A running collection of things I’ve found interesting, well-made, or worth spreading—mostly from art, design, tech, photography, and film, with the occasional thought or two of my own.
The lead client blinked, cleared his throat, and finally said, in a thick Irish brogue:
“I’m afraid it’s far too clever for our needs. It calls too much attention to itself on the page,” he explained—as if getting a distracted newspaper reader to notice his company’s message was a bad thing.
The lead client asked us to set “Ireland $399” in bold type, stick a shamrock in one of the 9s, and call it a day.
Fear of getting noticed is a terrible thing. It’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Skateboarding was banned in Norway for 11 years, from 1978 to 1989, which, obviously, made skaters build gnarly ramps like that one in the woods.
Japan is littered with vending machines, always beaming, always ready to (mostly) quench your thirst, or appetite for pretty much anything you can think of. And not just in the cities – I once came across one, very conveniently, halfway up the hill at the Fushimi Inari-Taisha.
See this odd-looking thing on top of the frontmost pillars in this 1858 photograph of the ruins of Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens? Paul Cooper does some detective work in this Twitter thread to find out what it is.
It is fascinating to trace the origins of these glitches of nothingness: inconsequential tweets that turned into inconsequential TikToks that turned into inconsequential news articles that somehow, suddenly seemed more consequential than anything else that day.
Nodding in agreement here. I've always watched these things mostly from the sidelines and lately, even the fads barely justify being called fads We seem to have collectively become so foggy and jaded and just so very done with this, whatever this is, that these sorts of cheap thrills have become the thing du jour because it’s the most effort we’re able to make. We just can't even anymore.
old man shaking his head in disappointment at the cloud.jpg
