David Loukidelis

I am a software engineer by trade, available for freelance and consulting. These are my writings, professional and otherwise. You can also find me on Bluesky and Github.

Browse posts by topic:

  • AI
  • books
  • cities
  • sourdough
  • web
  • Book Review: Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

    October 9, 2025

    Atlantic cod. Public Domain, Link

    The fisherman of Newfoundland never thought that the cod stocks could run out. With the benefit of hindsight, their folly seems obvious, but as a fisherman in the 20th century, it would be hard to imagine the extinction of cod. Cod had been plentiful off the coast of Newfoundland since Europeans began fishing it in the 1490s (this book speculates that Europeans--Basques and the British--were fishing in North America before Columbus sailed there in 1491, though this can't be proven). Cod lay 9000 eggs at a time. They had disappeared in certain locations many times before, only to reappear somewhere else. It was not thought that humans could possibly overfish cod to the point of depletion.

    The depletion of the Grand Banks (Newfoundland) cod fishery in the late 1980s could be called a black swan event. As someone who was born after the cod fishing moratorium was effected in 1992, reading this book helped me to appreciate just how surprising this was. The most economically important fish of all time, which had for hundreds of years been the main staple of many Europeans’ diets and contributed to the European settlement of North America, was gone.

    Keep reading
  • Book Review: Devil Take the Hindmost

    October 8, 2025

    Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.

    ― Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841)

    Lately I've been reading the works of Edward Chancellor. In February of this year I read The Price of Time, a book about how interest rates affect the economy and the business cycle. It is essentially a critique of central banks' control of interest rates, and the economic distortions caused thereby. I also read Capital Returns, which he edited and wrote the forward to, have listened to his podcast, and read some of his articles published in Reuters and elsewhere. All of this reading combined to give me the impression of Chancellor as a staunch libertarian capitalist, so I was surprised by his first book, Devil Take the Hindmost, which seems ambivalent about capitalism, or at least capitalism's ability to rationally allocate resources.

    The NASDAQ index from 1994-2004, showing the dot-com bubble.

    Keep reading
  • CulinaryWiki

    September 30, 2025

    I created a wiki which is intended to be a culinary encyclopedia. The idea came to me when I wanted to know about the culinary properties of rosemary–how it should be used, what culinary heritage it originates from, etc. The Wikipedia page for rosemary is too generic and not tailored towards culinary info. I was surprised that something like CulinaryWiki didn’t already exist.

    I won’t be able to signle-handedly provide all the content needed by this wiki, and obviously there is a good chance that it never catches on with a wider audience. But, now it exists, and I will at least use it for a repository of my own cooking knowledge.

    The CulinaryWiki page for rosemary

    Keep reading
  • Waiting For The Next Big Thing

    September 14, 2025

    I’m currently unemployed. I’m not lazy; I’m waiting for the next big thing.

    In the summer of 1998, I got an opportunity to talk with Jobs again. I said, “Steve, this turnaround at Apple has been impressive. But everything we know about the PC business says that Apple cannot really push beyond a small niche position. The network effects are just too strong to upset the Wintel standard. So what are you trying to do in the longer term? What is the strategy?” He did not attack my argument. He didn’t agree with it, either. He just smiled and said, “I am going to wait for the next big thing.”

    ― Richard P. Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters

    This famous passage about Steve Jobs describes how he managed Apple. I think one’s career can be approached this way too, and I intend to try it for myself. The next big thing is not always obvious. I expect the best thing to do in this case is bide one’s time, enjoy the moment, read widely and stay curious. Let the next big thing reveal itself in due time.

    A research paper from 1981, “Time resources and laziness in animals”, found that many animals spend a lot of their time doing nothing at all. We might have something to learn from our animal cousins. Inaction makes people uncomfortable, especially Westerners who are used to energetically attacking work. But not all work is worthy of one’s time; sometimes our time is better spent walking, reading, conversing, meditating, and exploring.

    Keep reading
  • Sourdough Bread Notes

    September 5, 2025

    I've been making sourdough bread regularly since 2022. I learned from the book Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson. Over the last few years, I've learned some things about bread making. I compiled some notes for a friend to serve as a companion to the “Basic Country Loaf” recipe from Tartine bread. I thought I'd publish them here as well.

    A loaf of sourdough I recently baked

    A loaf of sourdough I recently baked

    Keep reading
Previous Page 1 of 5 Next
Home Atom feed Art by Oleg Lipchenko