Ian Reppel

home search insights topics fiction contact about

The Cassandra Tax

Cassandra saw Troy burning before the first torch was even lit. She was ignored, silenced, and murdered, and the city burned anyway.

11 Jul 2026

Why Effective Altruism Ignores Latin America

GiveWell has directed $2.3 billion in grants since 2014, of which Latin America received 0.02 cents per dollar. Yet 220 million people in the region live in or near poverty.

10 Jul 2026

How Successful Companies Go Blind

The Mexican cavefish kept its eye genes for over a million years after the eyes themselves disappeared. Something similar happens to companies once they achieve success.

09 Jul 2026

The Emperor's New Xerox

Imitation has become the sincerest form of strategy.

08 Jul 2026

The Tragedy of the Engineering Commons

The surest way to ruin an engineering team is to believe it will survive whatever you do to it.

07 Jul 2026

The Product Manager Who Manages No Products

Nothing reveals an organization’s theory of product quite like giving someone the title “product manager” while denying them a product.

06 Jul 2026

Ironclad

Corporate wisdom assumes everyone has the same amount to lose.

05 Jul 2026

LLM-Powered Self-Sabotage

We do not need LLM-powered industrial sabotage. With humans in the loop, we can self-sabotage much more efficiently.

29 Jun 2026

Adieu, Claude

When Anthropic proved to be a liability, I replaced Claude Code with OpenCode.

28 Jun 2026

The Narcissist in Your Pocket

There is a narcissist in your pocket, and you are in its pocket.

27 Jun 2026

Lost in Compression

I have stopped reading my colleagues’ documents.

29 May 2026

Local LLMs for Zed and Obsidian

Got no WiFi or cash to pay for LLMs? Learn how to use local LLMs with Ollama and Claude Code.

11 May 2026