I'm reading Conor Dougherty's book "Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America". One of the stories he tells is of a development near a BART station in Lafayette, California getting scaled back from dense multifamily to single family detached homes. There is lots of drama, and I don't want to spoil the punchline, but the epilogue is of Steven Falk, the City Manager, resigning rather than holding on for a few weeks to take advantage of a half-million dollar termination bonus.
His resignation letter is well worth reading, especially for those of us who are looking at how other towns, like Petaluma, are fighting growth and celebrating freeway widenings.
https://www.lovelafayette.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=5499
Charlene got this timer to carry in her purse, for reasons, but needed a box to keep the buttons from getting accidentally pressed. White oak.
Manuel Bustillo:
One month without AI
One month ago, in a code review of one of my PRs, a coworker said something like
“this test you’ve written doesn’t actually test the scenario that you’re changing in the
application code”. I reviewed it, and he was right. But… it was so convincing… And I felt
shameful. Because for me, a developer who had been using TDD for 10+ years, failing on
something so basic was a bit of a humiliation. I realized I had lost control, and it was not
going to get any better. I think It’s worthless to just try harder, be more picky with the
AI, demand the quality you’re paying for! Because despite your efforts, the AI ends up
convincing you, and making you complacent again.
Via, quoting.
Thinking about the conversation I had with a neighbor on Thursday morning. They were
complaining about bike lanes and roundabouts. I pointed out outher places that had
experienced tremendous benefits from pedestrian and active transportation improvements. He
said "yeah, but they made better decisions in the past".
As though we were precluded from making good decisions because former leaders insisted on
auto-oriented sprawl.
Anyway, a good reminder of how we get stuck in our beliefs even when better paths forward
are obvious.
The weird thing about dentistry is what if your general practitioner and plastic surgeon
were the same person?
Any one got someone they like in Petaluma?
