Monthly Archives: October 2026

AI lets your fingers do the animating

I got a kick (heh, oh no) out of this fun marriage between organic & imagined worlds. If only I’d had this tech in 8th grade, I’d have used it on my buddies’ compulsive finger-scale simulation of kick flips & other skateboard tricks.

The animator’s comments are pretty thoughtful, so in case Twitter won’t display its translation below, I’ve pasted it below the post:

Ever since I started dabbling in animation—and it’ll be four decades soon—I’ve been waiting for tools that let you animate in a more organic and contextual way.

The entire traditional technical overlay on computer animation is absurdly overcomplicated.

It worked a bit like a gatekeeper. “Look how terrifyingly difficult this is, better leave it to the specialists, because no one else will grasp the depth and complexity of this magical process.” In fact, there are few other industries that have turned the complication of tools into a virtue, while simultaneously making the process inhuman and unintuitive.

From the start of this fun, I’ve dreamed of something else. Building the dynamics of a scene or a character’s movement is hard on abstract Bézier curves, on multiply nested hierarchical skeletons, but it’s easy to show with a gesture, fingers, body, or even just a whistle.

Finally, it’s possible. People are multimodal, so it’s great that machines finally are too. Finally, instead of “move the mouth corner controller 5 mm up, and increase the eye squint, move the eyebrow controller up 3 mm”—you’ll be able to say “smile.” Which is what I wish for myself and for all of us.

Reconstructing ancient ruins in 3D with Gemini 4 Argon

My wife & son are huge fans of LIDAR-heavy shows like Expedition Unknown, and I can only imagine how they and many others will use these new techniques to shed light on archeological finds:

“We don’t get to be heroes anymore…”

Man, I know I’ve been on a bit of a bummy kick with some AI-related posts lately, but I think we’ve gotta look at this maelstrom from all angles—including the really emotional ones.

I found this episode really touching:

Steven Strogatz, a professor of mathematics at Cornell University, describes the excitement and grief of watching A.I. take on work that gives people a sense of purpose — and asks what could be lost if machines deliver answers without the human struggle, insight and understanding that make solving problems meaningful.

Likening mathematical exploration to sex & courtship was not, I’ll admit, something I expected to hear—and yet it speaks to pursuit, triumph, and resultant meaning. Give it a listen, and I’ll bet you find a lot that resonates.

AI: “Grief, burnout, and opportunity”

“I don’t want to steer, I want to effing row!“

In a world polarized between AI hype & hate, I found Molly Graham’s take refreshing. She of “Give away your Legos” fame (i.e. give away what you’ve gotten good at) plainly acknowledges how much it sucks when AI one-shots so much of your hard-won craft and skills.

Yes, big step-changes in our tools promise that we can go from building houses to building entire worlds, but… what’s wrong with building just houses? Why is my work, my accomplishment, no longer enough?

I think you’ll find some thoughtful insights in this candid chat she had with Lenny Rachitsky:

Gemini provided a nice summary of key related points in her talk:

Key Emotional Challenges

  • The Identity Shift: Many professionals are mourning the loss of their traditional craft, moving from “rowing” (hands-on execution) to “steering” (managing AI tools). As Molly notes, “I’ve heard from a lot of engineers just like I really miss what it used to be” (1:03-1:06).
  • Loneliness of Collaboration: The collaborative nature of work is being altered as humans increasingly interact with AI agents rather than teammates. Molly describes a conversation with a product leader who felt “it’s kind of lonely” because “I miss these parts of the collaboration that have been a little bit stripped away” (21:43-21:52).
  • Burnout and Pressure: With burnout rates rising (55% according to the podcast data), employees feel pushed to maintain high productivity while simultaneously managing the existential anxiety of a changing job landscape (29:20-30:05).

Critical Perspective

  • Normalization of Grief: Molly stresses, “Change sucks. It also can be awesome but we don’t have to be fluffy bunnies about this. We can also just say this is hard” (22:03-22:08).
  • The Importance of Leadership: She cautions that leaders who attempt to gloss over these human realities risk alienating their teams, urging managers to create space for open dialogue about the difficulty of this era (15:15-15:20).

LTX AlphaGen promises amazing background removal

“Dad, what were the 90’s like?”
“Well, son, we spent most of it slowly dying as we set vector points frame by frame in order to (badly) separate items from video backgrounds…”

Maybe now models like this can once & truly drive a stake through the hearts of such dark days. Check it out, along with some sharp words from Aharon Rabinowitz—who 1000% knows what he’s talking about:

The Pope on AI, art, and humanity

I’m not sure what this will translate into, concretely, but I’m glad to see his holiness raise the topic: