Ron Bronson

@ronbronson

Public mechanics, speculative civics, post-HCD, platforms, governance, decision rights. HS 🎾 coach. Asst. Prof. of Practice in Urban Tech, UMich. 📍PDX ronbronson.com

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Ron Bronson@ronbronson· 28d

Glad I was able to find this from my 2024 airbnb in Michigan

A printed sign mounted on a dark wall asks, “Are We Earning a 5-Star Review?” beneath five gold stars. The sign explains that short-term rental platforms treat ratings below 4.6 as negative and asks guests to contact the host to resolve any issues before leaving a review. At the bottom, it provides a suggested rating guide: five stars for “I enjoyed my stay here,” four stars for “There are many issues to fix,” three stars for “Major problems with my stay,” two stars for “This should not be listed,” and one star for “I left early it was so terrible.” The sign ends with “Thank you.

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· 28d

i can't resist the 90s ass chain era sharables

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· 28d

A few miles away I saw Weird Al Yankovic with my best friend's since middle school for his birthday. he was a big fan back then & never saw him live. Weird Al has that old school performer work ethic, 2 hr set, costume changes, backing band & everything. A testament to timing & consistency.

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jul 10

on today's episode of service design in everything: GEICO is paying my claim to pay to me & I pay the dealership and the app goes beyond just EFT (or a paper check) one option is debit I can just imagine how well this works for unbanked people. Great affordance surely informed by research!

Mobile webpage for receiving an insurance payment. A heading reads, “Choose how you want to receive your payment,” followed by instructions that the entered information must match bank records and that a check will be mailed if the payment is not accepted by the email’s expiration date. Payment options are grouped by speed: under “Money in minutes,” radio buttons offer debit card transfer to a bank account or PayPal account transfer; under “Money in days,” a radio button offers bank account transfer in 1–2 business days. The page is open in Safari on ay.geico.com.

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jul 7

They played Aerials It was pretty metal

An outdoor concert takes place beneath large leafy trees in a neighborhood park. A musician in a black-and-white patterned outfit plays a marimba at center stage while a seated cellist performs beside her. An audience fills rows of chairs in the foreground, with microphones, trees, and apartment buildings framing the intimate performance

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jul 6

The opening lyrics to motion city soundtrack 2003 song.
the irony here is the song starts with "i'm on fire.."

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jul 5

Today's plane read

Michael Pollack's new book Sidewalk Nation; the life and law of america's most overlooked resource

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jul 4

Taps the sign.

A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jul 4

A crowd gathers on a grassy waterfront at dusk to watch a live music performance on an outdoor stage lit with blue lights. A green steel lift bridge spans the river in the background, its lights reflecting on the water beneath a deep blue evening sky. Trees frame the right side of the scene, creating a lively festival atmosphe

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 30

What a wild romp truly 1 of 1 cyberpunk. Glad no one has ruined it with a remake, total period piece

I want to get online. I need a computer. Screen cap from the movie

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 29

I took this a step further and started doing performance revews with ai agents, obviously YMMV and only works best in the same session not asking a future agent about past work, same with AARs I generate them on meaningful PRs or feature adds. Agnostic to the LLM platform. They follow the template

Human-Agent Performance review, where the human steers the agent through questions about what it did in a segment of work

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 29

Before I started using them in work projects, it began with hobbyist things. As a long-time sports text simmer/one-time game designer (of a real sport) I built myself a bunch of sims that are just for me. Having AARs in the repo really cut down on agent spinning when working w/multi-agent teams

an example of an AAR from my repo for my hybrid baseball sim

Screenshot of my fictional college team tennis sim

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 29

The Soviet AI killed its creator and so he had to convince the officemate that she had to be his mistress so they could talk, but Dr. Forbin has to beg the AI for privacy and have somewhere to talk. Apparently, a cocktail bar wouldn't have delivered these screens

The computer screen fills with the statement, “THERE ARE MANY KINDS OF LOVE,” in bold red lettering on a dark CRT display, framed by the machine’s industrial metal housing.

A large CRT monitor asks in bright red capital letters, “HOW MANY TIMES A WEEK DO YOU REQUIRE A WOMAN,” presenting Colossus’s clinical, impersonal questioning in a minimalist control room.

The monitor begins a new prompt with the words, NOT WANT REQUIRE,” as an off-screen speaker starts to answer, “My— My emotional life,” shown in subtitles at the bottom of the frame. The scene highlights the tense exchange between the supercomputer Colossus and its human operator.

A vintage CRT monitor displays glowing red text reading, “AGREED A WOMAN FOUR NIGHTS A WEEK,” while built-in shelves and another monitor sit blurred in the background, emphasizing the film’s retro-futuristic computer interface.

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 28

They're all agape at how smart Colossus is & reading the print outs and how the machine is learning stuff they don't know. I'm impressed by the set design of this silly thing. Nobody knows how the two AIs actually work, but Forbin's rhetoric indistinct from a modern SV ceo

A flat-screen TV mounted against a beige wall displays a scene from a vintage film or TV show. Three people stand closely together in an office or laboratory setting: a man in a light blue shirt leans over a large sheet of paper in the foreground, a woman in a mustard-yellow cardigan stands beside him, and a man in a gray suit with an ID badge stands behind them. White subtitles at the bottom read, “It’s like five years at Caltech in 15 seconds.” Reflections are visible on the TV screen, and part of a houseplant appears in the lower-left corner of the photo.

