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R. Alex Anderson

@ralexanderson.com
1.7K followers 323 following 4.4K posts

He/Him • Husband • Girl Dad • Latter-day Saint • Code Poet • Hobby Chef • Spaceship Enthusiast • Serial Optimist • Determined Dreamer Living in Utah thoriumsim.com

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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 14h
Siri AI is a bit hit-and-miss. One thing it does well is when I say "Add this to my calendar" and it creates the event for whatever is on my screen. I've done it with a hotel reservation and a JPEG of an event at my library, and it got it right the first time. Just don't have it change the event.😬
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 28/09/2026
I was big into UI interface theming on MacOS 9 and the early versions of OSX. It was thrilling, time consuming, and exhausting. I think that phase smacked the desire to tweak right out of me, hence why agents don’t appeal to me. (I also have the most vanilla smart home. Home Assistant is a pain)
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 27/09/2026
I just love it when a person has a very specific hammer, unique to them, and they are just whacking every single nail-shaped thing with it.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 26/09/2026
I’m just not convinced that I need an agent to help run my digital life. It’s got such a small interface with my irl life, and I’m not doing that much with my digital life to warrant an agent. It’s just not appealing to me to have a computer telling me what to do and doing things on my behalf.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 26/09/2026
I've been working on the same spaceship game for the past 6 years (and I was working on its predecessor for 4 years before that). Seeing it finally starting to come together is incredibly gratifying. Doing big things for a long time is great.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 23/09/2026
Pumpkin roll.
A brown loaf covered in white powdered sugar. A slice sits in front of it, which reveals it has a spiral of cream cheese frosting
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 21/09/2026
Everything I thought I knew about creating original musical compositions is wrong.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 20/09/2026
Herb loaves
Two fresh baked loaves of bread, speckled with green flecks of herbs
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Reposted by R. Alex Anderson
Hugo @hugorcd.com · 20/09/2026
For me, that means taking more photos, spending time in museums, becoming curious about unfamiliar subjects and genuinely pursuing the things that move me. It also means continuing to treat code as art: choosing what I build and giving it the time and care to become something I’m proud of.
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Reposted by R. Alex Anderson
danielroe @danielroe.dev · 19/09/2026
don't be nice.
roe.dev
Don't be nice
Sometimes, it's more important to be good than it is to be nice.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 16/09/2026
I just love the disk image background for my spaceship game. Warms my heart every time I see it.
A macOS finder window showing a purple starry background with a purple three-ringed triquetra logo and "Thorium Nova" underneath. The thorium Nova app on the left points to the applications folder alias on the right.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 10/09/2026
This notion has been noodling in my head for a while. It’s a good one.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 10/09/2026
“A URL is technical, a link is cultural.“ What a Pitch Perfect sentiment
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 10/09/2026
My child has a onesie with long pants and 11 buttons, which is perfect for teaching her how to count from 0 to 10 as I button them. Except I fear I am cursing her to live with a 0 indexed mindset.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 09/09/2026
I dunno, I kinda want to be the kind of person with less phone, not more phone.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 31/08/2026
This was fun to research and write. A nice, thick problem to sink my teeth into.
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Reposted by R. Alex Anderson
Remix @remix.run · 31/08/2026
Today we published the first release candidate for Remix 3! - 350+ commits since beta - Full-stack HMR - Database tooling - Safer routing - Improved assets serving - More components - SPA support - One remix package Try it: npx remix@next new my-app
remix.run
Remix 3 Release Candidate
Remix 3 RC is available now. A full-stack JavaScript framework built on web primitives and shipped as a single dependency.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 23/08/2026
Sleepytime Tea Ice Cream Heat 1 cup of milk — I used almond milk. Steep 4 sachets of tea for 6 minutes Remove tea bags, add ¾ cup of sugar if you want it really sweet, or adjust to taste. Refrigerate. Mix in 2 cups of cream. Churn for 15 minutes. Freeze. Delicious, floral, botanical.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 23/08/2026
Much like sync and async functions, apps built with AI have a color. Humans can try to untangle their codebase, but it's far easier to just send an AI to understand the other codebase and pull the pieces you want into your own. So maybe developers should care if it's vibe coded.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 21/08/2026
A trip to the children's indoor playground yielded this new profile picture.
