Did you know that when you measure a coastline, if you use a larger ruler, you'll get a smaller result. Likewise, a smaller ruler yields a larger result until. In other words, the closer you look, the more there is. Coastlines are fractal.

This is put so well.

There's something so human about storytelling, and not just the kind we tell socially. The stories we only tell ourselves are even more impactful.

One reason I like Tailwind is that it doesn't make it any harder to do things the old way, with plain old CSS. In fact, since it auto-generates theme custom properties, in some ways it makes things easier, even if you don't use the utility CSS classes.

Friday night I did something I haven't done in 15 years.

Remember to be happy.

One of the hardest parts about being a human is how tough it is to do new things that you aren't good at. I don't know, maybe other people can just do things without much effort, but for me, it takes a lot of energy to get into something new that I've never done before.

I've not been writing as much for the past two weeks, because that's when I started watching my two kids full-time. So far? No regrets whatsoever, though it's tough and time consuming.

My wife's phone is a sad, 5 year old iPhone SE 2nd Gen. The battery is shot. The camera is terrible. Liquid Glass constantly drags it to a halt.

Which type of person are you? Do you do research ahead of time, and then go straight to the piece that you know will captivate you? Or do you prefer to go in blind and be surprised by what you find?

Salma nails it. Read the whole thing. It's well worth your time.

I love everything published on Acko.net, this one was no exception. The quote above really stood out.

But it comes from a place of both grief and love

"Last" in every sense of the word

A well functioning government is a good thing, actually, and such a thing needs money to run. So, I pay my taxes.

I first played Minecraft when it was in alpha, around 2009. I was quickly hooked — the allure of pure creation was inescapable.

There is a lot to be said for moving fast, and to move fast you have to reduce friction — you have to make doing things effortless. But frictionless experiences cheapen life.

I like meat, of all varieties.

Jim's spot on.

The answer is Love

Someday, unless someone else does it first, I'm going to create an AtProto lexicon that does the following:

A story of almost over-engineering lighting in a crawl space

Twice now this week someone referenced just-in-time vs just-in-case learning. I'm afraid I can't remember the first (probably a Bluesky post lost to the ether), but the second was the final episode of People I Mostly Admire.

Yet another Thorium Nova discussion, this time about Long Range Comm. I'm pleased with how it turned out and how some extra features that I didn't expect kind of fell out as I was looking around it. Enjoy!

Fraud doesn't happen in a vacuum.

I remember the browser wars.

Most of what AI can do is a happy accident. Maybe we should just use it for what it's good at.

1993-1997

Are video games art? Can AI make art? What even counts as art?

Can confirm. About once a quarter I give a presentation at the Voyager Club, which is a volunteer organization of 12-18 year olds that do work for the local space centers.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/falling-into-the-pit-of-success/

A great read by Paul Hebert that questions the tradeoffs of big, batteries-included accessible UI frameworks like Radix and React Aria Components. Isn't this supposed to be the browser's job? Why reinvent?

Today, my writing is focused on my spaceship game, Thorium Nova. Over the last few days I've written several discussions about the behavior of ship systems. I'll link them here, for you to enjoy. Feel free to comment as well — anyone is welcome to share thoughts and opinions or ask questions.

I had a lovely chat with someone about critical CSS and optimizations. All optimizations come with tradeoffs, but many are acceptable tradeoffs. Algorithms might optimize for speed and Big-O complexity at the expense of memory. Websites might optimize for offline support at the expense of first load duration (needing to download an offline database). There are tricks and slight-of-hand to make optimizations feel better to users, but they're still there. Famously, the Instagram team makes it so your photo uploads silently in the background as you write the caption so that it's ready by the time you hit "Post". It's a neat trick!

One of the biggest problems of the United States is a lack of curiosity — a genuine interest in learning things.

Be sure to check out part 1 for context.

"Look around, figure out the most valuable thing to do, and then do that thing."

I don't like going slow. Unfortunately, as a parent of a 4 year old, I don't get a choice.

Wouldn't you know it, writing things down helps

Be sure to check out part 1 for context.

Productivity-maxing is entertainment

Continuing the theme from the past few days.

Even... no... especially if it's bad

My daughter was disappointed. Nobody at the protest was chanting and, darn it, she was promised chanting!

A sure-fire question to make friends at unfamiliar places.

It's tradeoffs, all the way down.

Recently my wife asked me: "What is the best media you enjoyed in 2025?"

Helping the uninitiated navigate this brave new digital world

Nadia Makarevich has some great numbers from a realistic benchmark. (h/t to Chris Coyier for putting it in my feed.) The whole writeup is worth reading, since it goes in-depth into several data-loading strategies. The summary is excellent:

A friend showed me a cassette tape that he found.

I pull on my jacket again.

A post a day keeps the brain fog away