Peter Gordon

Software Engineer, Mathematician, STE(A)M advocate, Transhumanist, Podcast Junkie. He/Him. LGBTQIA+ 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ Ally.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Someone actually ran the experiment behind the "remote work is fraud" claim. A Stanford economist took 1,612 office workers and split them at random: one group worked from home two days a week, the other came in all five. Six months later, their performance reviews came out the same.

The groups were split by birthday so nobody could rig it, and these weren't call center scripts. They were software engineers, marketers, and finance staff at Trip dot com, one of the biggest travel companies on earth. The work-from-home group was just as likely to get promoted, and quitting dropped by a third. It ran as a controlled trial, the same method drug companies use to test a new pill, and it was published in the journal Nature in 2024.

The same company tried an earlier, rougher version ten years before, and the fear they set out to test was literally called "shirking from home." Call center staff worked four days a week from home for nine months. Output went up 13 percent with no drop in call quality. Most of that came from more minutes worked per shift, fewer breaks and sick days, plus a bit from the quieter room. Quitting got cut in half. The clearest cost showed up in promotions, where the at-home staff lost out, probably because the boss never saw them.

One thing both setups had that the tweet leaves out: a place to work. The earlier study only took people who had a private room at home. Neither one tested getting any work done with a three-year-old and a five-year-old in the house. Trying to write code or do the accounting while solo-parenting two small kids is a fantasy, and nobody is pretending otherwise. The hold-up there is childcare. The studies measured something narrower, whether the same person gets less done from home, and the answer kept coming back no. Bloom's wider data fits this: going fully remote with no office at all gives messy results, while the clear win is the mix, some days home and some in the office.

When 137 of the largest US companies later ordered staff back to the office, a University of Pittsburgh team checked the numbers. Stock value and profits did not improve. Job satisfaction dropped. The mandates tended to arrive right after a bad stretch for the share price.

The fear has a name in the data. Every time someone ran the controlled test, the shirking never showed up in the output.

[Sesame Street @sesamestreet]

Happy #PrideMonth from Sesame Street! Join us in celebrating and uplifting the LGBTQIA+ members of our community. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

[On This Day in Simpsons History 🇺🇦 @dailysimpsons]

30 years later and I understand this line now more than ever.

#TheSimpsons episode “Homerpalooza” first aired May 19, 1996.

[𝙎𝙤𝙧𝙩_𝙤𝙛_𝘼𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙜 @sortofamusing]

Fozzie Bear and Weird Al Yankovic in 1984 and 2026 💕

[NASA @NASA]

Liftoff.

The Artemis II mission launched from @NASAKennedy at 6:35pm ET (2235 UTC), propelling four astronauts on a journey around the Moon.

Artemis II will pave the way for future Moon landings, as well as the next giant leap — astronauts on Mars.

[ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ 🛡️ @DanielMiessler]

People are completely missing the point of this feature. Most accidentally and probably some on purpose.

They stated very clearly that this obeys all blocking and content rules for your site. It’s literally the opposite of bypassing those controls.

The purpose of the system is to get rid of all the halfassed AI crawlers all over the Internet that are doing a crappy job of pulling your content.

They are loud, rude, and wasteful. And they’re filling the internet and all our logs with massive amounts background noise.

Cloudflare knows they are going to crawl no matter what.

This feature is simply giving them a legit way to do it efficiently so that they don’t clog up the entire Internet doing it in a way that it’s 1000x less efficient.

And it’s still uses all your rules for what can and cannot be crawled. And all of your other Cloudflare controls around crawling are still enforced.

If this is adopted to any significant degree, Cloudflare will be absolute heroes for reducing terabytes of crawler-slop background noise.

[Peter Gordon @codergeek42]

Cool!

[Jason Snell @jsnell]

Another unexpected opportunity 2026 threw my way: I got the call to be on @Jeopardy! Tune in next Thursday, March 19 (or March 20 on Hulu or Peacock), to watch me on the Alex Trebek Stage!

https://t.co/VLh0wsgI7S

[Peter Gordon @codergeek42]

🫠

[I Am Devloper @iamdevloper]

Why does software development feel like an infinite loop of bugs, coffee, and existential dread? Oh wait, it is.

[PoliticsGirl @IAmPoliticsGirl]

Today is the tipping point.

[ABC News @ABC]

Infectious disease experts told @ABC News that mRNA and mRNA vaccines have been studied for decades, the vaccines are safe and effective, and that the shots were instrumental in saving lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://t.co/sMHh25iFbb

[Peter Gordon @codergeek42]

@twooverK

[Quinn Nelson @SnazzyLabs]

I’m tired of people talking crap on the Nintendo Switch. No, it’s not remotely as powerful as a Steam Deck (or alternate), but it reinvigorated the handheld segment, is super thin, affordable, and makes use of every ounce of compute available to its 10-year-old SoC.

It’s GOATED.

[🎵 Tim Blais 👨🏻‍🔬 @acapellascience]

it's time to try defining gravity

[Hank Green @hankgreen]

What an achievement vaccines are. What a monument to our love for each other it is to stare straight into the face of something as horrific and unstoppable as smallpox or measles or polio or cervical cancer and say “You know what, it doesn’t have to be like this.”

HUMANS!

[🦕 Isaiah Cole Torre 🦖 @IsaiahCTorre]

Always and forever.

[Kamala Harris @KamalaHarris]

Two days until Election Day.

Remember that your vote is your voice, and your voice is your power. Make sure that you are heard.