Through Lines 139

Although I didn’t dislike Nolan’s previous film, Oppenheimer can make up for Tenet being a bit too clever for its own good, and quite frankly, a film about unleashing a dangerous technology on the world feels timely (cough cough AI cough cough).

• “We think of computers as being a thing that sits on your desk and that you use to do your taxes. And then we think of it as a rectangle in your pocket that you use to distract yourself. Eventually we’re just going to think of a computer as being, like, a physics, right? The rules by which we make infrastructure will be our computer capabilities and policies.” Buckle up for this lengthy interview with Cory Doctrow about computers and technology.
• Charles usually gets most of the credit and so it’s a nice change to see something focused in on the influence Ray Eames' hand had on their collective work.
• The History of the Ames Research Center. This is just down the freeway from us and I remember marveling at the massive hanger the first time we drove past.
• No matter what I might think of the man, I can’t argue with Tom Cruise's commitment to his art in riding a motorcycle off a cliff into a base jump not once, but 6 times.
• If you’re looking to squeeze in a end-of-year donation, I can’t more highly recommend The Tolerance Project, a traveling social justice poster show and 501(c)(3) spearheaded by designer Mirko Ilic.
• That photo of the earth cresting the moons surface… even after all these years, wow.
• The future is analog. That’s what I’ve been saying for years now and it’s good that other folks like David Sax are out there saying the same.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at 42. Still so good.
• A Star Wars yule log featuring The Mandolorian and Grogu (aka baby Yoda).
• Make your own Twitter Archive.
• A bitter coda indeed. Well said, David.

Notable Type Releases

• The variable and versatile Salo, designed by Mateusz Machalski is inspired by Italian modernism and road signage and arrives with a both serif and sans-serif varieties deriving from the same skeletal core.
• An early release of the very non-traditional slab serif typeface Looklyn landed on Future Fonts. I’d say this one is like jazz.
• CoType Foundry released Gridular as a little holiday kinda-pixel font freebie.