Matthew Barger

Senior Web Developer

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

What a crazy photo. It’s like the Nationals are playing baseball on Mars.

[Capital Weather @capitalweather]

Holy cow! This may be the weather photo of the year.

Double rainbow, orange sky over Nationals Park Friday evening.

Absolutely amazing capture by Alex Warofka

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

I think it would have to be something related to "The Peregrine", which he considers a mandatory book to be read by aspiring filmmakers. Perhaps the "J.A. Baker Award" if named after a person or, knowing his philosophical approach to storytelling and the cinematic gaze, it could be a brief quote from the book itself: "…And Neither of Us Could Look Away…" An odd award title but something that feels completely fitting.

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

This is a really interesting idea on how to handle grade inflation at the collegiate level. Whether you are inside or outside the academy, I think it is worth some careful consideration. It’s hard to make systematic change without fueling the incentives that are furthering the problem and this is the best idea I’ve read about so far.

[Phillip Muñoz @VPhillipMunoz]

Harvard, apparently, is about to adopt a new policy to combat grade inflation. I devised my own anti–grade inflation policy 25 years ago. I’ve shared it with provosts and deans, to no avail. Here it is:
The Muñoz Plan Against Grade Inflation
The plan has three key components:

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

@JeremyTate41 I think Professor George’s X account was just hacked. (It is soliciting funds via a personal bitcoin account.) Thought you might have a way of notifying him if he wasn’t already aware. May have just happened within the last 45 minutes or so.

[Library of Congress @librarycongress]

The Library's Jefferson Building gets a lot of love, but let's take a moment to appreciate the John Adams Building, which opened its doors to the public on this day in 1939. The Art Deco space is beautiful AND utilitarian, containing 180 miles of shelving.

[Steve Jurvetson @FutureJurvetson]

It's a wrap 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
In 2025, SpaceX not only set a new record for launches in a year, they launched more rockets in a single year than the Space Shuttle, Apollo and Gemini programs did in their combined history.

CONGRATS... and so excited for what 2026 will bring!

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

I'm sure that type of value extraction is prevalent with many large tech companies.

Unfortunately, even at the smaller level, software today is built upon layers of code that the developer neither writes nor investigates thoroughly. LLM code generation is compounding that issue. The trend is having profound impacts on not only software quality and usability but personal privacy and security.

Sadly, we had something better at the start of this journey only to let a mixture of apathy, greed, bureaucracy, and myopia diminish its positive cultural impact and potency for flourishing of the person and the soul.

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

Even as a developer, it can be hard to argue against that statement. Would you feel the same if the software was honed down in a way that didn't try to monetize and interject itself into all aspects of one's life and instead focused on enabling creativity and deeper reflection? I ask as someone who's thinking through these issues, is old enough to remember that early spirit of empowerment from democratized software development, and believes that computing can still be of service to the liberal arts.

[Criterion Collection @Criterion]

❤️Wishing a very happy birthday to the matchless Martin Scorsese — a director who has not only spent decades making some of the greatest films of all time, but has been an indefatigable cinephile dedicated to expanding the horizons of movie lovers around the world! ❤️

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

Very cool. @elonmusk just confirmed a crazy idea that I had taken notes on back in 2017– that perhaps the best place to run a quantum computer was on the moon.

Here is a photo of my sketch/notes from my idea journal from 8 years ago trying to figure out (all pre-AI back then by the way) things like the temperature differences between a mobile, quantum data center in a hypothetical, clean room shipping container and the dark side of the moon. I thought maybe it was just a few degree variance but a real physicist would know for sure.

Also, while I knew it wasn’t going to get the payload onto the lunar surface, I took a stab at understanding the scope of transportation costs by trying to get a better understanding of the cost per pound for payloads riding onboard a @spacex Falcon Heavy.

I'm pretty sure most of these ballpark calculations have errors (I was pulling isolated facts from Google and @Wolfram_Alpha after all) but it was a fun thought experiment back then and a real hoot today to see Elon thinking about it too.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Quantum computing is best done in the permanently shadowed craters on the Moon

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

@JoshHochschild Every time I check out a book from Greenfield Library that has a “Presented to @stjohnscollege from Mortimer Adler” label or his signature on the title page I smile. I’m just a community patron but I feel like I won the lottery.

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

@jarango I wouldn’t recommend choosing the Made for Kids option. It really translates to “made primarily for young children” and causes frustrating issues with the app’s MiniPlayer mode. YT does a very poor job of explaining the trade offs made with your choice.

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

@jackiebensen @nbcwashington To help put the amount of water in perspective, this photo was taken from a few days prior (Sunday, August 29, 2021) from roughly the same spot.

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

@jarango I’d say “maven.” https://t.co/30S2wlMf4x

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

@MacSparky Love your work @MacSparky so let me know if you ever want to chat about it more.

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

@MacSparky I've always felt this contextual computing was the hidden superpower of the Mac. I presented on a similar concept back at O'Reilly's Mac OS X Conference in 2003. I called it the 'Poised Desktop', a flexible environment that linked all your info together. https://t.co/XFM96GgcFn

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

@akaelainesk Definitely. My oldest has been saving her money for a while and ordered herself a new MacBook Air w/ M1 last night. I’m pretty much the Yankee Candle guy who makes sure no one else suffers the same fate while crawling away. We’re hanging in there. Hope you guys are well too!

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

@Tojiro This looks like a fun project. https://t.co/UkKvByGHye

[Matthew Barger @mbarger]

@gracyolmstead #GranolaNewsletter is a delight. Thank you for taking the time to write such a lovely and thoughtful newsletter. It is a joy to receive each month.