Weekly Thing 338 / Authority, Humanizer, Left
Hello there! 👏
I’m finishing up this email as it is -17 °F and waiting for the sun to rise. Yesterday it was -22 °F at this time so it is warming. This is the kind of cold that even hardy Minnesotan's take note of. 🥶
The Federal presence in Minnesota continues to be an ever present cause of anxiety. I feel like I hear police or ambulance sirens several times a day over the last two weeks. Please join me in supporting the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota who has been working with immigrants and refugees in Minnesota for 50 years and the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund (administered by the Women's Foundation of Minnesota) which is routing support to dozens of organizations that are helping people with immigration-related emergencies. 🫶
I mentioned last week that Mazie is off to Barcelona for the semester. She's having a great time and has been sharing her experiences on her blog! It all makes a Dad proud. 😁
Yearly Thing 2025
For a couple of years now I’ve been wondering if there was a book version of the Weekly Thing. I had in my mind the idea of an almanac. Something that captured some period of time and put information in a different format. This year this idea surfaced again and unlike the last couple of times I could not shake it. It seemed this thing needed to happen! And here it is, the Yearly Thing 2025: Agents, Attention, Artifacts.
The Yearly Thing 2025 places all 324 links that I commented on across 31 issues of the Weekly Thing in 2025 into one volume. It is organized into 10 topic focused chapters:
- The AI Revolution
- The Craft of Software
- Privacy, Security and Encryption
- Cryptocurrency and Web3
- The Apple Ecosystem
- The Open Web and Blogging
- Attention, Algorithms and Digital Life
- Leadership and Building Products
- Health, Connection and Society
- Tools, Productivity and Delights
There is also an Introduction, Weekly Thing Index, and an Afterword.
This repackaging of the Weekly Thing gives an opportunity to see topics in a different light. The eBook version maintains all the hyperlinks so you can go to articles and navigate as you like. The printed book references the issue each item was in, which you can then easily scan a QR code to go to via the Weekly Thing Index if you wish to.
I hope this is a way for people to go back to topics and reflect on them more. Make some notes in the margin on the print. All while supporting the Weekly Thing Supporting Membership program — with all proceeds from the sale of the Yearly Thing 2025 supporting great digital non-profits.
- The paperback is available for $30 on Lulu.
- The eBook is available for $20 on Gumroad. The eBook will give you an archive that you will find formats for Apple Books, Kindle, Nook, Android, etc.
- Purchasers of the printed book that would like the eBook as well can contact me and I will get you the eBook files.
- Anyone that purchases the Yearly Thing 2025 in the first 2 months will receive a special Yearly Thing 2025 POAP to collect!
This may be the first of many Yearly Things that you can collect over time. 🤔
PS: Unfortunately I don't know who purchases the paperback on Lulu. If you do, please send me an email letting me know and I will send you the POAP claim code!
Straw Poll
I’m bringing the straw poll section back! Since we are getting to the end of January I’m curious to hear how your New Year's resolution is going.
Snow sculptor at World Snow Celebration inspecting his work.
January 17, 2026
Stillwater, MN
Notable
You can discuss any of these links at the Weekly Thing 338 tag in r/WeeklyThing.
Our approach to advertising and expanding access to ChatGPT | OpenAI
Remember how ads first came to search results and the search companies had all of this highfalutin talk about not impacting results, keeping clear separation, don't be evil and all that ridiculousness. I was hopeful that we wouldn't recreate the original sin of the web with AI. We know better now right? Sadly no, and I’m a fool for thinking it wouldn't have.
This is all positioned as lowering the barrier and bringing AI to more people. Okay, I can’t argue that isn't the case. ChatGPT Go at $8/month is going to give more people access. However, this just isn't the whole story.
ChatGPT is adding ads for the same reason Netflix just did — it unlocks the top end of your revenue. If I have 1,000 users paying $20 a month that is it. It takes effort and product benefits to upsell them. But if I have 1,000 users paying $8 a month plus ads? My maximum revenue is now based on how I monetize them. And just like that we've started the enshittification train.
Hypergrowth doesn't merge well with "a reasonable fee paid for defined value". So, yeah, I shouldn't be surprised we are here. But I can still be bothered and a bit sad by it.
We already know that search results are skewed by advertising. How will we possibly ever know that AI interactions are not?
