December 2017

Happy New Year, dear reader!

December is gone, but its links remain.

I did some more film writing this month, most notably on The Disaster Artist and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and I also published a collection of all the shorter film reviews I wrote in 2017.

This month’s links are a good mix of the topical (net neutrality, sexism, the new tax bill), year-end reflections, inspiring art and design, and more. I hope… See more →

Who are these people who actually know the lyrics to “Auld Lang Syne”?

A quick primer on freestyle rap, which has evolved beyond being strictly improvisational. kottke.org/17/12/what-is-…

Closing out 2017 with this killer find at an Asbury Park vintage shop.

Swatting finally got someone killed. This is so, so ugly, and a host of societal ills have their fingerprints on it. washingtonpost.com/news/post-nati…

A nice roundup by @stuntbox of our interactive and visually-oriented work at @propublica this past year. features.propublica.org/2017-year-in-r…

Call Me by Your Name strikes me as an important achievement, but one that doesn’t speak to me as much as I had hoped, at least not as much as Carol or Moonlight, the other recent queer crossover hits that are inevitably offered for comparison. The gulf between its adolescent protagonist’s cosmopolitan intellectualism and my own experiences as a teen may be a factor, and it doesn’t help that I am definitely not a fan… See more →

A sweet fairy tale, easily the best of the small handful of Guillermo del Toro films I’ve seen. My one gripe is that it relies so heavily on the (strong) appeal of Sally Hawkins’ and Richard Jenkins’ performances that the film sags when they’re not onscreen. Michael Shannon is a serviceable villain, but his contours aren’t nuanced or idiosyncratic enough to justify the amount of attention del Toro lavishes on him.

One last bit of 2017 work to share: this troubling story of Mississippi’s systemic failures with mental illness. features.propublica.org/tyler-haire-mi…

I liked this so much more the second time!

Actual Christmas conversation I had:
“See you at the convent Saturday?”
“You mean Thursday?”
“No, that’s the other convent.”
#clergylife

The challenges of connecting with music in the age of smart speakers, from the always-thoughtful @elliotjaystocks. medium.com/@elliotjaystoc…

“The downfall of predatory men with household names is worth celebrating. But it is not nearly enough.” washingtonpost.com/outlook/no-nam…

I always imagine Glenn Danzig filling out health insurance forms. 🎶 “Am I demon? Need to know!”

Mark inspired me to subscribe to more design/dev blogs, but I’m disappointed to find that some don’t have RSS feeds. 😕 twitter.com/markboulton/st…

I tried not to get caught up in Last Jedi takes, but I can’t help it. Here’s my favorite one so far. theatlantic.com/entertainment/…

Just when you think the web has run out of surprises, something like this comes along. So fun. Try it at all the viewport sizes. 💫 twitter.com/lynnandtonic/s…

Thoroughly fascinating detective work on the arcane specifics of how and why Google Maps is far ahead of Apple Maps. justinobeirne.com/google-maps-mo…

This is great. Creative prompts à la Oblique Strategies. twitter.com/mgoldst/status…

I love these so goddamned much. mymodernmet.com/math-cake-dina…

Much as The Force Awakens strongly echoes A New Hope, many elements of The Empire Strikes Back are recognizable in The Last Jedi:

• A budding Jedi, Rey (née Luke Skywalker), seeks training from a master, Luke Skywalker (née Yoda), isolated on an obscure planet, Ahch-To (née Dagobah).
• Meanwhile, her friends in the Resistance (née Rebellion) are on the run from the First Order (née Empire).
• A rogue named DJ (née Lando Calrissian) comes to their aid… See more →

Gonna see The Last Jedi tomorrow. I assume there won’t be a Skywalker–Ren confrontation since they didn’t call the movie Crybaby Showdown.

Happy Friday. Here’s the great Peggy Seeger dripping some cheerful feminist venom in 1979. youtu.be/8IGVxBb5uYk

I have some issues with the design, but this is an outstanding breakdown of millennials’ uphill economic battle. highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/po…

How might we have better empowered non-tech people to participate in the open internet? Could we have stopped its corporate calcification? twitter.com/nytimes/status…

“But why do so many of us, as female artists, have to go to war to tell our stories when we have so much to offer?” nytimes.com/interactive/20…

Otis Redding has been gone 50 years. newyorker.com/culture/cultur…

Neuroses firing on all cylinders. Fun times.

🎶 It’s the mooooost anxiety-ridden tiiiime of the yeeeeeaaarrrrr

“The cost comes when people train themselves to ignore us.” niemanlab.org/2017/12/too-ti…

Loving @shiflett’s dual launch today: very handsome new sites for himself and his new company. shiflett.org/blog/2017/facu…

Conversation-starter of the year? newyorker.com/magazine/2017/…

I miss personal websites.

Critics should be concerned “not that Pence believes in God, but that he seems so certain God believes in him.” theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

“And it’s something almost beyond me to imagine, looking into Dudley’s eyes and saying, I’m sorry I didn’t save you from your own life.” twitter.com/thecut/status/…

The Disaster Artist ★★½ boxd.it/mjns9

Greg Sestero’s 2013 memoir, The Disaster Artist, tells the story of his unlikely friendship with Tommy Wiseau, a bizarre and mysterious man more than two decades Sestero’s senior. Both men dream of movie stardom, and the book centers on the making of The Room, Wiseau’s self-financed and uniquely terrible feature film, which later inspired an enduring cult following. Anyone reading the memoir is probably already a fan of The Room, and hoping to gain some… See more →

@meyerweb Aaaaaand here’s my uncle and my dad, both of whom passed away years ago. Not quite the same thing, but still.

After he’s written and spoken extensively on how design/tech can be more humane, FB gifts @meyerweb a photo of his dead daughter AGAIN. twitter.com/meyerweb/statu…

Nothing pushes my morbid fascination buttons like @willsommer’s Right Richter. tinyletter.com/rightrichter

I keep forgetting to turn off Do Not Disturb after @hqtrivia. 🙉

Now the exports appear to have given up entirely. 28 minutes and counting. WTF.

Illustrator SVG exports are now taking several minutes to appear in my Finder after I save them. Anyone else having this issue?

“Sitting inches from the president, Hannity covered the biggest issues of the day, serving as rudder and prompt.”

Sycophant? No. Puppeteer. twitter.com/nytimes/status…

Rereading The Disaster Artist, skeptical as ever that James Franco will convince me his adaptation needed to exist.

Though the game technically only began yesterday, it’s not unfair to say I lost a week ago. twitter.com/tomscott/statu…

Hard to express how much I love this. Something about seeing artist and art feeding each other and moving together in real time. Sublime. twitter.com/AmandaCamarato…

But the GOP couldn’t help themselves. They had to look right in the people’s eyes as they fucked them, and whisper, “We’re not fucking you.”

“[T]he [American] poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” —John Steinbeck

If they said, “The rich will get richer, and they deserve it, whereas you do not,” enough brainwashed poor people would still be onboard.

Maybe more than its contents, it’s the disingenuousness of this tax bill that upsets me.

People are the worst, but thankfully they are also the best. twitter.com/AmandaCamarato…

I’m not the Dream Theater fan I was 25 years ago, but for all its goony excess, sometimes Images and Words still really hits the spot.

I do a monthly newsletter of noteworthy links, so if you like what I share here, you might want to check it out! tinyletter.com/robweychert

Here’s my collection of noteworthy links from November. v6.robweychert.com/blog/2017/11/l…