llms.txt
# LLM Context File for James Edward Dillard
This file contains selected public writings and pages from https://jdilla.xyz, formatted in markdown.
It is intended to help LLMs and other tools better understand my work, interests, and perspective.
---
# Blog
## Suburban Georgia Fact of the Day
### Defaults matter
<p>Our oldest child started first grade at the local public school earlier this year. Much to her excitement, she’ll be taking the bus now.</p>
<p>The bus picks up and drops off a short walk from our house, 0.2 miles according to Google Maps, with a sidewalk the entire way.</p>
<p>We signed the release for daughter to be able to get off the bus and walk home by herself, thinking we could teach her to walk it and that she might enjoy the freedom.</p>
<p>Signing this form prompted two calls from the district to make sure we understood what we were signing and were truly comfortable with it. I obviously can’t know this for sure, but in one of the calls they gently indicated to us that we were the only parents who allow this for a child so young. </p>
<p>For clarity, I don’t blame the school here. They’re trying to do right by us and our daughter and if we’re making an unusual choice, calling to confirm is a reasonable thing to do. Still… this is a very restrictive default setting. No wonder <a href="https://mottpoll.org/sites/default/files/documents/101623_Independence.pdf">50% of 9-11 year olds don’t get to walk down grocery aisles by themselves</a>!</p>
## Good Tokens 2026-06-20
<h2>Shameless self-promotion</h2>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KljguOasT1Y">Why isn't your codebase in English?</a></strong> Holden and I had a great time chatting with Kasey Klimes, who is really thinking deeply about how AI changes software development.</p>
<h2>Worth your time</h2>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A colorized photo of Central Park during the Great Depression, New York (1933) <a href="https://t.co/FIWjMvZON6">pic.twitter.com/FIWjMvZON6</a></p>— Civixplorer (@Civixplorer) <a href="https://x.com/Civixplorer/status/2051409027943329926?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 4, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p><a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/linch/p/how-stealth-works">How Stealth Works</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.derekthompson.org/p/if-americas-so-rich-howd-it-get-so">If America's So Rich, How'd It Get So Sad?</a></p>
<p><a href="https://critiqueanddigest.substack.com/p/the-post-christian-condition-and">The Post-Christian Condition</a></p>
<p>"Every artifact that can be elongated is, by people who do not read what they produce, for readers who do not read what they receive." <a href="https://nooneshappy.com/article/appearing-productive-in-the-workplace/">Appearing Productive in the Workplace</a> Not so at Good Tokens.</p>
<p>Megan Gafford on <a href="https://www.metropolitanreview.org/p/architecting-a-myth">Brutalism</a>. Perhaps I'm imagining it, but it seems to me there's something Puritan about the modernist drive to remove ornamentation.</p>
<p>Jehan on the <a href="https://www.jehanazad.com/p/the-parable-of-the-rogue-wave">parable of the Rogue Wave</a>. Jehan's blog is on fire right now.</p>
<h2>Things I learned</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>China had <a href="https://x.com/JesusFerna7026/status/2013262261771440490">fewer births in 2025</a> than in 1776.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There's only one European company <a href="https://www.slowboring.com/p/let-companies-set-prices">more valuable than Home Depot</a> — which is itself only the <em>fourth</em>-largest American retailer. via Matt Yglesias.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Florida Man meme is <a href="https://www.atvbt.com/9-selection-effects/">actually caused by transparency laws</a>. Uri's blog is also on fire right now.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Compared to their Boomer parents, childcare time among Millennial dads has <a href="https://x.com/DKThomp/status/2049840280329965927">more than doubled</a>. via Derek Thompson.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Musings</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>There is a grain of discovery in the solution of any problem.
