Links #148

Jenny on generative AI and choosing friction. Loved this piece. “The problem with AI ‘art’ is that it was not the expression of a mortal being choosing to spend its one wild and precious life clawing its way through mediocrity to try and imperfectly communicate a feeling with other mortal beings who, by definition, can never fully comprehend it, and therefore it is fundamentally uninteresting to me.”

Steven Johnson on blank paper and notebooks, in response to Roland Allen’s The Notebook (which I really liked). Mmm, notebooks.

Ross Wintle on how software can be finished. Hear, hear. The part of my brain that likes creative constraints really likes this idea. Reminds me of Craig Mod’s pop-up newsletters, too — finite, bounded newsletters that are only published for a few weeks and then they end. Ross’s static not-Scrabble making-of post is also interesting.

Nate Meyvis on frontend maximalism. “Front-end maximalism is the view that considerations like these, under modern conditions and in a wide range of standard applications, should lead us to do much more than we currently do on the front end and much less on the back end.” For the small projects where I’ve done this, it’s been great. I’m planning to consider doing this on some of my personal apps that are currently more backend-heavy.

Affinity is now a consolidated, supposedly permanently free app. Not what I expected, but as long as it doesn’t eventually devolve into some awful big tech money grab, I’m going to try to see it as good news.

Damar Berlari’s visual explainer on dithering. Very cool. Looking forward to part 2, and Damar’s explainer on moving objects in 3D is also good.

David Zaruk on the European Food Safety Authority finding that many microplastic studies were flawed.

GitHub on avoiding toasts because of accessibility and usability concerns. Makes sense. And, lest there be any confusion, know that toast is still fine.

Ava on resisting self-Flanderization. Happy to report that while I used to worry about blogging things that segments of my readership might not care about (blogging about religion when some are only here for the book reviews, for example), I think I’m now doing much better at not worrying about it. (That said, has it had any visible effect on what I’ve posted? Not sure. I’m still very much stuck in the habit of writing only booknotes, link posts, and art posts, and it’s hard to get back into also writing other types of posts like I used to.)