Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Personal Letter to Rep. James Comer

The letter speaks for itself, and is very much worth reading in full. I’ll quote only from the conclusion, which rhetorically feels very Bill:

Continue to mislead Americans about what is truly at stake, and you will learn that Americans are better at finding the truth than you are at burying it.

Continue to pursue autopens instead of penning laws Americans need, and you will learn that you are signing away any remaining chance of being on the right side of history.

Continue to abet the dismantling of America, and you will learn that it takes more than a wrecking ball to demolish what Americans have built over 250 years.

The New York Times also published a copy of the legal letter the Clintons’ lawyers (two law firms, actually) sent to Comer. It’s not as good a read as their personal letter.

I’ll just add, revisiting a recent topic, that the legal letter from the Clintons’ lawyers was set in Times New Roman. That’s unremarkable, which is Times New Roman’s calling card. The Clintons’ personal letter, on very nice joint stationery, was set in Courier New, an interesting but disappointing choice. The intention is to evoke the effect of a typewriter — to add a personal touch. The letter is very clearly, from the first word to the last, a personal message from Bill and Hillary Clinton themselves. I suspect they jointly crafted every single word of it themselves. It’s not a short letter, but it’s not long, either. Not a word is wasted. But it would have looked so much better in Courier than Courier New (or, even better, the best version of Courier ever made, Courier Prime). The worst aspect of Courier New is that it’s inexplicably thin and wispy. It looks like it should be called Courier Thin, but there’s no good reason for there to exist a thin variant of Courier. The second worst aspect of Courier New is that a handful of punctuation glyphs are inexplicably not thin, and thus stand out excessively, grating on the eyes. Take note of how the commas and apostrophes appear almost bold in the Clintons’ personal letter. I gripe about Arial more frequently, but Courier New is a worse crime against typography. (Both crimes, of course, were set loose upon the world by Microsoft.)

Bitchat, a P2P messaging app launched by Jack Dorsey, has emerged as a key lifeline for people in Uganda and Iran facing government-imposed internet shutdowns (Reuters)

Reuters:
Bitchat, a P2P messaging app launched by Jack Dorsey, has emerged as a key lifeline for people in Uganda and Iran facing government-imposed internet shutdowns  —  A little-known offline messaging app launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has emerged as a key lifeline for Ugandans cut off …

Thundercats TTRPG Kickstarter turns the ’80s cartoon into a full D&D world

Now in its final days on Kickstarter, Lynnvander Studios Thundercats campaign unifies the Thundercats comics and TV shows. The lead designer explains.

Rick and Morty showrunner reveals his new dystopian sci-fi show

Set in the year 2127, Odd Jobs tells the story of a group of gig-economy workers taking on bizarre and deadly tasks.

BMW says electric M3 will be a ‘new level’ of performance

BMW teased its forthcoming all-electric M-series performance sedan today, promising that the quad-motor M3 sports car would feature specs that are truly next level when it arrives in 2027. The M3 will have four electric motors and simulated gear shifting, a feature that is quickly becoming a must-have for electrified sports cars. BMW says the […]