Joshua Pearson

Funny how investors have decided that Nvidia’s earnings should be the test of whether there’s an AI bubble. I can assure you that sales of picks and shovels didn’t have to crash in order for sane people to know that the gold rush was a fool’s errand.

As a University of Arizona alum, I feel doubly insulted by the fact that my alma mater was one of 9 sent the “Compact for Academic Excellence”. Firstly, this is unconstitutional. Secondly, the government is shut down, so you shouldn’t be able to threaten us until you pass a budget.

The entire global economy is currently so over-leveraged on "AI" that if we don't find a credible use case for it, and fast, we're likely to tumble into an economic meltdown of 2008 proportions, so please, your corporate overlords beg you, use "AI" to write that fucking email

Hundreds lose water source in Colorado’s poorest county with no notice, no warning Costilla County residents were cut off from the local water filling station when the Fort Garland water board voted to stop sales because of an “angry mob”

The water future of the American West will have more conflict as we see drier years and depletion of aquifers. I wonder if @paolobacigalupi.bsky.social has any idea when people in Phoenix will start buying hyenas.
coloradosun.com/2025/08/25/c...

Another useful approximation is that there are pi * 10^7 seconds in a year.

So we're outsourcing initial job interviews to AI now? You'd think all the productivity gains would free up humans for the important things, like interviewing our future co-workers.

At this pace, every candidate will need their own interview bot to keep up. Soon, bots will be interviewing bots.

What with @oxide.computer announcing their $100m series B round, I suspect a lot of folks with Dells, HPEs and Supermicros in the data center are hoping to get rid of these signs around the office.

The Mythical Machine-Month Paradox How well do the claims of an AI-dominated future for computer programming hold up against the reality of modern software systems? Are we truly headed for a …

My thoughts on how AI might impact the future of software engineering.
tucson-josh.com/posts/mythic...

The better you are at a thing, the more "AI" will be a drag on your time, because it's operating at a lower level of skill than you are, and you have to fix what it does, rather than just do what you already know how to do.

Creating Ergonomic Error Types for Rust Traits Designing error types for rust traits that are easy to use for both trait implementors and users of those implementations

A quick post I just put up about designing error types for rust traits:
tucson-josh.com/posts/rust-t...
#rust #rustlang #softwareengineering

Optimizing ClickHouse Join Performance Examining ClickHouse SQL Join performance and how to improve slow joins

I wrote a piece about optimizing merges in ClickHouse. Anyone who has worked with me knows how much I dig SQL optimization problems and ClickHouse is a new frontier for me:
tucson-josh.com/posts/clickh...
#clickhouse #sql #optimization

So frustrating.

Thank you for thoughtfully reading and responding, @dalefields.bsky.social. Your pragmatic response feels dead on to me. Perhaps figuring out when we need to exert deep thought and when we are just able to elide could help our society out.

It's Types All the Way Down - Rust CLI with Clap Using rust types to specify command line interfaces using the clap crate

The clap crate for rust is really convenient and can help you create amazing CLI apps that are reliable and work well as part of automated workflows. Let me know what you think of my piece about this:
tucson-josh.com/posts/rust-c...

#rustlang #cli #clap

Who needs AI text-generation when there’s Erasmus of Rotterdam | Aeon Essays Like today’s large language models, 16th-century humanists had techniques to automate writing – to the detriment of novelty

I'm curious what you think of this, @dalefields.bsky.social
aeon.co/essays/who-n...

A lot of data is also showing that in many fields LLMs simply shift the work to other individuals. Combined with the fact that the original user sees a decline in their pertinent skill. Far from a panacea.

RFK Jr. rejects cornerstone of health science: Germ theory In his 2021 book vilifying Anthony Fauci, RFK Jr. lays out support for an alternate theory.

Germs, what germs?
arstechnica.com/health/2025/...

Nope, I never underestimated the power of fandom at all, I called it out. I also didn’t disparage a group out of ignorance about that group’s composition. In fact, all I did was ask for some introspection around who is praiseworthy and who is deserving of our rebuke.

My point is that there was none of this for Shatner. He was celebrated despite the fact that he also had no credentials for the task. The others on his flight were also far more worthy of coverage than he, but alas, crickets. Sure seems like a double standard.

You wrote, "a bunch of women having absolutely nothing to do with space". I'm pretty sure that someone who gets a masters degree in aerospace engineering can't be described as "having absolutely nothing to do with space". But keep disparaging the group as a whole because you dislike some of them.

"which of these people who made the same trip are more worthy of being enthusiastic about" - That was your question. I answered.

I suppose that since you asked:
Aisha Bowe who worked at the NASA Ames Research Center after getting a bachelors and masters degree in aerospace engineering
OR
Amanda Nguyen - worked at NASA and the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

While I am 100% supportive of celebrating these women, let’s not forget how many people waxed poetic over William Shatner’s words when he did the same trip.

Resist, eggheads! Universities are not as weak as they have chosen to be. Opinion: It’s time for public resistance.

arstechnica.com/culture/2025...

Harlow Shapley, a black and white picture of man wearing a suit and tie

Heber Curtis, a black and white picture of man wearing a suit and tie

The Great Debate of 1920 between Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis is something that holds not just fact for me, but also truth. Shapley (left) argued that our solar system is off to one side of the Milky Way Galaxy (correct) and that our galaxy is the entirety of the Universe (incorrect).

I've seen some people saying how "AI"-generated text is now as good as certain published authors, and honestly I think it's really brave for these folks to admit in public how poor their reading comprehension has to be

How different is it from New Mexico style?

If I light your house on fire and then douse the flames halfway through it burning down, I shouldn’t be praised for my firefighting skills

This op-ed could lead to me being deported from America | Berna León I could never have imagined that writing a critical piece about the government could put me at risk of deportation

The direction we are headed in is frightful and should be a warning for anyone, regardless of political persuasion.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Bubble Trouble An AI bubble threatens Silicon Valley, and all of us.

This article really sums up the current state of AI companies and how it feels really similar to the dot com bubble bursting.
prospect.org/power/2025-0...