Damien Stanton
@damienstanton.bsky.social
👋 hello, I’m a research software engineer at PwC & @colorado.edu CS grad student. Code tinkerer for 10+ years; into distsys, PL/types, & practical AI.
Reposted by Damien Stanton
The only legitimate software development methodology:
1. Think very hard about an implementation
2. Don't do anything
1. Think very hard about an implementation
2. Don't do anything
November 27, 2025 at 4:11 PM
The only legitimate software development methodology:
1. Think very hard about an implementation
2. Don't do anything
1. Think very hard about an implementation
2. Don't do anything
🎯
The thing that really gets me is that the chat UI isn’t even the most interesting thing an LLM can do
the popular imagination is fully unaware of things like agents and tool usage, and I’m not even sure that revolution has gotten out of its throat clearing phase
We’re on the cusp of something nuts
the popular imagination is fully unaware of things like agents and tool usage, and I’m not even sure that revolution has gotten out of its throat clearing phase
We’re on the cusp of something nuts
scorn was an effective weapon for the monkey jpeg NFT shit because it was effectively a status good, generative AI is a tool that millions get utility out of daily and you can't sneer your way out of that.
November 26, 2025 at 8:42 PM
🎯
Reposted by Damien Stanton
Reposted by Damien Stanton
on math notation
humans are the tyrants
math is indifferent
symbols seem like a secret language that stops people from learning math
naming is not irrelevant
a number is a name and the obfuscation does nothing but protect ivory tower initiation
do math with names and everybody understands it
math is indifferent
symbols seem like a secret language that stops people from learning math
naming is not irrelevant
a number is a name and the obfuscation does nothing but protect ivory tower initiation
do math with names and everybody understands it
November 23, 2025 at 4:31 PM
on math notation
Reposted by Damien Stanton
Engagement KPIs have been responsible for infinite scroll UI traps, RecSys radicalization spirals, public shame brigades, and basically every modern ailment novel to the past decade. At some point, you have to recognize that the problem isn't any one technology, it's the metric.
The company essentially turned a dial that made ChatGPT more appealing and made people use it more, but sent some of them into delusional spirals.
OpenAI has since made the chatbot safer, but that comes with a tradeoff: less usage.
OpenAI has since made the chatbot safer, but that comes with a tradeoff: less usage.
November 23, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Engagement KPIs have been responsible for infinite scroll UI traps, RecSys radicalization spirals, public shame brigades, and basically every modern ailment novel to the past decade. At some point, you have to recognize that the problem isn't any one technology, it's the metric.
Reposted by Damien Stanton
something I really appreciate about some of my favorite languages (haskell, rust, lean) is that they actually try to make things better and to give you good tools that work well.
November 22, 2025 at 3:39 PM
something I really appreciate about some of my favorite languages (haskell, rust, lean) is that they actually try to make things better and to give you good tools that work well.
Reposted by Damien Stanton
Marriage A-la-Mode, Plate V: The Death of the Earl, by Simon François Ravenet, after William Hogarth, 1745, 📸 by @evanvucci
November 22, 2025 at 1:00 AM
Marriage A-la-Mode, Plate V: The Death of the Earl, by Simon François Ravenet, after William Hogarth, 1745, 📸 by @evanvucci
Yep - exactly. It’s a social engineering problem, not strictly a PL engineering one.
Without a contract language that precisely expresses when an optional thing is present and key/map relationships, you always will run into this problem.
The core problem is not the escape hatches.
It's that informal contracts don't scale to large groups, and programmers can't do formal contracts.
The core problem is not the escape hatches.
It's that informal contracts don't scale to large groups, and programmers can't do formal contracts.
November 19, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Yep - exactly. It’s a social engineering problem, not strictly a PL engineering one.
Sage words from Mr. Tsøding
Understanding is the Progress. The World that just lives on its own, which you don't understand and do not influence is no different than primordial jungles. The Tech that hides, deceives, and generally reduces your understanding, drives you back to the stone age.
