Links #147

Mandy Brown on thingness. “Screens are inconstant, unsame, unstable. A screen demands my attention—not only via the regular chirping of notifications, as hungry and unrelenting as a baby bird—but through that fundamental inconstancy: I know something may have changed since I last looked at it, know I cannot trust it to remain the same, to be steady or faithful.” Yes. This part was also good: “I want to suggest instead that turning away from screens is turning towards something else. It is not an absence but a presence, not an empty hand but one with a hold on something solid and true.”

Mason Currey quoting Robyn saying “the person who can be uncomfortable the longest will write the best song.” This framing has stuck with me and seems valuable, at least for people like me who often flee creative discomfort. It’s something I want to try to learn: to be okay with feeling uncomfortable, swimming in it rather than hopping out and toweling off.

Tad Walch on BYU researchers Lincoln Blumell and Annie Spach discovering the name of the female addressee of 2 John in the New Testament. It delights me that we’re still discovering new things about the Bible even now.

Radiant Computer, an operating system (plus hardware) being “reimagined from the ground up, a clean-slate design free from the historical baggage that plagues modern systems, and free from Big Tech’s influence.” Looking forward to watching this develop — this kind of project is total catnip for me.

MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics on a textile fiber computer they’re working on, with the paper by Nikhil Gupta et al. Ooh.

Spencer Wright on silica gel packets. Fascinating, particularly the bit about the surface area of the grains.

Ryan Feigenbaum’s ColorPalette Pro, a delightful analog-feeling web app. Those buttons!

David Chisnall on LLM hype. “It’s pushing machine-learning approaches into places where there are significant harms for sometimes giving the wrong answer. And it’s doing so while trying to outsource the liability to the customers who are using these machines in ways in which they are advertised as working.” I agree with a lot of this.

Mandy Brown on a psychology of craft. “The question I hear is, what does it mean to see our work as craft rather than as growth?” Over the past few years I’ve realized (as surfaced when managers or interviewers ask what kind of career growth I’m aiming for) that deeper craftsmanship matters far more to me than any level ladder climbing. Some of this perhaps comes from overromanticizing analog craftsmanship and imagining myself as spiritual kin to the woodworkers and the welders. Even so, focusing on craftsmanship feels better. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s something largely within my control.