From a distance, Nespoon's patterns appear flawless, as if they could be printed. Up close, it’s clear the lace lines are sprayed and brushed by hand, emphasizing the handmade.

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2026/03/nespoon-lace-murals-paintings/

#art

When to automate a repetitive task:

NO-BRAINER: "This is obviously going to be faster to automate than to do it by hand _even once_. Let's automate it right now, and not do it by hand at all."

FORESIGHTED: "Doing it once by hand is faster than automating it, but I'm going to have to do it a lot of times, so it still saves time to automate it first."

NEED A RUN-UP: "I don't yet understand this task well enough to automate it, so I'll do it a few times by hand first to get the idea."

RAN OFF THE RUNWAY: "Great, now I've done this by hand a few times, I think I can automate it reliably! Oh, oops, turned out I only had one more case of it left to do."

TERRIFIED OF RUNNING OFF THE RUNWAY: "This is a one-off, so it would be a waste of time to automate it, I'll just do it manually."
[next day] "Oh, oops, I made a mistake and have to do it again. But it should be fine this time."
[a month later] "Even though I've had to redo it 25 times already, surely _this_ is the last time? So it would still be a waste of time to automate it."

Not "Atlassian laid off 1,600 people, 10% of its workforce"

But rather: "Atlassian leadership, with 300,000+ paying customers & ~5.2 billion USD in revenue & 6+ billion USD in assets in 2025, failed to line up their financial projections with their own staffing projections, and acted to place the burden of this gap on their direct reports rather than leadership, executive compensation packages, assets, or shareholders"

Layoffs should be personally mortifying. Boards should change.

For shame.