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 28

Their TV phones were high tech, no latency. Their AI? Already taking over the world 20 minutes in.

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 28

Me voice commanding my IDE I guess

Screen cap from Colossus, 1970 sci-fi film about an intelligent AI

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 28

Federal Baseball (1922) which gave major league baseball an anti-trust exemption. no other pro league has. Also, the FDA would be a better metaphor, but realistically it's Freddie Mac meets Experian meets Salesforce. Living in an arcade of intelligent weapons. Kōbō Abe’s Inter Ice Age 4

However, now the risks are clearly here. It is time to go beyond transparency to more serious and binding regulation of AI. I believe the best analogy, at least at the current stage of the exponential, is to cars, airplanes, or drugs—powerful technologies essential to the modern economy, but capable of killing large numbers of people if designed or operated poorly. I therefore believe we should model AI regulation on agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Frontier AI models, like airplanes, should be required to go through technical testing and auditing, and their release should be blocked or reversed as a threat to public safety if they do not meet high standards of safety. I am grateful to see the Trump administration’s Executive Order move incrementally towards a greater role for government in AI, though Anthropic’s proposal recommends even further action. Our proposal includes the following elements:

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 26

Platformisation: I want something→ I open the platform → the platform fulfills the demand Hyperplatformisation: I am uncertain, lonely, busy, anxious, or simply open to suggestion → the agent surveils my situation → the agent proposes a path → the platform ecosystem fulfills the path

mckinsey report on "the automation curve in agentic commerce"

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 25

should be on the radar of all city councilors / legislators / mayor as they negotiate. I'm not sure a single one of them is aware of how pervasive the issue is and how solvable it is. You want kids off phones? Welp, one of many ways to do it.

Salem student athletes will once again have to pay to play sports at school as a three-year athletic fee hiatus ends in the fall — but district leaders and nonprofit groups say fees shouldn’t pose a barrier for any student who can’t afford them.

The Salem-Keizer School District is reinstating fees for middle and high school athletics after covering the cost of sports programs through grant funding since 2020.

High school students will pay $125 for the first sport in a school year, $75 for a second and nothing for a third. Low-income students would pay $50 per sport for the first two.

Middle schoolers would pay $40 per sport for the first and second sports in a school year, and nothing after. Low-income students would pay $20 per sport for the first two.

The change will affect over 8,000 student athletes at district middle and high schools.

Athletic fees were refunded to families in the spring of 2020 when schools shut down for Covid.

During the next three school years, district leaders used state grant money from the Student Investment Account to cover the cost of sports programs for families.

“Because we had that ability, we took advantage of it,” said Lara Tiffin, the district’s coordinator of athletics and activities.

Local schools offered fewer sports programs during the 2020-21 school year when classes were held mostly online, and waiving fees cost the district about $390,000.

West Linn

Athletic/Activity Fees for 2025-26 School Year

We have an important update regarding athletic and activity fees that will be in effect starting this fall season for the 2025-26 school year. We are implementing these fee adjustments to accommodate for the cost of our programs, to increase clarity, and to create better equity across our co-curricular programs.

Starting for the 2025-2026 school year, the cost for athletic and activity programs will change to the following:

$250 for each sport a student participates in (OSAA sports & lacrosse)

$250 for each activity a student participates in (OSAA activities, Theatre & Robotics).

The family cap will be set at $1,000 (this means that the maximum amount a family will need to pay is $1,000 total if they have multiple students participating in athletics/activities).

There will continue to be many other clubs and opportunities available to students at each high school where these fees are not required.

Families who choose to pay through MySchoolBucks will be charged an additional service fee of 4.6%. To avoid this additional fee, please make payment directly to the Bookkeeper's Office.

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 24

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 21

Seems fitting for the scent of the day on an unusually cool summer morning for "To My Father" from Vilhelm, an underrated gem #sotd #fragsky #scentsky

The scent notes to vilhelm perfumems to my father fragrance

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 19

Dang inflation has reached the swedish fish economy

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 18

This morning's pre-meeting feature loose-leaf tea is this delightful Wuyi Black tea. It's bold, not as malty but sturdy for people (never me) who take milk in their tea.

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 17

Unintentionally doing local, participatory events annually I guess. 2022: Death to UX participatory design event for PDX DF 2023: A Parliament of Neighbors at Lloyd Center Mall chimaera art gallery popup (www.ronbronson.dev/projects/par...) 2024: Design For The Public 2025: PDX Digital Corps

PDX Digital Corps closing event last July

Design For the Public 24 Day 1 at Revolution Hall Show Bar

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 15

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 14

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 12

Janette Lepistö, all-time women's RBI leader in history with 844 RBI in just 270 career top division games. Truly a 1 of 1 hitter, run producer and leader. #pesis

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 12

Life online in 2026 is just qualtrics surveys asking you if you're a happy user

a screenshot of a survey on some website asked "are you a happy user?"

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 11

I'm wearing a New York Mammoths (fictional team) cap from the 1973 film "bang the drum slowly" and even in notoriously antisocial Portland people are stopping me on the street to talk about the Knicks. Wild

Ron Bronson@ronbronson· Jun 10

I didn't think I'd have such a fun reaction to Puputti coming back to Vimpeli just to break the home run record, but it's been so fun having him back. #pesis 113 HRs in 706 games. 3583 career hits, while batting .660. It's not a 1:1 (HRs in #pesis are triples) but still.