I’m traveling through Portugal at the moment, and an Australian guy struck up a conversation with me on the train yesterday. He and I start talking politics, and he starts talking about how illegal immigration is a massive problem. He’s supportive of mass deportation, and generally likes how Trump is handling things. We debate this back and forth, and then move on to other subjects.

Later in the conversation he reveals, without a hint of irony, that his visa in Portugal has expired while waiting on residence paperwork. I just stare at him for a moment, and then ask him if he realized he was an illegal immigrant. He doesn’t really see the irony. Absolutely stunned.

“yeah, I just finished Infinite. It was pretty good, abrupt ending though. I hear Jest picks up right where it left off.”

As an American white dude traveling full time, I haven’t really gotten any of this yet personally. I have sat next to some really loud Americans and felt irritated at them, but the same goes for the British lady who walked into a cafe I was in and loudly insisted they make her a sandwich that wasn’t on the menu.

Most people are kind and curious. Those who aren’t, regardless of nationality, are the ones who irritate the locals.

Of course, the world is big and I obviously haven’t been everywhere. In each place I have been to, though, learning a few words and being extra polite goes a long way. Locals welcome you and return the curiosity and respect.

:fiddles with phone: Where’s the dang über-upvote button on this thing?

There’s actually a word for this!

Tmesis Tmesis is a rhetorical device where a word is split into two parts with another word inserted between them, often for emphasis or comic effect.

They don’t even post the bootlicker author’s info. Even if this was AI, a human still decided to publish this propaganda. It would be nice to have a public record for accountability.

“The impediment to action advances action. What’s in the way becomes the way.”

This is basically saying that anything that gets in the way of you solving a problem becomes the new problem to solve.

“The tool works at both ends.”

This is about skill building and practice. Making cool stuff improves you as a result.

Something I like about each is that they work in reverse. No impediment in your way? You’re probably not going to have very focused forward movement. No need to use tools (literally or metaphorically)? You won’t become more skilled.

Remember that buying things online always atomizes community. The less you know your local community, the harder it feels to go out and buy local and the more you crave the convenience of buying online. The more you buy online, the less you go out into your community.

This exactly. It’s meant to open up the conversation.

My favorite is:

“So take off your pants. Right here, right now.”

Gets the point across quickly and viscerally.

Makes the title of this community sound like a desperate request

This is honestly pretty smart on the part of the fascists. A big portion of what is so effective about the resistance is that it’s founded on strong community action. Neighbors helping neighbors, because it’s the right thing to do.

Posing as a neighbor in need makes that act feel riskier. It changes the calculus, just a little, in favor of not helping your neighbor. They achieve their near term goal of getting their victim, but there’s an even more valuable (to them) effect of weakening community ties overall.

Time to double down on looking out for your neighbors.

EDIT: Looking out for them so you can help. In case that wasn’t clear.

Owners cannot disable tracking or cover up the secondary screen (or they have to pay for the TV, which Telly claims is worth $1,000),

Tactically, I’m curious about how they’d actually enforce this.

This is perfect. Thank you for sharing.

body { heart: pig !important; }

The thing that flipped it for me was realizing the Spotify algorithm isn’t actually about discovering new music, it’s about driving profit. Idealism aside, what that tactically means for music discovery is the recommendations are based primarily around what they want to play, and then secondarily around what you might like.

It means that you’re only discovering a subset of music you might like that is profitable to Spotify and their big record label partners.

After realizing that, the Spotify algorithm lost a lot of interest for me. Now I use SomaFM to discover new music. They do curated music channels in a bunch of different genres, and I find that the DJs have a similar taste to mine, so I hear a good amount of new music I’m into.

This definitely reads like it’s written by the pelican, addressing someone with a baby

The best time to unionize was yesterday. Second best is right now!

https://techworkerscoalition.org/circuit-breakers/

This is the correct order. 5-to-2 sets the width of the star, which is important when writing multiple identical stars next to each other.

I totally agree that more diversity in art makes things more interesting, and I’m a big fan of bucking trends to make things unique. Art should be able to exist on its own merit, as the artist intended, divorced from what would make a better t-shirt. Even stepping out of art and into design, it makes me sad how many cars are grey, black, or white. Let’s get some variation!

But… This is a logo. It’s not a poster. It’s not a t-shirt or a building or a painting. It’s a logo. As such, there are some specific criteria that will make it better at being a logo. It needs to be instantly recognizable. It needs to be legible across a wide variety of contexts, sizes, mediums, and color applications. As a result, logos tend to be better if they’re simpler.

The AI output is an illustration because it uses things like shading, complex shapes, and shadows, etc… Can you use an illustration for a logo? By all means. In some situations, it’ll probably look nice. But at a certain size, it just won’t be recognizable, and then it won’t be doing the main job you want a logo to do — be instantly recognizable across as wide a set of scenarios as possible.

Also, to be clear, I’m not a fan of the logo on the left either. It’s not particularly imaginative, the highly variable line weight makes it feel in cohesive, and the details mean it probably wouldn’t work well at small sizes either.