Interactive visual essay on Nassim Taleb's Antifragile. Six parables, nine figures — convexity, barbell payoffs, fat-tailed distributions, and iatrogenics rendered as scrollytelling figures. Inspired by The Pudding.
What is the opposite of fragile?
Most people say "robust." It isn't. The English language is missing the word — Taleb had to coin it. This essay walks through the missing word in six of his own parables.
| # | Parable | Concept | Pattern |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | How to Love the Wind | Fragile vs antifragile time series | Side-by-side progressive draw |
| II | Between Damocles and Hydra | The triad + fat-tailed distributions | Toggle + morphing curve |
| III | Stone and Pebbles | Nonlinear harm (concavity) | Scrollytelling |
| IV | Naive Intervention | Iatrogenics + via negativa | Static dual distribution |
| V | Fat Tony | Barbell strategy + convex payoff | Slider-driven curves |
| VI | The Turkey | Inverse turkey problem | Progressive draw + cliff |
All essay text lives in src/data/copy.json. Edit that file and hot reload updates the browser — no need to touch Svelte components.
- PROJECT.md — scope, working order, non-goals
bun install
bun run dev| Component | Tools |
|---|---|
| Framework | SvelteKit (Svelte 5) |
| Visualization | D3.js v7 |
| UI | bits-ui components |
| Styling | Style Dictionary (design tokens) |
| Build | Vite |
| Deploy | Cloudflare (adapter-cloudflare/static) |
Single-page scroll essay. All sections render on one route (/).
copy.json → Svelte context → 8 components → SVG figures (D3.js)
| Layer | What |
|---|---|
| Data | src/data/copy.json — all prose |
| Components | Hero, Wind, Hydra, Stone, Intervention, Tony, Turkey, Credits |
| Figures | Pure SVG + D3 (line, area, scaleLinear, curveBasis) |
| Interaction | Scrolly, Slider, ToggleGroup, inView, tweened |
| Math | src/utils/gaussian.js — skewed distributions |
The concepts, parables, and figures are Nassim Nicholas Taleb's, from Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (Random House, 2012) and Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails (STEM Academic Press, 2020). The starter template is The Pudding's.