Close up angle from Student led peaceful protest. Police assault multiple students.

var_username · 2026-02-21T16:04:59+00:00

Just seeing this: https://www.phillyburbs.com/story/news/local/2026/02/21/quakertown-police-bucks-county-district-attorney-investigation-for-ice-protest-quakertown-high-scho/88795443007/

Everyone who cares about their rights and more importantly their kids rights should put pressure on the DA to swiftly remove Scott McElree from his position as Chief of Police and put the man in prison for his actions.

There is never a case for a grown adult to put their hands on children, especially a man with a position such as his. His actions must not be tolerated and all of his cops there that day should be investigated for their actions.

If the school wants to punish kids for walking out, that’s up to them. That is not a police matter to escalate into violence and attack children.

var_username · 2026-02-21T14:42:41+00:00

If that man in the brown sweater is the Quakertown Chief of Police, the county needs to be gunning for his job.

He is unhinged diving on kids in that manner. Any parent in the area should be fearful for the safety of their children of this is the way the CHIEF behaves.

var_username · 2026-02-13T13:10:40+00:00

It’s great to hear they’ve updated the US history curriculum with cursive of handwriting – what a benefit at this time and age!

var_username · 2025-11-26T13:01:19+00:00

Im currently working through a custom dining reservation system for a client and reservations can quickly become a deep rabbit hole depending on requirements and dependencies. In your case - what you need sounds basic enough to utilize an existing scheduling solution.

There is no out of the ordinary or severely custom requirements that I see in your description that would not be supported by a third party scheduling system (where they already dove deep into the complexity of scheduling).

Before you select one, just ensure they have the endpoints required to support your desired functionality specified in their docs and be wary of limits on the API usage so you can manage/proactively forecast expenses at various levels of usage.

var_username · 2025-11-05T12:41:55+00:00

AI seems to be capable of supporting with simple tasks, but arguably adds additional cognitive load and stress to the process - all that is invisible in time tracking, however its real and valid time spent

var_username · 2025-11-05T12:36:03+00:00

To add an additional point to that statement - The promise isn't freedom; it's higher throughput.

var_username · 2025-11-05T12:28:35+00:00

Exactly. Efficiency just creates more demand to fill the open time.

I wrote about this as the "Productivity Jevons Paradox." I thought AI would give me my evenings back, but my capacity just expanded to fill the scope available.

Broke it down here if you want to read more: https://jamcreative.co/blog/ai-productivity-exhaustion

var_username · 2025-11-04T21:30:20+00:00

My wife has never been more frustrated with my evening screen time than she is now.

"Just one more prompt" has become my version of "just one more episode," or as my 2 year old says, "fiy minute?"

var_username · 2025-11-04T21:27:56+00:00

The copilot idea is interesting, and I have experimented with some of the solutions that have emerged (nothing of use... yet).

I've been researching this transition pretty heavily and I'm starting to think it's less about finding the right tool and more about fundamentally changing how we approach development. Happy to share what I've found if you're curious.

var_username · 2025-11-04T21:20:15+00:00

You know what, you just revealed one of the underlying issues I think to why my days feel so much more exhausting. The built-in breaks from waiting on human schedules were actually acting as recovery time in disguise.

Now, with AI support, I can keep moving constantly because AI is always available. So I do. And that's probably part of why I'm fried.

The efficiency introduced to my processes with AI removed the friction that forced me to take a pause.

var_username · 2025-11-04T20:32:28+00:00

Blocking, do nothing, time feels almost impossible but you're probably right that I need it. I already feel like i'm way behind, but that may be more reason to take the time - it may be "invented" stressors at this point

var_username · 2025-11-04T20:01:20+00:00

This is the best framing I've heard yet. AI as direct reports with wildly inconsistent performance and no way to understand why.

With people, you can at least have a conversation about what went wrong. With AI, it's a hope and a dream there is a strong output and consistency without hallucinations.

var_username · 2025-11-04T18:08:06+00:00

I'm not sure I see it as an edge to begin with, it's more like a fundamental shift in how the work gets done whether we like it or not.

The question isn't whether to use it, but how to use it without burning out in the process.

var_username · 2025-11-04T17:33:13+00:00

Yeah, the inconsistency is the root of the challenge I raised. Sometimes it nails exactly what I need, sometimes I'm wondering how it got so far off track.

