Links for November 2025
This is my first linkpost! The classic fallback for bloggers without a cohesive idea to write about and a deadline to meet. Though I believe curation is one of the ways us writers can stay relevant in these days of AI, so it might not be so much of a cop-out.
- The frequentisation of Tāmaki Makaurau (Adventures in Transitland Substack)
- A great article on how much better buses have gotten in Auckland, especially in the outer suburbs. Aucklanders love to complain about public transit (and the train services have been getting suspended a lot, though for good reason) but there has been many unshowy incremental benefits over my lifetime.
- Common Ground between AI 2027 & AI as Normal Technology (Asterisk Magazine)
- What the AI 2027 and AI as Normal Technology people agree on. I'm not quite ready to take a firm position on the whole AI safety debate, but this seems like a good calibration point.
- The Great Downzoning (Works in Progress Magazine)
- How and why stringent zoning policies got imposed all over the western world in the late 19th and early 20th century. See also the excellent Upzoning New Zealand article from the same magazine about the (still continuing) fight over upzoning in our cities.
- Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts (Dynomight)
- 'Everyone' (or at least everyone in my techy professional circles) seems to agree that dating apps are horrible, soul-sucking and terrible for their intended purpose. But alternatives to them never seem to gain any traction. This article looks into why that is.
- If You Have Writer's Block, Maybe You Should Stop Lying (Sasha Chapin)
- The contrarian title hides a good point about diagnosing your difficulties in writing: are you blocked on ideas, or just on trying to explain them in a way you think will make your audience think you're clever and well-adjusted?
Here's a little bonus personal anecdote related to that last link: in the early years of my high school we only got to do creative writing once a year and only for the length of a few assignments, basically for the sole purpose of teaching us what a simile is. However, I enjoyed these assignments and had no trouble coming up with story ideas1. Now that I'm writing on this blog into the void2, I'm wondering am I recapturing that freedom. I could write about anything! But choice paralysis is a real thing and you do have to inhabit a point of view to write anything worth caring about, and that means inevitably narrowing down the scope of what you write. And maybe what this self-enforced writing is all about is finding that point of view that feels honest to myself.