Alex, a man wearing a hat with a short beard, is posing in front of a very colorful light fixture. Lines of red, purple, green yellow, orange, and blue lights are spreading out behind his face.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 17/08/2026
Just made and ate the most amazing roasted pumpkin soup from pumpkins and sage from my garden. Creamy, savory, full of flavor — positively delicious. Having dirt to grow stuff in is a real treat.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 17/08/2026
It's unnerving how much of physics is just "statistics and probability". Thermodynamics? Statistics and probability. Chemical reactions? Statistics and probability. Quantum mechanics? Believe it or not, statistics and probability!
The Venezuelan man from Parks and Recreation saying "Straight to Jail"
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 16/08/2026
There's a certain satisfaction that comes from taking three things that are similar, determining the dimensions that define their differences, putting them into a 2x2 grid, and discovering a secret, likely daft, fourth thing that is distinct from the other three.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 16/08/2026
While still true, this is becoming less relevant as AI models are able to pull in more and more context. There's definitely something novel and powerful about a tool that has orders of magnitude more memory than I do. I want to like it more... but... davidepiffer.com/p/ai-isnt-ou...
davidepiffer.com
AI Isn’t Outthinking Mathematicians. It’s Out-Remembering Them.
The key advantage may not be superior reasoning, but a virtually unlimited symbolic working memory.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 16/08/2026
What sucks about being a "makes fancy websites" guy is that any time I work in the real world, like with a residential sprinkler system, I get so frustrated by the constraints of corporeal reality. We've got it sooooooo easy. Anyway, gonna epoxy some PVC joints that were just a little too shallow.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 09/08/2026
> > Even if models are good at producing real results, they’re much better at producing results that look real but are misleading. > Something that looks real, but isn’t quite? > We have a word for that: artificial. Holy crap. It's obvious in hindsight. notes.jim-nielsen.com/n/2026-08-09...
notes.jim-nielsen.com
Some thoughts about Anthropic’s new cryptanalysis results | Jim Nielsen’s Notes
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 07/08/2026
It's true — fetching authenticated data directly from a PDS is a pain in the butt. And it's totally worth it.
alexanderson.leaflet.pub
Making Websites is More Complicated These Days - And That's a Good Thing
It's gonna get worse before it gets better... but once it gets better, it gets really good.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 01/08/2026
I still love how prescient and ironically anti-capitalist The Lego Movie is. Like, they have a literal room where the output of all the creative people is funneled into robots to create the most boring, mundane, cookie-cutter stuff imaginable. Sounds familiar in 2026...
The Think Tank scene from The Lego Movie. Several Lego minifigs are locked in boxes with green electrodes strapped to their heads. There's a large grid of them. A solitary white-robed minifig is floating in front of them.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 25/07/2026
TIL: the 1812 overture by Tchaikovsky commemorates the Russian military victory, not the American.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 25/07/2026
Not gonna lie, I can see the appeal of using agents and LLMs to make my vision a reality much faster with fewer mistakes. But does that leave any room for happy little accidents?
alexanderson.leaflet.pub
The Joy of Programming
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 22/07/2026
We painted rocks today.
A number of rocks painted with acrylic paint. One is dark with some planets and stars, one with a picture of a person, one with sea creatures, and several with many different colors.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 21/07/2026
I remembered something about trying to do something even though I didn't think it would work.
alexanderson.leaflet.pub
Hubris
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 19/07/2026
Isn’t this the guy who said the primary purpose of business is to maximize shareholder value? 🤦‍♂️
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 16/07/2026
You know what's nice about Factorio? Is it gives the feeling of being productive and solving problems without actually being productive and solving problems. Which is nice — for some reason, I'd much rather play a game about solving problems than actually solve problems. Why is that?
