Chintan

Why actors' pupils dilate on camera

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever noticed that in close-up reaction shots, an actor’s pupils often dilate noticeably right at the emotional climax?

It turns out this isn’t usually just incredible acting. It’s a physiological response to the scene’s emotional weight, sure, but sometimes the lighting crew actually uses a trick. By subtly shaping the key light or reducing fill during a take, they force the pupil to adjust to the darker environment exactly on cue.

LLMs are compilers that forgot their type system

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

very few years I find myself reaching for the same metaphor, and every few years it breaks in a new place. Right now the metaphor is this: large language models are compilers that forgot their type system.

We feed them prompts instead of well-defined ASTs. They output streams of tokens instead of predictable machine code. The result is a magical layer of abstraction that works 90% of the time, and fails spectacularly during the last 10%.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I write here once or twice a month — one long essay and one shorter note. The rhythm matters more than the volume.

Most of it is about language models, speech and voice interfaces, and the parts of software engineering that still feel unsolved to me. Sometimes it’s just something I noticed: why an actor’s pupils are dilated in a reaction shot, or why I keep changing keyboard layouts.

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