This is a great Xennial list. And I am glad I’m not the only one who thinks R.E.M.’s Monster is actually pretty good.

Monster is commonly regarded as the most “used CD” CD of all time. Which I think is somewhat unfair and due in large part to how conspicuous the blaze orange packaging is. I would bet that Come Away With Me or Eric Clapton’s Unplugged or my beloved New Miserable Experience are just as common. They just blend in with the pack better. Though I don’t think being the most “used CD” CD is a bad thing, if it’s true. So long as it’s not used as shorthand for lack of quality. I love Monster, I love used CDs, and I will strenuously defend both against all haters.

Source: The Most ‘CD Album’ Albums Ever, Ranked →

You know how those of us who read The Lord of the Rings before the movies came out got all weirdly and annoyingly upset about all the “new fans” and how they should have “read the books years ago”? That’s how I feel about the em dash and its AI takeover.

The real issue isn’t me—it’s you. You simply don’t read enough. If you did, you’d know I’ve been here for centuries. I’m in Austen. I’m in Baldwin. I’ve appeared in Pulitzer-winning prose, viral op-eds, and the final paragraphs of breakup emails that needed “a little more punch.” I am wielded by novelists, bloggers, essayists, and that one friend who types exclusively in lowercase but still demands emotional range.

Source: The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations →

This tracks. It’s definitely my most-used emoji.

Whether you’re overwhelmed, overextended, or simply over trying to keep it together, the 🫠 Melting Face is the perfect pictographic companion for the full spectrum of emotional discomfort—from awkwardness to shame to existential dread. […]

Because, in the words of Erik Carter, the graphic designer involved in proposing the emoji: “Sometimes it does feel as though the best we can do is smile as we melt away.”

Source: Lifetime Achievement Award: The 🫠 Melting Face Emoji →

This was a very comprehensive survey about everything from AI tools to Terminal app preferences, CI/CD systems, and more. Very much worth the click to skim through the results. Gergely also has an interesting theory on why developers hate Jira so much:

But I wonder if the root problem is really with JIRA itself, or whether any project management tool idolized by managers would encounter the same push back? It is rare to find a dev who loves creating and updating tickets, and writing documentation. Those who do tend to develop into PMs or TPMs (Technical Program Managers), and do more of “higher-level”, organizational work, and less of the coding. Perhaps this in turn makes them biased to something like JIRA?

Source: The Pragmatic Engineer 2025 Survey: What’s in your tech stack? →

Some real talk here about the nature of work, and what’s important:

Good work should do at least one of these things: fund the life you actually want to live, align with values you can defend at dinner parties, surround you with people who challenge you to grow, or teach you skills that compound like interest over decades. Great work does several of these at once. But work doesn’t have to feel like play, and you sure as hell don’t have to love every minute of it.

Source: Why are we lying to young people about work? →

Elena Verna has some really good tips for ramping up in a new job in this post:

If you over-index on action, you’ll likely misfire because you’re missing context. But if you over-index on just learning, you’ll create anxiety and unmet expectations around you. It’s a tough balance to strike. Assuming you are learning at max velocity, here is how I deal with ‘take action’ part: start with protecting what’s already working, move onto quick wins, go after big bets, and finish with the strategy.

I am inclined to move the strategy piece up (see my post about product strategy) and work on that before “big bets” so that you can build confidence that you know what the product is, who the users are, and how it makes money. Small quibbles about the order of things aside, I agree with all the details!

Source: Here is how I approach starting a new job →

Some of the charts here are a little hard to parse, but this is pretty incredible.

In the top panel, you can see that in the 1960s, only around 14% of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia survived at least five years. Despite initially improving upon treatment, most relapsed and died soon after. By the 2010s, the chances of survival had increased dramatically: 94% of children survived at least five years.

Source: Childhood leukemia: how a deadly cancer became treatable →

Yes, amen to this.

As a manager, be honest to your executives and your reports. Given enough people in your team, there is no tactical decision that will make your engineers work faster. Your only real option is to admit early that your deadline is untenable, and replan by reducing features, or extending deadlines. Whipping your engineers to work harder has never worked, and will ruin their trust in you forever.

Source: You cannot survive poor management ↗

Great list of resources here by Pete Steinberger:

These resources will help you master the new paradigm of AI-assisted development, where agents become true collaborators that can handle entire codebases and ship production features. Each piece was chosen for its practical, real-world insights.

I especially appreciate that it’s a combination of articles (yay!) and videos (not for me!), and that he provides a nice overview of each so you can decide if you want to click through or not. Excellent curation, would recommend!

Read Essential Reading for Agentic Engineers ↗

This take on the Pocket shutdown resonates with me real hard:

“What began as a read-it-later app”, they assert, “evolved into something much bigger.” That was the whole problem: the mistake that led ultimately to this “difficult decision” by Mozilla. Pocket was a good tool. Its integration with Kobo, another excellent tool, made it that much more valuable to users like me. We didn’t need “something much bigger”. But by trying to turn Pocket into something much bigger, Mozilla actually killed it.

I feel like nothing has changed since I wrote about this kind of thing in… 2012:

This is the core of the disappointment that many of us feel with the Sparrow acquisition. It’s not about the $15 or less we spent on the apps. It’s not about the team’s well-deserved payout. It’s about the loss of faith in a philosophy that we thought was a sustainable way to ensure a healthy future for independent software development, where most innovation happens.

→ Some Products Just Aren’t Big Companies