— George Pólya, via <a href="https://solve.it.com/">solve.it.com</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The best argument I've heard against the consciousness of LLMs: no one ever claims that AlphaFold or Midjourney is conscious. (<a href="https://x.com/kasratweets/status/2062283270034018573">Kasra</a>)</p>
<h2>LLM Corner</h2>
<p>Tyler Cowen on the <a href="https://x.com/noam_dworman/status/2062548955234185700">future LLMs will create</a>, and how to make peace with it.</p>
<p><a href="https://x.com/vasuman/status/2049659161005470071">If AI is so great, why isn't it working?</a></p>
## Book thoughts: 2666
### a fantastic, frustrating read
<p>It's moments like these when I wish I was reading books in a book club or an English class so I would be able to complain about them to other people. Instead I have you!</p>
<p>This is the most divided I’ve felt about a book in the past 10 years (since <a href="https://www.amazon.com/A-Little-Life-Novel/dp/B0DQQFQCMY/">A Little Life</a>). </p>
<p>There is some absolutely intoxicating writing in this book. There are characters and scenes that I will probably never forget. The hint of a mystical evil lurking in the background is so well done. </p>
<p>At the same time, this book is sprawling to the point of distraction. I almost quit this book on multiple occasions because I had grown so interested in parts of the story just to be dropped in another location and time to start over again. To the authors credit, the final portion of the book does make an effort to tie the threads of the story together but so much is left disconnected. </p>
<p>It reminds me of <a href="https://www.accademia.org/explore-museum/artworks/michelangelos-prisoners-slaves/">Michelangelo’s Slaves</a>. Obviously the work of a master… and yet unfinished.</p>
## Good Tokens 2026-04-17
<p><em>This edition of Good Tokens is best enjoyed while listening to the Phil Collins version of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9IwBJYTwQ0">You Can't Hurry Love</a>.</em></p>
<h2>Shameless Self Promotion</h2>
<p><strong>Introducing AgentCAD:</strong> About a month ago I became obsessed with the idea of a command line tool for creating CAD drawings as a way to empower coding agents (Claude, Codex, etc) to be better at designing 3D objects. The first version of it is here and I'd be lying if I didn't say I had a delightful time building it. Try it out by firing up your favorite coding agent, grabbing the starter prompt from <a href="https://agentcad.dev">here</a>, and giving it something to design for you. You and your agent can send me feedback directly from the CLI app or email me here: hello@jdilla.xyz</p>
<p><strong>Dangerously Skip Permissions:</strong> In other command line news, my friend Rami, the head of Product for Stripe's new command line product Projects.dev stopped by Dangerously Skip Permissions to talk about CLI tools and what it's like to be a PM in the age of AI. If you need any more reason to check it out, Rami is one of the 5 best PMs I've witnessed up close. Full episode is <a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=1f2V9ow6__E&feature=youtu.be">here</a> or a taster is <a href="https://youtube.com/shorts/el_DVlXdiME">here</a>.</p>
<h2>Worth your time</h2>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/hacker-mindset">Henrik Karlsson — How to Walk Through Walls</a></strong> Reminiscent of Derek Sivers's <a href="https://sive.rs/kimo">There's No Speed Limit</a>. Henrik is really cooking right now.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kranz">The Kranz Dictum</a></strong>: If this one doesn't get you going, please have someone check your pulse because you might be dead.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/the-creation-of-instant-coffee">The Creation of Instant Coffee</a></strong> I always love a good "how X came to be" piece. I was surprised by how many of these chemical processes I recognized from my time at Macro Oceans.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://minutes.substack.com/p/rented-virtue">Rented Virtue</a></strong> The connection between culture and value creation is underrated. So are the Quakers!</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/opinion/interesting-times-ryan-burge.html">We are called to be faithful, not successful.</a></strong> Ryan Burge preaches.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2026/02/why-are-american-passenger-trains-slow/">Why Are American Passenger Trains Slow?</a></strong> There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.chinatalk.media/p/best-books-q1-2026">ChinaTalk's Best Books Q1 2026</a></strong> is out. Always a good list to mine for your reading queue.</p>
<h2>Things I learned</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>AI is less popular than ICE. From an <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/27777984-nbc-news-march-2026-poll-03-08-2024-release-final/">NBC News March 2026 poll</a>, via Roy Bahat's excellent "This is Not a Newsletter."</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>As an adult human, our odds of dying <a href="https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/the-perks-of-being-a-mole-rat">double every eight years</a>. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There's only one European company more valuable than <a href="https://www.slowboring.com/p/let-companies-set-prices">Home Depot</a>, which is itself only the number-four American retail company.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>During Pangea, whole sections of the earth went without rain for thousands of years. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangean_megamonsoon">megamonsoon</a> cut off the interior from atmospheric moisture for stretches of geological time.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Consumers aged 55+ now drive 45.3% of all U.S. spending (<a href="https://x.com/unusual_whales/status/2031700916038943060">Unusual Whales</a>).</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Musings</h2>
