Not sure what were the author's references, but "The Cool MIT Professor" reminds me of Daniel Lemire (https://lemire.me/blog/, even though he's not from MIT) and "the weird dude who writes HTML" reminded me of Dan Luu (https://danluu.com/).
Both blogs are amazing and you should consider visiting them if you're interested in performance stuff.
Both blogs are amazing and you should consider visiting them if you're interested in performance stuff.