While it almost sounds good to prohibit taxing retirement savings and 401k, in practice it's written as a loophole that enables billionaires to accumulate immense untaxable wealth.
Prop 40 is a one-time tax, including a 5% tax on the amount exceeding $10 million in a Roth IRA. So a $12 million Roth IRA would have $2 million taxed at 5%, which is $100k — and again, that's a one-time tax.
California Proposition 41 and 42 advocates are dirty and misleading.
TLDR: prop 40 is a one-time billionaire wealth tax that exempts retirement savings and 401k. Roth IRAs are exempt up to $10 million.
Props 41 and 42 are attempting to block 40 by prohibiting wealth taxes. Their advocates are blatantly misleading voters by implying or saying that prop 40 or future wealth taxes may tax retirement savings.
#California #Prop40 #Prop42 #voting
https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/10/california-billionaire-tax-explainer/
Two years ago, I asked a security leader what their threat model was for having agents run their access management
I got a blank stare in return
This is about the same
For the context I wish no one had asked to exist:
https://openai.com/index/introducing-dots/
🤪
"We’re also sharing a preview of specialist dots with their own identity for access management, IT-provisioned hardware, and support for deep integrations with a company’s systems of record to allow them to take on well-defined responsibilities inside organizations."
IAM: dots
IT: dots
D&R: dots
someone who is good at the security please help me threat model this. my company is getting hacked
War Games? Skynet? Sneakers? Matrix? GladOS? HAL 9000?
No, no, no, the dystopian AI future we're getting is The Tick in AI form
Tired: "promoted to customer
Wired: "promoted to Skynet"
HOW AM I ONLY NOW LEARNING THAT MARY PARKER FOLLETT WAS GAY!?
#MPF
I plan org onsites around breaks to recharge social batteries because so many colleagues in security and software development are introverted or autistic
I didn't realize this was a skill I should advertise but now I think I should find a way to fit this in my resume
Oof, this is a gut punch of overflowing accuracy
"Each elimination looks rational in isolation. The second-order effects arrive six months later, and by then nobody connects the locust swarm to the dead sparrows."
"The Great Leap Forward’s famine didn’t arrive immediately. For a while, the numbers looked spectacular. Every province reported record harvests. Leadership was pleased. The requisitions increased.
The famine came when the real grain ran out but the reported grain kept flowing upward.
We’re still in the reporting phase. The dashboards are green. Adoption is up and to the right. Every team reports productivity gains that, if summed across the company, would imply engineers are shipping at 300% efficiency while somehow still missing the same deadlines."
https://leehanchung.github.io/blogs/2026/04/05/the-ai-great-leap-forward/
Dave Bresci presents a thoughtful and relatively balanced engineering leadership perspective on both human impact and strategic usage of agentic software development
His practical advice resonates with a lot of perspectives I've seen recently from managers of software teams
As a PagerDuty engineering leader, Dave comes from a perspective of operating resilient B2B SaaS microservice infrastructure at moderate scale, where real service availability for customers is a priority
https://www.pagerduty.com/eng/navigating-the-shift-to-agentic-ai/
Unexpected oof.
"People can do terrible things when they feel safe and powerful. Your father had probably gotten his way for so long that he thought he was untouchable, and that is a dangerous way for a person to feel."
-Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
I had a dream that I invented a wearable fungus clothing line
At first, I wasn't sure it would be practical or comfortable, but it's growing on me
Products no one asked for:
"Down Detector" but for finding ducks
While I've been writing about management, I connected the dots between some things I learned in therapy about what I need for my well-being, and my own daily practices I habitually do as a manager
Since the first time I managed a team, ten years ago, I've heard from both reports and peers and even interview candidates that they feel safe while talking to me, and that I enable them to feel comfortable being vulnerable. I think attunement and co-regulation are part of the foundation of building trust that facilitates that connection
The more I learn about things like attunement and co-regulation, the more I recognize my own intuition for building effective partnerships with colleagues. There's a lot more to it, but that's a crucial foundation I now understand how to name and describe and coach.
Do you find yourself gravitating towards increasingly stronger methods of activating dopamine spikes?
You may benefit from exploring dopamine regulation. The brain has two ways to release dopamine:
1. "Tonic" dopamine represents the baseline dopamine levels in your brain, which are typically steady but vary somewhat throughout the day
2. "Phasic" dopamine bursts are active spikes released in response to events
High parasympathetic tone helps your brain maintain healthy "tonic" baseline dopamine levels. Low baseline levels can cause reduced motivation or depression. Stress activates your sympathetic nervous system, causing hyper-reactive phasic dopamine spikes. (Chronic stress and chronic hypervigilance, like C-PTSD, can cause even weirder behaviors like depressed cortisol levels that I'm far from qualified to describe or explain.)
Intentionally being self-aware and mindful in how you engage in self-regulation and co-regulation will activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which supports dopamine regulation. In particular, it increases dopamine sensitivity (reward sensitivity), which means that you feel satisfied by smaller quantities of dopamine, rather than needing high-intensity activities to release stronger dopamine spikes.
I know you've heard people say "just take ten deep breaths" — and if it were that easy and effective, you wouldn't be reading this. You don't need to clear your mind (hi ADHD dolphins!), but you DO need to have part of your mind pointed towards self-awareness of the state of your body and your emotions. Don't change your body's state nor your emotions, just recognize what you're feeling and acknowledge that it's okay to have those feelings
Each of these techniques helps your mind and body leverage natural stress reduction by activating the parasympathetic nervous system, which reduces heart rate, blood pressure, and cortisol levels. Parasympathetic response enables more effective emotion regulation and dopamine regulation. Co-regulation can elevate endorphin levels and oxytocin.
Try different approaches! The exact methods and components of self-regulation or co-regulation that work best for you will be unique, but you will probably find high overlap with the people closest to you (because, «quelle surprise!», you meshed best with people who co-regulate and self-regulate similarly!).
Do you want more energy and stress reduction and energizing human connection, but you feel too introverted and drained to do anything about feeling exhausted all the time? I have a couple suggestions that might help!
1. Self-regulation:
There are many self-regulation methods (explore them!) but two quick simple options are splashing your face with cold water, or taking a quick breath in followed by a long exhale.
Exhaling longer than you inhale calms your autonomic nervous system by switching your brain from sympathetic (stress response: fight, flight, fuck, freeze) to parasympathetic (rest and digest).
2. Co-Regulation:
Spend a couple minutes with another human you feel comfortable being around. Make eye contact (not necessarily continuously!), talk to each other in calm and soothing voices, and recognize and acknowledge both your and their emotional states through active listening. Physical presence and mutually comfortable consensual touch can elevate the connection.
Co-regulation enables two people to mutually facilitate emotion regulation and help us feel grounded. Co-regulation also fosters secure attachment and builds feelings of trust and safety — but I want to focus here on the value that co-regulation can have for each individual regardless of the relationship.
#selfregulation #coregulation #HPAaxis #AmygdalaHijacking #ParasympatheticNervousSystem
The long-term arc of how we approach software engineering operations and resilience and maintaining operations expertise is one of the most crucial open questions right now, but we're all too exhausted to put meaningful energy into engaging with that
And then there's the further metacognition step to recognize and synthesize the many consequences of the layers of challenging patterns and problems that we're not engaging with or proactively addressing or even anticipating at all because, again, we're all too exhausted to put meaningful energy into engaging with that