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Andre V

@andrepology.bsky.social
62 followers 142 following 118 posts

design technologist 🌀 curlprojects.com / communal & embodied computing, aligned recommender systems; DWeb and local first

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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
I know many sites have a robots.txt that instructs them to stop, but asking it to write a web crawling program could work? Did you try that?
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
What happened when you tried to yourself? Rate limiting or block? Very behind this idea, also.
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adityaarpitha.bsky.social @adityaarpitha.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
We're accepting applications to the EE alignment retreat! We think aligning AI can't just be a technical problem, the same way aligning a government with its citizens can't just be the constitution's job. So we start with ourselves and work outwards to community, environment and eventually tech.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Intervention 1 and 2 are made by the “higher” self - grounded, intentional, spacious. But the “lower” self engaging in doomscrolling - contracted, unconscious, scattered - is quick to override these interventions. How can the higher self reach the lower self when it’s alive?
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Intervention 2 is the screen time widget on my Home Screen. Hypothesis: more observability over my behavior will help me manage usage by metering or pacing usage.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Intervention 1 is an automation that keeps my phone greyscale for all except 2 hours of the day. Hypothesis is that a less stimulating screen could help me reach for it less
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Owning some shame here: despite years of meditation training and recently teaching, I still find it extremely hard to “just observe it”. I still doomscroll 2/3 hours a day, just with new language around “resistance”, “emotional discomfort”
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Thread on Sober October experiments around regulating my own phone usage.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
and the meta (c) teaching others what you wish you were taught yourself
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
ie (a) you don't have to create something new or grand or world-changing, it is valuable because you value it and it speaks to you (giving permission) (b) in light of (a) we can learn to how to steer towards more fun (valuing the emotional / felt experience)
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
there's shared grief here. my solace recently has been teaching design classes in the spirit of convivial tools; staying close to a student's needs when teaching them how to make "soloware", while being with their firsthand experience of creating, orienting them towards joy, curiosity and ease.
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Matthew D. Sacchet @matthewsacchet.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Join us this Wednesday for the 2026 Science of Advanced Meditation Conference!
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Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
In the room heavy with life he slept.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
also sharing my research collection on this theme, may it be of benefit! www.are.na/andre-vacha/...
are.na
embodied computing | Are.na
computing with the whole body; multi-sensory I/O
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
seems much more satisfying that double-tap :) the word "musicianship" comes to mind when imagining seeing advanced usage of this
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
to take another frame - we want an embodied future that includes calm, but also other aspects of the human experience apprehended through the body, on experience flowing through all of it. Pointing you to @tobyshorin.bsky.social 's Body Futurism here, writing.tobyshorin.com/body-futurism/
writing.tobyshorin.com
Body Futurism
As society turns toward the body, a new politics of the flesh is on the brink of eruption.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Pourquoi pas ?
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
@tekhnema.bsky.social from your POV who am I to spencer saar cavanaugh?
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
ie Weisser’s principles respond to ubiquity constraining attention, so the principles revolve around the concept of center <> periphery. You seem to be pointing to more than that.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
It seems like an expanded set of principles might be needed for “embodied computing” that include and extend the calm principles (?)
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Curious. The first segment argues for how technology (ie computing) is causing disembodiment (“sensory deprivation”). It’s a refreshing critique that is different from what Weisser wrote about, and yet also feels mismatched with the calm principles themselves in the later segment of the talk.
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grant @grantcuster.com · 10/09/2026
Working through creation and deletion on the tabletop. Two-finger tap feels a little more reliable than double-tap, and paint-select feels great.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
double tap empty canvas spot to create a block under it, with a constraint to not overlap existing blocks? Really enjoying seeing this unfold, especially the adhoc multimodal inputtting, very embodied interaction.
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Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
The “immediate-to-handedness” came from indexing all saved blocks locally with @jazz.tools
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
I made a “tactile” are.na client last year to support my design research that has these properties that may be useful. Its core interaction was that you could right click any piece of media (self-authored or connected) and see its connections to other channels, m.youtube.com/watch?v=jaeC...
m.youtube.com
cantos advent of jazz preview
YouTube video by Andre Vacha
