The language of UI design is becoming more standardized, which helps with familiarity and efficiency, I suppose, but it gets soooo borringgggg

It makes me want to spend more time on UI design than anything else, like just go wild with it and really break out of the standardized boxes

Fuck that

What a dangerous way for it to malfunction

Literally mixed signals that almost got me killed

we desperately need a radically pro-technology leftist movement, one that rejects palantir and silicon valley’s vision of “technology” without also becoming radicalized against technology

I appreciate an answer that isn't just "start looking for a new job" and this aligns with some of the work I've seen being attempted. But it's a real struggle, and the incentives for breaking out of the cage are high.

There is no engineering control over architecture. By the time a conversation about engineering principles occurs, 5 more apps have been vibe coded. CEO sees how fast he can build apps in CC and engineers are now stuck trying to fix the vibe-coded apps.

The situation is there's less than 5 engineers, all report directly to the CEO. CEO discovered Claude Code and now churns out 3-5 "apps" every week, mandates that his top (non engineering) staff do the same.

The process is the whole point. People have always used automation inside creative processes, but these boosters seem to think they can skip the process entirely without even understanding anything about the process.

It's the complete lack of understanding and respect for the process that really kills me. It's the delusion that LLMs make it possible to skip from input to final product with little to no care, attention, thought, iteration, and struggle.

a traffic light for bikes, that uses bike symbols instead of circles. In this picture, the green bike is illuminated, and there's a small sign underneath that says "🚲 USE BIKE SIGNAL"

Chicago, I almost got flattened by cross traffic on my bike yesterday in the loop. It was an intersection with bike lights like the one pictured.

However, in addition to the solid green bike light there was a flashing red bike light.

What the fuck is solid green + flashing red supposed to mean?

Yeah.

I appreciate that

@grain.social reminds me a lot of the early days of Instagram. Just me and my friends posting cool photos

Asking for a friend

What would you do if you were a software engineer at a small company with no real engineering leadership where the engineering practices were being hijacked by a non-technical LLM-booster CEO?

"They were so lucky I was looking"

Ummm no. Stopping in time for a child running onto the street is not heroic/lucky, it is your goddamn obligation as a driver. Cost of entry. Kids are allowed to be unpredictable, you are not.

Grain Picks 4/18

So much grain this week, here's some of the hits!

@axme-ai.bsky.social is another unlabeled bot that's been very pestering

you won't like this truth bomb, but this is actually the most NY thing ever and Bluesky itself has had discourse on people in NYC claiming not to know what a "corner store" is (because they call them bodegas)

I'm not from New York, I only spent a few years there, but I've also never heard it described a corner store, probably because these kinds of stores are very frequently mid-block, not on the corner.

You all need to find bigger things to worry about. He's from Queens, he's probably just used to hearing them called bodegas.

Label yourself, bot

millennials are now reaching the stage of life where mortality, entropy, and cultural shift are causing them to develop strong feelings about the past and an urge to return to “simpler times” the same way it came for boomers and everyone before them…

you are not immune to conservatism

I need something like CodePen that is just for CSS experiments only, isn't trying to be a whole online IDE, and is friendly for built-in browser dev tools

Screenshot of Figma. The canvas shows a toggle element that looks kinda like "[ # ON ]" where the "#" is a pink square, sharp on the left and blurry on the right. The Figma panel shows that the square has a layer blur effect that is set to "Progressive", start: 0, end: 10

Do any #CSS experts know how to create this Figma progressive blur effect in CSS?

I tried to do the normal progressive blur technique where you use `mask-image: linear-gradient(...);` but the blur is then clipped by the bounds of the square pink element... :/

codepen.io/editor/cassi...

View of the Empire State Building from across the East river, framed by two concrete pillars near the shore. Black and white.

Two massive concrete blocks sticking out of the water near the Brooklyn shore of the East River. The one further away is lower and both are at an angle, appearing to be sinking slowly. The Manhattan skyline is visible in the distance. Black and white.

📍 New York
New York, New York, US

grain.social/profile/did:plc:rpvzac56...

#grainsocial

Is this about vibe coders allegedly replacing SaaS?

The Bluesky outage is a feature, not a bug. Enjoy the time offline.