<p>"Such is the blindness of men, that they even glory in their blindness." — Augustine</p>
<p>"The life of man is like a game with dice; if you don't get the throw you want, you must show your skill in making the best of the throw you get." — Terence. <a href="https://overcast.fm/+ABUL2gIRJHI">Literature and History</a> continues to delight me.</p>
<p>"Does an idea belong to those who use it or those who find it? I've decided to think that ideas belong to those who use them, thus to everyone." — <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/global-art-banksy/">Blek le Rat</a>. See also: <a href="https://www.jdilla.xyz/post/good-tokens-2025-03-07">you don't own the story; you do own the execution</a>.</p>
<h2>LLM Corner</h2>
<p><strong><a href="https://agentalent.ai/">Agentalent.ai</a></strong>: A marketplace where companies hire verified, human-supervised AI agents. Each agent has a human handler. It's like a staffing agency for AI. The future is weird and it's already here.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://coverager.com/elevenlabs-secures-ai-agent-insurance/">ElevenLabs Secures AI Agent Insurance</a></strong>: First AIUC-1-backed insurance policy covering AI voice agents. They passed 5,000+ adversarial simulations to get it. This is a big deal for enterprise adoption — insuring against hallucinations and unauthorized actions is the kind of boring infrastructure that actually unlocks deployment.</p>
## Second Opinion with Dr. Dua Hassan
<p><img alt="Second Opinion Podcast" src="https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/04/second-opinion-logo-3c0e74d1.jpg" /></p>
<p>Over the past several months, I've been collaborating with a friend of mine, Dr. Dua Hassan on her podcast.</p>
<p>One of the things that I think is underrated about being a parent is the degree to which medical stuff with your children just happens to you. Even the planned stuff — the 6 month and 1 year appointments — inevitably happens on a day when you're tired or distracted and there's less time, attention, and energy to get much beyond "What" and into "Why".</p>
<p>Which is exactly why I loved doing this podcast. In it, Dr. Dua takes the time to explain why things are the way that they are in a way that I've never had time for while raising my kids. In the process, I've learned an incredible amount, like the heroic story of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Guthrie_%28microbiologist%29">Dr. Robert Guthrie, who singlehandedly willed the PKU test into existence after his niece was affected by undiagnosed PKU</a> or that <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/3sUQISVxZ2udmDe8KmvMLQ">once upon a time doctors would lick babies</a> to understand if they had certain conditions that caused their skin to be salty.</p>
<p>The first season is all about the first 24 hours of life and the shots, tests, and eye goop that are applied to a baby right after it's born. I've been through this three times and recognized every step — but couldn't have told you much about them until this show.</p>
<p>You can find it on Spotify <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2J9xus87vFACNSmGZ0V19K">here</a> or on YouTube <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@SecondOpinionPod">here</a>. Send it to a parent or soon-to-be parent you love!</p>
## Good Tokens 2026-04-02
<h2>Worth your time</h2>
<p><strong><a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/minutes/p/craft-is-the-antidote-to-slop">Craft is the Antidote to Slop</a></strong> — Will Manidis is in my internet top 5. I hope I'm not insulting him when I say he has great taste (link: https://minutes.substack.com/p/against-taste)</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://blog.mikeswanson.com/backseat-software/">Backseat Software</a></strong> I am so sick of being interrupted for feedback. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.austinvernon.site/blog/manufacturing.html">Speed Can Reindustrialize America</a></strong> Austin Vernon is also in my internet top 5. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/fraud-investigation/">Fraud Investigation</a></strong> — Shorter patio11: Fraud is a policy choice.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://itcanthink.substack.com/p/robot-soldiers-are-reporting-for">Robot Soldiers Are Reporting for Duty</a></strong> — Armed ground robots serve a fundamentally different purpose than drones. Drones are light artillery — great at inflicting casualties. But the hard problem in warfare is holding terrain, and that's where ground robots start to matter. The Ukraine conflict is making this real fast. See also: <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-perseverance-rover-completes-first-ai-planned-drive-on-mars/">NASA's Perseverance Rover Completes First AI-Planned Drive on Mars</a>.</p>
