Everything is topsy-turvy I feel like there's a bit of repetition in the newsletter of late. That's because I keep getting emails and DMs asking me about what I'm doing and how to navigate everything given... well, everything. Now, did I write an entire newsletter just to use the phrase "topsy-turvy?" Maybe. It feels a lot more playful than the onslaught of emails that have flooding my inbox talking about climate disasters, underfunding of government agencies, economic uncertainty, health...
8 days ago • 4 min read
A model of restraint Is this the fourth time I've rewritten this just this week? Yep. Everything is moving fast and breaking my newsletter But I'm hoping that this will be an evergreen analogy. Recently, lots of people have been talking about how micro LLMs are the answer to anyone's concerns about LLM/genAI resource overconsumption. Because they're still cool toys like the big models, but they use less of everything. So isn't that a good thing? Maybe? I'm going to use excerpts from my side...
15 days ago • 3 min read
What do we see? I'm sitting here with my eyes dilated and blurry from an eye exam, so I'll keep this brief. This is a good tie-in for something I've been thinking about all week: perspective. Last week, I won an eBay auction for a circa 1970 film camera that is full of Wes Anderson vibes. It looks like the sort of thing one of his characters would carry, and it was a bargain at $53! (Original MSRP would have been about $93, or inflation-adjusted $769 in 2025 dollars.) I haven't seen any of...
22 days ago • 2 min read
What do you do with it? At the Green IO conference in New York City, there was a lot of talk about AI. (I know you're shocked.) Within the hallway discussions outside the broader apidays conference, there was a lot of talk about how AI is "just a tool," and what matters is how you use it. I think that's an oversimplification. A hammer is a tool. I can use it to gently tap a nail into the wall so I can hang a family photo, or I can use it to smash a windshield. An ice pick is a tool, but it...
29 days ago • 2 min read
Calculating water consumption I'm writing this early because I'm speaking at the Green IO conference this week. I'm a sucker for a sustainability conference, doubly so for one in New York City. I'll keep this brief, as there's a lot going on with life, travel, and... you know... everything else. Last week, I was introduced to the work of Masheika Allgood. She's developed a calculator to identify how much water is being consumed by hyperscale data centers. The existence of this calculator left...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Proactive framing I didn't publish last week because I was struggling with resilience. Resilience is a funny thing. Merriam-Webster says it's "an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change." But in that definition, there are two ways of looking at it. When we talk about personal resilience, it's usually in the context of misfortune: how did a person bounce back from trauma, illness, or disaster? How did they rebuild? It's about looking backwards. This kind of resilience,...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
We're going to have to be flexible Humans have an amazing ability to adapt to our climates. We grow crops that thrive in our specific ecosystems. We develop techniques that compensate for too little winter sun in Scandinavia, and too much sun in equatorial Africa. We build structures that match the prevailing needs — cinderblocks to withstand hurricane-force winds in Florida, flexible wood structures to move with the ground in earthquake-prone Japan. But what happens when environmental...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Setting the ground rules In sustainability circles, there's been a lot of murmuring about trusting the process. The idea is that even though everything is changing, we continue along with what we've been doing because long-established processes are in place for getting to where we need to be. I find this logic to be a little bit baffling. It feels like we've planned our route for a cross-country journey, and now we're patiently waiting for someone to come repair the massive sinkhole that's...
2 months ago • 3 min read
The best-laid plans fall victim to greenhushing It may not seem like it, but I have an editorial calendar for this newsletter. As content pros, we know the importance of editorial calendars, content planning, and strategy. Obviously that would be a feature of anything I would do. And then November 2024 came along in the U.S. and... well, each week brings new batshittery that seemed implausible the week before. So on Monday, I start to write this newsletter, and by Thursday I end up having to...
3 months ago • 3 min read