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Ben Fry

@benfry.com

Founder of https://fathom.info, co-founder of https://processing.org, lecturer at https://mit.edu

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Latest posts by Ben Fry @benfry.com

Thanks for the confirmation—I had seen that but was scared off by the “this probably won't work” message at the top of the post… But it's working! (For now.)

Nice to see you pop up on here—hope you're doing well!

03.03.2026 10:34 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

In 30 years, it's been incredible to go from Netscape making everyone realize you can just publish frequent point release upgrades & fixes—to our current moment, where software & hardware companies have decided they own your device & it's ok to harass you into upgrades because it's better for them.

02.03.2026 21:34 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
“Upgrade to macOS Tahoe” dialog box with buttons “Install Tonight” and “Not Fucking Ever”

“Upgrade to macOS Tahoe” dialog box with buttons “Install Tonight” and “Not Fucking Ever”

There I fixed it

02.03.2026 21:34 👍 8 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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The NYT style guide

02.03.2026 04:09 👍 8191 🔁 3313 💬 70 📌 105
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I have a new digital illustraion course live now! If interested - sign up here www.jamesgilleardacademy.com/beginnercourse

27.02.2026 12:10 👍 8 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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This frisky pair of bongos, a critically endangered species of African antelope, is settling into the zoo's Africa area. Meet Banjo and Bentley!

26.02.2026 23:52 👍 512 🔁 102 💬 7 📌 11

No JavaScript! Hilarious. Love this so much.

24.02.2026 12:01 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

[hospital]

SURGEON: [lowers mask] I'm sorry, we were unable to separate the art from the artist
ME: are they
S: yes, they’re still an asshole

05.07.2023 04:51 👍 2359 🔁 665 💬 17 📌 10

Using a great typeface is like cheating at design because your work instantly gets so much better.

After years of mucking, we started using MD System in a prototype. Seeing what the tool *could* look like was a huge motivation to finally make it happen. Once we saw it, we couldn't wait to build it.

17.02.2026 12:02 👍 12 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

Rest in Peace, Robert Tinney, the artist behind many of—and the best of—these covers: tinney.net/in-memoriam

12.02.2026 00:03 👍 5 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
America is on the cusp of competitive authoritarianism. The Trump administration has already begun to weaponize state institutions and deploy them against opponents. The Constitution alone cannot save U.S. democracy. Even the best-designed constitutions have ambiguities and gaps that can be exploited for antidemocratic ends. After all, the same constitutional order that undergirds America’s contemporary liberal democracy permitted nearly a century of authoritarianism in the Jim Crow South, the mass internment of Japanese Americans, and McCarthyism. In 2025, the United States is governed nationally by a party with greater will and power to exploit constitutional and legal ambiguities for authoritarian ends than at any time in the past two centuries.

America is on the cusp of competitive authoritarianism. The Trump administration has already begun to weaponize state institutions and deploy them against opponents. The Constitution alone cannot save U.S. democracy. Even the best-designed constitutions have ambiguities and gaps that can be exploited for antidemocratic ends. After all, the same constitutional order that undergirds America’s contemporary liberal democracy permitted nearly a century of authoritarianism in the Jim Crow South, the mass internment of Japanese Americans, and McCarthyism. In 2025, the United States is governed nationally by a party with greater will and power to exploit constitutional and legal ambiguities for authoritarian ends than at any time in the past two centuries.

This piece was published exactly a year ago, and at the time I /hoped/ it was at least a bit alarmist, but it has proven to be overwhelmingly correct, and perhaps even understated.

Well worth reading to understand where we are, where we're headed in the US: www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

11.02.2026 12:05 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Mmm… it's complicated. Longer than a post on here, but still haven't been able to make the time to finish writing it all down into something worth reading.

05.02.2026 21:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Fifteen years later, it's a new version of “if IBM's Watson is so f*ing smart, why can't it fix IBM's stock price?”

…but this is even more on-point.

05.02.2026 03:06 👍 4 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0

“She was right, but early” is also a hell of a line, just thrown in there.

04.02.2026 20:33 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Sound of that cough is definitely the first thing you notice; especially with kids.

04.02.2026 11:07 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Xcode 26.3 unlocks the power of agentic coding Xcode 26.3 introduces support for agentic coding, a new way in Xcode for developers to build apps, powered by coding agents from Anthropic and OpenAI.

Can't get over how gleefully people use the word “agentic” as if it doesn't sound like a terrible disease.

“Millions were sickened by Agentic Flu and thousands more died of the hemorrhagic fever before scientists were able to identify a vaccine candidate…”

www.apple.com/newsroom/202...

03.02.2026 21:27 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0

Always appreciate people who can put numbers in perspective.

