iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 26/07/2026

This is super fun and the first thing I did was look up Canton, which was super close to where I used to live. Alas, it is too short. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_...

Canton Avenue
This 26.2 m segment 20.4%
Sustained 250 m here road too short

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 12/05/2026

Eric writes about something I fear is coming for things we currently take for granted: the freedom to create, to take things apart, to modify, and to repair. What if the black box of modern algorithms kept expanding outward, consuming everything it touches in inscrutability?

You can open Notepad and type whatever you want into it. You can open Paint and draw whatever you can imagine. You can publish whatever you want online with a small degree of technical know-how. This all costs nothing past the hardware, software, and connection fee. We take this for granted, to our own detriment.

Being open and transparent is a radical strength, not a weakness. We should not throw this away in the pursuit of a convenient perceived inevitability.

In one notable scene from the book, Gu rages when dismantling a device. He finds all its internal components are sealed and labeled, informing him that there are “no user-serviceable parts within”.

Code may be poised to follow this direction. Imagine a world where attempting to open up any piece of software reveals a dense forest of evolved antennas, each constructed using inscrutable, black box language.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 08/05/2026

Uh oh! 😅 I have never said nor made a similar point as "if your chart needs colour it doesn't work." When I am invited to speak, I'm used to the hosting venue handling all marketing and communication. But with genAI, I find myself wanting to get involved (at least to do some quality control).

A generative AI image of a billboard.
THIS WEEK'S TL:DR
Physics affects your apis - Holly Cummins
If your chart needs colour it doesn't work - Frank Elavsky
Motivation needs autonomy - Yanina Ledovaya
Your diagram is a map, not a moodboard - Simon Brown
AI Agents need real tools - Akshatha Laxmi

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 24/04/2026

Ah, it's my birthday and I have finally taken the time to selfishly catch up on some reading. Hullman's writing is always fantastic but holy shit this is good.

Increasingly, a lot of the most enthusiastic pro-AI discourse (including for science) strikes me as nihilism masquerading as optimism. We have people who perceive themselves as huge optimists that will reshape science or society for the better simultaneously lacking the imagination to see beyond their own technological determinism. It reminds me a bit of the “optimism” associated with some open science and science reform positions, who also suggest that we just need the right technology to fix the problems (though in this case, its heuristics like replication or preregistration). It’s a fundamentally non-agentic view of human scientific endeavor.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 24/04/2026

How do we give students a sense of wonder, drive, and grit, to take struggle and see that it adds flavor to life? I'm reminded of this quote by Miyazaki, (art by @samdoesarts.bsky.social) that I put in my blog last year and have thought about constantly since: www.frank.computer/blog/2025/05...

Illustration of Hiyao Miyazaki drawing with a cigarette in his mouth, saying "If life's hassles disappeared, you'd want them back."

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 17/04/2026

I unpack "fidelity" in terms of prototypes ("what is a prototype?" and my recent piece about gen ai): www.frank.computer/blog/2024/01... www.frank.computer/blog/2026/03...

The prototype slop zone by Frank Elavsky. Diagram. There are two axes. X axis is how technically refined an artifact is, starting low and increasing. Y axis is how intellectually refined an idea is starting low and increasing. In the upper left (high idea refinement, low artifact refinement), an annotation says, what users want genAl for (for their brilliant ideas), an arrow points to an area labeled (zone of missing skills). Then the bottom right an annotation says what genAl enables. Low fidelity prototypes fill the left side near the bottom (low technical refinement and ideation) mid-fidelity in the middle of the diagram, and high fidelity fills the upper right (high ideation, high technical refinement). A tiny slice on the top right corner (maxed
on both axes) says no longer a prototype.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 16/04/2026

Apologies to anyone trying to chat with me. I can see I have (12) notifications, but no idea what they are. The app has been like this for a while now. RIP.

The notifications page of the bluesky app, but all entries are empty ghosts with no content.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 16/03/2026

Also, here is a nifty diagram I put together for folks who seem to misunderstand what genAI actually helps with: (Note: if you assume your ideas are already good, then all you need is a machine that perfectly follows your instructions! But... isn't the point of prototyping to refine your ideas?)

