Michael E. Gruen

Wondering what will be the greater: US midterm voter turnout of men aged 18-24 - or - 18-24 year old men taking positions in online prediction markets about the midterms I’m still floored the latter is legal, and that the numbers seem to be about the same: 25-30% of them.

Twenty minutes following e-mails from Anthropic about their upcoming ToS changes to be more SFW, I've got claude code over here undulating about while advertising to me a "side agent". Mixed messages?

Never thought I'd say this, but after reading more than 6 obviously Claude-generated websites this morning, I miss the everything-is-Bootstrap days.

Tell me you're about to go public on a business model that depends on consumption.

I’m at a big chain hardware store asking the paint associate behind the paint desk which of their 10 paint variants might best suit purpose, and why there’s a 3x price differential on each end. And I quote: “You should have done your research before coming here.” Am I just that out of touch?

It's been less than two weeks, Michael. Stop it.

This is what business success looks like. And don't blame the government, blame the people who empowered these politicians to install regulators whose job it is not to do their their jobs. Please vote.

20+ years ago the US Government wrote a worm/virus, propagated through Windows, to reach air-gapped machines. Its purpose? Disrupt centrifuge operations (and therefore the nuclear capabilities) of nation states, undetected. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet Please be careful what data you hand your AI.

Honestly I’d greatly want an iPhone Uno.

Once again, Michael: stop buying new domain names until you’ve launched the projects for the other domain names that you bought last month. (Surely I’m not the only one here.)

One of the under-appreciated aspects of the domain-as-handle approach is that you’re never in a rush to try and claim some janky alias for brand consistency. On other platforms, yes. But not here. It’s a small thing, but a very nice thing you don’t have to worry about.

Two strangers enter a quiet elevator. As the doors close, one says out loud, "You don't use talk to text? Grow up!" "No," thought the other, "and this is why."

Who is making the successor to Sonos? Sonos’ entire software ecosystem is now hot garbage and I want nothing to do with it.

Totality is totally cool. (Even when you miss your focus point.)

I've been fortunate in that, in all my years living in the US, I didn't know anyone directly who met their end due to gun violence. That streak ended yesterday. (That I consider this "fortunate" is also an indictment of how much we need to grow up as a nation.)

“Whether you enjoy watching the copulations of birds or words, decoupling it from status games is what gives an activity the breathing room to become meaningful.” — www.octopusyarn.com/p/you-are-a-...

Nice, @yegg13.bsky.social knockaround.com/products/duc...

Pinned for later www.submarinecablemap.com

K-pop demon hunters Rumi bobble head night at Yankees Stadium. …

I guess we’re pancaking the hamburger, @github.com?

A random sampling of technology leaders' inboxes in 2026.

Last time I was this excited for a phone release was the iPhone 3G. www.thelightphone.com/lightflip (Disclosure: I have a small investment in this company.)

You've got to keep space clear because when inspiration strikes, it's not going to always wait for you to finish your work day.

Go was uniquely designed for readers over writers That turns out to matter even more when the reader is an LLM running build-test-fix loops all day. Go's big advantages in 2026 look a lot like its old advantages: short compile times, boring tooling, readable simple code. spf13.com/p/go-the-age...

Congestion pricing can save your life.

It’s efforts like this that give me hope for the future.

NYC Pride 2026 Grand Marshalls

How long until the uʍop-ǝpısdn text thing on a hat gets played out?

New York State: Ranked Choice Voting. Let’s get it done.

Honestly, with the limited training companies give the front-line employees/contractors within financial customer support departments, give me the freakin' chatbot. Better yet, give me all the markdown.

A question I often ask myself

Posting this feels counter-purpose, but the sentiment is worth sharing.

Hilarious until you realize this also worked (I’m hoping past tense here) on accounts where people thought they were privately sharing. This should be considered criminally negligent.

I'm gonna be real mad if this was written by a clanker.

Oh boy does this resonate.

Hey, could I icepick your brain?

"Michael noted their conflict until Tuesday night, suggesting that if jello wrestling is proposed for Wednesday or Thursday, it could proceed." Trusting meeting transcriptions can get messy.

Immediate CPB intervention to any parent that opts to forgo this shot, barring exceptional exception. Nature is brutal and civilization depends on science. People need to be shook. www.propublica.org/article/more...

Where's the fucking "don't move my windows when I screen share"-setting, Zoom?

This may be a sophisticated identity theft ploy, but I'll risk it.

Once you remember @atproto.com goes deeper than short-form posts, you’ll all be hooked. This is a correct use of LLMs.

“The subagents edited the test files in the worktrees but the changes weren't committed. The tests pass now because the existing tests still compile against the new structs (they were already updated in-worktree), but those updates were lost when worktrees were removed.” (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Rooting for the Animaniacs to do their thing.

"Every human genius is more human than genius." This entire piece 🎯 davidwsilva.substack.com/p/im-sorry-t...