Miniroll - Your blogroll, anywhere
Blogrolls are "old school" web and were the way original bloggers linked to other sites they read and wanted to connect with. They still exist, and are awesome and beautiful. I keep a blogroll. Mine is just a page of writing and blogrolls can be made much more powerful and even pull RSS feeds for the sites and show the last article. I started playing with it and made a small blogroll on Miniroll. This is a cool service to make a more powerful blogroll to add to your site. Hannah wrote about creating Miniroll on his blog.
humanizer/SKILL.md at main
People tend to feel like they can identify AI writing — by looking for — lots of emdashes — amongst other things. This is an interesting Claude Skill that teaches an AI to write unlike an AI. I love how it uses Wikipedia's Signs of AI Writing to create the Skill. Seeing this and reviewing it brought me right back to The Most Human Human, which is all about the Turing Test and how some actual people fail to convey their human-ness.
Left – Widgets for Time Left
Little app I discovered via MacSparky and grabbed for myself. I’m a fan of visualization of time, and this has a bunch of really interesting ones. I was surprised that one of the whole tabs in this app is "You" where it gets your birthday and some info and give you a "Left" for you. It is a bit like my Four Thousand Weeks as Rings gauge, but this moves in seconds! It says I have 287.32335 months left right now. 🤔
How countries can end the capability overhang | OpenAI
I missed this offering when it was announced. This update is obviously timed for the World Economic Forum going on right now.
Today at our OpenAI event alongside the World Economic Forum, we announced that we’re expanding this work in 2026 with new initiatives focused on education, health, AI skills training and certifications, disaster response and preparedness, cybersecurity, and start-up accelerators. They give nations a range of options for how to work with us to address their needs and priorities.
Is this more marketing than real stuff? Diving into the PDF report on page 12 there is a brief rundown of what 11 different countries are doing. Honestly it seems smart when you read the various efforts.
Velocity Is the New Authority. Here’s Why – On my Om
This is an incredible essay from Om Malik reflecting on our modern information ecosystem. I have banged on about algorithmic manipulation of content at length, that algorithms cannot be designed without a purpose, etc. Malik does an amazing job framing this up in a much more cogent view than I ever could. I wanted to quote the whole thing, and honestly maybe you should just go read the whole thing.
Authority used to be the organizing principle of information, and thus the media. You earned attention by being right, by being first in discovery, or by being big enough to be the default. That world is gone. The new and current organizing principle of information is velocity.
What matters now is how fast something moves through the network: how quickly it is clicked, shared, quoted, replied to, remixed, and replaced. In a system tuned for speed, authority is ornamental. The network rewards motion first and judgment later, if ever. Perhaps that's why you feel you can't discern between truths, half-truths, and lies.
The bold is my addition. This sets the tone for how the algorithms that sit in front of our timelines are operating. They are looking for engagement and driving velocity off of that.
That's why we get all our information as memes. The meme has become the metastory, the layer where meaning is carried. You don't need to read the thing; you just need the gist, compressed and passed along in a sentence, an image, or a joke. It has taken the role of the headline. The machine accelerates this dynamic. It demands constant material; stop feeding it and the whole structure shakes. The point of the internet now is mostly to hook attention and push it toward commerce, to keep the engine running. Anyone can get their cut.
Velocity has taken over.
Algorithms on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter do not optimize for truth or depth. They optimize for motion. A piece that moves fast is considered "good." A piece that hesitates disappears.
It is all memes all the way down.
The algorithm doesn't care whether something is true; it cares whether it moves. Day-one content becomes advertising wearing the mask of criticism.
I hope that reading this gives you a perspective, a different edge, to look at what you are seeing on your algorithmic fed feed. I feel like focusing on systems that are non-algorithmic, like RSS feeds and newsletters, is a way around that. Honestly what I do right here in these emails is nearly 100% against every single growth hack that anyone would ever tell you. You're sending a 3,000 words email? That is a horrible idea.
I think what we need to counter this velocity meme train is perspective, and control, and even a bit of meditation on a regular basis.
Claude's new constitution Anthropic
Anthropic has been a leading voice, and an open one, on how they build their models. This new "constitution" is part of how they "program" (is teach a better word?) it.
Our previous Constitution was composed of a list of standalone principles. We've come to believe that a different approach is necessary. We think that in order to be good actors in the world, AI models like Claude need to understand why we want them to behave in certain ways, and we need to explain this to them rather than merely specify what we want them to do. If we want models to exercise good judgment across a wide range of novel situations, they need to be able to generalize--to apply broad principles rather than mechanically following specific rules.
And who are the "programmers"?
While writing the constitution, we sought feedback from various external experts (as well as asking for input from prior iterations of Claude). We'll likely continue to do so for future versions of the document, from experts in law, philosophy, theology, psychology, and a wide range of other disciplines. Over time, we hope that an external community can arise to critique documents like this, encouraging us and others to be increasingly thoughtful.