31.01.2026 22:17 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Cover of “Beading with Algorithms” with 30% promo code RECMATH30

Cover of “Beading with Algorithms” with 30% promo code RECMATH30

“my dream of combining my loves of math, art, and teaching into a book is finally a reality” —@gwenbeads.bsky.social

www.worldscientific.com/worldscibook...

28.01.2026 14:17 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
large boulder the size of a small boulder tweet from San Miguel sheriff, dated 1/27/20

large boulder the size of a small boulder tweet from San Miguel sheriff, dated 1/27/20

Happy large boulder the size of a small boulder day for all who celebrate

27.01.2024 14:56 👍 7552 🔁 3588 💬 64 📌 103
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Beautiful perspective from this map of the world re-oriented using the “Spilhaus” projection, which depicts Earth as a single, connected ocean.

From Woods Hole's “Why the Ocean” campaign: www.whoi.edu/campaign/why...

26.01.2026 12:02 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I wrote the speech I *wish* Chuck Schumer would give tonight - as an actual opposition leader. Here it is:

"My fellow Americans: At this hour, an unrestrained force of militarized and violent federal officers is carrying out a project of ethnic cleansing in the streets of American cities."

1/14

25.01.2026 02:06 👍 719 🔁 295 💬 17 📌 76

A reminder that we can expect and must demand so more from political leaders—including moral clarity.

I was fortunate to have Ami, a great speechwriter, work with me on several White House speeches.

Read what he would have Schumer say in an alternate parallel universe of courage and conviction 🧵

25.01.2026 02:28 👍 325 🔁 101 💬 2 📌 3
Bugs Apple Loves Bugs Apple won't fix. Why else would they keep them around for so long? We did the math.

“The bugs are real. The math is not. All estimates are made up. Your frustration, however, is valid.”

www.bugsappleloves.com

24.01.2026 01:37 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

This is art. The writing style of ChatGPT, recursively explained using that same voice.

18.01.2026 12:31 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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21,689 rows of film data (100 MB file!) and filtering by Director instantaneously on hover.

All in the browser, no roundtrip to a server. Just insane what we can do here: rowboat.net/f/7vb8dx84

(I'm actually moving slower in the first half to make it less confusing—second half is actual speed.)

16.01.2026 15:18 👍 12 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1

Boosting for 1) using bread for infographics and 2) what the costs of running a business actually look like

15.01.2026 16:53 👍 12 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
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A culture of work we believe in | Fathom Information Design Katherine reflects on how we've been thinking and talking about generative AI in the studio.

I really, really like this post from design consultancy Fathom: it’s a thoughtful take on why they’re not planning to incorporate “generative AI” into their practice. www.fathom.info/notebook/260...

12.01.2026 20:39 👍 28 🔁 5 💬 2 📌 0
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A culture of work we believe in | Fathom Information Design Katherine reflects on how we've been thinking and talking about generative AI in the studio.

An excellent piece by @kayserifserif.place about how we're thinking about Generative AI at @fathom.info, focused on the things we /want/ to build—from the artifacts we produce to the internal culture that makes it happen:

www.fathom.info/notebook/260...

13.01.2026 14:54 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1
As we train our sights on what we oppose, let’s recall the costs of surrender. When we use generative AI, we consent to the appropriation of our intellectual property by data scrapers. We stuff the pockets of oligarchs with even more money. We abet the acceleration of a social media gyre that everyone admits is making life worse. We accept the further degradation of an already degraded educational system. We agree that we would rather deplete our natural resources than make our own art or think our own thoughts. We dig ourselves deeper into crises that have been made worse by technology, from the erosion of electoral democracy to the intensification of climate change. We condone platforms that not only urge children to commit suicide, they instruct them on how to tie the noose. We hand over our autonomy, at the very moment of emerging American fascism.

As we train our sights on what we oppose, let’s recall the costs of surrender. When we use generative AI, we consent to the appropriation of our intellectual property by data scrapers. We stuff the pockets of oligarchs with even more money. We abet the acceleration of a social media gyre that everyone admits is making life worse. We accept the further degradation of an already degraded educational system. We agree that we would rather deplete our natural resources than make our own art or think our own thoughts. We dig ourselves deeper into crises that have been made worse by technology, from the erosion of electoral democracy to the intensification of climate change. We condone platforms that not only urge children to commit suicide, they instruct them on how to tie the noose. We hand over our autonomy, at the very moment of emerging American fascism.

While trying to sort out and assemble my own thoughts about generative AI, it's been helpful to take in the work of others who are more articulate about it.

www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

11.01.2026 17:36 👍 8 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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Gell-Mann amnesia effect - Wikipedia

“In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story—and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate…”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Ma...

10.01.2026 13:36 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0