David Knuffke

Heading back to writing in my own space. Easy sharing of things to people (aka my parents). Zero paywalls, RSS friendly, & free email subscriptions. Come say hi, get the next piece in your inbox, and send it along to anyone who might want to do the same: davidknuffke.com/blog

I have spent a lot of the last year thinking a lot about the system aspects of schools (more about that a little later). And from that place, I bring you this week's piece on different forms of friction inside school systems: www.davidknuffke.com/blog/2026/20...

Who amongst the tech elite are not awful weirdos? Any of them?

I’m not at all sure my fellow border-bound countrymen understand how behind the curve US automakers are at this point: www.reddit.com/r/interestin...

Probably by first burning the notion of a “gifted” kid to the ground?

I’m at 2. 2 different ways.

Let them eat poorly regulated organs.

Daily reminder that people who are smart about particular things can be quite stupid in other areas, even those right next to their area of expertise (and they can also be dumb in that area, too).

Stipulating an exact, non-zero number for an acceptable number of deaths from your product is NOT a great way to beat the allegations www.politico.com/news/2026/10...

My mother is 81 years old and volunteers for the democratic party in her little corner of mid-state New Hampshire. A highlight of her weekend was giving @chrispappasnh.bsky.social a hug. Given the difficulty of me being able to do that in any other way than virtually from SG, he has my thanks!

This is not the issue most people have with communism: www.reddit.com/r/SipsTea/s/...

I sold CutCo knives for two weeks immediately following 9/11 on Long Island. It was very strange.

I think we can all stop wondering if LLMs save time. They clearly don’t AND that misses the point. Does using an LLM save me time or effort? No, particularly in my domains of expertise. Does it enable me to do a bunch of things in those domains that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to? Yes.

This week’s piece is about the special hell that is @anthropic.com’s customer support experience for its paying customers: www.davidknuffke.com/blog/2026/20...

The Megacarcass Legacy ‘87 regional tour is widely recognized as a high water mark for the band: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

It didn’t go rogue. It did what it was told to in a system that failed to oversee or control it. It’s not complicated: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/t...

I want a podcast or similar wherein people who believe crazy shit about GenAI or anything else are just asked why they believe these things. We can call it “pile of why’s”

I genuinely do not understand why this is illegal or grounds for criminal sanction. I also believe that companies like Spotify do something functionally identical.

Fascist regime’s gotta fascist regime.

Famously, changing the name changes the nature of the thing. Billionaireism is a disease.

Everyone knows the price of each life is 25 million dollars, at a maximum. 🤮

This week's post is about a way I have taken to thinking about the projects people attend to in schools (and other places): www.davidknuffke.com/blog/2026/20...

Remember when OpenAI fired this guy for being unethical and then he wormed his way back into being CEO? Pepperidge Farm remembers: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

US frontier labs just criming it up left and right. www.davidknuffke.com/blog/2026/20...

Number of teachers that STILL say they don’t need the mic in a faculty meeting is notable here.

The trump regime will never not do the worst and grossest thing.

This week’s piece is about the cybercrimes that frontier labs are committing, and why they don’t want to be held responsible for committing said crimes: www.davidknuffke.com/blog/2026/20...

I don’t feel any more blame lies with people who use the terrible Meta agent than I do with the victims of scams, more broadly. And also, you very much should not use the terrible Meta agent.

Open AI hacked the US Government. Its systems didn’t “meddle”. It, the company, committed a cybercrime, to go along with all of the other cybercrimes it has committed: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/t...

If a company commits crimes, they should be held criminally liable. This is not a new concept.

This is useful!

This week's piece is about my general distaste for gimmicks in LLMs: www.davidknuffke.com/blog/2026/20...

@johngreensbluesky.bsky.social : Got a note from @bookshop.org that they might not be able to send me my signed pre-order. That feels like the kind of thing that is both bad for the fans and bad for the brand. Any insight into how this kind of thing happens? It’s a first for me, for sure!

As someone living in Singapore, I’m not sure that framing it as a program that anyone really cares about “working” is an accurate read on the vibe for this program as rendered in Singaporean culture.

The other day I asked where the “I Ain’t Gonna Play Sun City” vibe was. Apparently it was just a few days away. I would pay for an “I Ain’t Gonna Play With Sheeran” shirt.

Someone cognitively offloaded the onerous task of understanding the most obvious lyrics in Bowie’s entire catalog. Incredible move by Meta here. What a stupid, terrible, company.

This week's piece is about the need for educational leadership to involve putting one's self on the line for the beliefs and actions of the school system in which you are leading. A notion that I think generalizes quite well to all sorts of leadership: www.davidknuffke.com/blog/2026/20...

Is the moral arc of the Univers me supposed to bend toward justice? How do we go from “I Ain’t Gonna Play Sun City” to “do not speak of Palestine” in 40 years?

We don’t have one of those, though… Trump Says a Smart President Is All That’s Needed to Rein In A.I. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/u...

Best book on the current stupidity epidemic.

Hey…so…what the fuck?

This week's piece is about the thing that is the most overlooked in the "Does AI work in education?" conversation: www.davidknuffke.com/blog/2026/20...

This is why biologists do not spend a lot of time chatting with creationists.

The reaction to this on Bluesky is absolutely on-brand for the faction of the American left that has failed to build a meaningful coalition for a decade now. If you want to win things, you’re going to need to talk with people you find disagreeable and explore interest convergence overlaps.

Working in a Fancy International School it has been apparent for some time that being taught by humans is going to be a privilege marker in schools going forward.

Unless and until Open AI posts the logs from these cases, there’s really no choice but to assume they are hiding the bot actively encouraging these behaviors. futurism.com/artificial-i...

How this can possibly be considered a serious legal opinion is purely a function of late-stage capitalism.

This week's piece is on how the divergent and siloed nature of the standards that curriculum consortia build make it all the harder for schools to do good and useful work across domains: www.davidknuffke.com/blog/2026/20...