you know that feeling when you're driving or biking in heavy rain, or in icy conditions, or in strong wind, and you can tell the wheels are no longer in contact with the ground in a way that completes the usual tight feedback loop between how you operate the controls and how the motion of the vehicle responds? that sense you have of floating or drifting, and your model of the system you were controlling your place in until a moment ago is at least temporarily void?
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@brennen the feeling usually lasts only briefly before you hit something...
@brennen thanks this is the most accurate description of how this feels I've read to date. I hate it so much.
@kevingranade yep, it's obliterating a vast chunk of my sense of self/capability and fucking up my entire relationship to the world. having a fantastic time in general.
anyway i think i crossed the "the majority of code i review will be slop from here on out" threshold today.
i work with conscientious people, so "slop" is an imprecise description. a good portion of this stuff will have been evaluated by people equipped to understand it. but there's no longer any real way to know what's been written directly by a human, and it's clearly less and less as time passes.
it's windy. the wheels are floating on black ice.
@brennen I personally don't have the mental strength to deal with that, I would be rejecting those patches all the time and getting fired
@nicolas17 a lot of my mental strength is concentrated on the mortgage check continuing to clear for the foreseeable future
@brennen Maybe it will all come to an abrupt halt when Big English fails (management seems to be convinced) and the communities figure out we are spending as much on gen ai slop as Littler Mendelson “advice”.
@bd808 @brennen I've been surprised at the lack of discussion in general around AI use for MediaWiki code. As in, hardly anyone seems to be saying that we should completely avoid it, unlike in some other foss projects.
Personally I think there should be a ban on using it for commit messages and discussion threads, but I must be in the minority there!
@samwilson @brennen The decision was made without consultation. My efforts to nudge the ship in a different direction were deflected. The one stand I tried to take later quickly turned into an opportunity to conform or resign. I chose not to resign.
@samwilson @bd808 this currently feels like a thing that one might be able to start a serious fight about, given enough rhetorical effort, but much less like a fight one could win in any useful sense.
@brennen yeaaaaah. Excellent visceral analogy.
Similarly, https://cosocial.ca/@mhoye/117248944182197612 / @mhoye → https://exple.tive.org/blarg/2026/09/10/the-wind-the-wind/
@brennen Great analogy!