X-Risk: Thinking About the End of the Human Race

August 15, 2023 by Gary Schroeder in Book Review

This is a review of the book X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction by Thomas Moynihan. I was expecting this book to be an exploration of how human beings seem to be continually drawn to creating the mechanisms of our own destruction. Whether it be be nuclear weaponry, machines which poison our atmosphere, or computers which will become hyper-intelligent in an instant, we always seem to head in the same direction. Why should this be so? I thought this book would help me figure it out. No such luck. “X-Risk” isn’t about any of these real world problems. It’s about the philosophical origins of these problems as written by famous Western thinkers over the last 400 years

How to Feel About Roy Lichtenstein

July 07, 2023 by Gary Schroeder in Misc.

What happened to the unattributed comics artists whose work he cribbed? Their art form was considered so low that Lichtenstein never felt obliged to credit them, nor was his audience ever much inclined to care who they were.

Notes on 'Liftoff' by Eric Berger

June 29, 2023 by Gary Schroeder in Book Review, Technology

Elon Musk “long ago decided that for humanity to have a future, it must expand to other worlds”…a premise which is kind of nuts if one thinks about it for more than a few seconds but there seems to be no doubt that Musk believes it. This belief was his prime motivation for founding a company that could build the hardware to make that wild dream a reality. “Liftoff” is the story of the first few years of his effort to build the company we now know as SpaceX.

We're Children All Our Lives

May 22, 2023 by Gary Schroeder in Misc.

Author Martin Amis died this week and I saw a post by @juderogers recounting some of his views from later in life. This section really resonated with me.

The Fukuda Cube

October 30, 2022 by Gary Schroeder in Art & Design

Fukuda was expert at communicating messages using minimal graphic means. His spare style was universal, his symbolism bridging cultural divides.

What is Real?

June 07, 2022 by Gary Schroeder in Misc., Book Review

In quantum physics, what does it mean for a particle to exist in multiple places at once until you "look" at it? Forgetting the math, what's physically happening? The book does a good job of guiding the reader through the history of those rebels who have questioned the Copenhagen Interpretation and put forth some possible explanations for what's physically happening in the Forbidden Question Zone.

A Trip to the Glass House

May 16, 2022 by Gary Schroeder in Misc.

It’s a beautiful object from the outside; a glass box with a rectangular footprint held together by what seem to be impossibly thin ribbons of black metal. From the outside, you can see a brick silo and a few pieces of furniture. it’s pleasurable to look at. From a distance, I couldn’t wait to get inside, to experience what it was like to be inside.

Carousels are Bad. It's Conclusive.

May 01, 2022 by Gary Schroeder in Content Strategy, User Experience

Carousels are one of the first things that customers ask for on a home page. I resist but often lose the battle. Maybe, just maybe, if I had this kind of cogent, data-driven rebuttal in my arsenal of professional guidance, I might be more successful in prevailing. In the end, the customer would be the winner, not me. This article, lifted from Joni Halibi’s blog, explains the issue.

For the Love of Goodness, Don't Click Here

April 21, 2022 by Gary Schroeder in Misc.

This is a lazy post, but there’s nothing wrong with capturing someone else’s Good Thoughts when you see them. Emily Smith recently posted this concise thread about why you shouldn’t use “click here” as link text. I’ve written about this before as it’s one of my favorite pet peeves, but Emily sums it up even more directly, so here we go…

How an Infographic Comes Together

December 10, 2021 by Gary Schroeder in Misc., Art & Design

I’ve started to build up a significant portfolio of published infographics and I thought this is a good point at which to document how I work. Like any finished project, each graphic looks relatively simple, but the birthing process of any work of this kind is longer than you might think.