Bibliography

The receipts, the rabbit holes, and the things we think you should read.

Article

Distributed cognition: Toward a new foundation for human-computer interaction research

Hollan, J., Hutchins, E., & Kirsh, D. · 2000

Referenced in Anchoring Our Mental Model

Google Cloud’s announcement

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Introducing Claude Opus 5.5

2026

Referenced in Advancing AI Without Melting My Brain Part 1: Human Words

Introducing SWE-bench Verified

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Ironies of Automation.

Lisanne Bainbridge · 1983

Absolutely foundational article about human-machine collaboration.

Referenced in No Such Thing As Unskilled Labor: Further Ironies, Part II

Model selection

Referenced in Advancing AI Without Melting My Brain Part 1: Human Words

Prompting Claude Opus 5

2026

Referenced in Advancing AI Without Melting My Brain Part 1: Human Words

Streamlining change approval

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

The Maintainability Gap: 2026 AI Code Quality Research

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Using GPT-6

2026

Referenced in Advancing AI Without Melting My Brain Part 1: Human Words

Why is it so hard for adults to make friends?

American Psychological Association · 2022

Referenced in Fangirl Fiercely.

“The Effects of Generative AI on High-Skilled Work: Evidence from Three Field Experiments with Software Developers”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“The Influence of Organizational Structure on Software Quality”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Book

Site Reliability Engineering

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Writing To Win

Steven D. Stark

Highly readable guide on writing persuasively.

Referenced in Tina’s Hints For Writing Gud

Other

A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

Bret Devereaux

A gem of classical history applied to modern problems and media.

Referenced in Mythology In The Technical World

Baby Steps

Niko Matsakis

Rust!

Referenced in Anchoring Our Mental Model

Practical Polytheism

Bret Devereaux

Bret Devereaux's excellent series on why polytheism came about and how it worked in the ancient world.

Referenced in Mythology In The Technical World

Robotics — Vocabulary (ISO Standard No. 8373:2021)

International Organization for Standardization · 2021

Because words mean things.

Referenced in A Dishwasher Is A Robot

The Robot Report

Steve Crowe

Robot and robot-adjacent news. Solid stuff from an absolute workhorse of an industry journalist.

Referenced in Commodification: The Race To Zero

Paper

2025 State of AI-assisted Software Development

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Accelerate State of DevOps 2024

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

AI Engineering Impact Report

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Contrasting linguistic patterns in human and LLM-generated news text

2024

Referenced in Advancing AI Without Melting My Brain Part 1: Human Words

Diversity boosts AI-generated text detection

2026

Referenced in Advancing AI Without Melting My Brain Part 1: Human Words

Do large language models produce texts with "human-like" lexical diversity? Evidence from four ChatGPT models

2026

Referenced in Advancing AI Without Melting My Brain Part 1: Human Words

Echoes in AI: Quantifying lack of plot diversity in LLM outputs

2025

Referenced in Advancing AI Without Melting My Brain Part 1: Human Words

Insufficiently complimentary?: Underestimating the positive impact of compliments creates a barrier to expressing them.

Zhao, X., & Epley, N. · 2021

Referenced in Fangirl Fiercely.

Magnifica Humanitas

The freakin' Pope Leo XIV · 2026

No seriously, ignore the Catholic stuff and focus on the moral hazards. It's really good.

Referenced in Landing The Submarine: Further Ironies, Part III

More aligned, less diverse? Analyzing the grammar and lexicon of two generations of LLMs

Referenced in Advancing AI Without Melting My Brain Part 1: Human Words

Multivariable Feedback Control

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Reading behavior in the digital environment: Changes in reading behavior over the past ten years

2005

Referenced in Advancing AI Without Melting My Brain Part 1: Human Words

Revisiting the queen bee phenomenon: Understanding self–group distancing in women and other groups as strategic compliance within unequal systems.

Derks, B., Veldman, J., & van Laar, C. · 2026

Referenced in Fangirl Fiercely.

The ERP response to the amount of information conveyed by words in sentences

2015

Referenced in Advancing AI Without Melting My Brain Part 1: Human Words

The queen bee phenomenon: Why women leaders distance themselves from junior wom

Derks, B., Van Laar, C., & Ellemers, N. · 2016

Referenced in Fangirl Fiercely.

The shrinking landscape of linguistic diversity in the age of large language models

2026

Referenced in Advancing AI Without Melting My Brain Part 1: Human Words

“Ambig-SWE: Interactive Agents to Overcome Underspecificity in Software Engineering”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“An Empirical Study of Speed and Communication in Globally Distributed Software Development”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Coordination Breakdowns and Their Impact on Development Productivity and Software Failures”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Focusing on the Long-term: It’s Good for Users and Business”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Grounding AI Agents in Contracts: An Empirical Evaluation of Spec-Driven Test Generation”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“How to Fight Production Incidents?”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Knowing but Not Showing: LLMs Recognize Ambiguity but Rarely Ask Clarifying Questions”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Online Controlled Experiments at Large Scale”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Overlapping Experiment Infrastructure”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Seven Rules of Thumb for Web Site Experimenters”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“The Impact of AI on Developer Productivity: Evidence from GitHub Copilot”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

“Why Do Multi-Agent LLM Systems Fail?”

Referenced in Nobody Asks the Hard Question Anymore

Podcast

ChinaTalk: FCC's Adam Chan on the new robot rule.

Jordan Schneider

Learn how the FCC rationally considers things that the media zeitgeist is just absolutely losing their shit about.

Referenced in Hit Dogs Bark