June 2018

Hello, dear reader!

June is gone, but its links remain.

It was a relatively busy month on my site! I had an unexpected reason to revisit an animated student film I made 20 years ago, wrote about designing better concert listings, chronicled my experience learning about the future of typography at the Ampersand conference, and offered middling reviews of the year’s most celebrated horror films, A Quiet Place and Hereditary.

This month’s links are the sort… See more →

I’m in England (for the first time!) where I’ve just attended Clearleft’s outstanding Ampersand conference in Brighton. I was a little concerned that the combination of jet lag and the (otherwise excellent) venue’s warm temperature would make it hard for me to focus, but the lineup of speakers was more than engaging enough to overcome those obstacles. The most discussed topic of the day was, unsurprisingly, variable fonts, support for which has begun… See more →

👋🏻 Hi @ampersandconf! #ampersandconf

Listen up, Philly: Your regional @usairguitar champ for 2018 will be crowned on Friday at @johnnybrendas. I don’t recommend missing it! twitter.com/PhillyInquirer…

The sitcom in my dream: When I accidentally kill 2 of the teens who broke my window, I adopt the 3rd, played by current-day Macaulay Culkin.

“‘Your right to throw punches ends at the tip of my nose.’ […] where is the tip of our nose, exactly?”
newyorker.com/magazine/2018/…

This is just stupid enough that I’d consider spending a limited amount of actual money on it. mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/24/us/…

For a company as creatively industrious as Pixar, the strobing effects in Incredibles 2 struck me as a lazy choice. boxd.it/ts1Nv

I resurrected an animated film I made 20 years ago and wrote about it. v6.robweychert.com/blog/2018/06/t…

Woke up and checked that my knuckles had not actually been bloodied on a concrete wall while waiting in line at a hellscape of a Whole Foods

I can’t decide if its ideas are muddled or merely complex, but as a pure action movie, Incredibles 2 is a lot of fun. I’m disappointed that the filmmakers couldn’t find a way to avoid the strobing effects that exclude epileptic viewers. For a company as creatively industrious as Pixar, that struck me as a lazy choice.

As for the preceding short film, Bao, bravo to Pixar for stepping away from the Eurocentric boys’ club,… See more →

Can’t overstate what Vinnie Paul’s superhuman drumming meant to me as a teen. His father has now outlived his whole family. So, so sad. RIP.

So many fascinating details in this delightful architectural tour of Grand Central Terminal. youtube.com/watch?v=_b4XQU…

I’ve long admired @zeldman’s knack for finding humor and humanity in seemingly mundane experiences. zeldman.com/2018/06/23/my-…

A couple of years ago, I got a very unexpected email:

I wanted to inquire as to whether you were student at Kutztown University under the tutelage of Dr. Tom Schultz, and if you made an animated film in 1998 under the tile "Twelve Bucks".

Apart from the misspelled name of my professor (it’s actually Schantz), this was correct. But why on earth would someone be contacting me about an old, obscure student film?

The… See more →

“By embracing the cumbersome, painfully slow nature of my workflow, I was in a way trying to commune with my computer graphics forefathers.” twitter.com/kottke/status/…

Registered! twitter.com/xoxo/status/10…

I always wondered why the political spectrum is termed left–right. It began in the 18th century French legislature. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left–righ…

“The federal departments involved in dealing with separated families have institutional agendas that diverge.” newyorker.com/news/news-desk…

The rich, expansive adventure in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is 1MB. The entire game. Do our 5MB web pages offer 5× that value?

For whatever reason, horror is having a moment of sustained critical cachet, with a growing list of scary movies receiving praise for emotional resonance, thematic richness, and/or excellence of execution that transcend the genre’s usual stale jump scares. Hereditary seems keen to get in on the action, offering a sophisticated layer of fraught family drama atop a pulpier horror foundation; its familiar depictions of unraveling psyches and things going bump in the night are shaped… See more →

Different people scan for different things when looking through a list of events. Here are some tips for designing for that. twitter.com/robweychert/st…

Not gonna pretend I’m not onboard with the Degrassi TNG reunion in the new Drake video. youtu.be/rIhx2wZ8jnA

Watch out, world. I’m giving free design advice to concert promoters and nothing will ever be the same again. v6.robweychert.com/blog/2018/06/d…

Wide awake after begging the fry cook to guarantee that an aggressive customer’s chicken fingers would be tender and juicy so GOOD MORNING

I’m an avid consumer of live music, and New York City offers a ton of concert options on any given night, so I spend a lot of time poring over listings to make sure I don’t miss anything good. One of the primary ways I find out about shows is email marketing; I probably average about two dozen emails each week from various venues and promoters. And I can’t help wondering how much easier it… See more →

Anybody need a MetroCard?

“Look what you made me do.” newyorker.com/culture/cultur…

Did the internet weaken critical thinking, or merely enable more efficient exploitation of an existing weakness? newyorker.com/science/elemen…

“He is testing to the breaking point relationships that there was never any reason to test in the first place.” theatlantic.com/international/…

This proposal to replace the NYC subway with autonomous vehicles is excessively optimistic but still compelling. theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

In my dream, it wasn’t until my live debut as the new Jesus Lizard guitarist that I realized I don’t know how to play any of their songs.

“There is no deal to make with people like this, because there is no limit to what they want.” deadspin.com/the-nfl-is-too…

I didn’t follow Bourdain closely. But I so admired that he could eat anything and find something to enjoy in it. A worthy aspiration. RIP.

“Send and move on. Be pleasantly surprised if you hear anything back.” Advice for asking for advice. lifehacker.com/how-to-ask-for…

“Does alternative history need to be challenged beyond the merits of its own grotesque imagination?” kotaku.com/the-struggle-o…

The video game speed run explainer genre is not something I would have anticipated drawing me in, yet here we are. youtu.be/Y99Wj-NStok

“Complexity is good for convincing people they could not possibly do your job. Simplicity is good for everything else.” twitter.com/alistapart/sta…

This morning’s road saw makes A Quiet Place’s vicious alien invaders who hunt with hypersensitive hearing seem like a beautiful fantasy. 🌈

A Quiet Place centers on a family living in a not-too-distant future in which vicious aliens with hypersensitive hearing have wiped out much of the world’s population. A little over a year into the invasion, after losing their youngest child (of three) to the creatures, they have another child on the way. In a world where silence is absolutely crucial for survival, a newborn baby is the ultimate liability, and while we’re privy to the… See more →

Officially ready to learn the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

That movie really stuck with her.

The prize for visuals goes to this iconic Tim Cappello performance, serving up his sax with a side of beefcake. youtube.com/watch?v=fDrTT5…

I’ll start: INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart.” Sax solo by Kirk Pengilly. youtube.com/watch?v=T2CmcW…

Tell me your favorite rock/pop saxophone solo.

If you like your links email-flavored: tinyletter.com/robweychert

What do economics, typography, and Super Mario Bros have in common? They’re all in my collected links from May. v6.robweychert.com/blog/2018/05/l…