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 18/02/2026

Big announcement! I have accepted a tenure-track faculty position as an "assistant professor of data science" at Cal Poly in SLO, starting this Fall!! 🎉

Me, smiling and taking a selfie on a sunny day in front of the large-lettered CAL POLY sign.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 11/11/2025

I was a barista for 9 years and still practice at home. I think a 12-month tour of duty should be mandatory for anyone before they gain citizenship and the ability to vote. The 3am to morning shift rush changes you as a person. Also: here's some of my latte art at home on my affordable Bambino+.

A cortado in a flat, wide, wooden cup with a rosetta (fern) pour.

A cortado with a heart pour design on top.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 02/10/2025

This is a "repost" from my mostly-offline lab mate, when I was asked "what is 'theory' in HCI?"

A hand written note dated 9.30.25 with a quote,
"We're trying to understand the mysteries of the shit we make" - frank from twitter

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 29/09/2025

New Jackson+Williams piece is out and holy shit there are some outstanding points in this. Liz and Rua have repeatedly helped my thoughts evolve over the years. This does it again. This one isn't just about how "design for one, extend to all" is limited, but actively censors disabled people.

Particularly tantalizing to the designerly imagination are the ways disabled people hack existing objects and systems for our own purposes. The Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit uses empathy to prowl for these moments of disability ingenuity, because “the insight is in the adaptation.”

The token is a first line of defense, as their presence is used to legitimize the way things are done. Whatever can’t be shielded by the token then gets divided into two categories; structural issues and surface issues. Structural issues are often so extensive that they call into question the entire premise of the thing being critiqued.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 05/09/2025

Lmao these bar sizes are absurd. Why don't they share a scale??

Mobile view of bars in a bar chart. Mamdani has more than triple the donors as Sliwa but his bar is hardly larger.

Full description:
Individual donors since the primary
Size of donation legend
$250 or less $250 to $2,100 $2,100
Zohran Mamdani DEM 17,981
Curtis Sliwa REP 5,684
Eric Adams IND 2,149

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 22/08/2025

The chart from that article is so funny. Look at how amazing this dataviz is (click and scroll).

An obscenely tall data visualization that shows how astronomically large EA's CEO pay is over time (as high as 44m) compared to EA's median worker pay (currently 117k).

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 19/08/2025

I'm preparing my future research agenda and I want my aesthetic to be a mix of these two images: (on the left is an actual mug I own that I bought at the start of my PhD lol)

An ugly, 90s aesthetic cartoon of a frazzled looking person on a coffee mug. They are saying, "Will someone please (underlined) shoot the computer?"

A 90s aesthetic photo of a femme in a business outfit holding a rifle to a beige 90s desktop computer.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 19/08/2025

Lmfao the r/vibecoding subreddit has finally discovered that vibes, not code, are the true output of vibe coding. Source: www.reddit.com/r/vibecoding...

r/vibecoding
9 hr. ago
AssafMalkiIL

What’s the point of vibe coding if I still have to pay a dev to fix it?
what’s the point of vibe coding if at the end of the day i still gotta pay a dev to look at the code anyway. sure it feels kinda cool while i’m typing, like i’m in some flow state or whatever, but when stuff breaks it’s just dead weight. i cant vibe my way through debugging, i cant ship anything that actually matters, and then i’m back to square one pulling out my wallet for someone who actually knows what they’re doing. makes me think vibe coding is just roleplay for guys who want to feel like hackers without doing the hard part. am i missing something here or is it really just useless once you step outside the fantasy

Upvote
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Downvote
98

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 15/08/2025

And for our project with video streaming, we had a simple but powerful architecture design: what if we passed the game data itself to the stream viewer? Instead of receiving pixels + audio as video, viewers also get the richness of the game's UI, world data, and more! *This* is an underlay!

An architecture diagram that results in an image from a video game stream with a box over it labeled "screen reader accessible, customizeable interface." The diagram begins with audio, video, and stream ui data combined with game engine data going into streaming software. That is passed up to the stream as an inaccessible interface (a video feed). However, the game engine also passes up data to MARS, then to a twitch extension, and then to the accessible interface.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 15/08/2025

This matters! In data visualization, I did this with data navigator. The whole idea is that when you make a visualization, you have the data used for a chart/graph/etc as well as the code/specification/design information. And if you can pass all of that rich information to the frontend, then violá!

A cartogram showing data on a map of the US, labeled "this is made of pixels." A box shape floats over the map labeled, "this is a rich interface for assistive tech." Elavsky et al, "Data Navigator" (2023)

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 14/08/2025

Easily the most interesting and tempting spam text I've ever received. They're evolving.

