Recently (January 2026)
I’m shamelessly imitating the Recently idea from Tom MacWright as I’ve come to really enjoy seeing what people I follow are consuming and thinking. This was my first week back in the new year and it consisted of work meetings, planning, and a bit of brain dumping. I probably will adopt a monthly cadence for Recently posts in the future, but as I have a lot to share now and the next few weeks will be more heads-down work, here it is.
Is AI Model Collapse Inevitable?
Everything and More - Book Review
This is a pop-science book on math, a genre I quite enjoy as someone deeply interested in these topics, but without a formal grounding in them. Usually, the author is an eminent physicist, mathematician, or occasionally a very well-informed journalist. To read a book on math by a well-known fiction writer and essayist was a departure, albeit one I enjoyed.
New Year, New Website Design
It’s a new year, and more than ever, I want to simplify and focus on a few things rather than spread my attention too widely. This applies to my consumption habits–more books and movies, fewer reading articles on my phone or spending time on Reddit or YouTube–and also to work: I have a few big goals for the year and will strongly resist being moved off track as disruptions inevitably appear.
Year in Review (2025)
There are still another two weeks in 2025, but I’m ready to reflect already on how it went. Let’s dive in!
The Secret Prompts in GitHub Copilot CLI
GitHub Copilot is one of the original AI-assisted coding tools, introduced way back in February 2023, to add code completion to Visual Studio Code as well as chat, agent mode, and access to GitHub tools. But until last week, it didn’t have a standalone CLI, similar to Claude Code, Codex CLI from OpenAI, Gemini CLI, and others.
Resurrecting the Original Django Book
The original Django Book, first published online in 2006 at DjangoBook.com, is now available again at that same domain.
I Miss Tabs vs Spaces... And Other AI Musings
The other day, my Django Chat co-host Carlton Gibson and I were having yet another discussion about AI: how people are using it, whether it’s going to replace us all, and the ethical and economic implications of it. And he remarked in passing, “I miss tabs versus spaces.”
Empire of AI by Karen Hao - Book Review
I’ve spent this year reading as much as I can on AI and LLMs in particular, which means several books on the topic, innumerable online essays, posts, videos, and so on. This book is the single best resource I’ve found if you want to understand how LLMs like ChatGPT work and, more ominously, what the culture and people behind them are like.
ChatGPT Dark Arts: Make An Image with the Word 'Vote' In It
I recently wanted to generate an image on ChatGPT with a robot holding a sign that said “vote.” Seems innocent enough, right?
The Future of AI is Small (Language Models)
Lost amidst the rush of media excitement and corporate investment in Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT or Anthropic that consume billions of dollars in training and inference costs, is the question of whether this is the right approach in the first place. The Economist magazine had a recent post exploring this issue.
Prominent AI Researcher Leaving the U.S. for China
The Guardian recently published a very lengthy and excellent article on Why One of the World’s Most Brilliant AI Scientists Left the U.S. for China. It’s the best AI-related article I’ve read all year.
uv Livestream with Michael Kennedy
If you use Python you should know about uv, an extremely fast package manager written in Rust that truly seems to be the one tool to rule them all. Now I’ll be the first to admit that Python tooling is not, on the face of it, the most interesting topic. But it’s clear the Python ecosystem has had challenges for a while now around:
DjangoCon US 2025 Recap
DjangoCon US just wrapped up in Chicago last week, three days full of talks followed by two days of sprints on Django itself. Over 300 members of the Django community and sponsors attended at the Voco Hotel downtown.
Django for AI: My DjangoCon US 2025 Conference Talk
I recently presented my talk at DjangoCon US: Django for AI: Django for AI: Deploying Machine Learning Models with Django. Here is a text-based version of the talk.