How you can protect democracy ✶

There is good news: Regular citizens are the ones best suited to strengthen our democracy. This is especially true at the local level, where our sphere of influence is greatest.

…

To defeat authoritarianism, we must commit to a healthier information diet. Doomscrolling can increase anxiety or have a numbing effect that impedes our ability to act in the real world.

Shifting your information consumption away from social media, cable networks, and pundits and toward more in-depth, and — above all else — accurate information is a useful first step in protecting democracy (and feeling better about the world).

See also, a letter from America’s former lawyers:

Make no mistake: the Trump Administration’s punitive and unjust actions are wrong even if — especially if — they prove effective at silencing lawyers. Might does not make right. Indeed, these actions are particularly dangerous when they succeed in intimidating lawyers into abandoning their fundamental role in our justice system.

All lawyers must condemn these actions targeting the legal profession and stand up for the rule of law. Doing so is essential to keeping ours a country of laws, not of men.

Tuesday, 25 March 2025

Daily habits

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  • Write and or draw in the morning before anything else.
  • Don’t look at news in the morning, or at all, if possible.
  • 7 minute workout exercise, at least once per day.
  • Learn a new song or practice others on guitar or piano keyboard.
  • Touch a personal project like photo books or music recording.
  • Eat something healthy (usually) before drinking a coffee.
  • Think of a positive thing.
  • Speak with or write to someone you love.
  • Go for a walk.
  • Do something you like, that makes you feel happy.
  • Make it a process.
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InDesign tips

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Below are page layout and typesetting tips for InDesign I’ve learned along the way since the days QuarkXPress was the top software for this type of work.

I’ve used InDesign for dissertations, brochures, business cards, posters, flyers and many other things made with type including photo books and insomnia-curing documents with hundreds of pages.

Accessible PDFs

Learn how to make accessible PDFs so they can be read widely.

Basic paragraph style

Don’t use it. Set your own, and make sure it is not based on [Basic Paragraph], for the sake of other designers you send your file to.

Bold and italic shortcuts

Shift+Cmd+I = Italic

Shift+Cmd+B = Bold

CMYK and RGB

An equilateral triangle made of nine smaller triangles of primary colors, secondary colors, and tertiary colors. After the color theory work of Joseph Albers.

Understand the difference between CMYK (print) and RGB (screen) color.

Print rich black (and brown) colors in CMYK print. Standard Black ~ C:0 M:0 Y:0 K:100
Rich Black ~ C:20 M:20 Y:20 K:100
Deep Black ~ C:60 M:40 Y:40 K:100

For print projects don’t forget to work in CMYK and convert all colors to CMYK before packaging your project to send to the printer.

Talk to your printer and ask for samples of the paper you will be printing on. The type of paper has an effect on color and typography. Once you’re more experienced and confident don’t be afraid to break the rules.

Colors look different on different screens. Accept this. If you don’t, and need to choose a color, get a lot of different screens in the same room all displaying the same color, then choose the color that looks best in all the screens at the same time.

Find and replace using GREP

GREP expressions can be used to quickly find and replace specific strings of text or typography formats. You can ask AI tools like Claude to write them for you. Here’s an example.

Grid made quickly

Using the Rectangle tool (M) click and drag to draw a box, and without releasing the mouse button, press ↑ ↓ ← and → arrow keys to make a grid.

Drag multiple images from the Finder into your document and click and drag as above without releasing the button and use the arrow keys. The images will be loaded into the grid.

Hierarchy and styling of typography

Understand typography and its structure in the InDesign software:

A Story flows across many Text Frames that contain lots of Paragraphs made of Characters.

Use Parent Pages to create custom page styles for specific sections.

The word “Helvetica” set in the Comic Sans typeface.

Style paragraphs and characters for consistency and the ability to change everything quickly when your boss decides we need Papyrus or Comic Sans instead of Garamond or Helvetica. Name your styles in a sensible manner, like Main Title Heading 1 Heading 2 Heading 3 Body Text Bullet list Number list Figure Caption Quotation Dropped Capital Hyperlink Smallcaps Sidebar Footnote, Small Text, and so on.

Use Space After under Paragraph Style Options → Indents and Spacing instead of hard paragraph breaks in the text.

Link to a page in the current document

  1. Select some text or an object you want to be the link
  2. Menubar: Type → Hyperlinks & Cross-References → New Hyperlink.
  3. Link To: Select Page from drop-down. Destination: Select page number to link to.

Math calculations in inputs

Any input box with numbers in it supports math functions so you can type things like 300/1.618 to get 185.414.

Optical margin alignment, hanging punctuation

Make your document’s typography look nicer by turning on optical alignment so that bits of odd letters and elements like curly quotation quotes align in a pleasant way:

  1. Menubar: Window → Type & Tables → Story Panel
  2. Check the Optical Margin Alignment checkbox.

Preview without guides

Press W to switch between Normal and Preview screen modes.

