Disqus - Latest Comments for bfeld

Re: Streamline Workflow with CEOS: Claude Meets EOS

bfeld — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:26:52 -0000

Dave - great to see you here! Cool that you are deep in this also. Keep me posted.

Re: Freshell – Contributing to Open Source

bfeld — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 11:07:06 -0000

So awesome!

Re: Claude Code Now Posts to This Blog

bfeld — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 18:17:23 -0000

Yup - totally agree! It's one of the reasons I love WordPress and everything you and the entire WordPress community have done over the years.

Look for a bunch of WordPress stuff from me, since it's part of my infrastructure, and I'm going to do a lot more with it. I've had to rely on WordPress consultants and designers in the past, but don't feel like I have to do that anymore!

Re: Claude Code Now Posts to This Blog

bfeld — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:05:08 -0000

Oooh - I like that metaphor.

Re: Leveling Up in the Vibe Coding Video Game

bfeld — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 12:05:06 -0000

Tell me to send me an email if she wants some hints from someone who was a total rookie nine months ago.

Re: Leveling Up in the Vibe Coding Video Game

bfeld — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 11:58:19 -0000

Yup. It feels like Claude Code is next level. I was a Cursor fanboy for a while, but man they've got to come up with a twist to make it durable (it's not ...)

Re: Non-Transactional, Positive-Sum, and Multi-Turn

bfeld — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 09:52:11 -0000

I cover this plenty in the book.

Since Give First is a philosophy, not everyone will use it, and it isn't applicable in all situations. There are many 1-up or 1-down relationships in business, especially around fundraising. In my experience, the best investors don't focus on being 1-up with founders but instead try to approach the relationship with a long term view. And, there are definitely the inverse situations, where founders believe they are 1-up in their relationship with investors, and the best founders work to build balanced / peer relationships. If this is illogical, think of the concept where a founder/CEO says "I want to control the board so my investors can't remove me" or where a founder has super voting stock, even though they own < 50% (or even a modest %) of the company.

Being ghosted, ignored, or sidelined might be a function of power dynamics, but could also be a result of behavior. Your statement "raise legitimate concerns" is a judgement issue, including how and where they are raised. I'm not suggesting that there are formal, or specific, rules about this, but being thoughtful and considerate in providing feedback, especially when you are interested in engaging with the other person, tends to be more effective in my experience.

Please don't interpret "Give First" as an absolute statement, but rather a philosophy and a way to approach relationships and systems.

Re: Give First is a Philosophy, Not a Religion

bfeld — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 14:15:10 -0000

Fascinating observation! I need to ponder my strong view that I don't care about legacy with this statement. I don't care about being remembered for this, but I hope this philosophy persists ... forever. Plus, it's just a label on a philosophy that has existed long before I existed, as many humans throughout history have engaged in significant non-transaction, positive sum, multi-turn games (also now labeled ... at least by me ... as Give First).

Re: We Are All Just Dust In the Wind

bfeld — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 19:27:15 -0000

And just a reminder, from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkfvg1j1yg8

Re: I Have Embraced Absurdism

bfeld — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 18:54:30 -0000

Oooh. That's a good question. I guess I need to go ask the AIs.

The question I asked was, "Did you count hyphenated words as 1 word or 2 words"

Gemini said, "That's an excellent question that gets into the specifics of how word counting is done. Typically, standard word counting tools, including the one I used to analyze the article, treat a hyphenated word as a single word. For example, a phrase like "state-of-the-art" would be counted as one word, not three. This is because the hyphenated term functions as a single conceptual unit (in this case, an adjective). While the specific algorithm of the tool isn't detailed, it is a near-universal convention. Therefore, you can assume the count of 10,256 words considers hyphenated words as single words."

ClosedAI said, "Did you count hyphenated words as one word or two in your total word count? For example, is 'self-aware' considered a single word or two separate words?" I then told it, "Um - you didn't answer my question." It said, "Thanks for your patience. I’ll find out whether hyphenated words like "self-aware" were counted as one word or two in the 8,227-word total for the Wikipedia Absurdism article. I’ll update you shortly." and started Deep Research. It took 3 minutes, 15 sources, and 33 searches. The response was ... absurd ... and included the Feld.com post (this one) as part of its analysis. I then asked, "Can you give me an answer that is a sentence of less." It said, "Hyphenated words like “self-aware” were counted as *one word* in the 8,227 total."

Here's everything.