Thursday 6:45PM

Expect smoky ribs sizzing hot dogs and cold drinks tomorrow if you ve got time come join us

Screenshot of an anonymous text

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 01/08/2025

lmao hell yeah in high school people literally said I was a cartoon character because I wore the same 1-2 outfits every day and always had the same haircut!! the only time i ever changed outfits, I would wear thrifted, colorful, oversized suits (see fig a).

A skinny teenage creature, surprisingly with blonde hair (I was naturally blonde as a kid and it darkened with age). My hair is mid-length and straight, just to my shoulders, I have a huge smile and I am wearing small, oval yellow-tinted glasses. I am wearing a two piece purple suit that is too large for me, with a pink button-up shirt underneath.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 19/07/2025

So great to read this reflection on my talk on "softerware" at Outlier by Gabrielle Merite. I deeply respect Gabby's work, which is some of the most enchanting and captivating in our field. Humbled to have left an impression. Gabby's full reflection here: www.linkedin.com/pulse/notes-...

Frank argued for what he calls "softerware": visualizations that work more like clay than concrete. Instead of shipping finished, fixed objects, we give people tools they can reshape to meet their personal needs.

But here's the most provocative part for me: most people have already told us what works for them. They've set their systems for dark mode, bigger fonts, motion reduction. And we routinely ignore all of that.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 09/07/2025

Amazing piece. One note: the repeated link (in the screenshot) is broke. It is missing "ch" at the end of the href, so it currently takes you to a dead end.

If you haven’t clicked that last link and thumbed through, you should (link). It gives extrapolations for general estimates for chat queries, LLM-generated images, LLM-generated videos, and also how much energy was used to train said LLMs – it’s really in depth and fascinating, to say the least.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 01/07/2025

People who don't care to feel and connect view everything as an engineering problem; time can be optimized by removing any investment in your soul. It's all engineering management, but as a product: www.frank.computer/blog/2024/06...

I wouldn’t ask a robot to dance for me if I wanted to learn how to dance. That’s because I want to know how dancing feels, even while I am stumbling about and learning. Part of that stumbling (when you learn to dance) involves developing a better sense of feeling your own body. Asking a machine to dance takes away the opportunity to know your own body in the same way asking a machine to think takes away a sense of my own self-understanding. I certainly wouldn’t want an AI to go on a first date for me, I’d want to do that myself.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 23/06/2025

"nobody is fully grasping that this is potentially the last social identity you have to create," @jay.bsky.team This is, in essence, why I chose Bluesky. Its core pitch, which worked on me, was that my identity persists. This is, to me, the most hopeful novel infrastructure for the future.

What’s your pitch for why people should join Bluesky?

It’s a great time to shape the culture and the future of Bluesky. The people who have created starter packs, created feeds, and gotten involved in the community have seen a lot of growth—even if they previously weren’t big posters elsewhere. For creators, nobody is fully grasping that this is potentially the last social identity you have to create. Signing up now isn’t just committing to yet another micro-blogging app, it’s committing to a new era of social, to having a sort of digital passport that moves with you.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 16/06/2025

Some tech bros love AI just because it gives you so many kisses on the forehead. As someone suspicious of a technology that gives compliments, AI creeps me out every time I've interacted with it. In my latest blog, I poke at this idea: www.frank.computer/blog/2025/06...

Critics without solutions are useless
Plus, just saying that SP™ has “blended babies” and we should “stop blending babies” doesn’t offer any actual, real, working solutions. Are you doing anything about it? How are you, personally, going to make up for my 200% increased dongle-production efficiency at Dongles LLC?

These social media influencers talk about “climate change,” “murder without consequences,” “water insecurity” and the growing divide between people who have access to Super Productionizer™ and those who don’t. Plus, they say that because the SP™ gives me a kiss on the forehead every now and then when I do a really good job listening to it, that it is seducing me into an unhealthy relationship with it. UMMM I get kisses on the forehead because I am a smart, good boy who does a very good job, thank you very much. I earned my valor in the mines of dongle-production.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 15/06/2025

Can anyone who attended #Outlier2025 by @datavizsociety.bsky.social guess which single talk/panel I definitely filled out a survey on? 😂

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 07/06/2025

Lmaoooo this method?? I guess I'm probably in the new gender category of "assigned male at GPT." I also really love "once again, all the usual best practices of LLM prompting were applied." No citation! Hell yeah. Proper research going on over at Nature Human Behavior.

