David Chico Pham writes on technology, sourdough, and current events.

I recently discussed AI in the workplace with my manager. I had a growing sense that he's feeling the pressured to get on the AI train or be left behind. I prodded him with question about education but it didn't go anywhere. He interpreted my question was about AI in school. But I was more interested learning as a means of growing as a software engineer. You see, I look for the struggle, confusion and frustration that comes with not knowing how something works. Its when I actually engage with code in this way that I build a mental model of an architecture.

AI presents itself as a shortcut by leapfrogging to the solution -- all without you understanding how any of the pieces of code works in relation to the rest of the codebase. Like a parent, so very afraid of their child failing, will rescue any time their child is frustrated. In my view, this produces a weaker mind, a more ignorant knowledge worker, and a softer person.

I love learning. It's my only thing I am good at. Learning requires one to struggle. There's no shortcuts to that. An essay by James of Agentultra, on why he won't use AI deeply resonated with me. James on the joy of the struggle:

It is during the struggle that I learn the most and improve the most as a programmer. It is this struggle I crave. It is what I enjoy about programming.

Especially the boring parts. Working on the boring, rote code is where you learn patterns and understand when and how to refactor.

Ezra Klein on How I Write shares the same belief:

You can only make connections through grappling and struggling with text. Curiosity is the driver in expanding one's mind, even done poorly it's worth the pain of frustration and dissatisfaction. In engaging in a codebase, or subject for hours, it changes you. You grow. You learn. You struggle.

AI advocates usually gesture to technological improvement displacing the jobs of old such as the horse shit collector with new jobs, like factory car worker. What's interesting is that whoever is originally saying this is usually the wealthy man who owned the factory. In this case, though, it's the ravenous information thieves in Silicon Valley, promising turbo charge your programming game. It's a lie. AI is a theft of the mind. Again here's James view on labor and the promise of new jobs:

The Luddite movement is an interesting piece of history. People often remember the part about breaking machines in factories. Today, people refer to those who refuse to use new productivity-enhancing technology as, Luddites. But the movement was not about sabotage. At least, it had a purpose and sabotage was only one strategy used by people to try and enact change and gain bargaining power.

You see, there were no social policies or reforms in place to protect the rights of labourers during the industrial revolution in which the Luddite movement had formed. The people involved in the movement were skilled workers who used the machines they were destroying. They weren’t destroying the machines because they wanted everyone to make textiles by hand: they were protesting the fact that capital owners were extracting the wealth from their labour with this new technology and weren’t reinvesting it to protect the labourers displaced by it.

Today, AI technology is being used to replace labour power with capital. The knowledge work we do is being replaced with machines and algorithms by capital holders who want to own and rent out access to that knowledge. It’s cheaper, produces more value, and that new wealth is not turning into shorter working hours or supplementing any labourer’s income. That wealth is going into the hands of the ultra wealthy.

And there's the rub. Let's say the co-pilot tools do actually increase productivity. It isn't like workers see shorter hours or bigger paychecks. Folks like Mr. Bezos get richer with a smaller workforce doing more. What do we as workers get in return? Lesser benefits and 2% raise and another year maybe of employment.

We might trading something more than our time and efficiency. Our minds might get weaker as we rely on these AI tools to do the heavy lifting of thinking.

The No Kings Protests coincide with Trump's sad military parade. An estimated 5 million people (according to organizers) showed up and protested. G. Elliot Morris estimates 2.6 million attendees, representing 1.2 - 1.8% of the U.S. population.

Moreover, these weren't just progressive liberals or left wing people of the Coastal Elite variety showing up. Even in crimson red states saw people showing up. Look at Boise Idaho! The important thing is to recognize the extent to which Trump's public support has deteriorated.

Why does public support matter? It matters in so far how much resistance Trump sees. In a world where, like he imagines, people are non-playable characters (NPC), without agency, free will and opinions. This is a view of a sociopath, but this world view expects no resistance for only from a few pesky left wingers. This is not the world we live in. People are responding in horror and are outraged by plain cruelty of Trump's Gestapo, kidnapping people off the streets, courthouse, and schools.

Protests matter in proportion to an unpopular weak president. Even Putin, a man who has rigged every election and thrown every popular dissenter off the balcony of a hotel, needs public support. There is a reason why the use of the military is the last thing an autocrat does. They require a public that is not terribly too resistant to their policies and would-be popular leaders stay silent. It's why places like China crack skulls early on before protest reach critical mass or develop a charismatic popular leader. By the time you need the military to suppress protests, its often too late.

Strength as autocrat requires shutting down dissent, like from a popular young charismatic leader saying you're bad, wrong, and dumb. You as a autocrat look weak and have no ability to control the populace or sway popular opinion. One could argue, Trump sending the National Guard and Marines to LA was a sign of weakness and Governor Newsom looked strong standing up to a pretend king. In WWE parlance, an organic popular leader draws heat from the public. They are energized in a way that saps strength from the Heel.

Much of the power of tyrants comes from people anticipating what is expected of them and doing so before they are targeted. Mass protests demonstrate people dissenting at scale, despite the fear they may have of being singled-out themselves.

