iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

These are… really good rocks.

Olivia Sullivan @zebko.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

Reposted by Brendan Zab

Damp green

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Reposted by Brendan Zab

Leena 🌵 @leena.reuben.games · 30/06/2026

They also, as in Australia, want to hide and launder the atrocities against Palestine. It’s the only place you can hear Palestinian voices.

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Reposted by Brendan Zab

loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

when folks say that manual procedural generation work is not the same as generative AI, this is what we mean. it's all just humans making artistic decisions, even if it is generated. it's more often than not a highly manual process as detail oriented as when i'm manually making environments.

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Reposted by Brendan Zab

Thomas Ragon @thomasragon.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Mœbius, 2001

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

these cloud shadows omg… I always wanted this :O really looking forward to the haze and stuff

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

It’s so nice that moss season is back

Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

I love this kind of thinking so much

Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

So cool! I got stuck (or I guess, sidetracked) while trying to figure this stuff out years ago. Glad to see you exploring it!

Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Woah these clouds are great! Always curious about approaches to clumpy, non-photorealistic clouds

Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Maybe within some circles “anonymous records” might colloquially have ended up implying row polymorphism, but to me it's very much an additional feature. Like, an anonymous record is just a record where you don't need to define a new, named type. Early versions of Rust had this for example.

Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Even for compile to JS languages, Flow and Typescript use subtyping for being flexible over the fields of objects (which can effectively be seen as fancy records in this context).

Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Hmm, TBH I would question if this is a the canonical way to support anonymous records? Like, you don't *need* to support polymorphism over fields to support anonymous records - see Standard ML for instance?

Polyducks @polyducks.co.uk · 26/04/2026

Reposted by Brendan Zab

Just added another 152 images to my dinosaur collection. It even has some of the bigger ones! polyducks.neocities.org/shrines/dino... #dinosaur #toys #indieweb

polyducks.neocities.org

Dino Collection

Polyducks' collection of plastic dinosaurs

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Yeah, I have thinking similarly. I *really* like machine learning stuff like Firefox's local site translation, and being able to copy text from a screenshot in macos. But the large language/image model stuff is so irresponsibly designed, and attracts the most boring, griftiest kinds of thinking.

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Here's an example of what this might look like: gist.github.com/brendanzab/3... You could even consider dropping some local type annotations if they might be easily inferred from context - there's no reason to stick to the limitations of C for this kind of thing!

gist.github.com

Example for Red Blob Games (using Pascal-style type annotations) https://bsky.app/profile/redblobgames.com/post/3mjrvpxyiw22m

Example for Red Blob Games (using Pascal-style type annotations) https://bsky.app/profile/redblobgames.com/post/3mjrvpxyiw22m - example.txt

Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Tbh I’d probably prefer an ML/Pascal type annotation syntax (as seen in Rust, Typescript etc), as I find it more readable, giving emphasis on the identifiers vs the types.

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

I find types really helpful for understanding tbh! That way I don’t need to run type inference in my head to figure out what data structures are being used.

Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

The trouble is that once you do that, it makes mutually recursive datatypes really challenging/annoying.

Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

I do wish OCaml was less weird about it though - raising an ambiguity error rather than picking the last defined constructor, for example. I also like it when you have option to disambiguate based on the type name (like in Lean).

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

I like it, because I hate it in Haskell and Rocq when you have to come up with random, adhoc prefixes to disambiguate stuff.

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

What I gather is that most people will answer unreliably if you ask them directly if they've understood, either to not disappoint you or to save embarrassment, so it's a very unreliable measure.

Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

I learned from a teacher that it's sometimes better to ask questions that tests their knowledge, to ensure the ideas have in properly. Then you can adjust your approach based on their response. (alas, easier said than done)

loren schmidt @lorenschmidt.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Reposted by Brendan Zab

if you appreciate my art, design, procedural, or experimental work, or design analysis, please consider supporting me or reposting! i'm /extremely/ good at living frugally but i would like to eat better and get a new computer. i'm aiming to get to $1000 a month. www.patreon.com/vacuumflowers

a spread of 16x16, 2 color characters from the post-jam version of my 7drl project. various oracles and mystical beings, some people disguised as devils, some skeletons, a grave digger.

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Yeah, a lot of people who care about the environment are now pushing for urbanism, walkable cities, public transport, electrification etc. This is not just good for the environment, it’s good for public health, housing affordability, the economy, energy security, and people’s wellbeing in general.

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

I didn't know you had a patreon! I had considered asking you about it in the past, because I find your posts really inspiring. If I was going to donate, it would mainly be because I'd want to support your creative endeavors and curiosity, not necessarily to get a specific monthly thing out of it.

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Reposted by Brendan Zab

loren @ribo.zone · 25/01/2026

added a page with scans of the original sketches

meewillis.neocities.org

Plant Grid Concept Art

plant clade sketches

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

Never get tired of seeing people’s sketches and creative process like this. So good! Very inspiring!

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

As a reader I like to think of them at their best as signposts… or treasure maps… or a friendly guide pointing you to somewhere where you can learn more, or to find alternate perspectives. Not sure how to illustrate that but yeah.

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Reposted by Brendan Zab

FWIW, the jury is still out on Gen AI being good at text summaries. Because it shortens & emphasizes text based on distribution, not meaning, it’s less of a summary (ie, salient points highlighted) than a compression (ie, the most frequently asserted terms in the distribution). Not the same thing!

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

This was in my recommendations but I am worried it will contain lots of ahistorical ideas about the development of Rust.

Fran @sydmus.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Reposted by Brendan Zab

Lynda Barry (2016)

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Not sure if it helps at all (its tangential), but there’s some questions over how a similar word choice originally entered into programming languages from natural language: github.com/e-n-f/if-the...

github.com

Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Very cool to see these progress updates! And nice to see Runebender getting some love!

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

You need to then do another step with some other provider to verify it I think.

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Welp, I got the age verification thing. Not sure if I'll end up sharing my data with this third-party provider. Feel free to follow me on the fediverse via the link on my profile.

Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

It’s so frustrating to see scientists using image models for this kind of thing, the results are really bad compared to what actual artists could do. So thank you for your service!

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Brendan Zab @brendanzab.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Bringing artists and technical people together is really important work, even if you can’t be all things to all people. This brings me so much hope.