2026 – Hot Year

Other accounts are more reliable. July 2026, for instance, tied with July 2024 for the hottest July since modern record-keeping began in 1850. Thanks to this year’s unusually powerful El Niño and climate change—which is widely believed to be strengthening that El Niño—2026 is very likely to be the hottest year on record, surpassing the previous record, set in 2024. If that turns out be the case, 2026 will have been the latest in a long string of record-setting hot years; as the World Meteorological Organization reported back in January, the last 11 years have been the hottest 11 years on record.

Goodbye to the Least Apocalyptic Summer of the Rest of Your Life
Kate Aronoff
The New Republic

Girl as Seen from Train / Vision of Alternate Life – Proust Quote

I needed her to notice me. She did not notice me, so I hailed her. Her tall person was topped by a face with a complexion so golden-pink that I seemed to be seeing her through the radiance of a stained-glass window. She turned and walked back toward me: I could not look away from her face, which, as it neared and grew larger, was like a sun that did not dazzle the stare, no matter how close it came, which you could look straight at as it deluged you with its blaze of glorious golds and reds. Her eye, which had a piercing gaze, met mine; but just then, as the guard and stationmaster were shutting the doors, the train started to move. In broad daylight now, I watched as she walked away from the station and along her footpath: I was traveling away from the dawn. Whether my excitement had been caused by the girl, or whether it had been the cause of much of the enjoyment afforded me by the nearness of her, she was so much a part of my feeling that my desire to see her again was above all the longing to retain something of that excitement, not to let it die, not to be severed forever from the one who, though she was unaware of this, had been part of it. It was not just that this feeling was pleasant. It was especially because (as the tightening of a string or the more rapid vibration of a nerve produces a different note or color) it gave a sharper tone to what I saw, gave me a part to act in an unknown and infinitely more interesting world; and for as long as the gathering speed of the train allowed me to see the beautiful milkmaid, she was like a part of some other life, separated from the one I knew by a narrow borderline, another life, in which the feelings transmitted to me by things were not the usual ones, and the leaving of which felt like a sort of inner death.

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 2
Marcel Proust

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