Singing the gospel of collective efficacy. Lovely piece from Matt Webb about how you can "just do things" to help make your community better for everyone:
Similarly we all love when the swifts visit (beautiful birds), so somebody started a group to get swift nest boxes made and installed collectively, then applied for subsidy funding, then got everyone to chip in such that people who couldn’t afford it could have their boxes paid for, and now suddenly we’re all writing to MPs and following the legislation to include swift nesting sites in new build houses. Etc.
It’s called collective efficacy, the belief that you can make a difference by acting together.
My current favorite "you can just do things" is a bit of a stretch, but apparently you can just build a successful software company for 20 years and then use the proceeds to start a theater in Baltimore (for "research") and give the space away to artists for free.
Recent articles
- How StrongDM's AI team build serious software without even looking at the code - 7th February 2026
- Running Pydantic's Monty Rust sandboxed Python subset in WebAssembly - 6th February 2026
- Distributing Go binaries like sqlite-scanner through PyPI using go-to-wheel - 4th February 2026