A Last Trip to Mercer County

Some months carry more weight than others. For me, October 2025 was one of those. My father was nearing the end, and I knew that getting to see him one more time mattered. It happened to be the month the GMI (Guaranteed Minimum Income) rural study counties were re-ordered, putting Mercer County, WV—my dad's county—first on the schedule.

Why Pledge to Share the American Dream? • RGMII

Why we pledged to Share the American Dream: RGMII’s $50M plan funds rural guaranteed minimum income studies to expand opportunity and strengthen democracy.

Rural Guaranteed Minimum Income Initiative • RGMIIJeff Atwood

That October trip was the last time I saw him. He knew it was coming, and so did I. There's no loss in that, because nothing ever ends.

Those experiences, especially that final visit, stay with me. Nothing was lost; everything was gained. We beat capitalism, then turned back to improve it for everyone. I am far from finished with my third startup.

The Dataset Behind the Code

I want to extend a genuine thank you to everyone who ever contributed to Stack Overflow in any way. It isn't a Starship this time.

It's worth acknowledging a fundamental fact: LLMs basically could not code at all without the high quality creative commons programming Q&A dataset that we all built together at Stack Overflow. If you doubt that, ask the LLMs themselves. Go ahead, really grill them on it. For the best results, use pro mode—those are the only decent LLM modes in my experience.

What you can accomplish with global brain statistics and a strongly curated dataset created by the people is incredible.

A Warning Worth Repeating

There is one last thing worth saying. If the LLMs end up hollowing out the communities that produce all their training data, they will come to regret it deeply.

I give these LLM and GAI companies the same advice I gave Joel Spolsky when I left Stack Overflow to start Discourse: do not, for any reason, under any circumstances, kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. That goose is the human community around your product that does all the real work.

The principle is simple. Treat the community with the respect they deserve—that we all deserve.

Thank you for being a friend, because there's no way I could have done any of this without you.