---------

The English Wikipedia page on Absurdism contains roughly *8,227 words* in its main article textfeld.com <https: feld.com="" archives="" 2025="" 06="" i-have-embraced-absurdism="" #:~:text="ClosedAI%20Deep%20Research%20took%209,came%20up%20with%208%2C227%20words">. This figure comes from an automated analysis of the article’s content (lead and body) as of mid-2025feld.com <https: feld.com="" archives="" 2025="" 06="" i-have-embraced-absurdism="" #:~:text="ClosedAI%20Deep%20Research%20took%209,came%20up%20with%208%2C227%20words">. (It excludes references, captions, and other non-article sections.) Word-Counting Method

The words were counted by extracting the plain text and splitting it into tokens. In practice, *hyphenated compounds were treated as single tokens* (the hyphen is not treated as a separator). For example, a common regex-based word counter is designed so that terms like “long-term” or “front-end” match as one wordcss-tricks.com <https: css-tricks.com="" build-word-counter-app="" #:~:text=",one%20word%20instead%20of%20two">. Thus, in this count each hyphenated compound (e.g. *meaning-making*, *day-to-day*, etc.) contributes just *1* to the total.

*Single-word count:* Under this method, a hyphenated word counts as one wordcss-tricks.com <https: css-tricks.com="" build-word-counter-app="" #:~:text=",one%20word%20instead%20of%20two">. For instance, CSS-Tricks explains that a pattern including -? causes “long-term” to be counted as a single wordcss-tricks.com <https: css-tricks.com="" build-word-counter-app="" #:~:text=",one%20word%20instead%20of%20two">. By the same rule, *“self-aware”* in the article would have been counted as *one word*, not two.
-

*Style-guide note:* For context, some editorial conventions differ – e.g. the Chicago Manual Q&A explicitly notes that one might count “32-year-old” as three wordschicagomanualofstyle.org <https: www.chicagomanualofstyle.org="" qanda="" data="" faq="" topics="" hyphensendashesemdashes="" faq0021.html#:~:text="A,war"> – but those guidelines were *not* used here. The automated count simply grouped hyphenated phrases together as one word.

Conclusion

In summary, the 8,227-word count was obtained by a straightforward tokenization of the article text. Hyphenated compounds were counted as single wordscss-tricks.com <https: css-tricks.com="" build-word-counter-app="" #:~:text=",one%20word%20instead%20of%20two">. Therefore, under this method *“self-aware” is treated as one word* in the final tally, consistent with the rules above.

*Sources:* The count (8,227 words) is cited from a recent analysisfeld.com <https: feld.com="" archives="" 2025="" 06="" i-have-embraced-absurdism="" #:~:text="ClosedAI%20Deep%20Research%20took%209,came%20up%20with%208%2C227%20words">. The treatment of hyphenated words follows common word-count rules css-tricks.com <https: css-tricks.com="" build-word-counter-app="" #:~:text=",one%20word%20instead%20of%20two"> (even though some style guides might differchicagomanualofstyle.org <https: www.chicagomanualofstyle.org="" qanda="" data="" faq="" topics="" hyphensendashesemdashes="" faq0021.html#:~:text="A,war"> ).

Re: I Have Embraced Absurdism

bfeld — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 17:22:23 -0000

I am taking the opposite approach of #3. If anything, I rebel against the "rebellion" you are describing, which is just honoring my existing (pre-existing to the current "rebellion") value system. I also don't interpret this class of characters as "absurdists". There is something much more precise going on here, but that's just my opinion, which, like all opinions, can be entirely incorrect.

Re: Steve Ballmer’s Tricks

bfeld — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 11:59:30 -0000

I encourage you to listen to the podcast. He covers all of these things along with mistakes he made and what he learned from it. He also talked about what he got right, especially around the enterprise.

It's important to realize that the board rejected moving forward with the Nokia deal. Ballmer then resigned. The board then changed their mind. There is a key nuance in this.

Finally, it's not clear that Ballmer was overpaying for Yahoo at the time, since the acquisition would have included the Alibaba stock and Yahoo Japan stock. The Alibaba stock ended up being worth about $50b at the Alibaba IPO. Alibaba stock ended up over $300 / share at its peak and Yahoo owned over 400 million shares. That's worth: $120 billion at the peak. I expect that was part of the calculus Yang used to view Ballmer's offer as undervalued, since Yang was on the Alibaba board in 2008 and knew how well it was doing as a private company (and was a true believer in Alibaba.) Even if Microsoft had held on to the Alibaba stock price until today and you don't include the dividends, it still would be worth over $40b to Microsoft.

