Links

Smart watches have the potential to “switch the media paradigm from an endless stream to a concentrated dispatch.” niemanlab.org/2019/01/leave-…

“I always tell my daughters they can be anything they want, so long as they don’t make other people uncomfortable.” mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-don…

George Bush, Who Steered Nation in Tumultuous Times, Is Dead at 94

I like this Bush obit as a crash course on the political forces that shaped the world during my formative years.

24 Ways

Always delighted to see this advent calendar of web design articles light up my RSS feed every December.

The Fun Is Back in Social Media…Again!

TikTok probably feels a lot like Flickr or Twitter in the early days, where everyone… See more →

Close out 2018 by learning about glitter. nytimes.com/2018/12/21/sty…

“What’s gone from the internet, after all, isn’t ‘truth,’ but trust.” nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Never really listened to the “Here Comes Santa Claus” lyrics before. They’re… creepy. genius.com/Gene-autry-her…

I’m so into @CarniDC’s “Visualizing the History of Fugazi.” I wish every band could be this well documented. carniklirs.com/project/fugazi

This makes my brain hurt so good. A thoroughly inspiring peek behind the curtain of @lynnandtonic’s genius. twitter.com/lynnandtonic/s…

In lieu of forcefully venting my extreme anger, I’ll just say I am, as always, amazed at how it coexists with a complete lack of surprise. twitter.com/nytimes/status…

“You may forget Facebook; it could happen sooner than you expect. But it’s not likely to forget you.” nytimes.com/2018/12/12/mag…

something something influencers something something orwellian theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

I had no idea @bjork did so much before she was in The Sugarcubes! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Björk#196…

Today I learned that @bjork recorded her first album in 1977, at the age of 11. youtube.com/watch?v=3du0Gp…

I like this idea. Lately I’ve been moving my Sass math into calc/variable configurations like the ones @chriscoyier describes here. twitter.com/css/status/107…

This image fills me with awe and dread. 200-million-year-old creatures from a real-life H.R. Giger world. nytimes.com/2018/12/07/sci…

🎶 It’s the mooooost wonderful tiiiiiime of the yeeeeeaarrrrr twitter.com/lynnandtonic/s…

Delighted to see @24ways lighting up in my RSS reader again. 24ways.org

I like this Bush obit as a crash course on the political forces that shaped the world during my formative years. nyti.ms/2DU2iwe

Hello, dear reader!

November is gone, but its links remain.

I published a couple of nerdy blog posts in November: one about how I’m using my Letterboxd data to address my cinematic blindspots, and one about a common convention of editorial design that’s currently incompatible with CSS Grid.

Lots of interesting stuff in the links this month; for what it’s worth, my favorites are Earworm’s series of videos about jazz.

As usual, you can get many… See more →

“Punishing individual bad actors doesn’t change the incentives that brought them to the platform in the first place.” youtu.be/wZSRxfHMr5s

Good food for thought in this post from @paulrobertlloyd about barriers to entry that impede the web’s potential. paulrobertlloyd.com/2018/11/warp_a…

Great read from @iamrumz investigating the prevalence of Choc, a French typeface from the 1950s, on NYC storefronts. nyti.ms/2zkVp47

I love the Dieter Rams exhibit at @philamuseum, but presenting his work in a rarefied art context is disorienting. I wanna touch everything!

I never noticed before that Jack Nance is the dad in Suicidal Tendencies’ classic “Institutionalized” video! youtu.be/aYItTxqTc38

“[I]n 2011 the U.S. had fewer than 15 known Catholic exorcists.” Today, “there are well over 100.” theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

“[T]hese tiny insects [have] sculpted some 90,000 square miles of Brazil into a junkyard that’s visible from space.” theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

“Here’s the thing: in order for [airline] fees to work, there needs be something worth paying to avoid.” newyorker.com/business/curre…

I’ve worked with most of these folks and they’re really effing smart. twitter.com/themarkup/stat…

3. A giant mechanical minotaur and giant mechanical spider wandering around Toulouse, France, by @lamachinefr. thisiscolossal.com/2018/11/46-foo…

2. A Visual History of Computing 1945–1979, by @Docubyte (via @kottke) docubyte.com/works/guide-to…

1. Gorgeous, abstract impasto portraits by Joseph Lee (via @Colossal). josephleeart.com

Did a lot of wincing while reading this. theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Hello, dear reader!

October is gone, but its links remain.

I was mired in personal matters throughout October, so there wasn’t any activity on my site apart from the horror extravaganza that is Robtober, which was thankfully not disrupted. I finally finished a project that had been in the works for a few months: a custom-designed story with ProPublica Illinois about a family’s heartbreaking experience with an ill-conceived psychiatric clinical trial.

This round of links… See more →

Humans are an invasive species. theguardian.com/environment/20…

Another shooting, same reliable GOP response: “that the only way to combat terror is to yield to it.” theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

Every last thing is now officially terrible. twitter.com/Variety/status…

Reminder: the earliest influential web design teachers were women, specifically greats @jenville and @lyndaweinman. thehistoryoftheweb.com/the-books-that…

To put the film “on either side of the cultural divide is to actively ignore its ambivalence—a key philosophical tenet of Chazelle’s work.” twitter.com/TheAVClub/stat…

have they blamed it on gritty yet twitter.com/nytimes/status…

Elizabeth Warren’s DNA debacle reinforces the pernicious myth of race as a measurable biological category. newyorker.com/news/our-colum…

This @mckaycoppins profile of Newt Gingrich is some depressing shit. Hubris and cynicism are a nasty mix. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

I’m honored to be mentioned (at 15:03) in @sillypenta’s impressively researched look at 1990s Lego animation: youtu.be/xQtHWlgZEVI

“It can be hard to tell when we’re consuming art and when we’re conducting H.R.” nytimes.com/interactive/20…

Members of the “Exhausted Majority” share “a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation.” theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

Turnover in the Trump administration relative to the previous three administrations. nytimes.com/interactive/20…

This kid and his functional Lego combination safe are making me think that just maybe everything will be okay. youtu.be/OjDKSWCrWeU

“[S]ome researchers watched the mistaken-identity theory spread through the Senate this month with a sense of stunned dismay.” twitter.com/washingtonpost…

My new favorite Tumblr is full of colorful animations of vintage electronics. electronicitems.tumblr.com

Hello, dear reader!

September is gone, but its links remain.

It was a big month for me, as I finally finished the project I was preoccupied with for most of the summer: Incomplete Open Cubes Revisited, inspired by Sol LeWitt. I also wrote about why and how I did it.

This month’s newsletter is a few days late because I wanted to include Robtober 2018, my annual deep dive into horror films which always takes… See more →

I want to be as good at—and articulate about—something as this guy is at and about paper airplanes. youtu.be/3BNg4fDJC8A