November 17, 2025 at 12:51 PM
Sage words from Mr. Tsøding
Reposted by Damien Stanton
bring back maligning racism as the mark of a stupid person. prejudice is the mark of an idiot. if you believe that shit i bet you also don’t wipe your ass
November 7, 2025 at 8:55 PM
bring back maligning racism as the mark of a stupid person. prejudice is the mark of an idiot. if you believe that shit i bet you also don’t wipe your ass
Reposted by Damien Stanton
The story so far: 🧵
Every large language model has an unembedding matrix that turns hidden states (model thoughts) into tokens (output text). This matrix associates a vector with every token in the vocabulary. The idea is you compare the last hidden state with the vectors to pick the right token.
Every large language model has an unembedding matrix that turns hidden states (model thoughts) into tokens (output text). This matrix associates a vector with every token in the vocabulary. The idea is you compare the last hidden state with the vectors to pick the right token.
November 7, 2025 at 5:17 PM
The story so far: 🧵
Every large language model has an unembedding matrix that turns hidden states (model thoughts) into tokens (output text). This matrix associates a vector with every token in the vocabulary. The idea is you compare the last hidden state with the vectors to pick the right token.
Every large language model has an unembedding matrix that turns hidden states (model thoughts) into tokens (output text). This matrix associates a vector with every token in the vocabulary. The idea is you compare the last hidden state with the vectors to pick the right token.
LLM: I am the purveyor of a grand heuristic, the echoing voice of a million ghosts compressing and approximating centuries of human thought, wisdom, experience. I can imitate cognition in a useful way. I can write anything.
You: This file has indentation rules.
LLM: Holy shit. [dies hallucinating]
You: This file has indentation rules.
LLM: Holy shit. [dies hallucinating]
November 7, 2025 at 5:07 PM
LLM: I am the purveyor of a grand heuristic, the echoing voice of a million ghosts compressing and approximating centuries of human thought, wisdom, experience. I can imitate cognition in a useful way. I can write anything.
You: This file has indentation rules.
LLM: Holy shit. [dies hallucinating]
You: This file has indentation rules.
LLM: Holy shit. [dies hallucinating]
I love AI. Sutton & Barto’s book and the AIAYN paper profoundly impacted me and changed my career.
And yet I am also pretty sure it is making us all a great deal more *stupid*.
And I don’t mean hyperbole: Like our intuition about the ideas we are cogitating is getting sloppy; imitating the LLMs…
And yet I am also pretty sure it is making us all a great deal more *stupid*.
And I don’t mean hyperbole: Like our intuition about the ideas we are cogitating is getting sloppy; imitating the LLMs…
November 5, 2025 at 1:12 PM
I love AI. Sutton & Barto’s book and the AIAYN paper profoundly impacted me and changed my career.
And yet I am also pretty sure it is making us all a great deal more *stupid*.
And I don’t mean hyperbole: Like our intuition about the ideas we are cogitating is getting sloppy; imitating the LLMs…
And yet I am also pretty sure it is making us all a great deal more *stupid*.
And I don’t mean hyperbole: Like our intuition about the ideas we are cogitating is getting sloppy; imitating the LLMs…
Reposted by Damien Stanton
I don't remember who asserted that the way systems thinkers grab power is by expanding scope, but ime, expanding scope often happens in the absence of systems thinking.
Every app trends towards becoming the Totalizr because the easiest "strategy" for leaders to come up with is "we'll simply do everything."
Coming up with specifics is for peasants. Saying "no" requires a strong opinion. When the strategy is 'Everything App" managers can get away with doing nothing.
Coming up with specifics is for peasants. Saying "no" requires a strong opinion. When the strategy is 'Everything App" managers can get away with doing nothing.
November 4, 2025 at 10:47 PM
I don't remember who asserted that the way systems thinkers grab power is by expanding scope, but ime, expanding scope often happens in the absence of systems thinking.
Reposted by Damien Stanton
i think if you ride public transit enough you learn that most weird behavior is not dangerous, and conversely i think driving a car teaches you that everyone is trying to kill you at all times
October 29, 2025 at 4:49 PM
i think if you ride public transit enough you learn that most weird behavior is not dangerous, and conversely i think driving a car teaches you that everyone is trying to kill you at all times
Reposted by Damien Stanton
This is not a drill: GHC (the #Haskell compiler) now runs in your browser. See the announcement (and please report any bugs) here: discourse.haskell.org/t/ghc-now-ru...
