Daisy Chain Fields – 2026

Daisy Chain Fields is a charitable American music festival held at Great Park in Irvine, California. Inspired by Lilith Fair, it was founded by American singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo and took place on August 29, 2026; Rodrigo has stated she has hopes for it to be an annual event. It featured performances by Bikini Kill, the Breeders, Chappell Roan, Devon Again, Die Spitz, Doechii, Eli, Garbage, Mitski, Not for Radio, Quiet Light, Rachel Chinouriri, Santigold, and Rodrigo herself (with special guests Alanis Morissette, Sarah McLachlan, and Stevie Nicks). The women-led line-up forwent financial compensation to appear at the festival. The event raised $20 million United States dollars in total; proceeds went toward ten charities supporting various causes such as women’s issues and labor rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Chain_Fields

Renewable Energy in Colorado

Another record for renewables in Colorado. Wind, solar and hydro delivered 56.1% of Colorado’s electricity in the second quarter of 2026
by
u/Simpleximo in
Colorado

“Renewable energy is on a roll in Colorado,” said Boulder’s Ron Sinton, who monitors the EIA data.

“The 54.7% fraction of renewable generation for the first half of 2026 pulls us up to 49.6% for the last 4 quarters as more of the planned solar and wind comes online. We got more power from solar in the first half of 2026 than from coal, at 17% solar and 13% coal! Coal has been pushed to the margins as its retirement date approaches and the planned phase-in of solar and wind proceeds.”

Thoughts on Being a Child Actor, Alison Pill in NYTIMES

But I wasn’t making all the decisions. At a time when kids are supposed to be forging our own identities, child actors have ours chosen for us by agents, casting directors and the public. We are stuck as the hot one, the nerd, the bad seed, the cute ingénue. It is difficult, if not impossible, to develop an independent sense of self when what feels like the entire world pillories you for deviating from your type and heaps praise on you when you conform to it. For professional people pleasers, why wouldn’t we give the people what they want?

I often think about the parts of my childhood I lost, the hours spent driving to auditions and learning lines after school, the times I ditched friends, vacations and class at the drop of a hat for the sake of a job. I was a misfit at school because I missed so much of it, and when on set, I played misfits, too. I had trouble imagining a place for myself in the world where I wasn’t a misfit or an outcast as a result.

I Was a Child Actor. No One Deserves That Fate.

Naur on Code as a Shared Mental Model, Google AI explains

In his seminal 1985 essay, Programming as Theory Building, computer scientist Peter Naur fundamentally redefines software development as a deeply human activity. He argues that the primary product of programming is not the tangible source code, documentation, or specifications, but rather a shared mental model—a “theory”—constructed within the minds of the engineering team. Drawing on philosopher Gilbert Ryle’s concept of mind, Naur stresses that successful software relies on an active, intuitive “knowing how” rather than a rigid list of rules. Code and design specs are inherently lossy media; they merely capture what a program does, completely failing to communicate the “why” behind historical constraints, structural exclusions, and architectural trade-offs.

Consequently, Naur views a software system as “alive” only as long as its original engineering team actively possesses and maintains this underlying theory. When the group of programmers who understand this philosophy completely disperses or leaves the project, the program is effectively considered “dead”. Subsequent developers can execute the software and even mechanically modify it, but they are forced to treat it like a mysterious black box. Lacking the original theory, their subsequent modifications manifest as disjointed patchwork fixes that introduce unexpected side effects and ultimately accelerate overall architectural rot. In Naur’s view, reconstructing this lost theory purely from source code text is so difficult that scrapping the codebase and rewriting it entirely from scratch is frequently the cheaper, cleaner option.

This perspective has gained profound significance in the modern era of generative AI and Large Language Model (LLM) coding assistants. While AI tools can effortlessly churn out complex, syntactically perfect code, they inherently lack any structural intent or broad cross-module architectural awareness. When engineers reflexively accept these AI-generated blocks without integrating them into an evolving mental model, projects quickly fill up with theoretically orphaned codebases. Naur’s work reminds the modern software industry that writing text is no longer the primary bottleneck of software engineering. Instead, the true value and survival of software reside entirely in the human developer’s ability to maintain, communicate, and expand the underlying theoretical framework.

