Five Links #108

1. Matthew Butterick’s font license

I’m adding this to my list of great typography licenses: easy to understand, flexible and the fonts are reasonably priced.

2. Before I go: Double your business with companies you like

So much quotable stuff from this post:

…I think it could be as simple as re-patronizing small businesses you already enjoy.

  • Double your purchases from that shop you liked, even if it’s a little too expensive because you understand they deal in small volumes.
  • Go to that local restaurant you like again, the one where the owner comes out and shakes everyone’s hand.
  • Buy another online course with your company’s education budget from that online helpful person, even if you’ll never use it.
  • Watch one more video, read one more post, like it, subscribe. And don’t block the ads.

And the inverse is also true…

  • Make one less order from that big online retailer funneling dark money into our elections.
  • Cancel your subscription to companies owned by race-baiting ketamine-addled nazis.
  • Make one less post on the billionaire owned platform, delete the app, let your session expire.

3. ‘AI mania is eviscerating global decision-making’

The gist of his argument is that the entire corporate world — not merely the computer/tech/industry — is caught up in an AI mania that brooks no dissent. It’s a religious fervor and heretics are excommunicated. But the dissenters, who feel they must remain silent, are largely correct.

4. How to read a painting

Love this:

An example

This is the back wall of the Arnolfini Portrait, 1434. The whole room repeats in the convex mirror, and two people stand in its doorway who appear nowhere else in the painting. They’re standing roughly where you are.

Above the mirror the painter wrote Johannes de eyck fuit hic. Jan van Eyck was here. Painters normally wrote made this. He signed it like a witness.

Nobody notices the two in the doorway on their own. Someone points them out, and then you see them. That is all this does, on fifty paintings.

5. Background texture maker

This page generates CSS for textured backgrounds. Play with the sliders to preview it here

What am I up to?

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Until next time,

Dave

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