Lorin Hochstein has a great, short post about the distinction between modernism and post-modernism, and the connection to software engineering. In short, modernists believe that the world is turbulent and dynamic, and can be constantly remade anew; while post-modernists believe that “we can never cast off our history and start from scratch.” He writes…

We software engineers are modernists at heart. We see the legacy systems in our organizations and believe that, when we have the opportunity to work on replacement systems, we will remake our little corner of the world anew. Alas, on this point, the post-modernists were right…

1. Kate Winslet’s performance in Mare of Easttown. I spent a few formative teenage years living outside of Philadelphia in Delaware County, so the moment just a few minutes in where she says the word “homeowner” I had to pause the stream and put my head between my knees. This Maureen Dowd interview with Winslet is worth reading: “I loved her marks and her scars and her faults and her flaws and the fact that she has no off switch, no stop button. She just knows ‘Go.’”
2. Liz Phair’s new album, Soberish. Top tracks on first listen: Soul Sucker and Good…

Gibson Biddle has an amazing retrospective of 20 years of personalization at Netflix, and its role in the company’s product strategy. The screenshots alone are worth the trip down memory lane.

It took Netflix more than a decade to demonstrate that a personalized experience improved retention. But consistent growth in this proxy metric convinced the company to keep doubling down on personalization until many years later, Netflix proved that personalization improved retention in a large-scale retention test.

This is an interesting proposition…

Here’s the long-term personalization vision: twenty years from now, Netflix will eliminate both the “Play Something” button and…

Marcin Wichary on The Making of Four Laps:

“Why did I do this? It seemed like a weird gimmick and a fun challenge. Like with many of my weird creative projects, for most of the time I assumed that this will fail — after all, I have heard of anyone doing something like this, and I had no idea if the tech was even available — but at least I will learn something.”

If you haven’t watched it yet, you should. I won’t spoil it for you.

1. The Number Ones: Guns N’ Roses’ Sweet Child O’ Mine. Stereogum’s Tom Breihan has been every #1 hit in the Billboard Hot 100, chronologically. “For years, Slash claimed to hate Sweet Child O’ Mine. The song, he thought, went against the sound that the band had established for themselves. He’s right, and that’s part of what makes Sweet Child so magical.”
2. Oakland, the city that borax built. One of my favorite follows this past year has been Andrew Alden’s blog about Oakland geology. The twist in his latest post is that there actually aren’t any borax deposits in Oakland.
3. River…

1. Olivia Rodrigo’s SOUR. This is gonna be in heavy rotation all weekend, and probably all summer. I loved Julius Bridgeforth’s review.
2. StackBlitz’s WebContainers simultaneously feels years overdue, and completely mindblowing. “WebContainers allow you to create fullstack Node.js environments that boot in milliseconds and are immediately online & link shareable — in just one click. The environment loads with VS Code’s powerful editing experience, a full terminal, npm and more. It also runs entirely inside your browser.” Announcement comes complete with Alan Kay quote.
3. Why is this interesting, The Micro to Macro edition. This post resonated with me — you have…

This post from Cory Doctorow is one of the best pieces on blogging I’ve ever read. Twenty years of a sustained practice of thinking in public; Cory’s ongoing work at Boing Boing and on his personal sites is inspiring. I loved his notion of writing to build an audience, instead of writing to serve an audience.

Keep a domain around long enough, and unsolicited spam hilarity ensues. From a recent email:

Hi Michael! I’m [[redacted]]. Your site, theobvious.com, has sparked my interest to contribute articles and resources in the various topics that you cover. I especially enjoyed one of your latest posts, and therefore decided to reach out to you.

My latest post on theobvious.com? September 2003.