Vibe Coded

They’re Living in a Dream World…

Do the “AIs” really think or understand? Are we on the verge of machine consciousness? You know how I feel about all that (lol), but more important than such discourse on X (not real life, also lol) is who is actually pushing back against the Associated Press Stylebook’s warnings against using anthropomorphizing language (Emily M. Bender will surely be pleased!). Discover more about this shady bunch, what we can do to stop them…and why humans treating LLMs et al. as entities capable of experiencing real things and existing in the real world is a dangerous fantasy. 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links How to talk about "AI" without adding to the anthropomorphization by Emily M. Bender & Nanna Inie The Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 Podcast AI Bros Are Having a Meltdown Because the Associated Press Stylebook Clarifies That AIs Don’t Have Feelings (Futurism) Contra Chiang on machine consciousness by Henry Shevlin (not to be taken seriously) OpenAI risks White House relationship with hiring of ‘nuisance’ AI policy executive (re: Dean Ball) It’s Time to Investigate the AI Labs by Cal Newport Meet the developers rejecting AI by Sage Lazzaro

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The Future of Code and Learning to Wield Political Power

I'm back from vacation—a road trip through Northern California and Southern Oregon with my brother—and I return with a clearer perspective on the things which matter to me. Yes, to this show! And also, yes to building solidarity and connective tissue within the hand-coding community. We are facing the possibility of an extinction-level event, a future where it is literally impossible to participate in the software community without being required to use agentic coding practices. How can we fight this? How can we stand firm against the onslaught of fashtech? Let's get the dialog going. The solutions are bigger than any one of us, and as the saying goes, we're stronger when we work together. 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Human Web Collective Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links HandcraftedCode.org “I'm beginning to wonder if handcrafted code is the only ethical filter required…to fight fashtech…”

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I’m Building a New App in Public

Yep, I've been hard at work on a new web software application—not for nerds, not for developers, it's for everyone. This is a new concept for me, so I'm stoked to tease a few initial details with much more coming soon. This was originally released on the Intuitive+ members-only podcast Future Insider, and now I'm sharing it with y'all. Enjoy! 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson

John Ternus is a Monster (is he though?)

Apple CEO John Ternus is a monster! He is an angel! Everyone is rushing to define this guy. And I think that says much more about the sorry state of tech media than anything about John Ternus. Here’s an episode that is not about the upcoming Apple Event, but about the people talking about the upcoming Apple Event. Because that’s how we roll here on Vibe Coded. 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links Give Apple CEO-Elect John Ternus a Chance Tim Cook won't be presenting the iPhone 18 Pro event Luke Miani on John Ternus and the Apple Event (YouTube)

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Solving the DHH Problem

This is about the Ruby developer community, but it's also about so much more than Ruby. It's about all of us, and what we can do to hold fascists and white supremacists to account. (As well as clanker supremacists, and surprise! They're often the same people!) The story of the Ruby on Rails web framework getting forked (finally!) is just one of many stories of how communities are protecting themselves against slop machinists and anti-social rhetoric. This is a good thing. 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🧭 Hire me! Whitefusion.studio 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links handcraftedcode.org Codeberg on protecting FLOSS comons from LLMs Forking Rails an effort spawned from Plan Vert open letter Rails is done (aka, feature-complete) Fresh Fusion 127: Hey, So For How Long Has Open Source Been a Nazi Bar?

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So What is Vibe Coding? And What is Handcrafted Code?

How is it that we've arrived at episode 21, and I've never actually done an episode about what Vibe Coding is exactly? Or what the opposite of Vibe Coding is for that matter? Today, we rectify this odd scenario, and I also have an exciting announcement to make: 🔗 We write code by hand. 🙌 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs Sorry, You Don’t Get to Die on That “Vibe Coding” Hill My Mastodon toot which blew up We write code by hand. (handcraftedcode.org) Slop-Free Software is So Hot Right Now (Episode 10) A Tale of Two Cyberspaces

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Questions? Answered…and Hey OpenAI, What the Hell?!

Mastodonians and Discorders ask questions about regulations in technology and bringing guests on the show, and I answer them. Then we get into the meat of the episode: what the hell was Clammy Sammy thinking? You can feel many different ways about Apple, but one thing is pretty damn obvious: Apple is a wildly-profitable hardware company with an army of corporate IP lawyers at their beck and call. Don't put yourself in their crosshair. But we shouldn't be surprised. After all, this is OpenAI we're talking about. Theft of the intellectual property of others…sort of their stock in trade. 😂 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links 👋 I'm available for hire: Whitefusion / Personal CV Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets Upgrade #628: Conspiracy to Steal Trade Secrets

