Rachel Andrew: A Guide to the State of Print Stylesheets in 2018
We have covered print stylesheets in the past here on Smashing Magazine. In this article, Rachel Andrew takes a look at the state of printing from the browser today.
Katie Notopoulos: What If Amazon.com Actually…Is A Horrible Website? (Buzzfeed)
Looking at the big picture, these are all tiny things, mostly harmless. Considering the amount of harm Amazon does to the environment and the people who work for them, it’s hard to give much of a shit about whether or not there’s a Subscribe & Save option for a bassoon harness. But these little things matter when we’re putting massive amounts of money, personal data (including our kids’ data), and faith into a company that’s falling short of its basic business: running a website that sells stuff.
Matthew Singer: Did a Rave Review Really Shut Down Portland Burger Bar Stanich’s? Maybe It Was the Owner’s Legal Troubles. (Willamette Week)
For almost a year, the sudden and unexplained closure of one of Portland's favorite burger joints has baffled the city's food scene.
Last week, a freelance food writer claimed responsibility—saying he had "killed" Stanich's on Northeast Fremont Street by naming its cheeseburger the best in America on the website Thrillist.
The confession went viral. But it wasn't the full story.
In fact, court records show that owner Steve Stanich's personal life had been spiraling into chaos long before his restaurant landed on the national radar.
A look at how Spencer Krug portrays the Minotaur in the Moonface album ‘This One’s For the Dancer.’
The Athenian children are victims, but so too is the Minotaur. This is far more representative of many real conflicts than the standard good vs. evil narrative – insulated potentates have orchestrated a scenario in which there are no winners, only victims, in the attempt to keep the political machine grinding on.
Is this a realistic demand? Perhaps not yet, but that’s the point.
—
Amazon gets what it wants by being so big and powerful that it can bring state governments to heel. No one company should have all that power.
Ask A Fuck-up: I’m ashamed of being so broke (The Outline)
Try to remember that your financial and emotional anxiety is a necessary aspect of an economic system that excels at both producing and consuming it: more anxiety means more work for less money... which means more anxiety. It’s a beast that eats its own shit. The fact that you “knew what you were signing up for” by going into a sometimes-noble profession does not make any of this your fault, or in any way diminish your right to feel awful about it. There is no job that grants nobility to economic precarity — struggling does not build character, it serves no one save those who profit from our immiseration.
The Resistance and the Democratic Party say “Vote,” but the voter purges have already been done, the polling places restricted, the prohibitive I.D. laws put in place. The national press is writing about it after the fact and before the election, when they can seem to take it seriously without changing anything.
For the press do anything more would mean moving beyond its crabbed sense of “politics,” to engage with the reality of the situation. The legacy media have been browbeaten into a perpetual terror of being seen as serving as partisans for the Democratic Party, until those are the only terms on which they understand the world and the work they’re doing.
Central City in Motion is PBOT's effort to plan, prioritize, and implement transportation improvements in the city’s core. Eighteen projects are under consideration. They include new pedestrian crossings, bus lanes, and bikeways.
Kevin Alexander: I Found the Best Burger Place in America. And Then I Killed It. (Thrillist)
If there was one main negative takeaway from the raging fires of food tourist culture and the lists fanning the flames, it was that the people crowding the restaurant were one time customers. They were there to check off a thing on a list, and put it on Instagram. They weren’t invested in the restaurant’s success, but instead in having a public facing opinion of a well known place. In other words, they had nothing to lose except money and the restaurant had nothing to gain except money, and that made the entire situation feel both precarious and a little gross.
His politics, to the extent that they’ve ever been legible, have always been off-the-rack big city tabloid bullshit—crudely racist exterminate the brutes/back the blue authoritarianism in the background and ruthless petty rich person squabbling in the front. His actions since becoming president have been those of a dim, cruel child playacting at being a powerful man—giving orders without quite knowing what they mean or how they might be carried out, taunting enemies, beating up the people he can afford to beat up without having to be called to account for it, lying as needed or just for yuks. He hasn’t changed a thing since graduating from punchline to president. It’s been clear for decades that Trump was both an asshole and a dummy; this is now a problem not just for the odd unlucky cocktail waitress and his staff of cheesy apparatchiks but for literally every person on earth.
53K+ high-resolution pieces of art.
Explore thousands of artworks in the museum’s wide-ranging collection—from our world-renowned icons to lesser-known gems from every corner of the globe—as well as our books, writings, reference materials, and other resources.
Walt Hickey: The Ultimate Halloween Candy Power Ranking (Five Thirty Eight)
Can we build the perfect Frankencandy based on this information?
On one hand, no, that’s a ridiculous oversimplification of a somewhat scientific process and is likely to result only in an abomination.
On the other hand, that exact ethical dilemma did not stop Dr. Frankenstein, and ’tis the season!
