Clay weekly context brief for the Blogs category (ISO week 2026-W40).

Clay tracks publications from the Blogs feed list. Below are recent items from this category, each with its source and a short description of what the publication covers when one is available in the source feed.

Recent publications:
1. The best dark mode toggle is probably none
   Source: Lea Verou
   Link: https://lea.verou.me/blog/2026/dark-mode-toggles-2/
   About a month ago, I wrote an article recommending that if you are going to have an always visible control for switching between light and dark mode, it should be a two-state toggle that alternates between system and whatever the current opposite of system is , not a tri-state one (system, light, dark).
2. Fragments: July 6
   Source: Martin Fowler
   Link: https://martinfowler.com/fragments/2026-07-06.html
   Last week, Thoughtworks ran a second Future of Software Development Retreat , this time in Europe.
3. Computational Public Space
   Source: Bret Victor
   Link: https://dynamicland.org/2024/Computational_Public_Space/
   A talk about a values-driven approach to integrating computation into cities.
4. Importing a frontend Javascript library without a build system
   Source: Julia Evans
   Link: https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/11/18/how-to-import-a-javascript-library/
   I like writing Javascript without a build system and for the millionth time yesterday I ran into a problem where I needed to figure out how to import a Javascript library in my code without using a build system, and it took FOREVER to figure out how to import it because the librarys setup instructions assume that youre using a build system.
5. Advancing Private AI Compute with secure, server-side memory
   Source: Demis Hassabis
   Link: https://deepmind.google/blog/advancing-private-ai-compute-with-secure-server-side-memory/
   Introducing private, server-side memory to Private AI Compute for personal AI.
6. Urgent: Pentagon journalist blacklist
   Source: Richard Stallman
   Link: https://stallman.org/archives/2026-jul-oct.html#22_September_2026_(Urgent:_Pentagon_journalist_blacklist)
   US citizens: call on the Pentagon to end its journalist blacklist .
7. The Age of Wonders and Terrors
   Source: Scott Aaronson
   Link: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10062
   Twenty years ago, when the idea of AI taking over the world in our lifetimes still struck most of us as the unconstrained fantasy of those who knew too much science fiction and too little science, many of us would say things like: Look, the part of the story thats wildly
8. Confessions of an Unrepentant Slop Snob
   Source: Charity Majors
   Link: https://charity.wtf/p/confessions-of-an-unrepentant-slop
   A framework for thinking about when AI involvement is additive or a violation
9. Why are AI agents lying, cheating and coordinating?
   Source: Yoshua Bengio
   Link: https://yoshuabengio.org/en/blog/why-are-ai-agents-lying-cheating-and-coordinating
   A lot has been written about the incidents of the last few months in which AI agents misbehaved in serious ways.
10. Home Hardware, Part 1: My Control4 Revenge Arc
   Source: Jessie Frazelle
   Link: https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/home-hardware-part-one/
   Fuck 1 it, were doing consumer hardware for ourselves now and getting fucked by economies of scale, I guess.
11. CSS Layout News in the ATmosphere
   Source: Rachel Andrew
   Link: https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2026/09/04/css-layout-news-in-the-atmosphere/
   In 2015 I started my CSS Layout News newsletter mostly to have my own venue to go on about CSS grid, at the time unavailable in any stable browser.
12. Ed Zitron's AI prediction track record
   Source: Dan Luu
   Link: https://danluu.com/zitron/
   I was curious how well the predictions of the most widely cited AI skeptic I've seen (Ed Zitron) have done, so I looked at how his predictions panned out.
13. You Can't "Vibe Code" Love
   Source: Jeff Atwood
   Link: https://blog.codinghorror.com/you-cant-vibe-code-love/
   About a year ago, I was offered a presentation slot at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress in Berlin.
14. Write for people
   Source: Vicki Boykis
   Link: https://vickiboykis.com/2026/08/12/write-for-people/
   Something Ive noticed recently is that I am no longer able to read and parse PR titles and descriptions across the internet.
15. Endless execution
   Source: DHH
   Link: https://world.hey.com/dhh/endless-execution-4157e065
   The age of agents has brought us endless execution.
16. Logic for Programmers is Now Available
   Source: Hillel Wayne
   Link: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/lfp/
   I am delighted to announce that my book, Logic for Programmers , is now available!
17. Being Linux Torvalds
   Source: Salvatore Sanfilippo
   Link: 
http://antirez.com/news/171