For now, Trump and his ghoul, Stephen Miller, are doubling down on state kidnappings and workplace site raids. They believe they can get away with it and not have people notice. Jamelle Bouie gets at their fundamental miscalculation:

Here we see Trump’s fundamental problem. He and his White House seem to think that the cost of their policies — the fallout from their effort to mold the country to fit their nativist and mercantilist obsessions — are indirect. Who cares about a few thousand protesters in Los Angeles, or even a few million undocumented immigrants, out of the more than 340 million people in the United States? But the reality is that to harden the border and more tightly police immigration — to remove as many unauthorized people as possible — is to necessarily subject American citizens to the scrutiny and violence of the state. External control requires internal suppression
...
Both Trump and Stephen Miller, the chief architect of the administration’s immigration policies, may have imagined that their crackdown would isolate a relatively small group of people and be met with indifference by most Americans, giving Trump and Miller free rein to do as they pleased.

No doubt they will continue to dig in their position and continue to cry out for public to join them in their cruelty. If these massive protests are any indication, its a matter of time when normal conservatives who don't like radical rapid change join in these protests in large numbers.

Even in authoritarian regimes don't set the military this early in squashing dissent. It's a too high of risk in losing public support. Trump's move to send 1700 national guard and now the marines to handle peaceful protests is a sign of a weak tyrant on the verge of an early collapse in public support.

I think writing is suppose to be somewhat uncomfortable, confusing and painful. But I did not considered it might be unnatural thing to do. I suppose it can be argued that written word as a recent invention to our existence means that reading and writing is not a built-in human instinct but rather a deliberately taught thing. Adam Mastroianni shares 28 slightly rude notes on writing Number 10 is one that resonates with me:

Maybe it’s because writing is inherently lonely, or maybe it’s because the only people who would try to make a living from writing are messed up in the head.

Personally, I think the reason is far more sinister: making art is painful because it forces the mind to do something it’s not meant to do. If you really want to get that sentence right, if you want that perfect brush stroke or that exquisite shot, then you have to squeeze your neurons until they scream. That level of precision is simply unnatural.

My god. If you are not moved, I don't know what to tell ya.

@RaymondCool's comment captures the moment well:

Can you imagine the assignment? "your privilege is dying, your friends are enemies, you lost your daughter, everything you love, this is the point of no return, rage" dance to hide it all behind a couple extra drinks.

I've been there. Sometimes you gotta get lost in dance to find your way out.

I had a correspondence with Alex Petros, a core engineer on HTMX. We had some overlap when he was an engineer at the Washington Post. He said something that has stuck with me for several months. Building websites is needlessly complicated.

Most of what is on a page is largely static, but we insist on cutting edge frameworks that can scale to unicorn level performance. We are still just building HTML, CSS. The JavaScript is too much, in my view, to justify picking frameworks such as NextJS, Remix, etc.

I am exploring Astro and so far it has struck a great balance in it's partial hydration or architectural islands. In a sea of static contents, a section is marked for dynamic updates. It can sometimes feel like, it can't be this simple -- we must prove our value at work by abstracting further these tools.

It's a little bit of bullshit, and fooling ourselves.

Larry David for the New York Times Opinion, wrote a piece satirizing Bill Mahar's dinner with a dictator at the invitation of Kid Rock.

Larry David on Hitler is so charming:

I joked that I was surprised to see him in a tan suit because if he wore that out, it would be perceived as un-Führer-like. That amused him to no end, and I realized I’d never seen him laugh before. Suddenly he seemed so human. Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I’d seen and heard — the public Hitler. But this private Hitler was a completely different animal. And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning.

Subversive and cunning, the whole thing is brilliant. See?! Bill Mahar, this is the difference of being funny versus being played.

The clarity Te'Nehisi Coates brings to his writing and thinking is why he is so effective in driving uncomfortable truths. I keep revisiting his writing because it so closely resembles James Baldwin. It strikes like a hammer and cuts like knife. His words haunts me like a night of regrets and embarrassments.

Bill Maher had dinner with President Trump over the weekend. He had a fine time with him. Maher went on his show to tell his audience he is going to be bring the hard truth: President Trump is a fun hang at a private dinner.

In an opinion piece, Leon Krauze for the Washington Post lists examples of people visiting dictators and strongmen, and coming away charmed:

Herbert Matthews of the New York Times traveled to the Cuban mountains to interview Fidel Castro, then a little-known guerrilla leader. The reporter came back enthralled. “The personality of the man is overpowering,” Matthews wrote.

Joseph Stalin was remembered by close comrades such as Nikita Khrushchev as a man who could be jovial in private settings, telling jokes and singing Georgian folk songs late into the night — just before ordering purges that would cost thousands of lives.

Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger were both startled during their historic 1972 visit to China: Mao joked with them, played with words and made them feel at ease — a deliberate mask concealing one of history’s most devastating authoritarian records.

Maher was charmed by him. I can't imagine Charlie Chaplin having dinner with Adolf Hitler and then being over the moon because Hitler autographed a movie poster of The Great Dictator