Robin James: The Other Secret Twist: On the Political Philosophy of The Good Place (LA Review of Books)
Eleanor recognizes that only in The Bad Place would people be forced to treat others as disposable…so they must be in The Bad Place. And when she makes decisions on the assumption that she isn’t in an ideal world, this throws a wrench in Michael’s plan. He has to reboot that world because Eleanor’s behavior has become incompatible with it. Eventually (in “Team Cockroach” S2E4) Michael joins them, realizing that he needs their help if he himself is to escape the ultimately punitive and carceral regime of which he is a part. That’s what the show spends the rest of season 2 doing: season 2 is about mostly white women and people of color (and one white male accomplice who literally is a mostly(?) reformed demon…plus Janet, who I’ll get to later) collectively practicing philosophy on the assumption that the world they live in is not in fact equal but designed to harm and oppress them.
[...]
Beginning from the assumption that everyone’s on more or less an equal playing field and thus entitled to equal weight in the conversation (and that people generally want to do the right thing, which Mills calls the assumption of “strict compliance”), this is the same “both sides” liberalism that Mills critiques as ideal theory. Despite what Schur tells us the show’s message is, season 2 shows us a very different message, one about the importance of beginning from the assumption that you—especially if you are a white woman, person of color, or non-human person—are in The Bad Place. And you’re there not because of anything you did, but because White Men engineered it that way for their benefit.
Maria Bustillos: How Staying Small Helps New Directions Publish Great Books (The New Yorker)
The size of the company, which is held in trust, is dictated by the terms of Laughlin’s will. There are, and will be, just nine employees, and the number of books the company may publish each year is also fixed. Profits are generally reinvested, and the relatively low salaries paid to staff are balanced out by policies like an annual bonus system—which alone might make up ten or fifteen percent of a year’s earnings—and a retirement savings plan. These constraints were baked into New Directions’ business model in the interest of quality and longevity. “We’re expected to make our own way financially,” Epler told me. “The trust is just how he left it to make it safe, so we couldn’t be bought by a larger corporation.”
As intended, those constraints have factored deeply into the company’s acquisition strategy. Its employees leverage connections, taste, a worldly sensibility, a capacity for risk, and thrift in order to bring revenues to the company and fine new books to a global readership.
Lacey Donohue: Against Their Will, Men Learned Something Yesterday (Hmm Daily)
On men’s reaction to the Kavanaugh hearing.
Yesterday, many women wept and tweeted about weeping, but the men seemed to be taking it even harder, to be shaken by it, broken even.
And they seemed to be broken because, perhaps, for the first time ever, they had to face the reality of what existence is like for all the women in their lives. They had to understand that every bit of progressive advice they’ve given women at bars, over dinner tables, in annual reviews, or under covers didn’t fucking matter. It meant that those firm conversations filled with directives—we all know what they sound like—to just “ask for that raise,” or just “go to HR and tell on your boss,” or “OK, if I’m being honest, what’s wrong with you is that you apologize too much” actually carry no weight.
Because yesterday, the liberal men saw that a woman can take their advice, march into a room, and tell her truth, and she can walk out of the room
But let’s be honest: We as Americans have set certain landscaping expectations for our office parks, our median strips, and our suburban yards, and it involves blowing. Ours is a nation too vast to be groomed by hand tools. So we must learn to co-exist with these man-machine hybrids, the Blower Guys, as they roam the grasslands, blasting organic debris before them with their mighty nozzles. (A little-discussed complication to the arguments of anti-blower partisans: Like ripping an awesome burnout or firing a machine gun at a roadside gun range in Las Vegas, wielding a pro-grade leaf blower can be a wasteful-but-satisfying projection of power. It’s akin to being some kind of ancient wind deity.)
Briahna Gray, Camille Baker: The Unbearable Dishonesty of Brett Kavanaugh (The Intercept)
Importantly, having “no recollection” of the night in question, or no “knowledge” of the alleged events is not the same as saying it didn’t happen — especially since Ford never alleged that anyone but Kavanaugh and Judge witnessed the assault. So why would a judge, someone presumably familiar with the implications of what it often means when a witness avers they “do not recall,” so grossly mischaracterize the nature of those statements?
Robin James: Toned down for what? How 'chill' turned toxic
Like its ancestor cool, chill does double duty as a prestige marker. On the one hand, in the post-#MeToo era, chill masculinity seems infinitely preferable to so-called “toxic masculinity”, which is predatory and self-destructive. But even though Sheeran’s tame romanticism may feel less toxic than the slightly skeevy masculinity of bro-step, chill is less a step towards equality and more an update on gender and race stereotypes.
Kath Barbadoro: I Think About This a Lot: Salman Rushdie Calling a Woman ‘Gorgeous and Hottt’
It doesn’t matter who you are, horniness makes fools of us all. In the right context, the revelation of that vulnerability can be almost sacred in its intimacy. But in a society that unconditionally gratifies powerful men and derides sexual women, it’s easy for that desire to get turned inside out, to become weaponized against its object.
For an introduction to mindfulness meditation that you can practice on your own, stream or download the guided meditations below. Recorded by UCLA MARC's Director of Mindfulness Education, Diana Winston.
The discovery of Hawaii Sign Language in 2013 amazed linguists. But as the number of users dwindles, can it survive the twin threats of globalisation and a rift in the community?