Super interesting approach and structure. You can read the full Constitution for the complete picture. Truly wild stuff.
Supporting Membership
Hey there, Weekly Thing enthusiasts! 🌟 We're on an exciting mission to support the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), champions of digital freedom, and we need your awesome energy to make it happen! So far, we've rallied together to raise an impressive $696.52, but with your help, we can soar even higher. With 15 weeks to go until we send every cent to the EFF, and just 23 incredible Supporting Members leading the charge, now is the perfect time to join the movement. By becoming a Supporting Member, you're not just contributing funds—you're becoming a vital part of a community dedicated to protecting our online rights. Let's make a splash and show the EFF just how much we care—jump in and support today!
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Journal
Tammy and I had a delicious evening at Rio 1854 -- the Surf & Turf for two was amazing. Recommended!
Delicious Gingerbread Latte and breakfast at Mon Petit Cheri in Stillwater.
Stillwater.
World Snow Celebration
Jan 17, 2026 at 10:30 AM
It was a very cold morning but we made it out to see the World Snow Celebration and the snow sculptures. Teams were working towards the deadline of completing their sculptures. They were amazing. We also did the Peoples Choice votes. I voted for Team Falcon of Mongolia and Tammy went for Team Warm Your Cold Brits.
Tammy and I saw Marty Supreme at the Edina 4 theatre this afternoon. Fantastic performance from Timothée Chalamet. The story is “loosely based” on the life of Marty Reisman.
We watched Knives Out tonight, again. Tyler hadn’t seen it and now that there are two sequels we’re going to watch those together. I didn’t remember that much after seven years so was still fun to watch again. 🍿
Tyler and I made our way out to Chaska to check out The Forge. This was on our list of card shops to explore. Unfortunately the Pokemon inventory was nearly non-existent. They had a ton of other gaming stuff though. They only had a couple dozen cards but I did find two to add to my binder.
Amazon Spending
Jan 20, 2026 at 9:09 PM
Peter Rukavina posted a graph of his Amazon spending and I couldn’t resist taking a look at my data. You can easily request this from Amazon in the “Privacy Center”. A quick pivot table later and I had this graph. I’m omitting the actual scale on purpose -- the shape does enough to tell the story.
I’m not that clear on what happened in 2015 that drove a big jump that stayed that way. My family comments that I purchase a lot from Amazon and I thought they were overstating it, but maybe not.
Honestly I was truly surprised at the frequency and amounts.
Briefly
Yadda, yadda about access. Really about raising ceiling of average revenue per user. → Introducing ChatGPT Go, now available worldwide | OpenAI
Love that Marlinspike is bringing his privacy ethos to the world of AI. 🧠 → Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike wants to do for AI what he did for messaging - Ars Technica
This is why I love the web. If only it were a blog post, but this will do. 🍅 → I spent 8 months testing every brand of canned tomato with a controlled pasta sauce recipe. Full rankings inside. : r/Cooking
Good guideline on making sure your AGENTS.md file is focused and making your project better. → A Complete Guide To AGENTS.md
Paid post but you can read enough to be interesting. I’m doing a ton of non-code projects with Claude Code. It is amazing. → Claude Code for writers
Interesting insights from deep usage of the "worst AI coding assistants" that we will have in the future. → 10 things I learned from burning myself out with AI coding agents - Ars Technica
First major version in 10 years, and "the final release". → jQuery 4.0.0 | Official jQuery Blog
This one had me at "indexable arrays, which may be thought of as functions whose domains are isomorphic to contiguous subsets of the integers". 🤓 → Are arrays functions?
This is hilarious, horrible, and you could probably make an EDM song with it. → Busy Simulator
Scary and incredible recount of former Minnesota United head coach Adrian Heath being kindapped! → The extraordinary story of a soccer coach, a kidnapping and a Saudi job that didn’t exist - The Athletic
Lessons shared. → I'm 34. Here's 34 things I wish I knew at 21 | elliot.my
Reflections on what the open web really means. I would add to the commentary that I think we need to consider zoning on the web. It should be clear when I’m in a non-commercial public area, versus a commercial or industrial zone. Ideally domain names would have had some meaning here, but that didn’t really pan out. → The conditionally open web • Cory Dransfeldt
I don't know that this project is even done or launched and it took me a minute to figure out what it was doing but now I see it is bridging blog RSS feeds to the Fediverse. → RSS.Social
A haiku to leave you with…
Tomato taste test,
Sauce secrets in each tin hide
Pasta dreams collide.
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