Reading Log #7

Here is what I read from 18^th September to 3^rd October 2026.

Blogs

• The revolt of the reader

  Discovered Pangram via this post. I haven’t run into blog posts where an LLM has written most of it — lucky that I don’t get to follow/stumble upon that part of the internet. But I have stumbled upon too many website copies being authored by LLMs and it makes me furious all the time.

• ⭐ the senior engineer death spiral

  Must-read for any engineer.

• Introducing System One Models & Jev

  A new day, a new thing in the AI world.

• Jev means structured output is interesting again

  But as Nelson Elhage famously said, fast software doesn’t just mean we can do the same tasks faster, it means we can do entirely new kinds of tasks. What kinds of new programs can we write by injecting 100ms worth of dirt-cheap intelligence at various decision points?

• Joy & Curiosity #100

  My usual read :)

• ⭐ Grit your teeth and ship it

  Build momentum! — almost always the right way.

• “Act now, apologize later”

  Fascinating — never thought this would be done like this in game dev.

• Trying the Software factory pattern.

• Three Sticky Notes

  I have been recently experimenting with using sticky notes for managing my TODOs. It has been working out okay some days and I go off track on some days. But I have to tell you this: it is so satisfying to crush the sticky note for a done task.

• Joy & Curiosity #101

• AI Has No Wisdom and Neither Will You

  Okay, finally somebody is making a prediction that I haven’t heard anyone tell.

• Degrees of freedom

  Where there is a will, there is a way!

• I don’t want the details

  A good CXO would make you feel that they trust you and steer you towards doing your best work at hard times. The trust part isn’t always obvious. For example, when a CXO says “I don’t want the details”, you might feel rudeness, but what it could mean might be different. Imposter syndrome could be at play. I believe it takes both the humans to operate with optimism in tough times to achieve great results!

• Attention is all you have

  I have been opting more and more for the slow internet.

• Burnout by the Kindness of Agents

  Mental overload is real!

Books

• ⭐ ✅ How Will You Measure Your Life?

  (read 122 pages)

  I haven’t experienced something like this. The book belongs to a genre that I can’t explain. This is definitely one of the best books I have read this year. And it goes straight to my “suggest-to-anyone-as-a-must-read-book” list.

• Digital Minimalism

  (read 64 pages)

  I already have a good hang of some parts of my digital life. But want to revise my way of using social media a bit.

• Show Your Work!

  (read 36 pages)

• Grandma’s Bag of Stories

  (read 5 pages)

  Bedtime stories!

• Letters from a Stoic

  (read 3 pages)

  Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there. — Letter XXVIII

• The Daily Stoic

  (read 2 pages)

• Tao Te Ching

  (read a few random pages)

  Those who are good I treat as good. Those who are not good I also treat as good. In so doing I gain in goodness. Those who are of good faith I have faith in. Those who are lacking in good faith I also have faith in. In so doing I gain in good faith.