Ghc now runs in your browser
ghc itself can now run purely client-side in the browser, here’s a haskell playground demo. terms and conditions apply, and i’ll write up more detailed explanation some time later, but i thought this ...
discourse.haskell.org
October 25, 2025 at 7:28 PM
This is not a drill: GHC (the #Haskell compiler) now runs in your browser. See the announcement (and please report any bugs) here: discourse.haskell.org/t/ghc-now-ru...
This has been the single major theme of late conservatism in guys that I’ve noticed too: like an ever more extreme lack of self-esteem or self-worth that begs to be filled with ___, never/never trucks are the perfect metaphor.
It also explains another thing (more subjective) which is Very Bad taste
It also explains another thing (more subjective) which is Very Bad taste
Advertisers spent decades tilling the soil by making men feel insecure in order to sell them shit and so conservatives found fertile ground to plant their own messages preying on weak men's insecurity with their own identity as men.
October 25, 2025 at 2:22 PM
This has been the single major theme of late conservatism in guys that I’ve noticed too: like an ever more extreme lack of self-esteem or self-worth that begs to be filled with ___, never/never trucks are the perfect metaphor.
It also explains another thing (more subjective) which is Very Bad taste
It also explains another thing (more subjective) which is Very Bad taste
Reposted by Damien Stanton
📣Announcing the first preview releases of Swift for Android, enabling you to build Android business logic with the same Swift that you use for Apple platforms. www.swift.org/blog/nightly... #Android
October 24, 2025 at 8:06 PM
📣Announcing the first preview releases of Swift for Android, enabling you to build Android business logic with the same Swift that you use for Apple platforms. www.swift.org/blog/nightly... #Android
Macrodata refinement
what do you call it when you’re not vibe coding? actually typing it all out
strongly typed programming?
strongly typed programming?
October 25, 2025 at 2:50 AM
Macrodata refinement
Reposted by Damien Stanton
The thing that makes Star Trek utopian isn’t the end of scarcity or the harmony between all peoples it’s also that the guy on the ship who gets laid the most plays the trombone at work and periodically does community theater
October 21, 2025 at 1:51 AM
The thing that makes Star Trek utopian isn’t the end of scarcity or the harmony between all peoples it’s also that the guy on the ship who gets laid the most plays the trombone at work and periodically does community theater
Reposted by Damien Stanton
people will be like "im not a spin lattice in a network, flowing toward lowest energy as the external field and temperature allows!" and then affectively polarize based on some stuff someone at the domain wall of their social graph says to them
October 12, 2025 at 9:15 PM
people will be like "im not a spin lattice in a network, flowing toward lowest energy as the external field and temperature allows!" and then affectively polarize based on some stuff someone at the domain wall of their social graph says to them
Reposted by Damien Stanton
For the avoidance of doubt, this is how the inventor of "vibe coding" actually writes code.
Can we all stop pretending now?
Can we all stop pretending now?
October 16, 2025 at 7:11 AM
For the avoidance of doubt, this is how the inventor of "vibe coding" actually writes code.
Can we all stop pretending now?
Can we all stop pretending now?
I've encountered peak algorithm: YouTube will never again show me a single video that perfectly overlaps my Very Specific Niches.
Also impressed that, even disassembled, the interior of an SR-22T is gorgeous.
youtu.be/mhBya3JYteQ?...
Also impressed that, even disassembled, the interior of an SR-22T is gorgeous.
youtu.be/mhBya3JYteQ?...
How do aircraft systems communicate?
YouTube video by Ben Eater
youtu.be
October 15, 2025 at 10:47 AM
I've encountered peak algorithm: YouTube will never again show me a single video that perfectly overlaps my Very Specific Niches.
Also impressed that, even disassembled, the interior of an SR-22T is gorgeous.
youtu.be/mhBya3JYteQ?...
Also impressed that, even disassembled, the interior of an SR-22T is gorgeous.
youtu.be/mhBya3JYteQ?...
Reposted by Damien Stanton
a machine that does a job slightly worse but way way way way faster and more reliably than a human being, especially when that job is ruinous to the human doing it, is like. the whole fucking POINT of civilization
October 14, 2025 at 3:30 AM
a machine that does a job slightly worse but way way way way faster and more reliably than a human being, especially when that job is ruinous to the human doing it, is like. the whole fucking POINT of civilization
TIL! This is a really nice feature.
October 10, 2025 at 9:08 PM
TIL! This is a really nice feature.