A Funkaoshi Production

This is one of the darkest, bleakest, stories i’ve read in some time. Great journalism from ProPublica. America is fucked.

Probably the craziest story in supply chain computer security.

“The killing of foreign aid workers from World Central Kitchen brought international outrage. The death of their Palestinian driver drew less attention.”

This is one of the best Jungle sets I’ve heard in ages. The mix of concluding song is incredible.

This essay is so nerdy I kind of love it.

He dressed six presidents, coached designers and made thousands of suits for TV shows and movies. But his beginnings were dismal: He learned to sew at Auschwitz.

A very incredible life.

The linked training video for Waffle House is weirdly engrossing. What a bananas system! In the comments, Vigilant talks about their experience working at Waffle House.

A weirdly engrossing video about a very weird sitcom.

This film is looking so hot.

This article really explains some of the bizarre moves Kickstarter has made in recent years. My friend Mark feels the article misses the mark when it comes to articulating Kickstarter’s current woes. They haven’t made things easier for creators on their platform. Meanwhile, Gamefound and Backerkit entered the market and hoovered up creators. The perfect example, that’s even mentioned in the article: Sanderson’s latest crowdfunding effort is taking place on Backerkit. I can’t imagine he’s there because of Kickstarter’s lack of web3 nonsense. 17 million and counting, on someone else’s platform.

The lady behind McMansion Hell writes about Formula 1, only to have the article pulled almost instantly.

This is amazing: “a physical and digital archive of Canadian graphic design, with modernism central to its glowing heart.”

Wordpress and Textpattern felt like peers when I was trying to pick what to replace MovableType. Nowadays it’s quiet clear Wordpress was maybe the horse to bet on. But, I really love Textpattern. The platform has served me well for over 19 years! I used to run my own fork of this software, so I could hack in clean URLs and some other features missing from the earliest versions of the product. Nowadays I run a few plugins I wrote and use a stock install. This is much easier to manage and maintain. Dean Allen, the creator of Textpattern, died many years ago now. Tragically. Prior to his death he was already a distant figure when it came to this software. It’s a real testament to the power of open source software that it continues to live on till this day, a small community keeping it going.

I had forgotten how great he was being behind that desk.

These Toronto Life scam stories are always so bananas, and this story is no exception. These women really torpedoed their lives.

The design and typography of this article on the NY Times is fantastic.

A lovely post from Kottke on the 19th anniversary of running his blog as a full time job. One of the greats.

This conflict is being so thoroughly documented by the civilians and journalists on the ground, but the impact of those videos seems to be a lot of indifference. (At least at the level of political action.) A more chilling and creepy form of documentation is also being undertaken by the IDF soldiers themselves, posting their actions on TikTok and other forms of social media. Also lots of examples of people saying the loud part quiet, so to speak. (Samira has been doing a good job covering that aspect of the current conflict, over on her Instagram account.)

Fathima and her friend Sujith Xavier look at the parallels between the conflict underway in Gaza right now, and the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka. (Hamas and the LTTE being on the other side of the conflict seems like another parallel. They both give / gave easy cover for the atrocity that follows.)

Craig Mod writes about running his Special Projects membership program for the last five years. I became a member myself this past year. My original reason for becoming a member felt very transactional: I wanted to get one of his books, and it seemed like I may as well also support him while doing so. Having been a member this past year, that feels like the entirely wrong way to approach what he’s doing. It’s honestly not really that great a “deal” if you just want to buy some books or prints. You kind of have to want more for it to make any sense. Almost a year on, I do feel like i’m contributing a very small part to helping make something good.