Links for January 2026
Announcement: I'm going to be posting once every 2 weeks from now on. I'll still have Beeminder to make sure I stick to the posting schedule, though. I feel like I've burnt through most of the topics I can write about in one big writing session (hence me punting with a link post), and I would like a little more leeway to write stuff that requires actual research, or perhaps even multiple drafts?
By the way, my feedback form is still open for comments!
Like I said above, I've been a little strapped for time and topics lately, so here's a few interesting links I've come across (or made):
- Notes on Afganistan (Matt Lakeman)
- Matt Lakeman returns with another incredibly detailed and well written blog post on Afghanistan. This post has a lot worth reading about, but the most interesting part might be when he recounts deal with what might be the scariest thing a traveller overseas can face short of getting caught up in an actual war - the internet going out nationwide with no explanation.
- I Can't Stop Yelling At Claude Code (The Argument)
- A fun account of the experience of using Claude Code. Having a good grasp of what these tools can, and more importantly can't do seems pretty important, and the best way is to actually use it on novel, open ended tasks. And speaking of that...
- https://tguernier.github.io/wiki-flights/ (My GitHub)
- My grand introduction to the world of vibe coding is this app which visualises the (surprisingly robust and up-to-date) flight data available from airports' Wikipedia articles on a world map. There are still some rough edges, but it seems to be picking up all the flight data reliably, as compared to previous generations of models which would give up and hard code hallucinated data. Making these little tools seems to be all the rage now, so here's my entry.
- Bumper breeding season for kākāpō on the cards (University of Auckland)
- The kākāpō (big parrot from here in NZ) are going to have a big year, apparently. Perhaps more so than I...