I Shipped a Facebook Feature So Fast Sheryl Sandberg Called an Emergency Meeting to Stop Me

https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/i-shipped-a-facebook-feature-so-fast

What made it possible was a culture of ownership.

And this wasn’t superficial. It wasn’t people trying to get political points on a performance review. It was literally: if you own something you take full responsibility for every aspect of it, no excuses, no blaming. No “I didn’t know about this.” No “the servers crashed, let me ask another team to fix it for me.” If you truly owned something, then no one at Facebook would say no—even if your idea was terrible, even if it didn’t work—because you were the person carrying the weight of the consequences.

This environment empowered very young engineers, straight out of college, to swing for the fences. It’s the same culture that let junior teams build React and GraphQL—not because a manager handed down a spec sheet, but because they saw a problem, owned it completely, and grew it because they had the authority to do so.

The Merton Prayer

https://reflections.yale.edu/article/seize-day-vocation-calling-work/merton-prayer

My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think I am following your will

does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you

does in fact please you.

Andrelton Simmons was the best defender in baseball. Then he suddenly walked away.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7322869/2026/06/01/andrelton-simmons-angels-braves-mexico-defense/

 When he’s done playing, that may be the last baseball fans see of him. It may take him a few more years, he said, but unlike several ex-big leaguers in this league, not past 40. He has no desire to coach, and if the last few years are any indication, no desire to stay in the game in any public way.

“I want to enjoy retirement for real after,” he said.

The next day, Simmons was back in the lineup. Back to being under the radar, out of the public view, but out on the field taking grounders. Enjoying that baseball, even in this different form, is finally coming easy to him again.

My year as a degenerate gambler

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/online-sports-betting-app-addiction/686061/?gift=otEsSHbRYKNfFYMngVFweLsiO3CHpZFZmczY-kuVbN0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

To humanity’s great thinkers and leaders, gambling was an impediment to an ethical life (Aristotle), an invention of the devil (Saint Augustine), and a tax on the ignorant (Warren Buffett). It fostered selfishness and a something-for-nothing ethos that was poisonous to the soul. George Washington went so far as to warn that “every possible evil” could be tied to gambling: “It is the child of avarice, the brother of inequity, and the father of mischief.”

How Russia’s War Machine Brutalizes and Exploits Its Own Soldiers

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/31/world/europe/russia-military-abuse-soldiers.html

In hundreds of official complaints, inadvertently posted online by the Russian government, soldiers and their loved ones describe a lawless and violent military apparatus that abuses its own troops to maintain its assault in Ukraine.

Norah Jones Is Playing Along with Harry Mack (Podcast Season 2 Episode 27)

https://youtu.be/F4gGroSuYWk?t=3710

Britain Should Have Read the Tweets First

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/starmer-abd-el-fattah/685469/

Starmer—and his Conservative predecessors—were right to call for Abd el-Fattah’s release. What was absurd, however, was to frame his arrival on British soil as an unalloyed blessing. Starmer was thinking like the procedure-obsessed human-rights lawyer he used to be, not the political and moral leader that Britain needs right now.

500 mile email limit

https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles

Here's a problem that *sounded* impossible...  I almost regret posting the story to a wide audience, because it makes a great tale over drinks at a conference. :-)  The story is slightly altered in order to protect the guilty, elide over irrelevant and boring details, and generally make the whole thing more entertaining.

I was working in a job running the campus email system some years ago when I got a call from the chairman of the statistics department.

"We're having a problem sending email out of the department."

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"We can't send mail more than 500 miles," the chairman explained.

I choked on my latte.  "Come again?"