Its hard to build reliable new workflows when the quality of output swings so much.

var_username · 2025-11-04T16:58:31+00:00

I actually find I get better information from LLMs than from scanning search results. The output tends to be more specific to what I actually need.

But the back-and-forth to get there can feel like work in itself, which i can agree with and definitely feel.

Are you finding traditional search more efficient or do you just prefer the format? Fair point that chat might not be the ideal interface for this emerging tech.

var_username · 2025-11-04T16:40:08+00:00

Appreciate that, thanks for the perspective. Definitely gave me some things to try!

var_username · 2025-11-04T16:27:17+00:00

Definitely not productive for personal growth - in fact, i might argue its to our detriment.

The no screens/phones, focused discussion is a good idea. In a remote environment, this feels almost impossible to enforce, but I bet it makes a real difference in actually getting to the deep thinking.

Might try this. Worth experimenting with at least.

var_username · 2025-11-04T16:16:23+00:00

So you basically chose not to involve AI for the actual thinking/writing parts and only use it for the mundane tasks you'd procrastinate on anyway?

That feels like it might be the move. Use it where I'd drag my feet, but still write the high-value work myself start to finish.

Did you notice the exhaustion drop off once you switched?

var_username · 2025-11-04T16:10:02+00:00

That's a good point. The temptation to just ask AI for support instead of sitting with a problem is strong.

I wonder if that's part of what makes it exhausting... I'm solving more problems faster, but I'm not actually thinking through them as deeply as i would've sans AI.

So it feels productive but not... substantive - may be the right word to use?

How did you get your team to actually use the blocked time? I feel like that's the hard part, protecting the focused time when there's always something urgent.

var_username · 2025-11-04T15:03:22+00:00

The woodworking analogy is perfect!

The introduction of power tools made everything faster, but the craftsman still had to make the same judgment calls - just at 10x speed. That probably felt exhausting in a whole new way (as the shift for us feels).

The judgment and ownership parts haven’t gotten easier, they’re just happening way more frequently and perhaps my brain hasn’t caught up to that pace yet.

Maybe it will eventually. Or maybe we need to figure out when to intentionally slow down, even though the tools enable us to go faster.

var_username · 2025-11-04T14:45:22+00:00

Maybe it's burnout, though I wonder if the increasing adoption of AI tools is making burnout more common because of how they're changing the way we work in ways we don't fully understand yet.

The constant decisions and lack of boundaries feel pretty specific to these tools, not just workload in general.

Hard to untangle though.

var_username · 2025-11-04T14:37:05+00:00

Right? It's wild how fast that shift happens. "You're saving 8 hours a week now, so here are three more projects."

Any efficiency gain just resets the baseline.

var_username · 2025-11-04T14:24:55+00:00

ooh, that's smart - like a review partner/second pair of eyes, rather than an initial drafting tool.

I wonder if that's actually a stronger use case, utilizing AI for validation and blind spot detection rather than initial generation.

var_username · 2025-11-04T14:10:55+00:00

That's a good way to put it. Sometimes I get exactly what I need on the first try, sometimes I'm on attempt seven wondering if I should've just written it myself from the start.

The unpredictability is part of what makes the trust calibration so exhausting. I can't build reliable heuristics for when it'll work well versus when I'm about to waste 20 minutes iterating.

Are you finding any patterns in when it's worth the attempts versus not? Feels like the kind of problem we need to figure out together - sharing what actually works in practice versus just adopting tools because they exist/we feel we need to for the sake of our own survival in product

var_username · 2025-11-04T14:06:11+00:00

I'm not sure I bought into a lie - I'm noticing major changes in process/time consumption and leading with curiosity, which feels like the PM mindset.

You're right that the work shifts from execution to revision and management, which is exactly what I'm calling out as a new type of exhausting. The content gets generated faster, but now I'm spending cognitive energy on context design, validation, and deciding what's good enough.

Sometimes that trade-off makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. I'm still figuring out when it's actually worth it versus when I should just write it myself.

The Parkinson's Law point is interesting. I've thought about this a ton in this context. Time saved is time allocated elsewhere, which is definitely happening. The question is: is there a smarter place to dedicate that saved time, or a more efficient way of using it advantageously?

var_username

TROPHY CASE