Interesting Things I've Read (or Watched) /

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read/Watched: Link Dump #1

• March 16, 2025
• thoughts  
• reviews  
• linkdumps  
• jobs  
• fashion  
• fiction  
• AI  
• computer science  
• workers  
• education  
• poetry  

I keep coming across articles (and occasionally videos, and occasionally fiction or poetry) online that I want to share and comment on, but I recently realized that I will never have time to fully comment on everything I read that I find interesting. So I’m pulling another page out of Cory Doctorow’s book: here is a dump of links to cool stuff, along with some (hopefully very) brief descriptions of why I found these articles interesting. (Also, here is a link to a link dump where Doctorow ¹ talks about link blogging. It might be interesting for you to look at.)

I reserve the right to more fully review any of these at a later date, of course.

Your Job is Inherently Wrong and Your Job is Still Inherently Wrong

A two part series about how most office jobs bear close to no resemblance to their job descriptions and about how many job interviews are disingenuous, especially in tech.

Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber, by Susan Fowler Rigetti

Susan Fowler Rigetti’s story about trying to fight sexual harassment at Uber. It’s a horrifying read. Tl;dr: it did not go very well (how shocking).

Today is the Best Time in Fashion, by Derek Guy

Derek Guy runs a Twitter account with the handle @dieworkwear and I stumbled upon this blog post there. (His blog is also called Die, Workwear! I think it is great. I think all of Deruk Guy’s fashion writing is great.) This article is a detailed rebuttal of the claim that fashion used to be better, back in the old days. I LOVE this article – it’s full of context and fashion history and is in conversation with so much other writing about fashion. I never knew menswear could be so interesting until I followed Derek Guy. Honestly, he is the only reason I’m still on Twitter.

Insta, by Kelsey Robbins Lauder

A short story written in the form of Instagram posts. This one hits hard. (It also won a bunch of awards, I think.)

Ge Wang: GenAI Art Is the Least Imaginative Use of AI Imaginable

Ge Wang, a professor at Stanford who does research at the intersection of music and computer science, talks about how he’s realized over time that having AI make art for us might be missing the point – though he’s still not entirely sure what “the point” even means.

Computer science taught me that books weren’t important. It was wrong., by Amy J. Ko

Amy J. Ko, a professor at the University of Washington, reflects on how undervalued the practice of reading and writing books is in computer science. (This is a sentiment I especially relate to.)

Don’t Major in Computer Science, by Varun Shenoy

Varun Shenoy argues that students shouldn’t major in Computer Science, because it’s the boring option and anyone can take CS courses and learn to code. Instead, they should take major in broader fields such as physics, math, philosophy, or engineering. I have major issues with this article, but agree with some of the sentiment – the main part I argue with is that being too risk-averse when it comes to your educational choices is counterproductive in the long-term. Anyway, I’d really like to write more long-form thoughts about this article, because I have very nuanced and mixed feelings about it.

Networking on the Network: A Guide to Professional Skills for PhD Students, by Phil Agre

Phil Agre, a prof at UCLA, wrote this article about how to navigate the research world as a grad student (and beyond) back in 2005. This is a novel length read, and parts of it are somewhat outdated (for example, it’s basically impossible to get an academic job now in general even you are really good and do everything he says), but it captures so much of the ethos of academia that I think this should be required reading for anyone interested in an academic career. It wasn’t a particularly comfortable read, either. In any case, apparently it’s a classic (in some circles, at least).

Applying to Ph.D. Programs in Computer Science

Mor Harchol-Balter, a professor of CS at CMU, wrote this guide. I’m mainly putting this here so that I don’t forget about it.

Apple to EU: “Go fuck yourself”, by Cory Doctorow

Doctorow examines why the GDPR extinguished lots of small companies who couldn’t afford to keep up with the privacy regulations but did pretty much nothing to large corporations like Google and Facebook that are clearly flouting the rules. Also, there’s a really interesting analysis of Apple’s malicious compliance to the Digital Markets Act in the US.

The future of Amazon coders is the present of Amazon warehouse workers, by Cory Doctorow

Doctorow makes an interesting observation about how surveillance and the erosion of workers’ rights happens slowly, to people with less social power first, is cyclically refined to be made more palatable, then goes back up the food chain. Of course, if you know anything about Amazon warehouse workers, you likely are aware that they are treated horribly. Here, Doctorow makes a chilling argument that Amazon’s end game is to turn being a software developer into an AI code reviewer, continuing Amazon’s practice of turning humans into algorithmically controlled reverse centaurs. He makes a good argument, I think. This was a chilling read.

Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year, by Kim Liao

This is the classic article about why writers should aim to be rejected 100 times a year. Most writers have either read this article, or at the very least, heard this advice, I think. I appreciate the sentiment, but I disagree with it. I do think aiming for such high goals can be helpful or motivating for some people, but I also think that sending out that many submissions in a year is kind of insane and perpetuates an idea that to be a real writer, you need to be incredibly prolific, or that you’re somehow lesser if you’re not constantly writing. How much does she write to be able to submit that much? Idk, some of us have lives. In any case, this is a classic article. Go make your own opinion about it.

How Translation Works, Book Title Edition, by John Scalzi

This super short blog post illuminated a lot of things I never understood about reading books in translation, like why entire cultural references might be changed or why sometimes, when reading translated books, entire locations or references to places might be changed. Translated books are almost never a word for word translation of the original, and I used to find reading the same book side by side with its translation uniquely frustrating for that reason. But looking at translation as the process of capturing the vibe of the book in such a way that it can be understood by a completely new audience made me understand why it’s done that way a little bit more.

Class Is Canceled Until Further Notice While I Do My Job, by Laura McCullough

This is satirical piece about what a professor’s job actually looks like today (sidenote: McSweeney’s publishes lots of great satire, and it’s a website well worth looking at periodically). They also published an accompanying interview with the author, Behind the Tendency Classics: Laura McCullough’s “Class Is Canceled Until Further Notice While I Do My Job”. In it, she gives her take on the intent behind the piece, on her writing process (which involved keeping an ongoing list of administrative task that were keeping her away from research and teaching), and talks about the responses other faculty members had to this piece (they felt uncomfortably seen). I feel like most undergrads, and most people, in general, have a pretty terrible idea of what professors actually do and what their lives actually look like. Reading something like this should be at least somewhat illuminating. I’ve also taken to frequenting the r/Professors subreddit, which is even more illuminating, and is honestly quite a depressing place.

Two Poems by Liam Burke

No spoilers, but I love, love, love the first poem here, and I’ve been trying to relocate it for a long time since I first read it and closed the browser tab. These are so playful. I definitely want to steal at least some of this energy for my own work.