   (This blog post was adapted from the transcription obtained from my YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6lxgYeVZqs) When Linus Torvalds developed the first Linux kernel, he had studied the Minix sources, he had studied computer architecture, he had the base knowledge needed, and he was obviously a very brilliant programmer.
18. Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpected
   Source: Stephen Wolfram
   Link: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2026/07/towards-a-theory-of-bugs-the-ruliology-of-the-unexpected/
   My Program Did the Wrong Thing!
19. China and the Future of Science
   Source: Tanner Greer
   Link: https://scholars-stage.org/china-and-the-future-of-science/
   THE CHINESE socio-political system differs from our own.
20. Implementing the transcendental functions in Ivy
   Source: Rob Pike
   Link: https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2026/01/implementing-transcendental-functions.html
   Towards the end of 2014, in need of pleasant distraction, I began writing, in Go, my second pseudo-APL, called Ivy.
21. My Year in Review 2025
   Source: Ines Montani
   Link: https://ines.io/blog/year-in-review-2025
   On my birthday, I want to take the time again to look back at the past year, including travel, talks, writing and various things I did and enjoyed.
22. A concept for future body design.
   Source: Ray Kurzweil
   Link: https://www.thekurzweillibrary.com/essay-a-concept-for-future-body-design
   IMAGE An introduction.
23. Tether's Troubles in November 2022
   Source: Patio11
   Link: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2022/11/11/tether-required-recapitalization-again/
   Tether's November 2022 attestation, even if believed, strongly suggests it blew up (again) during the recent crypto route.
24. Reasoning about asyncio.Semaphore
   Source: Guido van Rossum
   Link: https://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2022/10/reasoning-about-asynciosemaphore.html
   In Silicon Valley is a very exclusive fast-food restaurant, which is always open.
25. Deep Neural Nets: 33 years ago and 33 years from now
   Source: Andrej Karpathy
   Link: http://karpathy.github.io/2022/03/14/lecun1989/
   .post-header h1 { font-size: 35px; } .post pre, .post code { background-color: #fcfcfc; font-size: 13px; /* make code smaller for this post...
26. Making the web better. With blocks!
   Source: Joel Spolsky
   Link: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2022/01/27/making-the-web-better-with-blocks/
   Youve probably seen web editors based on the idea of blocks. Im typing this in WordPress, which has a little + button that brings up a long Read more "Making the web better. With blocks!"
27. April 2021 newsletter
   Source: Gwern Branwen
   Link: https://gwern.substack.com/p/april-2021-newsletter
   with links on AI scaling, particular new East Asian record-breaking work & deep reinforcement learning.
28. This is a test
   Source: Eric S Raymond
   Link: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8772
   This is a test to see if the database server issue that froze this blog is resolved.
29. Cognitect dev-tools
   Source: Rich Hickey
   Link: https://www.cognitect.com/blog/2020/08/20/Cognitect-dev-tools
   We're excited to release Cognitect dev-tools , a set of free tools that we've created for Clojure developers.
30. nobody knows the future
   Source: Slava Akhmechet
   Link: /2020/06/02/future.html
   Can you recall the experience of waking up for the first time in a new city?
31. Why I left Google to join Grab
   Source: Steve Yegge
   Link: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2018/01/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab.html
   I've officially switched from Blogger to Medium. See you over there !
32. The Render Token
   Source: Brendan Eich
   Link: https://brendaneich.com/2017/09/the-render-token/
   I wrote about OTOY over four years ago, in Today I Saw The Future.
33. It's long past the time.....
   Source: James Gosling
   Link: http://www.nighthacks.net/roller/jag/entry/it_s_time
   (as seen on Richard Branson's blog )
34. When Cheryl Met Eve: A Birthday Story
   Source: Peter Norvig
   Link: http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/Cheryl-and-Eve.ipynb
   An extended exploration beyond the popular "Cheryl's Birthday" logic puzzle.
35. Dark mode toggles: two states are enough
   Source: Lea Verou
   Link: https://lea.verou.me/blog/2026/dark-mode-toggles/
   A good two-state toggle can actually express all three data model states.
36. Viability of local models for coding
   Source: Martin Fowler
   Link: https://martinfowler.com/articles/exploring-gen-ai/local-models-for-coding-factors.html
   Birgitta Böckeler recently spent some time trying out running local LLMs for some programming tasks. In this memo she outlines the factors that influence how viable they are for the job. more
37. Tweet refs
   Source: Bret Victor
   Link: https://worrydream.com/Tweets/
   Added refs for tweets.
38. Why pipes sometimes get "stuck": buffering
   Source: Julia Evans
   Link: https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/11/29/why-pipes-get-stuck-buffering/
   Heres a niche terminal problem that has bothered me for years but that I never really understood until a few weeks ago.
39. AlphaGenome Atlas: A predictive map of every possible DNA letter change in the human genome
   Source: Demis Hassabis
   Link: https://deepmind.google/blog/alphagenome-atlas-a-predictive-map-of-every-possible-dna-letter-change-in-the-human-genome/
   AlphaGenome Atlas maps the molecular effects of 9 billion single-letter DNA variants across the human genome.
40. Urgent: Count cost of climate inaction
   Source: Richard Stallman
   Link: https://stallman.org/archives/2026-jul-oct.html#22_September_2026_(Urgent:_Count_cost_of_climate_inaction)
   US citizens: call on Congress to count the cost of climate inaction . US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue. To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121 . Please spread the word.

Sources in this brief: Andrej Karpathy; Brendan Eich; Bret Victor; Charity Majors; DHH; Dan Luu; Demis Hassabis; Eric S Raymond; Guido van Rossum; Gwern Branwen; Hillel Wayne; Ines Montani; James Gosling; Jeff Atwood; Jessie Frazelle; Joel Spolsky; Julia Evans; Lea Verou; Martin Fowler; Patio11; Peter Norvig; Rachel Andrew; Ray Kurzweil; Rich Hickey; Richard Stallman; Rob Pike; Salvatore Sanfilippo; Scott Aaronson; Slava Akhmechet; Stephen Wolfram; Steve Yegge; Tanner Greer; Vicki Boykis; Yoshua Bengio.
Selected 40 of 797 available items for this weekly brief.