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 13/07/2026
Three novel JavaScript runtimes that I've seen pop up recently: antjs.org pocketjs.dev www.perryts.com Notable that all three of them have an AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md Say what you will, but I doubt any of these projects would exist if it weren't for LLMs and coding agents.
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Reposted by R. Alex Anderson
dan @danabra.mov · 13/07/2026
i want to do a little ✨ ama about atproto ✨ in this thread. no question is too simple if you’ve been curious about atproto but don’t know much (anything?) about it, ask any question and i’ll try to explain it in my own words. (+ would love to hear from friends who aren’t very active on bsky)
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 09/07/2026
My glasses are thick on the edges, and I have astigmatism. The correction produces a very strong chromatic aberration. Looks trippy if I’m paying attention.
A ceiling fan with motion blur. The top-left side of the light fixture has a distinctly blue border, while the bottom right has a red border, as if the RGB layers came apart and shifted underneath each other.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 08/07/2026
I've found LLMs are really good at that first 90%. The problem is they make the second 90% even harder. Probably better to keep that first 90% as small as possible...
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 05/07/2026
Just some noodling on fractals and looking deeply at things.
alexanderson.leaflet.pub
Reality is Fractal
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 30/06/2026
Uh oh. The Octocat has made @enclose.horse into a ghost! 👻
Two tabs in Safari's suggested page window. On the left is Github, with the octocat surrounded by clouds. On the right is Enclose Horse, with a large pixelated horse on top of the game board. One of the clouds in the Github image lines up perfectly with the horse on the Enclose Horse image, making it appear like the horse is a ghost.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 30/06/2026
I should add, this is in addition to the small side yard garden we started this year. It used to be a dog run, complete with turf and soil saturated with dog urine. Fortunately, the soil isn’t too salty for things to grow!
A small garden plot along the side of a house. Tomatoes, marigolds, lettuce, carrots, and beets are arranged in rows. A large squash plant takes up the right side of the frame.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 29/06/2026
Next yard project is underway: replacing this very sad patch of grass with a vegetable garden. First step: KILL EVERYTHING! Black plastic sheets will create an oven that should take care of the grass roots, weeds, and even ungerminated seeds. Next spring, it will be ready for tilling and planting.
A rectangle of yard is bordered by concrete sidewalk and covered with a sheet of black plastic. A rose bush can be seen in the foreground.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 25/06/2026
I'm stealing music, but not in the Limewire/Napster sense. In the "The only way I'll learn to compose myself is by copying other musicians" way.
alexanderson.leaflet.pub
Stealing
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 24/06/2026
That space between conviction and humility, between standing up for what you believe in and changing your mind when presented with new data, between saying and doing things that might annoy people and cautiously tiptoeing around issues to avoid rocking the already shaky boat.
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 22/06/2026
The yellowish cast of the sky, ash raining down, smoke filling the air… that’s probably as good an excuse as any for why I don’t feel like doing anything, right?
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 21/06/2026
An offhand comment gave me a lot to think about stories, specifically the stories we tell ourselves.
alexanderson.leaflet.pub
Storytelling
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 18/06/2026
I had a lot of fun summarizing this thread for my 5 year old. We just love learning science stuff!
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 10/06/2026
Just a few first-draft thoughts on React, Remix, and raw HTML sprinkled with JavaScript, inspired by this excellent piece: mohkohn.co.uk/writing/html-first
alexanderson.leaflet.pub
Additive Ideas vs Paradigm Shifts
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 09/06/2026
Part of the reason why making a spaceship game with realistic sizes and distances is such a pain. To make travel fast enough for fun gameplay, I have to crank the speed up to 200,000 C - that’s 200,000 times the speed of light! And it still takes about 5 minutes to get to Proxima Centauri!
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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 03/06/2026
Last weekend I did something I haven't done in over 15 years — put on a silly costume and played a silly acting part for a starship bridge simulation game. And I had a blast.
alexanderson.leaflet.pub
Playing Spaceship
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