Gender
Gender is not directly available through OpenAlex or Twitter. To infer gender, we extracted the official names of academics as provided by OpenAlex. We passed the names individually through an LLM (OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 Turbo model) in similar fashion as for tweets. We used the following prompt:

“Based on the given name, please indicate the most likely gender association. Name: ‘<name>’. Respond as ‘Male’, ‘Female’, or ‘Unclear.”

Once again, all the usual best practices of LLM prompting were applied.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 02/06/2025

This is how I'm prepared to deal with the IEEE VIS paper review results that will be released this Friday. Always plan ahead!

Google calendar screenshot
Fri 6
9am to 5pm, event titled "Uhhhhhh depression??"

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 29/05/2025

I was about to link to the humorous article "Libertarian Police Department" and talk about how capitalism, ideally, is a series of smaller and smaller tollbooths between you and anything (the cops puts a quarter in his gun to shoot it). But alas, the New Yorker is much harder to read than in 2014.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 25/05/2025

A hammer requires whole worlds to participate in its creation and use. When we are considering the ethics of a hammer, how we choose to swing it is hardly the most important thing worth talking about.

Even a hammer, made of wood and iron, requires trees to be cut down and earth to be mined up. A simple hammer requires laws to be written about fair treatment of workers in multiple industries, sustainability of various biological and geological environments, and regulation about the sale and use of the hammer. “It matters how you use it,” in regards to artificial intelligence ignores the reality that it also matters how AI is made, how AI is disseminated, the waste AI produces, the damage AI causes to economies and environments, and the overall impact that AI has on human life and culture.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 25/05/2025

AI discourse is all vibes. Unfortunately, I love the vibes of writing (code included) but not what is called "vibe coding" now. I saw this coming long before Karpathy tweeted 3mo ago: tech bros love managerial vibes and unearned power. But I love the vibes that come with the struggle of making.

I often feel that my “vibes” argument isn’t popular with computer and cognitive/behavioral scientists. Computer scientists are in it for speed and scale. And LLMs help speed and scale, so vibes are a hard argument with them. And I am far too ignorant to explain myself meaningfully to a cognitive or behavioral scientist, so I don’t even try. So I understand that a lot of other people simply won’t agree or relate at all to this post, which is fine. Other people don’t gain a sense of themselves through their work, I guess? I have no idea how other people form thoughts and know what they value.

But tech bros in particular I understand intimately. And they love the managerial vibes of LLMs. So to tech bros, they understand a “vibes-based” approach but fundamentally disagree with my conclusion. Tech bros want the vibes that power offers them when they have an agent perform work for them. LLMs (borrowing the Hullman framing) help tech bros solve problems because of a sort of delegation of tasks. There’s some black box effect and trust required, but working with models largely converts any or all forms of difficult, analytical work into a sort of management work instead.

Andrej Karpathy
@karpathy
There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. It's possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper so I barely even touch the keyboard. I ask for the dumbest things like "decrease the padding on the sidebar by half" because I'm too lazy to find it. I "Accept All" always, I don't read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it. The code grows beyond my usual comprehension, I'd have to really read through it for a while. Sometimes the LLMs can't fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away. It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I'm building a project or webapp, but it's not really coding - I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.
6:17 PM · Feb 2, 2025
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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 23/05/2025

Good article on what dissonance feels like: we live in a time of atrocities and yet still have to clock in for work like it's a normal day. Great, encouraging call to action and coupled with my favorite quote of all time, from Le Guin. This article is a really important read right now.

“We are in a period now when it’s absolutely essential to protest,” says Hartmann, citing the Harvard professor Erica Chenoweth, who argues that just 3.5% of a population engaging in peaceful protest can hold back authoritarian movements.

In 2014, Ursula Le Guin accepted the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, saying: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 22/05/2025

What is "disability washing?" It's when people with disabilities are used to legitimize something, often a brand or a new technology. There's an initiative by Microsoft and some gov group that claims 91% of people with disabilities see Copilot as helpful, right after listing 1.3b people as a stat.

AI Skills 4 Accessibility
Build your AI expertise with a free course created for the disability community. Learn how to use and implement AI tools to boost productivity, streamline tasks, and create impact.

