úlfurinn · links on úlfurinn

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 17:39:35 +0200

…the person standing in front of you is not an input to a utility function.

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 02:29:16 +0200

Making persuasive arguments within a shared deliberative space is a very different task than inviting people into that space to begin with—and it is the latter that is most urgently required today. Rather than flooding swing states with a tidal wave of talking points that are inevitably tuned out by those who need to hear them, effective campaigns of democratic renewal will thus focus on reshaping the meaning of certain identities that have been captured by anti-democratic forces—such as rurality or masculinity—and shifting the relative salience of others—such as class.

The Problem is Epistemic. The Solution is Not.

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 01:56:13 +0200

Appearing Productive in The Workplace

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 01:32:05 +0200

Friction and not being touched

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 21:14:50 +0200

The AI Great Leap Forward

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 12:49:51 +0200

The Guide to Sous Vide Eggs

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Tue, 19 May 2026 11:39:16 +0200

On institutional knowledge in the GenAI era.

Programming as Theory Building, Part II: When Institutions Crumble

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:33:34 +0200

How far back in time can you understand English?

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:25:37 +0100

It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 20:48:50 +0100

Empathy Doesn’t Scale (But It Can Evolve)

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 22:40:12 +0100

Good Interfaces Are Not Like Jokes

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 22:17:11 +0100

While individual productivity improvements help people cope better with bureaucratic or complex, rule-based procedures, these processes are the very things that need carefully unravelling. They need questioning and reconfiguring to realise the type of transformation that addresses root causes of inefficiencies.

Improving productivity and the need for service design

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 00:12:13 +0100

The Case Against pgvector

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 22:30:00 +0200

On Surveys

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 13:30:11 +0200

Repeat yourself, do more than one thing, and rewrite everything

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 00:19:11 +0200

Banish With Laughter

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 12:35:22 +0200

We’re living in a time of digital feudalism where our tech giant lords provide us serfs with cloud infrastructure, tax us to use it, and then claim that the data we grow on their land is their own. It’s understandable that in that system, we’d envision a utopian future where we are all lords of our own land. But this still imagines the world in feudal terms. It empowers individuals, but it doesn’t reject the power dynamic itself. It creates a system where everyone has to provide for themselves instead of a system that provides for everyone.

The Future is NOT Self-Hosted

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 18:48:24 +0200

Only outputs can be automated

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 18:23:57 +0200

The rise of Whatever

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 00:58:27 +0200

Who hates AI and why?

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 00:17:04 +0200

“Why Bell Labs Worked”

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 23:00:42 +0200

…if those in power cannot prove that a great many people are already inferior then they will bring that inferiority about by forcing them to use a tool that diminishes their intellectual and creative capacity.

“Toolmen”

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 21:53:23 +0100

But good grief, to all those cooing about education’s coming automation as we watch public institutions be looted and civil rights reversed, as people in your field and in your neighborhood are being intentionally hurt and traumatized, all as part of a plan to AI the tech oligarchs into a new Age of Empire and the rest of us into submission: “Read the fucking room.”

Automated Contempt

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 23:28:07 +0100

Money quote:

There’s a general observation here: attempts to add performance to a slow system often add complexity, in the form of complex caching, distributed systems, or additional bookkeeping for fine-grained incremental recomputation. These features add complexity and new classes of bugs, and also add overhead and make straight-line performance even worse, further increasing the problem.

Reflections on software performance

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 22:57:14 +0100

Joyce’s Ulysses, the Rubáiyát, and “Yes”

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 18:17:07 +0100

We Are Destroying Software

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 22:21:39 +0100

We need to enable people to care and empower them, not to replace them. This means building tools that assist and enable professionals to oversee, instead of building black boxes.

“Unlike an LLM, You Can Feel Bad and Go to Jail”

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 15:11:39 +0100

Twitter discussion

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 14:04:01 +0100

A collection of traditional dyes and pigments.

The Traditional Colors of Japan

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 14:02:25 +0100

Geometric patterns, plant and animal motifs, etc.

Illustrated Dictionary of Japanese Patterns

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 00:23:09 +0100

The most toxic consequence of social media manipulation, whether by the Russian government or others, may have nothing to do with its success as propaganda. Instead, it is that it sows an existential distrust.

“The PKD Dystopia”

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 16:49:10 +0100

“What layoffs teach us about technical leadership”

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 23:29:56 +0100

Being contrarian may be useful in the right circumstances.

John Cutler, “Yes, Or…”

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 16:27:03 +0100

Look at the world! See it aching! It’s got so many problems—I promise you, there’s one with your name on it.

“Underrated ways to change the world“

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 14:45:00 +0200

An excellent three part series.

Chelsea Troy on tech debt

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 12:47:27 +0200

Your default description of (almost) any problem will be too threatening/overwhelming.

“20 Things I've Learned as a Systems (Over) Thinker”

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 23:44:29 +0200

A cute little deck builder.

Burn With Me

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ulfurinn@ulfurinn.net (Valeri Sokolov) — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 11:42:16 +0200

…designers, limited as they must be by the capacity of the mind to form intuitively accessible structures, cannot achieve the complexity of the semilattice in a single mental act.

“A City Is Not A Tree” [PDF]