Links #72

Jo Walton’s reading posts on Tor. Lots of good recommendations throughout these posts. I need to read her An Informal History of the Hugos.

If the person who named walkie talkies had named everything. Ha.

Liz Climo’s cartoons are fun.

Kottke on customizing AirPods Pro for even better sound. Fascinating use case for those with some hearing loss.

Semaphore, a full-body keyboard using computer vision. Ha. And cool.

David Merritt Johns on nutrition science showing that ice cream is actually good for you. Sort of. At least that’s the takeaway I’m going to charge off with.

Shareware Heroes, a book by Richard Moss about shareware games from the ’80s and ’90s. Can’t wait to read this.

Sarah Constantin on why she isn’t an AI doomer and why she doesn’t think AGI will kill us all. Agreed.

Spectral.js, a nice JS color-mixing library from Ronald van Wijnen. Looks useful for generative art.

David Moldawer on rambling, in context of Robert Jordan writing Wheel of Time. I occasionally do something like this with writing, though I’ve thought of it just as journaling rather than as a dialogue with myself. (But now that I’ve read Chatter, the latter framing seems potentially more advantageous.)

Adam Mastroianni on strong-link problems and weak-link problems, particularly in relation to science. Liked this. I also liked his posts on psychology being hogwash and underrated ideas in psychology and ideas not being harder to find.

Slime Mold Time Mold on reality being weird. I was also fascinated by their posts on the gender gap in chronic illness and the potato diet for weight loss and the root cause of the obesity epidemic.

Tom MacWright on AI. “I also just don’t especially want to stop thinking about code. I don’t want to stop writing sentences in my own voice. I get a lot of joy from craft.” That resonates.

Hexagony, an esoteric programming language on a hexagonal grid, by Martin Ender. “The name is a portmanteau of hexagon and agony, because…well, give programming in it a go.” Ha.

True Millennial on David Alexander’s story of conversion and getting baptized. Loved this.

Adam Stoddard on craft at scale. I suspect he’s right.

Henrik Karlsson on the borderland between essays and code, and how AI might change that. Interesting take.

Julian Gough’s The Egg and the Rock, a book being written on Substack. One of the most interesting things I’ve read in a while, about cosmology and science. Absolutely going to be reading this as it’s posted.

John Thyer on making small games. Enjoyed this. Planning to make another small game sometime. (That’s the only kind I’ve ever made, as it happens.)