The Extraordinarily Bad Vibes of Data Centers

Vibe Coded has turned 1! It's hard to believe a year has gone by already, and in so many ways I feel like I'm just getting started. Thank you, my audience, for helping it grow, for all of the wonderful feedback I've received, and for the appreciable evidence that people care about the topics covered here. Speaking of which, today's topic is a whirlwind tour through just a few days of data center-related news that is truly shocking…and speaks to the reasons why fighting (and stopping!) the buildout of slop machine infrastructure has become a unifying force in American politics and beyond. 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links Episode 1: That Pesky AI Backlash Keeps Growing Google Admits It Missed Its Climate Goals — Again — Because of AI Amazon Is Spewing a Record Breaking Amount of Pollution to Power Its AI Data Centers Revealed: landmark Scottish AI project has no prospect of meeting renewables promise Meta data center water discharges suspended after contaminating the city's reclamation water supply with bacterium Data centers emitting more CO2 than thought: study Yeah, it's a problem (Mastodon) AI Data Centers Use Far More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report “I'm almost at the point where I hate data centers more than I hate the actual technology itself.” (Mastodon)

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Every Luke Skywalker Needs a Yoda

There's a malaise in our society. Something has gone very, very wrong. People are craving mentorship, professional nurturing, a sense that someone's got their back. And increasingly, that someone is a chatbot. Oh no! What can we do to help steer people away from the slop machines and back to humans? How can we build new creative communities which welcome folks in and make them feel supported and encouraged? This isn't a technology problem, it's a cultural prob—dammit, the slop machines have got to me now! Something something moat. Not X, Y. Help! 😂 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson

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A Thief and a Liar

Many news media publications and rights holders seem to be bowing at the altar of Big AI. The New York Times is not among them. “We cannot allow AI cheerleaders to dominate the public conversation” says NYT publisher A.G. Sulzberger. That and much more covered in today's whirlwind tour of recent news, from a ban on much AI usage in Norwegian elementary schools to the specter of "workslop" dragging down corporations. And the Resistance is scoring wins right and left, blocking billions upon billions of dollars of data center projects so far this year. Let's dig in. 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links $130 billion in data center projects blocked by protests so far this year College Students Consumed by “Resignation and Despair” as They’re Relentlessly Pressured to Use AI Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school Big Tech Is a Thief and a Liar, Says New York Times Publisher Companies That Embraced AI Are Now Rotting Away in a Very Specific Way People training new AI models admit they just get chatbots to do it DOJ Makes Shock Admission in Court on Iranian All Girls School Strike Chinese vlogger just built a rideable flying sword drone

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iDeepfakeOS

Tim Cook's final appearance in an Apple keynote, so of course he went out with style and flair! Just kidding. It was so-o-o-o boring. 😴 Unfortunately, so was most of the rest of the WWDC26 announcements—that is, when they weren't absolutely enraging. A deepfake generator of your friends? Really Apple? This is what your legendary focus on UX has come to in the twilight of Cook's tenure? A Siri which is totally willing to glaze students with "It sounds great!" pablum? Really?? Steve Jobs is rolling over in his grave right now. But hey…at least we finally got our "Snow Leopard" OS release cycle. That's something! 😂 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links Fresh Fusion (my other podcast) My social media reaction to WWDC26 Give Apple CEO-Elect John Ternus a Chance All the little details Apple did show in its WWDC 2026 keynote…just very quickly She won an exemption from using AI at her tech job. The Pope's remarks could fuel similar appeals. "Chat is dead": OpenAI preps overhaul of ChatGPT

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Biases and Fallacies and Heuristics, Oh My!

Hype—any hype, but in this instance tech hype—only works because humans are fallible. We fall prey to quirks of the mind, real-world hacks which dilute our rational thinking and cause us to sink into a mire cynically crafted for us by bad actors who are more than willing to manipulate and trick others for their own gain. In this episode, I will explain to you some of these mind games: the heuristics, biases, and fallacies which are difficult for us to escape…even when we're being thoughtful and critical ourselves. Guard yourselves against endless capitalist hype cycles by strengthening your mind! Oh, and in case this wasn't reason enough to tune in…The Amazing Criswell from Plan 9 from Outer Space makes an appearance. Because of course! He's one of the greatest hype men of all the ages! 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links We once laughed at the horseless carriage…now some of us laugh at ~~outer space~~ generative AI! Availability heuristic Survivorship bias Post hoc ergo propter hoc

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The Psychological Cost of Activism Against Slopologists

It's a jungle out there. Disorder and confusion everywhere. No one seems to care. Well I do! Hey, who’s in charge here? It may seem like I'm quoting from a famous Randy Newman song, and…OK yes, I am! 😂 But this is the world we live in. Having to deal with AI-pilled morons on the regular, feeling forced to leave improperly moderated communities overrun with slop, unfollowing slopologists, constantly having to seek out alternatives to Big Tech…and then getting yelled at for picking the “wrong” alternative…whew, it's a lot. How do we cope? That is the topic of the hour. 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links Neuromaxxing Space Cadet Pinball Slow Productivity by Cal Newport

The Death and Resurrection of UX w/Ayush Newatia

Marketing has taken over product design. Usability used to mean something. Now software is becoming less "human", a symptom of a wider business culture sucking up to AI companies because of far too much capital flooding the markets. But it doesn't have to be this way. Join us for a merry dialog on the hazards of A/B testing your way into a good product (spoiler alert! you can't!), asking the why about your data not simply the what, codemaxxing, flaming Teslas, and a whole lot more. 📢 Hosted by Jared White & guest Ayush Newatia 💬 Chat with us! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links Zoomers are ditching doomscrolling and saving cinema Your AI Use Is Breaking My Brain Ellipsus (yes again…I swear I'm not a paid shill, I swear it!)

