Rod Begbie

Fuck yeah! Some great SF news. (Though throwing some side eye at “There will be some updates to the website and ticketing system as well.” I love the vibes of their hasn’t-been-redesigned-since-Netscape-Navigator-was-a-thing website!)

The Oasis documentary is good stuff… but it’s made even better if you pretend while watching it that it’s a live-action remake of KPop Demon Hunters.

So while Shane Gillis is platformed by SNL complaining that women in gyms dress like whores, Instagram is showing me AI slop ads that boil down to “Hot women at the gym will want to see your boner.” Rape culture in action.

It is correct to dunk on dimwits singing X’s praises, since it’s a hive of racism, transphobia, and fascism. And if you’re pointing out all those things from your Substack it’s also a good time to take your own advice.

Approximately half the companies with booths at this conference are selling “software factories for your enterprise.” My new gazillion-dollar startup idea? Software factories to build software factory startups.

This whole story seems like it only exists to be the set-up for a million “I hate gay halloween” posts. (what do you mean you’re “Molly”, a one-of-a-kind singing and dancing bird automaton?)

Because @monteiro.bsky.social is a layout wizard these How to Vote zines (free to download, print, and distribute in YOUR communities) are not only bilingual, but flippable. Written by election experts, here to help you overcome voter intimidation and get to the polls: howtovote.tips

Oh man, I installed all sorts of wonderful UI hacks on my Mac back in the day, even though they would sometimes do weird things to system performance and stability. Am I older and wiser now? (Don’t answer that.)

A little widget I put together that may be useful to anyone with a Claude Code subscription: I used their new “mods” functionality to build a plugin adding an element to my UI, showing how close I am to hitting my 5-hour and weekly usage limits. Details at github.com/rodbegbie/ro...

"By using AI, tasks like essays that used to take hours can be completed in minutes!" Sure, like how if I arrive at the gym and immediately go for a shower, my workout is done in record time. And if I throw my sandwiches straight in the bin, I can finish my lunch in under 10 seconds.

vibe-leaking (n): Important company data being made public by non-engineers vibe-coding dashboards. "Finance shipped a AI token cost dashboard in an afternoon. Vibe-leaking was a matter of hours, not days."

Any time (and I mean *any* time) I have a slice of cake in front of me, I’ll point to it and ask someone “Is it difficult?” *beat* “No, it’s a piece of cake!”

Everyone needs to read this. Reality is, in fact, stranger than fiction. Reality is worse than anything we can say about these people in a few words, media appearances, op-eds, or other conversations. Read the whole thing. ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com/urbits3/sitf...

A few months, I wrote a Claude skill that hides future Instagram ads from anyone who’d recently advertised to me. Turns out, it runs on Muse too. ngl, it feels pretty good using FaceBook’s infrastructure & tokens to reduce the value of their advertising network. gist.github.com/rodbegbie/eb...

we should have killed this bastard when we had the chance

Sometimes I ask Claude to proofread something I’ve written, but then end up doubling-down on the stuff it suggests I remove. “Fuck you, robot! I’m adding ‧₊˚✧ MORE ˖✶˖ UNICODE ˖✶˖ SPARKLES ✧˚₊‧ to this LinkedIn post!”

Please join us this Friday for our last Summer School session of the season! We are hosting a SELF-PROMOTION CLINIC. Bring us your problems. Bring us your hesitation. Bring us the little voice inside your head telling you that you aren’t worthy. WE’LL CRUSH THEM WITH MALLETS!

you shouldn’t learn about bands from shady TikTok manipulation, you should learn about bands by hanging out with a girl you like but are also extremely afraid of

Happy Kicked In The Head By A Horse Day, to all who celebrate. It's the 7th anniversary of this absolute banger.

If you want a Sunday morning longread I wrote up a rough version of the talk I gave at LDX3 this week on the Manager's Path in the Age of AI skamille.medium.com/the-managers...

mmygod

My “Doctor Who” idea is that the Doctor is a frog and his companion is a bear and every week they put on a variety show with the help of a very special guest star.

Hello. They are going to try to fuck with your vote, and we are NOT going to let them. Last week I pinged my friend Dana Chisnell, who knows how elections work, and said "Hey, let’s make it hard for them to fuck with us.” Today, we are very proud to announce the HOW TO VOTE zine. howtovote.tips

This week’s newsletter is for people who are tempted to use LLMs to do their writing. Please enjoy. I wrote every word. buttondown.com/monteiro/arc...

I am sympathetic to Silicon Valley guys ascribing human-level consciousness to AI because if I had to talk to people from Silicon Valley all day I’d probably have a real low bar for sentience too

New post on my blog about switching password managers in 2026! It covers: - why your iPhone or iPad, and not your Mac, might be the place to start your switch - the recent controversy in password management and some thoughts on values - and more! rmondello.com/2026/09/07/s...

It’s true that AI is leading to increased software output—whenever I have a need for specific software I find like 3 separate vibe-coded abandoned code repositories with all files from like 4 months ago and it’s very shiny and doesn’t work at all.

M Night Shyamalan could never.

This is spectacularly close to an answer I gave in a job interview last night. I think the interviewer wanted me to say “My process for teams is X, Y & Z,” but instead got a lengthy monologue about figuring out the actual pain points, introducing “experiments”, and validating the changes helped!

Yesterday, I found out that there is an Edinburgh riot grrl band called “Fistymuffs”, and tbh, I don’t think I’ve fallen in love with a band without hearing their music as quickly before. (And it t turns out their music is pretty great. fistymuffs.bandcamp.com/album/we-fight)

My wife keeps getting We Didn't Start The Fire by Billy Joel stuck in head. I deliberately write shopping lists, text messages, etc. in the same meter and it drives her insane. I've denied it so far.

I’ve just realised that I’ve come to Scotland in August… but my raincoat never made it into my suitcase. #rookiemistake