Stephen Donahue
c6d7c8c211
Retract the seven published columns into drafts/ and promote the 24 per-date entries split out of Notes/random.md. Bodies are verbatim; titles, subjects and slugs are new. Make publication a matter of location. Notes/Notes.11tydata.js gives anything under Notes/ permalink: false unless tagged `column`; drafts/drafts.11tydata.js renders drafts at their real permalink under `yarn dev` and excludes them from collections entirely in a build, so no template can surface one. Publishing is now `git mv drafts/<file> columns/`, and moving it back retracts it. Untagged notes were previously rendered into _site/ and deployed — including Notes/random.md, which was live at /Notes/random/.
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title, date, layout, tags, permalink
| title | date | layout | tags | permalink | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harvard Material | 2026-06-09 | column.njk |
|
/columns/2026/harvard-material/ |
Knicks lost. Do I care. I bothered to watch the broadcast, and get swept up in the excitement.
Anyway, why I'm here - what would it take to never have to babysit an update again? How could we have our software transparently swap in new modules / components / dependencies / etc without needing a handler?
I struggle with the chat interface - the agent dumps so much material, and I have to recall it while asking questions and clarifications.
How does anyone form an original, defensible opinion about anything? Religion sells the idea that the answers can be found in the book, at the end of the chapter, sometimes. But what does it take to look at a situation and have an informed opinion? How do I look at a problem, and rather than bash my head against it, step back and see where the barriers are? How do I modulate the desperate urge to survive, by doing the "necessary thing," no matter the cost? The belief that I have to push through, mindlessly. This might be good in the beginning, as a survival tactic, but what comes next, when you don't die? You survived - what now?
We're looking for a new fit, sure we can squeeze in or through, but when we're changing shape, where does it chaffe? Where does it constrict and limit our motion? What isn't obvious or clear?
Not knowing the answer isn't strictly a sign of ignorance - but you have to write the story. Sometimes it highlights the limits or shortcomings, the blind spots. Is the truck driver stupid because he can't see around corners?
We should be ashamed that most students aren't Harvard material.But we quickly write it off as a moral failing - the student was lazy, or indifferent. It wasn't that our process failed to create successful pupils, that our learning apparatus is defective, and we've framed a success rate less than 5% as a mark of excellence, rather than a sign that something is wildly ineffective.
Maybe deliberately so.