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Nothing Sus About Ellipsus

If you’re like a lot of folks now wondering if it’s even possible to build delightful, human-centric & humane SaaS products for the web anymore, Ellipsus is proof that yes it’s possible! One of the great things about Ellipsus is they have been standing with writers and creators against the onslaught of generative AI and slop. And “Our Survey on Creativity, Writing, and Reading in the Age of AI” highlights just what their community is feeling but in a broader sense, how it’s possible to build new products & services around these sentiments. One does not need to become a slop peddler in order to find successful product/market fit. 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links Our Survey on Creativity, Writing, and Reading in the Age of AI Fresh Fusion Podcast episode 129 Ooo, shiny linky! 🤩 Record-Breaking Drone Show (Guinness World Records)

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But My Fake Influencer is Very Authentic

In a phrase I never expected to utter: I wholeheartedly endorse the upcoming Chinese regulations! Yes, China is getting ready to crack down on so-called "digital humans", requiring proper labeling as such as well as forbidding any deepfakes based on real people without their informed consent. Many other restrictions are proposed as well, and in this episode I go through the details and explain how such regulations are sorely needed here in my country (the U.S.)—though I don't trust anything coming out of our current regime. We may have to wait for the political turnover, which is looking very likely! 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links The Kids Are Alright (So Let’s Team Up!) China Cracking Down on the Types of AI That Are Tearing America Apart

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Slop-Free Software is So Hot Right Now

Welcome back to the 2026 season kickoff of Vibe Coded! In this episode, I cover the phenomenon of how open source software projects are either fending off or embracing the onslaught of agentic coding services, and the ways in which the technology is splitting the F/LOSS community asunder. I just keep thinking, it didn't have to be this way. But here we are! 📢 Hosted by Jared White 💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon 🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) 📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded 🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson Links Fresh Fusion Podcast episode 128 Recording on Linux: Ardour Shame! Open Slopware List Hurray! No-AI Policy List Hurray! EVi (vim fork) on Codeberg Shame! systemd discussion on disallowing genAI: Closed as not planned

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Brace Yourselves! (The Crash is Imminent)

The state of play in late 2025 and my expectation that the bubble will burst in 2026. The “Agentic Age” did not materialize this year. Anti-AI activism is heating up…people are noping the f out of the Torment Nexus. Gen-Z and Gen Alpha are turning against the slop machines. That's AI! goes the new lingo. Microsoft's AI CEO is getting pummeled online and a post-Windows PC landscape looking increasingly likely. This and a whole lot more, right here on Vibe Coded. Hosted by Jared White Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider) Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded Theme music by Ben Elson Links NEW! Human Web Collective: a forum for the AI-Free movement (join today for free!) No ~~Kings~~ Benevolent Dictators for Life Almost all major Windows 11 core features are broken?! AI vegans: Why Gen-Z are turning against chatbots Building AI the Firefox way: Shaping what’s next together Last year’s AI feedback thread 😂 Better Offline by Ed Zitron

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The Pro-Craft Mission (and Refuting Stupid Arguments), Part 1

The same tired, clichéd arguments keep coming up over and over again why we should all welcome our new robot overlords, so I'm here to knock 'em all down and push back systematically…but most importantly, make the case for the Pro-Craft Movement and how vital it is that we preserve and champion the historical & emotional components of Human Creativity. Hosted by Jared White Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded Theme music by Ben Elson Links NEW! Human Web Collective: a forum for the AI-Free movement AI Podcast Start Up Plans 5,000 Shows, 3,000 Episode a Week

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The Trashy Aesthetics of Slop

I’ve talked in length about the ethical quandaries surrounding generative AI, from the industrial-scale theft of intellectual property to the ways it harms both the natural as well as digital environments due to its extractive nature. But I also want to talk about the aesthetics of the slop output we have to contend with now on a regular basis, and I don’t just mean the political side of it—I and many others have been sounding the alarm that genAI lines right up with aesthetics of fascism. Rather, I want to explore the relationship between the slop machines and true art forms, and why we just aren’t seeing anything meaningful and lasting being produced using these problematic technologies. Hosted by Jared White Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded Theme music by Ben Elson Links NEW! Human Web Collective: a forum for the AI-Free movement A Tale of Two Cyberspaces “100% of the music I love listening to was produced without the aid of slop machines” 'AI slop': Emily Portman and musicians on the mystery of fraudsters releasing songs in their name Embrace Generative Art, Reject Regurgitated Slop (podcast) A Photo with Paint FX is Not a Painting, But It Could Be Something Else 404 Media Podcast: Shrimp Jesus The AI vibe shift is upon us (CNN Business) Kat Tenbarge: Sam Altman's Dyson Sphere 😳 Cat soap operas and babies trapped in space: the ‘AI slop’ taking over YouTube

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