Ernie Smith at 404media, The Weird Way the 404 Media Zine Was Built, detailing the difficulties and possibilities of layout work without Adobe:
But it’s my hope that experiences like mine convince other people to try it, and for companies to embrace it. Affinity isn’t open-source, and Canva is a giant company with plenty of critics, just like Adobe. But there are emerging projects like PixiEditor and Graphite that could eventually make print layout an extremely viable and even modern open-source endeavor.
James O’Sullivan at Noema, The Last Days of Social Media:
These are the last days of social media, not because we lack content, but because the attention economy has neared its outer limit — we have exhausted the capacity to care. There is more to watch, read, click and react to than ever before — an endless buffet of stimulation. But novelty has become indistinguishable from noise. Every scroll brings more, and each addition subtracts meaning. We are indeed drowning. In this saturation, even the most outrageous or emotive content struggles to provoke more than a blink.
Kathy Chow at The Walrus, Welcome Back to the Office. You Won’t Get Anything Done:
The fact that psychological control has become more important to employers than productivity is one of the many paradoxes wrought by capitalism. Employers want to control their employees not only physically but also psychologically because they feel like they have bought their employees’ time.
Noah Smith, Why Everyone Loves Japan:
I believe that that something is commercial density. Tokyo has an order of magnitude more restaurants than New York or Paris, and the disparity in retail stores is probably similar. Small business is the lifeblood of Japanese cities — and, in many ways, of the Japanese middle class. This might be partly cultural, but at least some of it is the result of deliberate policy. Japanese zoning usually limits the size of stores in mixed-use areas, ensuring that small businesses dominate. The Large-Scale Retail Store Location Law also provides some protection. And Japan’s government provides lots of support for people who want to start small businesses, including a variety of subsidies. This support, along with a culture of craftsmanship, might be why Japan’s independent restaurants and stores tend to stand out in terms of both quality and originality.
Matt Klein, The Art of (Attention) War:
In The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote,
> “Do not swallow bait offered by the enemy.”
We cannot defeat that which seeks attention by any means necessary by giving it attention. This is the paradox at the heart of the attention war.
Dylan Roth at Aftermath, I Can Say Goodbye to Star Trek Because Star Trek Raised Me:
No one is a hero for not watching a television show, nor are they a villain for continuing to watch. Certainly, the large majority of creative professionals who are directly responsible for the brand have nothing to do with Skydance’s politics and lack the leverage to do anything about them. But in the years ahead, as more and more of what makes us who we are is gobbled up by fewer and fewer ghoulish robber barons, we’re all going to have to decide how much of ourselves we’re willing to keep renting from people who hurt us. We’re all going to make moral compromises, we’re all going to be subject to whataboutism, and we’re all going to make hypocrites of ourselves here and there. But sometimes, it will be shockingly easy.
Adam Mastroianni, Text Is King:
Finishing a great nonfiction book feels like heaving a barbell off your chest. Finishing a great novel feels like leaving an entire nation behind. There are no replacements for these feelings. Videos can titillate, podcasts can inform, but there’s only one way to get that feeling of your brain folds stretching and your soul expanding, and it is to drag your eyes across text.
Leave a comment