<h2>Things I learned</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Papua New Guinea, with about 0.1 percent of the world's population, hosts more than 10 percent of the world's languages. Sweden maintains such accurate daily birth-and-death counts that it <a href="https://davidoks.blog/p/a-lot-of-population-numbers-are-fake">no longer needs to conduct a census</a>. That whole piece on fake population numbers is wild.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect">IKEA effect</a>: people place disproportionately high value on things they partially created.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Tigers are orange because their prey <a href="https://www.livescience.com/why-are-tigers-orange">can't distinguish between orange and green</a> — and green pigment is hard to produce biologically. Evolution is full of these "good enough" solutions.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There were <a href="https://x.com/JesusFerna7026/status/2013262261771440490">fewer births in China in 2025</a> than in 1776, the year the United States declared independence.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Georgia has the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_Georgia">second highest number of counties</a> in the union.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>It worked for me</h2>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.lakeshorelearning.com/products/language/alphabet/alpha-bots/p/AC225/">Alpha-Bots</a></strong> — Consistently one of my kids' favorite toys. Most likely to get the 3 and 5 year old playing together for 20+ minutes at a time while I'm not in the room.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread">No Knead Bread</a></strong> — My friend Chris introduced me to this No Knead Bread recipe late last year and it has quickly become a part of my family's weekly routine. Who knew fresh bread could be this easy?</p>
## I’m not sure all of you mean to be here
### The internet is weird right now
<p>I keep this blog mostly for myself, as a way of cultivating a habit of curiosity and creativity. I’m flattered that a small group of people (with impeccable taste!) visit it or have decided to subscribe, but I’m clear-eyed enough to know it’s not the most important place on the internet. When traffic spikes, I almost always know why. When someone signs up, I usually know who they are.</p>
<p>Until recently.</p>
<p>At some point in the past several months, I started to see a lot of traffic from China, Singapore, and, occasionally, Iran (I noticed this on <a href="heyrecap.com">HeyRecap</a>, which uses AI to cover the local governments here in Georgia, as well).</p>
<p><picture>
<source type="image/webp" srcset="https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/03/screenshot-2026-03-07-at-7-21-17-pm-cc8f3196-480.webp 480w, https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/03/screenshot-2026-03-07-at-7-21-17-pm-cc8f3196-960.webp 960w, https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/03/screenshot-2026-03-07-at-7-21-17-pm-cc8f3196.webp 1294w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px">
<source type="image/jpeg" srcset="https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/03/screenshot-2026-03-07-at-7-21-17-pm-cc8f3196-480.jpg 480w, https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/03/screenshot-2026-03-07-at-7-21-17-pm-cc8f3196-960.jpg 960w, https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/03/screenshot-2026-03-07-at-7-21-17-pm-cc8f3196.jpg 1294w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px">
<img src="https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/03/screenshot-2026-03-07-at-7-21-17-pm-cc8f3196.jpg" alt="" width="1294" height="838" loading="lazy">
</picture></p>
<p>I didn’t think a whole lot of it. There’s a lot of LLM / bot traffic on the web these days and I make my site pretty easy to access. I figure if I’m going to spend my time doing this, I should at least be a part of the training data set. Perhaps the SuperAI will be friendly to me!</p>
<p>But this week something else happened. I started to see a bunch of new email subscriptions come in, all about one after the other. All people of these people used their business email addresses. I can find most of them on LinkedIn. They seem to be real people… except I have no connection to any of them. They live in places and work on things I have no connection to. Some of them are probably reading this now (👋).</p>
<p><picture>
<source type="image/webp" srcset="https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/03/screenshot-2026-03-07-at-7-22-08-pm-c897c0fc-480.webp 480w, https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/03/screenshot-2026-03-07-at-7-22-08-pm-c897c0fc-960.webp 960w, https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/03/screenshot-2026-03-07-at-7-22-08-pm-c897c0fc.webp 1424w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px">
<source type="image/jpeg" srcset="https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/03/screenshot-2026-03-07-at-7-22-08-pm-c897c0fc-480.jpg 480w, https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/03/screenshot-2026-03-07-at-7-22-08-pm-c897c0fc-960.jpg 960w, https://pub-0dcc00d1b64645a9a482077cf95cc143.r2.dev/images/2026/03/screenshot-2026-03-07-at-7-22-08-pm-c897c0fc.jpg 1424w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px">
<img src="https://pub-0dcc0
