authorized audit paved the way for this unelected illegitimate regime.

This should be a Five Alarm Fire on every G'ddamned media outlet in the world.

I very rarely post a link to someone else's newsletter...as I have my own. This, however...is a MUST see.

open.substack.com/pub/thiswill...

at a certain point it really doesn't matter how the tech "works" or what its ostensible purpose is. it is legit to criticise it entirely on its externalities and the interests it benefits

Thank YOU. I can imagine how difficult that must’ve been. I had to hold it together for three minutes while being mildly that vulnerable, it was super meaningful to me and I don’t expect I’m the only one.

Our bots would fight

YouTube video by Ruby Central RailsConf 2025 The Keynote of Keynotes by Aji Slater

@polotek.bsky.social- recently I keynoted at Railsconf, having watched all the keynotes of all the Railsconfs to keynote about said keynotes’ contents. I wanted to let you know that your 2017 talk is super important to me, and had a pivotal place in my presentation. 50:40 if you’d like the timestamp

A friend told me this isn’t a compelling argument, but these systems have to be understood in the context of the fact that many of them are developed by the most predatory and exploitative companies in existence. The literal worst people alive want you to think an ai should be your girlfriend.

@tenderlove.dev I found your next project!

Are you a Ruby developer from Amsterdam? thoughtbot is having our company summit in your beautiful city this year in October and I’d love to meet and hang out with y’all…or even better if we serendipitously landed when there’s a regular meetup, I’ll bring some bots!

Maybe the real Ship of Theseus was the Ship of Theseus we made along the way

Most of the internet used to be like this. This is actually the default, it took companies enclosing the internet and adding weird, soul-killing incentives to make people behave the way they do now. In a way, there is truly nothing special about Wikipedia except that it survived longer.

New pet peeve is when I ask someone a nuanced question and they respond "Here's what GPT said"

I already asked GPT, if it had a good answer I wouldn't have asked you!

Gonna need to develop social protocols around this

Women Dating Safety App 'Tea' Breached, Users' IDs Posted to 4chan “DRIVERS LICENSES AND FACE PICS! GET THE FUCK IN HERE BEFORE THEY SHUT IT DOWN!” the thread read before being deleted.

We are going to spend the next few years finding out exactly *why* it was a horrible idea to unleash a tsunami of vibe-coded apps made by idiots and scammers on an unprepared world.

Welcome to the Entirely Foreseeable AI Consequences Era.

Thank you!

I can honestly say it is the best keynote I have ever given.

YouTube video by Ruby Central RailsConf 2025 The Keynote of Keynotes by Aji Slater

Turnaround in record time, the Railsconf 2025 talks have been published! If you missed my keynote in person: here’s your opportunity. Now excuse me while I go binge all the talks I missed. www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-lq...

Trump's new executive order about AI states that companies' models must not incorporate the idea that trans people exist as a concept. Seems bad.

"Although AI removes the majority of the grunt work from programming, it doesn't remove the necessity to think about system design, understand business requirements, and create maintainable and secured systems"

The type of developers most excited by vibe coding didn't do this stuff BEFORE AI.

I love how study after study after study shows that simply giving people financial stability and free time with no strings attached leads to better outcomes for *everybody*, and yet society keeps rejecting that solution by saying, "But then how would poor people know to be ashamed of themselves???"

this is such a perfect illustration of the fundamental disconnect between what LLMs are and how they are sold and how people interact with them

it’s not a person, it does not “know” things, it does not remember and learn from things the way a person does

it is predicting what someone might say

I was working though boot.dev because I got a free month. The second or third project is to create a gen AI coding agent. The last thing it did was to fix a bug by replacing the entire program with a print statement that printed the expected answer to fix the bug and removed all other functionality

Image from the Blackpink concert in Chicago, the group is at the front of the stage and their image is repeated in the huge LED screen upstage behind them.

Just came from the incredible Blackpink show in Chicago. Both amazingly fun and also an intense source of gender dysphoria. But also…it f*ckin’ rocked!

tech as an industry sucks right now but i wanna voice appreciation for all of the humble technologists who have stuck to their principles and turned down bigger paychecks and “better” roles—often without praise—in service of doing work that matters. i see you

Not the point but I fucking hate the trend of pinning or holding the wireless lav pack instead of a discrete lav mic. Looks stupid and sloppy