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Some examples: - how might I see iteration and feedback as the practice of improving my ability to take the best guess? - are you confusing activity with progress? (here, listen to your gut) - what was recently subtracted rather than added in service of clarity?
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
One way I’ve short circuited this thinking is by bringing mindfulness to design. There’s a set of questions / prompts I read to myself at the start of a work session, are.na/andre-vacha/...
are.na
personal design heuristics | Are.na
mental moves used to cultivate self awareness in a creative practice
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Had similar experiences, but through “chasing images”. I’d see an interaction or image of screen in my mind, and just build it, skipping the design process entirely. Have many prototypes but not that are coherent or resonant.
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Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
But when a direction is chosen freely and followed wholeheartedly, it may seem that all things further the going.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
@clinamenic.com
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Matthew D. Sacchet @matthewsacchet.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
How does meditation improve mental health? The answer may lie not in a single pathway, but in coordinated changes across the brain and body.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
this is asking for subtle camera motion and parallax
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Matthew D. Sacchet @matthewsacchet.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
There is a lot of hype around neurofeedback for meditation. Does it work? Neurofeedback is a tool for real-time monitoring and modulation of mental states using feedback from one's own neural activity.
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clinamenic @clinamenic.com · 23/07/2026
Experimenting with new multi-layer features for Lattelier
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Leonardo La Terza @leonardolaterza.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Well it's over variety.com/2026/digital...
variety.com
Netflix in Talks to Buy Letterboxd: Report
Letterboxd has reportedly held exploratory sales talks with Netflix, Paramount, Sony Pictures and other parties.
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WebDesignMuseum @webdesignmuseum.org · 06/07/2026
Rockstar Games website in 2000
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
has the complexity of a small bacterial colony
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
listening to new, dancier sounds by Gigi Masin open.spotify.com/track/5DKqHA...
open.spotify.com
Golden
Gigi Masin · Movement · Song · 2026
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
bold, confident storytelling coming out of my home state, Kerala, in India. letterboxd.com/film/balan-t...
letterboxd.com
Balan - The Boy (2026)
A teenage boy searches for his missing mother following a turbulent childhood and her subsequent disappearance, exploring his search for closure and the truth about his past.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Not for coding specifically, but this essay by Daniel Thorson reflects on the four different relationships we might have with AI, two of which recall the ones you outlined substack.com/@dthorson/p-...
substack.com
The Human Alignment Problem
What AI psychosis reveals about the real task of our time
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
I’ve seen Qualia Research Institute (I believe) make a similar map along valence and arousal axes, but also draw the possible state changes between states (eg happy -> joyful -> ecstatic). It produced a beautiful image. are.na/block/47301048
are.na
5_clusters_oval_curved_1-1 | Are.na
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Another projection technique that comes to mind: are.na/block/38572576
are.na
iSphere: Focus+Context Sphere Visualization for Interactive Large Graph Exploration - YouTube | Are.na
iSphere: Focus+Context Sphere Visualization for Interactive Large Graph Explorat…act: Interactive exploration plays a critical role in large graph visualization.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
What if you could zoom into a continent to reveal not a flattened map but another nested sphere? It could be a way of navigating levels in a hierarchy of clusters …
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Saleh @mskayyali.com · 21/06/2026
New video on Interface Studies: what happens when software borrows a word from a different world and what makes an interface “social”? youtu.be/j7xidb5fK8c?...
youtu.be
When Software Took the Word 'Social'
YouTube video by Interface Studies
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Did you look into multimodal embedding models in the CLIP family? Quantized versions are small enough to run locally, so we can do away with the image captioning service. Nearly done with a prototype for bookmarks -> feed, excited to share soon.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
so i'm exploring ways to toggle between opting-in / opting-out of imposed structure, while defaulting to opting-in.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
What I've learned about designing systems that support intentionality/slowness like this is that you have to adopt a stance, or "posture" when using and designing it. If you break that stance, choices can feel annoying/friction-y/cumbersome.
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
"bunch of rooms with desks" feels a bit like moving between desktops, which are very loosely organized as workspaces for a project. I might enjoy the intentionality and ritual of cleaning up before assembling new context. But I'm curious if I'll get annoyed/frustrated
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Andre V @andrepology.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
partially - I think I also want a "planner" or task list to replace my home screen, with tasks/routines/events associated with apps. bsky.app/profile/andr... I saw from your video that we're on the same trail - you putting the active task up in the window header is a great idea
bsky.app
Andre Vacha (@andrepology.bsky.social)
sketch of a launcher for paper-like devices I was making last year. Key concepts: - day planner as home screen, - call with AI for a daily planning ritual + support on activity tracking & form fill...
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