2025 Delights and Not-So-Delighfuls

(This is an annual thing )

Delights

Top & tail of the year in Latin America

Began the year in Guadalajara Mexico, and (almost) finished it in Buenos Aires (back to Maine for the holidays, but was in BA close enough that I saw xmas decorations in the summertime).

My personal ambitions for Spanish have decreased a bit recently. I have enough to get by as a traveler. I can ask people what their favorite sports team is. When people talk faster than I can understand I can politely ask them to slow down, all in Spanish. Maybe this is all I ever needed.

San Francisco!

Had never been before, but went in March for a hackathon with Mentra smart glasses. Then returned in May for Llamacon(I felt stupid going to Llamacon even at the time. But ... early 2025 you squint and maybe facebook is gonna be a leader in open source LLMs and actually kinda do some cool shit. "Llama could be the linux of LLMs"). Then returned for a whole month in the fall, and I really enjoyed my time there. I hope to either go back there or find other IRL places where tech people are congregating.

Discovering the Atmosphere

I got ATProto pilled on September 27th via Simon Willison directing me to Dan Abramov's Open Social blog posts.

I like how ATProto has challenged me technically. I admire the hard work of so many people who have been thinking hard about protocols for a lot longer than I have. It's been a joy to meet people too .

Janky xc-skiing

I grew up skiing so as an adult I really haven't done it much except socially. It's cold, and expensive, and there's lots of logistics so I don't really go out of my way to make it a part of my life.

That said! Living in Maine on a family property in 2025, I have had access to flat trails and so basically most days if the conditions are decent I'll do a little ski. It's very fun.

Piano

Similar to learning Spanish, I've been "learning" piano as an adult for a deceptively long time (part of having been an adult for a deceptively long time).

Unlike Spanish, if anything with piano I've been feeling lately that if I'm gonna keep at it I kinda need to be more aggressive about improving/doing things with it besides just learning songs from youtube tutorials. We'll see.

My Kindle

2025 I became a book pirate. I didn't know before 2025 that you could be such a thing. I feel a little bad about not paying, and I still buy books as frequently as I used to. But I now do most of my reading on the kindle. And I love it. I've should write a whole blog post just about my kindle I love it so much.

Phoneless house-leaving

Leave the phone without your house! Wait. Reverse that.

But actually, though.

2025 I got to a place where, leaving the house, it was a question: do I need my phone? And often the answer was no! Including in Buenos Aires (hot tip: a kindle has wifi for emergencies/if you get lost).

I Did Things

https://bsky.app/profile/elevatorselfies.bsky.social

https://jakesimonds.leaflet.pub/3m4hcfym3mk2p

https://jakesimonds.github.io/posts/wikisurfer/

(I also did things at work that were very interesting and satisfying and I feel lucky to have gotten to try things/learn on the job. I also quit my job in 2025. Hopefully in 2026 I'll include in the Delights section something like: "omg my new job is incredible. Second only to my amazing new partner and her dog. Also that MacArthur Genius Grant sure came out of nowhere!").

RSS!

You mean I can just have an app where bloggers who I like...when they post it just gets delivered right to me?

Not-So-Delightful

Micro-blogging

I've had a funny thing happen a few times now.

1: I discover a person who made something really cool in ATProto-land. I check out their personal website. I'm like 'omg I had no idea a person could be so talented and cool and amazing'

2: I see how they micro-blog, and I do not like it.

I still like these people! What I think I don't like is micro-blogging.

( Ezra Klein said it pretty well: "Twitter makes me dislike people I like, and podcasts make me like people I dislike.")

(While I'm up here on this soapbox: everything in ATProto is public. To say something unkind about another person in a public forum...that should be a big deal.

To talk shit about others IRL with your friends is not a big deal. I personally really enjoy it.

While talking shit thru micro-blogging can feel very similar, it's a very very different thing to say something (anything!) unkind about another human being in a public forum. Would you say what you're saying about them to every single person on the planet? Because that's kinda what you're doing.)

LLM-anxiety

Where is it all going??? I felt at times this year like I wanted to get off the ride.

Not all the time, though. It's not a bad ride all things considered.

"Am I ever gonna be exceptional at this?" / seeing what it would mean to actually be exceptional at programming

In 2021 I put my head down and said, "I'm gonna learn to code."

2025 was the year I lifted my head up again.

This year I discovered deep in my soul I want two things:

1: I wanna be a computer genius who knows everything and is widely celebrated for my remarkable computer accomplishments

2: I wanna close my laptop lid and never ever open it again and only be in the real world with real people looking at real things.