Re: I Have Embraced Absurdism

bfeld — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 18:19:26 -0000

I love Carlo Rovelli. Hegoland is awesome. The Order of Time is more awesome. I always interpreted him as an absurdist (without knowing that word). Wikipedia seems to agree: "Thus, for Rovelli, the source of the conflict is not the pretense of science to give answers – for Rovelli, the universe is full of mystery and a source of awe and emotions – but, on the contrary, the source of the conflict is the acceptance of our ignorance at the foundation of science, which clashes with religions' pretense to be depositories of certain knowledge."

Re: Three Thoughts on AI and Life

bfeld — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 13:52:28 -0000

Mountainhead: The first half was fun. That last half went off the rails and was stupid. Oh well.

Re: Is This What Happens When People Don’t Understand How AI Works?

bfeld — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 12:37:51 -0000

Oh - that's inevitable. It has already happened with spam and phishing. Robocalls are right around the corner - like, ... tomorrow.

Re: Being Out And About At Public Events

bfeld — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 13:26:58 -0000

Fun! Thanks.

My new book, *Give First: The Power of Mentorship* <http: amzn.to="" 4cyvmtr="">, is coming out on June 24th. Pre-order it today!

Re: Substack vs. X vs. LinkedIn vs. Medium vs. Blog

bfeld — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 11:54:18 -0000

Well, I guess those are two more that I probably should try in this moment. I hadn't really thought about that, but I think you're right.

My new book, *Give First: The Power of Mentorship* <http: amzn.to="" 4cyvmtr="">, is coming out on June 24th. Pre-order it today!

Re: Destigmatizing Mental Health in Entrepreneurship

bfeld — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 17:59:51 -0000

I received an email from Zach Breslaw with a Substack post he wrote titled What is OCD? It is an excellent description.

Re: Destigmatizing Mental Health in Entrepreneurship

bfeld — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 21:04:18 -0000

Thanks! I expect that destigmatizing mental health, especially in entrepreneurship, will be one of the missions I'll be on for the rest of my life.

Re: Being Out And About At Public Events

bfeld — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 21:03:38 -0000

I'll definitely do something in the Roaring Fork Valley and/or Aspen. I haven't focused on this yet but if you have ideas / suggestions, just let me know!

Re: A Tweet, Vibe Coding, Jj, and Grok Walk Into A Bar

bfeld — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 19:58:40 -0000

Indeed. Stephenson (and many others) were way ahead of the curve.

Re: Turn Every Page

bfeld — Mon, 19 May 2025 19:30:34 -0000

I do remember the drive from Boston to Stamford, CT (with our lawyer David) and you reading every page of the final contract.

I don't remember the salary reduction thing. I presume that when we told them they fixed it.

My guess was that was a mistake somewhere because in doing over 50 deals (acquisitions and investments) with Len, while there were some modest retrades during the deal process (as with a lot of M&A as you work from the LOI to real diligence and disclosure scheduled), I don't remember anything that I'd categorize as "snuck in" or "without a rational discussion with the other side."

In some cases, I've been part of failed deals when there was a retrade, but most that didn't kill a deal were modest and easily justifiable based on economic characteristics that were misrepresented by the seller in advance of the LOI. I also remember a big early "goof" where there was ambiguity about a major economic term (it wasn't unambiguous to me, but the investment banker representing the seller somehow communicated to the seller that is was different than what was intended and agreed to in writing) and, after a lot of very angry yelling from the banker at me and Len, I sat down with the principal one on one and worked through things. It was a great early, stressful example of how intermediaries (lawyers, bankers) can make things go off the rails if the principals aren't talking regularly about the substantive stuff.

Re: Turn Every Page

bfeld — Mon, 19 May 2025 17:00:06 -0000

I learned a slightly different lesson on the shakes. One Shake Shack Shake is ok. Two is four times too much.

Re: Back in Boulder

bfeld — Tue, 13 May 2025 07:33:29 -0000

Daniel is doing great. I'll mention this to him. Grunge is for sure at the end of my musical love time spectrum. I particularly enjoy all the angry fruit named bands ...

Re: This Week In Vibe Coding Learning

bfeld — Tue, 06 May 2025 16:01:19 -0000

Other recommendations so I have them in one place:
- Figma
- Powerpoint slide designs + https://gamma.app/