LightNews LightNews
benschroeder.bsky.social
@benschroeder.bsky.social
15 followers 39 following 0 posts
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted
celechii.itch.io
last week i remembered that macOS lets you set your own icons and that *I* have the power to delegitimize the professionalism of the software that runs on my machine, so here's a thread of the 16 new icons i've made so far

i really forgot how fun it was to just sit down and make art for myself :')
comparison between apple's finder icon and mine. apple's is the split blue and white smiley face, mine is two blue and white anime girls making out comparison between discord's icon and mine. mine is like a screaming cat on a blue/purple slimy background comparison between celsys's clip studio paint icon and mine. mine is similar but rotated with some comic styling and pink and blue highlights comparison between mozilla's firefox icon and mine. mine is similar but looks closer to the old firefox icon and brings back the little arm and gives the fox a cute little smiley face
November 29, 2025 at 1:48 AM
Reposted
dubroy.com
"Simply following one's curiosity — even when it seems unproductive to do so — is wildly underestimated as an activity that moves the human race forward. Feynman's spinning plates led to his Nobel prize."
alexanderobenauer.com Alexander Obenauer @alexanderobenauer.com · Jul 18
Completed another trip around the sun this week. With gratitude, something to share:

Creative work is hilariously unintuitive to the adult mind. We are like beavers, blocking flow at the first sound of running water with dams made of any debris around.

Here are reminders I hold close:

(1/2)
You can do things for their own sake without having to provide justification. But if you really need one, it's this: *things lead to other things.* Doing things opens up doors, ideas, pathways, and opportunities that couldn't have been imagined or designed without having first done those things. By definition, doing things you enjoy leads to more things you'll enjoy. It's another way of saying "the dots connect looking backwards", one of the three messages in Steve Jobs' (wonderful) commencement address at Stanford, but it keeps the frame in the present. Simply following one's curiosity — even when it seems unproductive to do so — is wildly underestimated as an activity that moves the human race forward. Feynman's spinning plates led to his Nobel prize. It's easy to lose motivation when it isn't clear how some work will contribute. But quite often, the biggest contribution something makes is the next thing it leads us into. We can't predict these paths in advance, but we can notice how much it has happened in the past, and trust that it will continue. This is one worth repeating early and often. Things lead to other things. It's a powerful reminder in the face of creative doubts. "What if this is nothing?" Doesn't matter, it will lead to something. In creative work, there is this frustration while mid-process that reflects the delta between where a work is and where you want it to be. When it's gone, the work is done. This means that one is always experiencing this in the ongoing activity of their creative work. There's always a next problem to be solved, or a need to get some work away from some unsatisfying place, or toward some unknown more satisfying one. It isn't always clear, in fact, it's usually unclear, where to go — that's why it's so frustrating. We live with this frustration during the whole life of a creative work. You have to learn to embrace this frustration. The frustration sometimes feels like a despair born from fear that the work won't get better, that it won't ever meet your tastes. But it should be embraced: it's what tells you your work will get better, because it keeps your mind at the task of figuring how to improve it. It is a *good* frustration. Once you learn to embrace this frustration, you can start to enjoy it, which helps you enjoy your work more (which helps you do harder things). It helps to have gone through many resolutions of this frustration; that gives you the confidence to know early on in a creative project that it will, in time, dissipate, as you find your way through the nooks of creative revelation. But I've found that it seems to require revolutions in each domain; this frustration is hard to enjoy in a new field of creation, since this confidence has much less to ground itself on. It's important to be able to identify the good frustration. Simply being able to identify it can turn it from a source of negativity to one of excitement and energy. Once identified, it can become a source of action, sometimes even direction. In particularly challenging moments, this frustration can end early work. Pointing at this frustration, describing its source, and what about the work has led to it, is often all you need to think more clearly about how to proceed. I furiously note-take my way into the depths of a project. These notes become Ariadne's thread; when I'm deep in the details and I've lost sense of the project's purpose — which I need to color my interpretation of the details, including filtering out those that do not matter, and to direct my next actions — I can return to those notes which pull me into the right perspective again. They are also helpful when writing descriptions of the project for public consumption; once I know the inner-most details, challenges, rewarding pieces, etc., it becomes much harder to describe the project from the outside. I'm now a native to the project, and I can no longer give a newcomer directions that make any sense to them. The original notes serve this purpose wonderfully. David Bowie: > Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you co-exist with the rest of society. I've found it necessary to document that spark from first flint to the first moment of forgetfulness. The creator's mind can often fall into a perfectionist's trap: "It must first be *right*, then it can be." Obsession grows with something being perfect, more perfect, more than perfect. This will grind work to a halt. We hold on too tight. In these times, it's important to reorient to experimentation and consistency. It is at these times that I must catch the down-spiral early, and instead refocus my obsession on consistent work and progress. Striving for consistency inevitably leads to quality; striving for quality inevitably destroys consistency. This advice does not necessarily supersede the need to acknowledge one’s seasonal creative phases or to give into good distractions. So this may not be the right advice at all times, but you'll know the times when it is, because it'll annoy you. And it's important to remember: **Diverse inputs create rich outputs**. This happens in big ways and small. On the latter: at some surprisingly early point, doing a lot more of the work won't make it any better, but doing a lot of *other* things will. On the former: one must cultivate an interest in and understanding of many different things. Each field has different ways of seeing the world, and each person has still more nuanced takes. Adopting many lenses helps us see creative solutions to the ever-harder problems we and the world will face. Different lenses are one of the great gifts we get from reading, inquisitive conversation, and following obsessions down deep paths.
July 18, 2025 at 1:11 PM
Reposted
luciaromano.bsky.social
@aoc.bsky.social
No caption needed.
July 6, 2025 at 3:35 AM
Reposted
dubroy.com
Here it is — very happy to officially release the book that @marianoguerra.org and I have been working on for the past 2½ years.

If you bought it in early access, thanks for your support! 🙏

If you haven't bought it yet, please check it out!!
wasmgroundup.com WebAssembly from the Ground Up @wasmgroundup.com · Mar 10
Excited to announce the official launch of our online book, WebAssembly from the Ground Up! 🎉

It's the book we wish we'd had 3 years ago.

No messing with tools and frameworks. It's a hands-on guide to the core of Wasm: the instruction set and module format.

Link below. 👇
Learn Wasm by building a simple compiler in JavaScript. No compiler expertise necessary. All the code is in the book; we'll take you through it step by step. Get your hands dirty and see for yourself what WebAssembly is all about.
March 10, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Reposted
kottke.org
Thought-provoking musings on AI from Robin Sloan. “The language model reads Everything, and leaves Everything untouched — yet suddenly this new thing exists, with strange and formidable powers. Is that okay?” (via @craigmod.com) [robinsloan.com]
Is it okay?
Squaring up to the foundational question for language models.
www.robinsloan.com
February 14, 2025 at 9:32 PM