I joined Twitter in 2007 and my brain slowly morphed over the next 15 years from hopelessly verbose to nihilistically pithy. I've kicked the Twitter habit, but the takes keep flowing. That's why I post them here and format them as a social network of one. You're welcome to bookmark any of these takes, though I'm not sure why you would.
By the way, the hearts and like counts are fake. They're just there to make you feel safe.
"Brakeman, hosted on GitHub under the stewardship of developer Justin Searls—known online as presidentbeef"
Pump the brakes, man. webpronews.com/brakemans-static-vigilance-securing-ruby-on-rails-from-code-to-cloud/
Is anyone really surprised that Entropy fell apart over time? theblock.co/post/386942/entropy-a16z-backed-decentralized-custody-startup-is-winding-down-and-returning-capital-to-investors
After hearing lots of Opus 4.5 hype, I decided to switch to Claude Code this month from Codex CLI (with which I have a separate set of frustrations), and I've learned two things:
Claude Code is significantly more productive (parallel by default) and generally smarter (smarter coding) than it was in August
When literally anything goes wrong, it routinely takes the path of least resistance (making excuses, declaring victory when things don't work, reaching for workarounds when basic reason points elsewhere)
Disappointed overall. Both GPT-5.2 and Opus 4.5 (and their CLI's surrounding chrome) feel barely improved since last summer.
Look on the bright side, Apple chose not to ruin Aperture's icon last week. ikennd.ac/blog/2026/01/old-man-yells-at-modern-software-design/
Given that it's just as often programmers who have no clue what to build with the coding capacity offered by AI agents, I WOULD say the issue is that many people are horribly uncreative. simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/24/jasmine-sun/
Twenty years working on Windows command line tools? Glad the dude is retiring but I'm sure he's a shell of his former self. tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/23/1915259/powershell-architect-retires-after-decades-at-the-prompt
Jerod Santo, the co-host/co-founder of The Changelog, has joined the POSSE party!
If he can figure out how to set it up, I have faith you can, too. jerodsanto.net/2026/01/i-joined-the-posse-party/
I would simply start a podcast. wsj.com/health/wellness/the-retirement-crisis-no-one-warns-you-about-mattering-380873b2
Documentary music video of my experience getting out of bed at my Japanese Airbnb this morning.
Easy to take whole home central air conditioning for granted youtu.be/s4DxPeLNVuw?si=eU-lScgkrcyyP79A
For anyone who wants to see my self-deleting wisps but isn't in the habit of checking a web page every day and doesn't want to follow stories on Instagram (🙋♂️), you can catch them in your feed reader! Subscribe to justin.searls.co/wisps.xml
I must admit, Japan's wholesome spin on absurdist nationalism is cuter than what we've got going on in the states. Leading morning news in Tokyo is the "drum diplomacy" between Japan's PM and Korea's President youtu.be/RE6vr_ZpUHM?si=BYzd1Yew43X9JHZw
It is Twenty Fucking Twenty Six and iMessage still thinks that a phone number without a country code and a phone number with a country code belong in the same message thread (good!) but different contacts (bad!). What am I supposed to do? Save +1 and non +1 variants for every US phone number in my contacts?