Links
A regularly updated collection of things I find worth reading, watching, or listening to. Subscribe via RSS.-
Illustration by Pierre Buttin. Zadie Smith, on essay writing for The New Yorker, making it sound easy (paywalled once more, I apologise). In-between the lines, her most puzzling admission, for me:
(I still write the opening and last lines of an essay first.)
Fascinating. The meandering form of an essay is difficult enough to master, let alone knowing where you'll end it before you commence.
“Bob's your uncle".
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Ben Lerner's (paywalled) essay on his open-heart surgery for The New York Review is something else. Gruelling, but beautiful.
As she removed the tape and cleaned the tips of the wires where they protruded near my lower sternum, I asked her what kind of pain I should expect. I’d been told the wires were “gently tacked” to the outermost layer of my heart wall. She said that patients rarely reported pain. [...] What people report, the nurse explained, is that it feels like mice scurrying in their chest. Wait, more than one patient has said this thing about mice? I asked. Yes, she said. A lot of people have told me that.
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I very much enjoyed this two-hour mix by Caribou, Floating Points and their intern, Fred Again.., who had me at the drumless version of Earl Sweatshirt's “Chum”.
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T-shirt design by Andrea Vacovská, photography by Viktorie Macánová. Over on The Brand Identity, Daniel Quisek explains how the Prague-based type foundry Displaay has overhauled its licensing and reimagined its website.
The new licensing model strips away the usual complexity. Instead of tracking device counts, managing web traffic metrics, or navigating tiered user structures, it comes down to one question: how many people work at the company? That’s it.
On top of that, they offer individual styles and custom variable packages. They even allow you to take out characters you don't think you'll use, and you can test everything for free on their website.
This kind of flexibility is very non-standard in the world of type foundries, but may gain traction from here on out.
Oh, and did I mention their new typeface, Serrif? What a beauty.
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The sketchbook of Rose Wong My friend Ilse, an illustrator herself—for whom I'm designing a new website—pointed me to the sketchbook of Rose Wong. A beautiful collection of photos of her sketchbooks, full of (fineliner?) drawings.
I just wish I could enlarge them to admire them more closely.
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Selling Lemons
№ 101Frank Chimero on “a market for lemons”, an idea taken from a 1970 paper by George Akerlof, used to—accurately, I think—describe the current state of the web.
What makes the Market for Lemons concept so appealing (and what differentiates it in my mind from enshittification) is that everyone can be acting reasonably, pursuing their own interests, and things still get worse for everyone. No one has to be evil or stupid: the platform does what’s profitable, sellers do what works, buyers try to make smart decisions, and yet the whole system degrades into something nobody actually wants.
The degradation of the web has been on my mind, so his post resonated with me. I guess the launch of an app called Vibes, made to spew AI-generated slop into a feed that's full of it, only adds fuel to that fire.
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Merging my RSS feeds
№ 100I feel bad for using the 100th post here to point your attention to something so meaningless, but I'd like to just make sure to get it out of the way: I've made some changes to the RSS feeds on this site. If you follow me via RSS, please read this post and, if you like, re-subscribe using this link.
I've greatly enjoyed picking up the pace here, and look forward to publishing the next 100 posts. I hope you do too.
Thank you for reading!
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Did you know birdwatching is a competitive sport? I didn't. I've downloaded Merlin Bird ID, but that's about it.
This funny, somewhat obnoxious, and very well made two-hour documentary does a great job diving into the subculture. When I started watching it I thought "I'll probably finish this over a day or two", but I couldn't stop watching it.
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You Need to Be Bored
№ 98Arthur C. Brooks, a Harvard professor, explains why boredom helps you be more creative, and less depressed. I feel like this is common knowledge, but it seems like we—as humans—are less and less capable of allowing boredom into our lives. This video was a helpful reminder of why doing so is a good thing.
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Ode to the Dinkus
№ 97
The Dinkus. Three months ago, I was a normal person. Now all I think about 24-7 is the dinkus.
I use the word dingus a lot, and had no clue that a line of three asterisks (***), often used to create a breather between two paragraphs of writing, was called a dinkus. My sincere thanks to Đorđe, who suggested I have a custom one made for Trema.
The dinkus, mind you, is not to be confused with the asterism (⁂). Daisy Alioto, writer and dinkus influencer, explained it all, years ago, over on The Paris Review.