Footnotes
  1. Reddit: Programming as Theory Building, Naur (1985) Discussion
  2. Ratfactor: Dave’s Paper Notes on Naur’s Theory Building
  3. Ingenieria de Software I: Programming as Theory Building (Full PDF text)
  4. Embedded Artistry: Field Atlas Breakdown of Naur’s Theory
  5. Hacker News: Discussion on Naur’s Essay in the Era of Autonomous Agents
  6. LinkedIn: Wesley Reisz on the Modern Relevance of Naur’s 1985 Essay
  7. Polvara: Reevaluating Naur’s Essay in the Generative AI Era
  8. Cekrem: Senior Developers as Guardians of Software Quality

 

The Rest is History – NYTIMES article on

Part of the delight of the podcast is in their mischievous, but fundamentally good-natured observations about life — its absurdities, contradictions and continuities. For Mr. Holland, the show is popular because it reveals the strange ways of our predecessors while illuminating the common threads that bind us.

“Without having consciously set out to do this,” he said, “I think it is a celebration of the inherent fascination of the past, as the best way to understand how infinite the ways are of being human.”

How ‘The Rest Is History’ Podcast Conquered the World
When two British historians, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, began the show, neither anticipated it would become the top history podcast in the English-speaking world.

American Music – Violent Femmes

Why Do Birds Sing? is the fifth studio album by Violent Femmes, released on April 30, 1991. It was the band’s last album with original drummer Victor DeLorenzo, who left two years later to devote his time to acting, and was produced by Michael Beinhorn, best-known then for his work with Red Hot Chili Peppers on Mother’s Milk and The Uplift Mofo Party Plan.

The album featured the single “American Music,” which rose to number 2 on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart during the week of May 18, 1991, and became a staple of the band’s live shows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Do_Birds_Sing%3F

Old Days of Internet – Some Remembrances

People who used the internet before 1999, what do you remember?
by
u/Revolutionary_Data86 in
AskReddit

ferminriii
Everything was new. Whatever new website you found, it was the first time you looked at it. There was no YouTube so people were just launching websites to be funny and post jokes and tell stories. You learned about things from your friends. I remember I was on some kind of email list that got emailed picture of the day. It ended up becoming a lot of what was recycled on FARK.com

Richard_Sauce
This is important thing. Like, yeah, dial tones and AOL, lol.

But the important thing was the expansiveness, the sense of discovery, the DIY/self-made nature of everything. Finding and building communities. The internet used to be made and controlled by people before it became a main street of corporately own websites. Nothing but digital chain restaurants now.

And lest you think I’m some rose tinted/everything was better back in the day type…..lots of things were worse then. Discovery was way harder, took effort. You might find a community, forum, site, whatever, only for it to die immediately. The internet was harder to navigate, harder to maintain, less stable, and oh yeah, no streaming video.

Still miss it. If I could hit a button to revert to back then, I would. Even with the trade offs.

Clear_Economics7010
No barriers to entry. Some wacko in a basement would have a website that looked more professional than a university. You would end up reading something only to realize halfway through it was the manifesto of a insane person not an actual PhD.

starkeffect
Having to learn HTML since there was no website-creation software yet.

FoodLionMVP
My friend and I went to a Better Than Ezra concert, and we loved their opening band so much we made an entire Geocities fan page for them. The band actually SIGNED OUR GUESTBOOK! We were maybe 14 years old? We were the coolest.

SnottyMonkey
What was rhe band? I was randomly listening to Better Than Ezra when I read this comment, true story.

FoodLionMVP
The band was called “Convoy.” They had an album called “Black Licorice” that was released around the turn of the century. I don’t know if they were ever heard from again but we definitely had that CD.

No-Author-2358
I first got online in 1993. There was no web browser – it was just typing on a green or amber screen monitor.

The Internet was like DOS. Except you could chat and interact with people all over the planet. Text only.