Caleb Gardner

Finding out Alex Pretti's parents found out via an AP reporter broke me

What's frustrating me is the complete bifurcation of the narratives. Techno-optimism on one side that is divorced from the reality of most people's lives, and complete skepticism and frustration on the other that disregards how genuinely useful these tools can be. Tribal sentiment all around

Colbert calling the Board of Peace a "Kirkland UN" got me

Sociotechnical systems theory would call us a failure of joint optimization: tech gets deified and optimized while human concerns are neglected

He's going to ask this Board of Peace to give him some kind of award, of course

How to Help: Twin Cities Residents This is a post for people in Minnesota. I’m going to do a separate post for the non-Minnesotans when I’m done with this one. (If you’re in a hurry you can go to Stand With Minneso…

TWIN CITIES FOLKS WHO WANT TO HELP AND DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START: I put together a big list of resources. Do you want to deliver groceries? do people's laundry? work in community defense? I want to help you get connected!

naomikritzer.com/2026/01/19/h...

Settling comfortably into my role as Chicago's second favorite Caleb

I am shook

Was today the first day back? Or is tomorrow the *real* first day back ... ?

AI notetakers are becoming the electric scooters of Zoom meetings

Do I put stuff like this out into the BlueSky ether hoping to re-create 2010 Twitter ... ? Probably

Good: Switching to Notion Mail from Gmail in my browser means I'm not just constantly getting distracted by emails

Bad: Now I just don't respond to emails ... oops

Research is clear about why every AI pilot (MIT: 95%!) is stalling right now: bad data, no workflow clarity, no clear business cases—and especially, lack of trust.

Stop letting the technologists lead every conversation. These aren't tech problems—they're people and business model problems.

Three years into the AI ReVoLuTiOn, and every event I go to is still talking about what AI is supposed to do in the future, without solving for right now.

It's still hype, without much practical application. It's wild tbh

Chicago: ICE was just spotted taking people on Elston just north of Montrose. Keep alert

Is it just me, or has TV writing gotten really bad lately? The last three shows we've tried, the writing was so, so bad I could barely watch

It happened: November 15, 8:30am.

First instance of "All I Want for Christmas is You"

How does every major media outlet not have a running log of how long the government has been shut down prominently on their sites?

almost wonder if he's gonna lose interest in the east wing and just like leave it half built and like exposed

First AWS, now the internet on my block has been down all morning. This week has been one big reminder of how fragile our infrastructure is

"Why is this font so small?" ... is something I'm now saying to myself a disturbing amount of times.

Next level for the ambitious: create an automation in Shortcuts to open Hand Mirror automatically when you join a video call

Zoom hack that's saved my sanity (and minimized Zoom dysmorphia):

1) "Hide self" by default so you're not always looking at your own face
2) Download the Hand Mirror app (or equivalent for Windows) to quickly check your camera settings instead

of any person in the trump cinematic universe, the person whose influence i desperately want to learn more about is Baron‘s

In Chicago, four vehicles descended and eight ICE agents moved in to kidnap a child.

She screams, “I’m 15,” as ICE yanks her from the car and kneels on her neck.

This is not about immigration enforcement.

It's about terrorizing Americans.

It's wild to me that Gmail doesn't have an option to filter any unknown senders from your inbox in the Year of Our Lord 2025. Would be super helpful for nuking spammers.

Anyone found a work around?

so at this point it seems like *nothing* the feds said was true? it's a legitimate miracle that this woman is still alive.

entirely plausible that the greatest success in business in this country over the next five or ten years is going to come down to whether or not your c-suite has been poisoned by groupchats or not

Texas proudly invading Illinois.

It’s hard to describe the level of potential constitutional crisis here.

It's next-level gaslighting to be fully in control of the government but blame the opposition party for a shutdown