1.3B
people around the world live with a disability

91%
of people with disabilities see Copilot as a helpful assistive technology

87%
of people with disabilities feel more productive at work with Copilot

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 21/05/2025

I wanted to check how Costco, who has committed to DEI despite everything, has done against Target, who took their mask off. Low and behold, Target has continued to lose ever since they announced they were dropping DEI on January 24th. In the last 6 months: Costco is up 7.5% Target is down 24.8%

Costco Wholesale (COST)
1,036 USD +7.48%

Target Corp (TGT)
93.98 USD -24.82%

A line chart showing 6 months of data, normalized to a relative 0 starting point, between Costco and Target.

Costco loses a little value in January and then rises in Feb, loses a little in March, and is now above as of May 21st.

Target gains value slowly until Jan 24th. An annotation on the chart notes: Jan 24th: Target drops DEI. After the 25th, Target has consistently dropped in value and not rallied. Target has been steady near -25% since April.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 17/05/2025

Lmao this is basically the ending of the "feed eggs" game from I Think You Should Leave

FEED EGGS
A low-quality computer graphics egg has an open mouth. Nearby is a basket of eggs.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 14/05/2025

Quote post with a picture of the plane you'd expect as a bribe

Flammarion Engraving, a black and white woodcut print. A missionary holds a staff and leans out, poking their head past the sphere of earth, stars, and the sun, into heaven itself.

Original caption: "A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet..." Engraving by an unknown artist in Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (1888).

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 13/05/2025

Grant drops another absolute bomb of journalism at the intersection of games and accessibility. My jaw is on the floor (again) because of his work. The quote here captured is a large part of the industry of accessibility: banking on highly "marketable" disabilities (not invisible ones).

They described incidents including overhearing racist remarks about other employees, a time when they felt they had to verbally break up a conflict between Barlet and another coworker, and witnessing a number of inappropriate comments from Barlet such as, “We need to get the most f***ed up disabled person to be on our marketing, the one with real multiple disabilities.” The source notes that in this particular instance, Barlet proceeded to make obscene gestures, mocking individuals with physical disabilities.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 13/05/2025

I go off, in my usual fashion, by the end of this:

Image from Andor, where 14 security officials sit around a round table in a bleach white room.

Caption:
The Empire loves minimalism. Look at this room of security officials: The room is as "pure" as it could be from blemishes and disorder; no wasted color, no aliens in sight, perfect geometric symmetry, clean, precise, and almost exclusively men. What better place to control the galaxy?

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 07/05/2025

I've won awards for outstanding reviews at CHI 3 years in a row plus 2 at UIST. I've done this reviewing *as a Ph.D. student.* Yet, I am convinced that asking anyone to disclose expertise will only encourage fellow reviewers and paper authors to disregard valid parts of a review. It won't help.

Special Recognitions for Outstanding Reviews
1 recognition for CHI 2022 Papers
1 recognition for CHI 2023 Papers
1 recognition for CHI 2024 Papers
2 recognitions for UIST 2024 Papers

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 07/05/2025

I'm a prideful little goblin but I think that the new requirement for students to choose "student reviewer" on an already biased and problematic part of our reviewing form, is deeply misguided. This just invites even more bias about hierarchy. A good review should stand on its own.

Expertise
Provide your expertise in the topic area of this paper. If you are a Student reviewer invited by the Primary, please indicate this by clicking the "Student Reviewer" button and disregard the remaining buttons.

Expert
Knowledgeable
Passing knowledge
No knowledge
Student reviewer (selected)

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 05/05/2025

You mean you cannot access the report by EuroNCAP or the Wired article? But yeah, EuroNCAP is a requirement for European cars. Screenshot from the article has a classically American answer: "consumers need to drive demand." EuroNCAP report is here: www.euroncap.com/media/85790/...

Neither Young nor Jake Nelson, director of traffic safety research for AAA, would be drawn on whether US automakers—via the US version of NCAP—would adopt EuroNCAP’s button nudges. “Industry design changes in the US market are more likely to occur based on strong consumer demand,” Nelson says. “It would be ideal to see better coordination between NCAP and EuroNCAP, however, we have not observed much influence in either direction.”

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 04/05/2025

Ah yes, pesky principles like avoiding using stolen content, reducing environmental impact, and enjoying the feelings of learning deeply and making something you understand at a low level while learning about yourself in the process! www.frank.computer/blog/2024/06...