Save locally and often

Save your document on your local machine often.
Make a backup copy of your work daily.

Selecting with clicks

1 click = character insertion point
2 clicks = select word
3 clicks = select line
4 clicks = select paragraph
5 clicks = select story

A heart signifying love, warmth, and affection.

Variables for pages and dates

Use text variables which change automatically depending on the page you are on, the current date, etc.

Warm colors

Add a bit of yellow to a color such as red to make a warmer red.

Zooming and scrolling

Hold Alt while scrolling the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

Hold Shift while scrolling the mouse scroll wheel to scroll from side to side.

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Monday, 24 March 2025

Planetary aircraft detection analytic feed ✶

Planet’s new Aircraft Detection Analytic Feed automates daily detection of aircraft by leveraging a machine learning model trained using PlanetScope and SkySat data. It precisely identifies aircraft ≥25 meters in length or wingspan across airfields globally.

Sunday, 23 March 2025

The battle for the bros ✶

Andrew Marantz writing in the New Yorker about protein-head influencers of the current moment, who end up ironically doing the same thing the power-hungry people they love or loathe do: Using media to enrich themselves at the expense of their followers.

The article touches on the dissafection of men and the failure of the other side to meet them where they’re at and talk to them in their language.

In a 2022 book, “Of Boys and Men,” Richard Reeves, a social scientist and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, blasts Republicans for exploiting “male dislocation” and misogynist fury at the expense of women’s rights. But he also lambastes Democrats for “pathologizing masculinity.” He gives an example from his sons’ high school in Bethesda, Maryland, where boys passed around a spreadsheet ranking their female classmates by attractiveness—behavior that Reeves describes as “immature,” even “harmful,” but not worthy of an international incident, which is what it became. He writes that “indiscriminately slapping the label of ‘toxic masculinity’ onto this kind of behavior is a mistake,” likely to propel young men “to the online manosphere where they will be reassured that they did nothing wrong, and that liberals are out to get them.”

Boom!

In politics, like in a bicycle, car, or airplane, when turning too quickly to correct a problem, one can overcorrect and go too far in the opposite direction, a maneuver which depending on the amount of fuel or rage one has onboard, can end in a fiery crash.

Extremist views, whether right or left, end up meeting and joining together, becoming the same thing, like red becoming violet and blue becoming indigo at the ends of the spectrum.

Illustrated by two pixel behemoth man-monsters made by Nick Little, these get extra points for having Meditations along with a video game controller down the middle ground.

All of Bach ✶

A project of the Netherlands Bach Society with the aim to perform and record all of Bach’s works and share them online with the world for free.

Here’s their BWV 565 Toccata and fugue in D minor.

Via Tim Bray.

Friday, 21 March 2025

Atkinson hyperlegible font ✶

Free easy to read font created by the Braille Institute, that I’ve linked to before.

My grandfather, Frank Griffee, was blinded by shell fragments in France in 1914. He read using braille for the rest of his life.

I still have the clock with the raised dots that sat by his bed at St. Dunstan’s in Brighton.

Thursday, 20 March 2025

Michigan rural libraries sounding alarm ✶

Thank you for this important cost-cutting measure, Fat Nixon & World’s Richest Egotistic Man (Nixon, aka Cohn Man, being the operative word here — I don’t want to offend my heavy friends).

I’m sure that along with all your other actions, and the nice people you surround yourself with, the people you are supposed to be working for as a civil servant and your friend Pukin will be very happy.

The last word in the United States is in its Constitution, not your lies. 👎 👎

Wednesday, 19 March 2025

Brendan’s AssCreed Shadows review ✶

Makes me laugh out loud, as usual, and puts this stabby brawly tour of shinobi-era Japan on my list of video games to play.

My favorite thing to do in AssCreeds is stop and look at the detail. Ever since Origins, I think I’ve spent more time in photo mode than in playing the game.

Tuesday, 18 March 2025

Take a simple, basic idea, and take it very seriously ✶

Charlie Munger, writing in Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Chapter Four, Talk Five:

This reminds one of pilot training, and this outcome is not a coincidence. Reality is talking to anyone who will listen. Like pilot training, the ethos of hard science does not say “Take what you wish” but “Learn it all to fluency, like it or not.” And rational organization of multidisciplinary knowledge is forced by making mandatory 1) full attribution for cross-disciplinary takings and 2) mandatory preference for the most fundamental explanation.

This simple idea may appear too obvious to be useful, but there is an old two-part rule that often works wonders in business, science, and elsewhere: 1) Take a simple, basic idea and 2) take it very seriously.

