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amac

@amac0.bsky.social

3K followers 2.6K following 2K posts

Lawyer, coder, baker. Govt (Deputy US CTO for Obama and Biden), non-profit (Trust & Safety Professional Assn & Foundation, Data & Society, Public.resource), startup person (Google, Twitter). Curious tinkerer. @amac on the other thing. Now in London.

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amac @amac0.bsky.social · Nov 19

Thanks to many great suggestions, my #InternetLaw starter pack is getting better. Please keep the suggestions coming!

If you are suggesting yourself and you are white, cisgender male & from the US or Canada (like me) please consider also suggesting someone else who is not.

go.bsky.app/HAjFEKn

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Reposted by amac

Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · Aug 20

Call for Papers! 🧵

The Public's Science–A New Social Contract for American Research Policy a Special Issue of The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Editors: Alondra Nelson (IAS) and Jenny Reardon (UC, Santa Cruz)

Abstract Deadline: Sept 19

www.ias.edu/stsv-lab/pub...

Public Science

Call for Papers Special Issue of The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social ScienceThe Public's Science–A New Social Contract for American Research Policy

www.ias.edu

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Reposted by amac

Glenn O. Brown @go-brown.bsky.social · Jun 14

As you may have heard, there’s an important birthday this weekend. We can only hope that people across the nation — nay, the globe — engage in tribute and fanfare proportional to the occasion. 1/

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amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 28

Those bits and more are some of the thoughts I wanted to get down based on a bunch of AI coding I’ve been doing.

More at:
www.bricoleur.org/2025/05/some...

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Some Current AI Coding Thoughts

I've been doing a bunch of coding with AI assistance ranging from souped-up auto-complete to full on vibe coding . I’m learning a ton and am...

www.bricoleur.org

amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 28

And, LLMs opacity + non-deterministicness make evaluation (including human) even more important, as Lili Jiang effectively argues.

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amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 28

One-shots & waterfall encourage thinking of software as products not services, which is not good.

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amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 28

AI vibe coding best practices look a lot like waterfall development, with all of its pitfalls.

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amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 27

Quick blog post about a tool I wrote* to help understand Claude Code sessions.

www.bricoleur.org/2025/05/unde...

*mostly this was guiding o3 and Claude Sonnet 4.

Understanding Claude Code Sessions

Claude Code logs a bunch of stuff via jsonl. The logs are a little hard to read but include all the requests a user makes and a bunch of oth...

www.bricoleur.org

Reposted by amac

tante @tante.cc · May 26

The narrative that #AI will do all routine and we can just focus on important/strategic/big picture things works because it tell us that we are oh so smart and special. WE DO THE BIG STUFF.

Newsflash: If your big picture decisions are not grounded in real experience they are gonna end up bullshit.

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amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 22

Claude Code logs a bunch of stuff via jsonl. The logs are a little hard to read, so I made a rough and ready parser that can also show git commits in the log timeline:

github.com/amac0/Claude...

All coded via LLM, mostly o3 & when o3 had trouble, switched to Claude 4 Sonnet (in Claude Code).

GitHub - amac0/ClaudeCodeJSONLParser at main

A parser for Claude Code's json logs. Contribute to amac0/ClaudeCodeJSONLParser development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 14

That seems wrong and typical Claude ("I found a test I don't pass, I'm going to pass by removing the test") but I don't know bandit, so I look online and find out that it is a perfectly smart thing to do and that bandit shouldn't check tests.

See bandit.readthedocs.io/en/1.7.3/con...

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Configuration — Bandit documentation

bandit.readthedocs.io

amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 14

A good example of Claude Code teaching me stuff.
Claude code says: "Let's try a different approach - instead of using a .bandit file, let's update the pre-commit config directly to skip bandit checks for tests:"
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Reposted by amac

Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · May 13

"For me, the answer now lies in refusal, the withdrawal of participation from systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging."

Today I am resigning from the National Science Board and the Library of Congress Scholars Council.

I wrote about my decision in TIME.

time.com/7285045/resi...

Why I’m Resigning from the NSF and Library of Congress

I cannot participate in systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging.

time.com

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Reposted by amac

Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · May 13

Thank you for your leadership, courage, and example!

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amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 14

... What then, is the responsible course of action? For me, the answer now lies in refusal, the withdrawal of participation from systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging."

time.com/7285045/resi...

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Why I’m Resigning from the NSF and Library of Congress

I cannot participate in systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging.

time.com

amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 14

Alondra Nelson (@alondra.bsky.social‬) is a beacon, as usual.

"To watch these changes unfold without naming them for what they are is to participate in a collective amnesia about how knowledge infrastructures shape power relations. ...

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amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 14

Saw An Oak Tree last night at the Young Vic. Most unusual play I've seen in a while and I don't really know what to think of it -- which I'm enjoying a lot. Anyhow, I'd recommend it if you get a chance to see it.
www.timeout.com/london/theat...

An Oak Tree, Young Vic review: Tim Crouch’s experimental classic returns for its twentieth anniversary

Starring a different celebrity each night, Tim Crouch’s experimental meditation on the nature of grief remains a thing of wonder

www.timeout.com

amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 12

7) this type of coding is a bit like social media scrolling in terms of dopamine slot machine (someone at Coding AI www.oreilly.com/CodingwithAI... said this and I agree but forgot who said it)

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www.oreilly.com

amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 12

"yes the tests are important, you should still do the tests and not move on if some are failing.";
5) pay attention to Claude Code and intervene;
6) Claude Code will do better in areas that you know because you'll be able to tell when it is not doing good stuff and stop/redirect it;

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amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 12

3) anything you would want to have at your disposal when coding, make sure Claude Code has and knows it has;
4) stop Claude Code often to point out obvious things -- "that is out of scope for this step", "mocking the test result doesn't mean you passed the test",

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amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 12

Published a short thing on one of my Claude Code experiments.
www.bricoleur.org/2025/05/clau...
Key takeaways:
1) be prepared to throw everything out (also, learn & incorporate git);
2) make the spec and the prompts simple -- no, simpler than that;

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Claude Code + Theater Scraper

Am playing around with AI coding. Which is fun and frustrating and very educational. Am going to post some of my attempts and observations. ...

www.bricoleur.org

amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 10

I think that's directionally right, but I'm loathe to generalize. I have been doing a bunch of programming with the models and they often are quite good on judgment-like stuff and especially so when I know what I'm doing in the area.

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amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 10

I do think that a lot of what passes for AI "intelligence" these days is really AI producing a bunch of results and skilled humans choosing whether it is worth using / done / needs more prompting to get a better answer. Deep knowledge can be extremely helpful for the human part of that equation.

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amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 9

OK, learning git wasn't so bad. I used this video by Gwendolyn Faraday, which starts very basic but gets the job done:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGOj...
then this one on pre-commit:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX6w...

Git and GitHub for Beginners - Crash Course

YouTube video by freeCodeCamp.org

www.youtube.com

amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 9

Am angry and sad about this:
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
Carla Hayden is a wonderful public servant and has been a great Librarian of Congress.

President Trump fires Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden

President Donald Trump has abruptly fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden as the White House continues to purge the federal government of those perceived to oppose the president and his agenda

www.washingtonpost.com

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amac @amac0.bsky.social · May 9

Ironically (?), I want to learn this stuff so that I can feel comfortable letting an AI coding helper remember it for me.

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