It's July already

Woah. Or Whoa.

I mean, almost. July emotionally, if not actually. The summer solstice has come and gone. These are facts. If nothing else, we are all about facts at Three Point Four Media. Hard truths, obvious answers. We are not picky.

In other news, the World Cup has been fun. Recent TPF Q&A participant Neil Buethe predicted this turn to excitement, but it really is impossible to kill. The games are high scoring, the tourists loving our giant houses and endless refills and whatever this is, the whole thing coming together nicely.

Perhaps a problem vis-a-vis FIFA being garbage, but what are you going to do?

Finally, I guess we spell it differently now.

An article

A tour de force profile of SBF, who remains the same person he’s always been.

Often when we are talking on the phone, Bankman-Fried confesses, he is on his tablet playing the game, just as he was on his computer half-playing Storybook Brawl virtually until the moment he was arrested at his Bahamas apartment complex in December 2022.

An exceptional story about an exceptional person. The highest of recommendations.

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An academic paper

We begin:

Of all the monsters who fill the nightmares of our folklore, none terrify more than were-wolves, because they transform unexpectedly from the familiar into horrors. For these, one seeks bullets of silver that can magically lay them to rest.

What a start! In that way that one does, I stumbled onto “No Silver Bullet — Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering” the other day. A seminal paper from Frederick P. Brooks Jr. who won a Turing Award and managed development at IBM. An argument for why human-led software development will continue to exist in the world of AI, and might be even more important than before.

The world is a complicated place.

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A coffee shop

Powerhouse Arts is “Brooklyn’s Batcave Reborn as Gotham’s Art Factory.” Inside the lobby is the aptly named Turbine Cafe, a lovely space for sitting. They have excellent yet comically small breakfast burritos from some local proprietor and very solid coffee. Getting there is not easy, a confusing maze of occasionally signed alleys, but what are you going to do? Then I wandered around the art exhibition upstairs. I did not buy anything. Will I be back? Maybe. Will I tell people I went to a cafe inside the giant industrial space that’s visible from many parts of my neighborhood? Absolutely.

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A project

We are heads down on a bunch of stuff right now. Being busy is good. So is sleeping. Make time for both.

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A triathlon

The 2026 Wyckoff/Franklin Lakes Triathlon. Kona for people who want to drive from Brooklyn in the morning, race a sprint tri, and be back by 9:05 a.m. An enjoyable experience. About two and a half minutes faster than my time in a similar length race a couple years ago. If you squint, I came in second because one person I lost to was actually a team of three doing a relay and the person who finished second beat me by 21 seconds but I got lost on the bike course, which cost me 90 seconds. I even had a map on my bike computer, which I ignored. I need a coach specifically for directions.

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A Q&A

Another one next week.