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 04/05/2025

Sometimes going through pain or struggle is immensely important! Not all pain is a lesson, of course. And much of work is tedium. But *some* pain is deeply useful. And that pain, and our ability to think about it, is what separates us from large language models. I wax a little philosophical here:

Hayao Miyazaki said (back in 2016) in response to an AI demo of a monstrous creature that “whoever creates this has no idea what pain is” and that “I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”

I passionately believe that pain, as a pre-linguistic thing we all experience, is far more important to creativity than language is. Language is something we created to escape pain, to distance ourselves from it. Language can evoke pain, but it takes real pain to stimulate what matters about human creativity. And pain is just one thing among many things that we feel before language (that are all central to creativity) - love, comfort, happiness - these are all pre-linguistic feelings too. How can someone be truly creative if they don’t understand what happiness feels like? If they don’t want to evoke the experience of happiness in someone else? If they aren’t fervently seeking joy, to escape from pain? Language has only just been a vehicle, an instrument, that we use on our journey alongside our joy and pain.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 04/05/2025

I always tell this to my research assistants: if you use AI to summarize and write for you, you don't need to be my assistant. You don't need to do research at all. Research should be selfish: *you* (not a machine) learn how to read, write, innovate, and dream. Otherwise, what is the point?

Should you use ChatGPT to understand a paper?
No.

If you have an assignment due, getting ChatGPT to summarize something can be tempting for completing that task. But learning isn’t just a task to complete, you need to be the one who acquires knowledge and really chews on big questions.

For the same reason it wouldn’t make sense to ask a robot to lift weights for you at the gym, it doesn’t make sense to ask an agent to “learn” papers for you. Learning how to think creatively is one of the hardest (and most valuable) types of things you can do. So if it feels hard, that’s because it is. For these reasons though, I highly caution against using LLMs too much. Any use of an LLM can risk reducing the overall “reps” your brain should be putting in. And you need practice. So really try your best to answer the questions I listed above on your own before going to an LLM to answer and learn for you.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 02/05/2025

being frank, it bugs me that we do this

am bug, not feature :(
meme of the sad ant carrying a bindle

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 02/05/2025

One of my favorite provocations of all time, from John Lee Clark's, "Against Access." @johnleeclark.bsky.social audio.mcsweeneys.net/transcripts/...

The question I am asked most frequently by hearing and sighted people is “How can I make my [website, gallery exhibit, film, performance, concert, whatever] accessible to you?” Companies, schools, nonprofits, and state and federal agencies approach me and other DeafBlind people all the time, demanding, “How do we make it more accessible?”

Such a frenzy around access is suffocating. I want to tell them, Listen, I don’t care about your whatever. But the desperation on their breath holds me dumbfounded. The arrogance is astounding. Why is it always about them? Why is it about their including or not including us? Why is it never about us and whether or not we include them?

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 02/05/2025

This is it, the real reason he is backing crypto: funds from foreign entities. Gift link to the article here (in case you don't have a Times subscription): www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/u...

Federal law prevents foreigners from donating to presidential campaigns or inaugural funds, but World Liberty’s coin sale offered a new, legal way to back Mr. Trump.

“The main reason for purchasing such a token was to support Trump’s inauguration, as he was the first crypto-friendly president of the United States,” said Keer Lau, chief strategy officer at Orbiter Finance, a Hong Kong-based entity.

Blockchain

The blockchain is the publicly viewable ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions. Every time someone spends money with a digital coin, it shows up as an entry, allowing investigators to track the flow of funds. In most cases, the identities of the buyers and sellers are concealed behind strings of letters and numbers.

An analysis performed for The Times by the forensics firm Nansen, drawing on crypto industry data, showed that many of the investors were based abroad in places like Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 28/04/2025

WOW! Just look at how gorgeous and professional the Visa Design System chart components are. Holy smokes, the team has really polished these examples. Huge congrats to the broader VDS team on their big open source push, but especially for Visa Chart Components. 🎉📊 design.visa.com/data-visuali...

4 different data visualizations are shown:
A waffle chart titled Category share of total,
A stepped line chart titled Current vs. previous trend,
A line chart with a data-baseline starting at zero titled One vs all trend,
And a dumbbell chart titled Trend with categories

The design is visually strong, crisp, and relatively minimal. Only grey and blue are used as colors, creating a strong visual hierarchy and visual focus.

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