Wired magazine removing paywalls for Freedom Of Information Act-based reporting ✶

The news business isn’t just any business — it serves a vital role in our democracy, recognized by the First Amendment. But media outlets can’t serve that role if they’re bankrupt. And as a result, news readers often find themselves blocked by paywalls from reading important stories about government business.

Wired showing lots of good sense, lately. They should also remove paywalls around particularly important stories like this one.

Monday, 17 March 2025

Compassionate communication ✶

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is an approach to enhanced communication, understanding, and connection based on the principles of nonviolence and humanistic psychology. It is not an attempt to end disagreements, but rather a way that aims to increase empathy and understanding to improve the overall quality of life. It seeks empathic dialogue and understanding among all parties.

Or preferably, compassionate communication.

Make a website

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For people who want to write and publish online in an old-school World Wide Web way without social media sillyness, here are two of the simplest approaches I know of to quickly edit and publish a website, be it a single page or interlinked Wiki:

  1. Edit this HTML page (open source), click the Save icon on the right, and select Save as Read Only to download it to your computer. Or download and edit the latest version of Feather Wiki-in-a-single-HTML-page (also open source) and click the Save Wiki button to save it.
  2. Upload the saved HTML file you downloaded to Netlify Drop.
  3. Visit the Netlify link to see your website online. See this documentation if you want a custom domain name.

=todo:

  • Fork and edit Nash to have Save as the icon label and default behavior of the save button which would save an exported file without the deactivated JavaScript to reduce file size.
  • Have Save file with editing controls as a 2nd save option.
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Feather Wiki ✶

Lightning-fast infinitely extensible tool for creating non-linear notebooks, databases, and wikis.

Nash - make a doc from a single HTML file ✶

Rich text editing for quickly making notes including images and links savable with the click of a button, all in a single HTML file with contenteditable="true" doing most of the hard bits.

Lovely open source work.

Sunday, 16 March 2025

Our interfaces have lost their senses ✶

Amelia Wattenberger:

Recently, we’ve been too focused on fitting to the computer’s shape, and not enough to our own bodies.

…

We’ve been successfully removing all friction from our apps — think about how effortless it is to scroll through a social feed. But is that what we want? Compare the feeling of doomscrolling to kneading dough, playing an instrument, sketching… these take effort, but they’re also deeply satisfying. When you strip away too much friction, meaning and satisfaction go with it.

Yes. And while we’re at it, I want icons and buttons that look like real “clickable” things, with texture and shadows and depth, please, like the wonderful, though I think ironically AI-generated illustrations in Amelia’s piece.

Lets dispel the “flat design” curse from our screens.

Thursday, 13 March 2025

Bad ideas in tech that refuse to die ✶

James Mickens:

In this presentation, I explain the signs that a tech idea is bad. The primary indication is that the idea involves technology or is liked by someone who likes technology. After encouraging all venture capitalists to return their equity to Satan (the ultimate source of their power), I will awkwardly admit that the equity should have been cast into a black hole instead of being concentrated in the hands of a single demon lord.

See also his AMA on Reddit 10 years ago.

My attitude in life is that, unless you’re directly helping to end war, poverty, and homelessness at the same time, you don’t have the right to be ultra-serious. I think that if scientists reflect on their day-to-day routines, they’ll find a lot of funny moments.

Thursday, 6 March 2025

Revolt.chat ✶

Open source chat alternative to Discord. Glad this exists, and hope they do well.

Ancient color ✶

The use of color in the Ancient Roman World.

Tuesday, 4 March 2025

The brutality of Monster Hunter Wilds ✶

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell over at Rock Paper Shotgun:

Monster Hunter’s defining dilemma is that sometimes hunting a monster feels, you know, a bit mean. The developers have spun many a yarn via backstory documents about the impact these great predators have on their habitats, and the necessity of curbing their numbers, but no Lion King-esque monologue can offset the suspicion that these large, beautiful animals are essentially minding their own business, and that it’s neither caring nor eco-friendly to endlessly topple and transform them into frilled jackets.

His article explains well my distaste for games where your main objective is to kill wild animals or destroy nature, like the Monster Hunter series, Factorio, and Satisfactory.

We’re destroying our wilderness and biodiversity in reality. Why glorify these acts in fiction?

Friday, 28 February 2025

Memory makes computation universal ✶

I’m not sure I understand, but Erik Garrison’s paper seems to show that some of the mechanisms of Large Language Models mirror what happens in nature.

Universal intelligence—the ability to solve any problem—depends on the ability to be true to yourself while remembering what you’ve thought, and nothing else.

Maybe it’s time to read I Am A Strange Loop again, once I finish Jane English’s Fingers Pointing to the Moon.

Via Harper Reed, via Simon Willison.

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