New artwork: Strait Is the Gate. A new take on Narrow Is the Way. Also, Inkscape’s roughen and simplify filters are nicer to work with than SVG filters (which often have some weird rendering issues in the bottom right of shapes, at least when using Inkscape to render them).
New artwork: In the Waters of Mormon.
Mandy Brown on energy making time. “It turns out, not doing their art was costing them time, was draining it away, little by little, like a slow but steady leak. They had assumed, wrongly, that there wasn’t enough time in the day to do their art, because they assumed (because we’re conditioned to assume) that every thing we do costs time. But that math doesn’t take energy into account, doesn’t grok that doing things that energize you gives you time back. By doing their art, a whole lot of time suddenly returned. Their art didn’t need more time; their time needed their art.” This is a really good point. I think writing does this for me.
OnlineSafari.tv. Wildlife webcams across the world. These feel magical to me.
Barbara, a live coding language for quilting patterns. Intriguing.
JSketcher, a web-based parametric 2D and 3D CAD modeler.
Adam Zewe on MIT scientists using kirigami to make ultrastrong, lightweight structures. “Using kirigami, the ancient Japanese art of folding and cutting paper, MIT researchers have now manufactured a type of high-performance architected material known as a plate lattice, on a much larger scale than scientists have previously been able to achieve by additive fabrication. This technique allows them to create these structures from metal or other materials with custom shapes and specifically tailored mechanical properties.”
New artwork: Into the Wilderness.
David Pierce on Keegan McNamara’s wooden computer. When I first read about this, I hoped the computer itself was actually made out of wood, but alas, it’s just the case.
Tom Simonite on Sam Zeloof building semiconductors in his parents’ garage. I’m intrigued by the idea of tinkerer-scale computing — less powerful, but perhaps more sustainable.
Lincoln Michel on magical realism vs. urban fantasy. I haven’t read much magical realism, I’m realizing. Probably should change that. Any recommendations?
Erik Hoel on the UFO craze being created by government nepotism and incompetent journalism (his words). This does seem to be one of the more reasonable and balanced takes on UAPs.
Neil Gaiman on actual magic. Yes.
New artwork: He Saw and Heard Much.
Jim Nielsen on disability. “1 in 5 people currently have a disability. 100% of people will have some form of disability in their lifetime.”
MoonBit, a new Wasm-first language. Still early on, but looks quite interesting. Almost as fast as Rust, too, and I like what I see on the syntax page.
Bryan Braun on good eating habits. Wise advice here.
Ronan Farrow on Elon Musk’s shadow rule. Incredibly disturbing. “There is little precedent for a civilian’s becoming the arbiter of a war between nations in such a granular way, or for the degree of dependency that the U.S. now has on Musk in a variety of fields, from the future of energy and transportation to the exploration of space.” And: “Current and former officials from NASA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration told me that Musk’s influence had become inescapable in their work, and several of them said that they now treat him like a sort of unelected official.”
Julia Evans on brag documents. I’ve been calling mine “work accomplishments,” but I don’t update it as often as I probably should.
New artwork: No Man Can Serve Two Masters.
Made in Blender. This also uses a displacement on a plane for the ground texture, with a little more texturing applied in post in Affinity Photo.
New artwork: Wise as Serpents, and Harmless as Doves.
This uses the Blender heightfield technique I wrote about in Prints 2.1. I made a grayscale texture — Figma for the base, Cirque + SVG filters for the circles, textures applied in Affinity Photo — and then used that as a displacement on a plane. I also exported a color map from Figma for the coloring. Little bit of fog and chromatic aberration added in as well.
