Recently updated blogs

Growing Up in Alphabet City: The Unexpected Letterform Art of Michael Doret. Hardcover, 10 × 10¾ inches, 328 pages (including 7 concertina fold-outs).Get your copy Doret is a lettering legend whose instantly recognizable artwork has helped define the look of popular culture for over fifty years. Since the 1970s, he has brought his unique style to magazine covers, posters, signs, and typefaces. He created logos for sports teams and fast …

In the US, it's common for local governments to focus on tax revenue produced by a property, without considering the costs it adds to the city's budget. This is like measuring how far a car can drive without considering how much gas it uses to get there. Different properties create different long-term cost burdens for the city. One of the biggest contributors to that variance is the amount of infrastructure …

🏳️‍⚧️ Today marks 5 years since I came out as trans on the internet. Time for a little ✨ gender update ✨. 💖 Check the release notes for all the details!

The more I think about my life, the more of a loser I realize I am. There might be a tinge of regret of not making different decisions, of ultimately taking the safe path in life. But we’re told that regrets are for losers. (Things are getting quite circular here.) Nevertheless the inner gothpunkrebel of my teenage years would spit on my face now seeing how ultimately petit-bourgeois I have …

You know those last five seconds of a green light? The ones where the guy in front of you suddenly has to stop for a bit but just enough so that you can't escape? Yeah, that one. Yesterday when returning from the office I faced a similar situation but I had already crossed the white line and I could either move forward or stop in the middle of the road. …

A new children's book now available, and updates about other projects

I got a dog passenger for this ride around Lake Merritt in Oakland. He’s sitting in my bike basket, and I got my Seatylock Mason attached to the frame, as well as my anti-theft bike lights. The PUBLIC C7 bicycle: a relaxed upright dutch style cruiser bicycle with a step through frame that has gears for hill climbing abilities. The PUBLIC C7 bicycle delivers surprising power with a great commute …

I’ve been unsatisfied with how entity creation works in Dinghy (now renamed “Zinc”) for a while. I said as much a few months ago on the forums and I’ve been mulling it over ever since. Specifically, the more you lean into using ECS, the more the requirements around interfacing with it tend to grow like a virus in your codebase. Especially for “real” ECSs where you shouldn’t ever really be …

Dear readers: I appreciate your patience as I navigate some life changes (some negative, ultimately positive), which have taken much of my time away from listening and reviewing. I do hope to return to the ECM fold soon enough, as the universe allows. Those who’ve been following me for a while may know I’ve been known to moonlight as an academic, and my latest book is a testament to all …

Never in my life have I been so violently confronted by my brokenness than in the first year of separating from my husband in early 2023. My body and mind, both of which had historically existed as a kind of backdrop to my life thus far, suddenly took centre stage as grotesque, malfunctioning vessels of pain. I began looking for answers. I scrolled through hours of TikTok, desperately browsing the …

​The 21st century has been referred to as “the Chinese century”, a reflection of Beijing’s increasing political, economic, and cultural influence. China’s rising prominence is making waves in the antiquarian book world, as more people become interested in collecting works which can speak to China’s fascinating and complex history. Where once the rare book trade focused on a select group of famous antiquarian titles, dealers are now offering collectors access …

People don't respect sleep. They think of it as "wasted time," repeating stupid phrases like "you can sleep when you're dead." People drown themselves in caffeine and make themselves work through the night with some unfounded certainly that this will somehow get them ahead of a Sisyphean workload. But all of our experience and all of our science tells us that sleep is crucial to any semblance of a decent …

I had a great life as a pilot but back in the day "real men" didn't wear hearing protection. It was not just ramp noise but airborne with a pair of TIO 540's next to your ears and a incanal ear piece for the radio, I'm now profoundly deaf to high frequencies. I other words I can't hear female voices, the left ear is worse than the right and the …