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Here you can explore my work, learn more about minimalism photography, and purchase your favorite from my print vendors.

Xavi Bou focuses on birds, his great passion, in order to capture in a single time frame, the shapes they generate when flying, making visible the invisible. […] Technology, science and creativity combine to create evocative images which show the sensuality and beauty of the bird’s movements and which are, at the same time, clues for those wishing to identify or recognize them.

Our world became one of isolation, round-the-clock care, panic and uncertainty — even as society carried on around us with all too few changes.

Media has focused on the top-down, authoritarian response in Wuhan. But the way ordinary citizens handled the crisis should be replicated across the world. --- Federal and state responses to coronavirus are becoming more organized, but the magnitude of this crisis requires massively sustained bottom-up efforts too. This is why mutual-aid networks, caremongering, local delivery for at-risk populations, and neighborhood slack groups are being activated like wildfire across the US.

The Republicans are confronting the coronavirus with nihilism—and the Democrats are responding with impotence. --- Metaphors fail daily: Trump really would sooner risk the lives of a million strangers than do his job, and his party is quite willing to go along with it. In the absence of an opposition party willing and able to point any of that out or call it what it is, the nation is more or less left to take him at his word. Where and when the media takes up the challenge of doing the basic civic work that Democrats can’t or won’t, it lets Trump spin a once-in-a-generation crisis as Another Media Thing. And that renders the whole episode as just another argument to have on television. […] At this moment, erring on the side of saying or doing too little instead of too much would be not just infuriating in the typical Democratic ways but devastating and damning in essential ones: The crystalized threat presented by this crisis and this moment requires a clear and commensurate response in both words and deeds. Strategically lying low or working the angles—such as gaming the outcomes within the denser stretches of mundane appropriations bills—doesn’t work terribly well in comparatively normal circumstances. But the Democrats’ usual tactics are terrifyingly insufficient when they’re deployed in response to business interests and reactionary politicians opting into a holocaust in the best interests of a market. It is ghoulish in the most contemporary of ways that this sort of thing is even up for debate, but it’s most important to see the effort to counter it as what it is: not a political campaign but an existential one, and so not the sort of thing that you get to do twice.

Calls to reopen America have disturbing intellectual roots. And the millions of deaths that could ensue would fuel a depression beyond our imagination. --- Economism is a belief system that leads people to believe that everything can be simplified to models and curves, and that it’s possible to count and maximize utility in every circumstance. What economism misses includes complexity, historical contingency and the profound, uncountable power of human emotion. […] Anywhere in the world, positing this problem as a tradeoff between the economic interests of the young and the lifespan of the old is a terrible error. As the US Centers for Disease Control explains, those vulnerable to serious or fatal cases of the infection include not just the elderly, but anyone who is obese, diabetic, has high blood pressure, is HIV-positive, has undergone cancer treatment, suffers from asthma or smokes. Those factors are more common among poorer Americans as well as older Americans. And poor Americans occupy all age ranges.

The coronavirus outbreak may last for a year or two, but some elements of pre-pandemic life will likely be won back in the meantime. --- Come summer, Americans might get restaurants but no music festivals, offices but no crowded beaches, bars with spaced-out seating. Projecting when each facet of daily life will be restored would be easier if public-health authorities had an omniscient view of who is infected, who has recovered and become immune, and who is still susceptible—this is the information that would emerge from widespread testing, which the United States is terribly behind on deploying. […] “Once the [current] wave is dealt with, then some things might relax—a little,” Hanage said. More out-of-the-house working and socializing might take place, but this would still be a world with rigorous hand-washing, well-smothered sneezing, and generous amounts of hand sanitizer (and suspicion of anyone who disregards these public-health norms). In all likelihood, people who can work remotely or order food via delivery would still do so instead of leaving the house.

Yay, there we go! We have a performant static site that takes its data from Google Sheets and deploys automatically when updates are made to the sheet.

An interview with musician Siavash Amini. Following U.S. sanctions, widespread protests, internet blackouts, and government crackdowns, COVID-19 is the latest calamity to befall Iran’s avant-garde.

Ehhhh we’ll see. As Democrats fret about their own prospects, many fail to recognize the president’s fundamental weakness.

We're a playlist platform that directly supports independent music, built on our streaming integrations and powerful curation tools. The closest analogy for what we are would be Patreon for music or Substack for playlists. We enable artists to create a space to elevate the music and artists that they enjoy for their fans and accept tips from supporters. You can think of it as a newsletter of music, featuring thoughts alongside selections for fans to listen to. We enable fans to have a closer connection to their favorite artists via curated playlists, personal thoughts, and early previews of their work.

JQBX lets you play & listen to music in sync with friends or public groups. We believe music is better with friends. JQBX lets you be a DJ, join a party, or just kick back and listen to music with friends or strangers from all over the world in real time. JQBX hooks into your Spotify account and is 100% free to use. Give it a try and start listening. Together.

COVID-19 tracker generates summary visualizations of COVID-19 testing results in the US to help inform and communicate the current situation. All testing data are retrieved in real time from the COVID Tracking Project. Their database is updated daily by 5 PM EST, and so are the plots on this page. Resident population of the US in 2019 by state was obtained from Statista.

Use these instructions to get up and running with helping your community! Kick off your city's relief efforts as we all learn to cope with COVID-19 with this starter powered by Gatsby, Airtable, and community efforts. This project is aims to make it as easy as possible to launch and manage an index of resources in your city during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How Japanese-Americans helped launch the California tuna-canning industry—and one of America’s most beloved sandwiches.

An interactive visualization of the exponential spread of COVID-19. --- A few interesting bits I found interesting to explore: In nearly every country in the world, when the virus reaches 100 people the number of cases begins to increase by 35% daily. • At that rate, a country would reach 1,000,000 cases just 31 days after reaching 100 cases. • The curve flattens with social distancing -- check out Japan, South Korea, and China over time. There are two different ways to view the exact same data: • The logarithmic scale shows a great comparison of the magnitude of growth between countries, but less of the human impact. • The linear scale shows the real human impact -- a growth twice the size is twice the number of real people infected.

Stay up to date on tools, resources, and supports made necessary during this time. #WhileAtHome is a clearinghouse for credible information and action steps.

In cases of emergency, many organizations need a quick way to publish critical information. But existing (CMS) websites are often unable to handle sudden spikes in traffic. Like so many others, I’m currently in voluntary quarantine at home - and I used some time this weekend to put a small boilerplate together for this exact usecase. Here’s the main idea: • generate a static site with Eleventy • minimal markup, inlined CSS • aim to transmit everything in the first connection roundtrip (~14KB) • progressively enable offline-support w/ Service Worker • set up Netlify CMS for easy content editing • one-click deployment via Netlify The site contains only the bare minimum - no webfonts, no tracking, no unnecessary images. The entire thing should fit in a single HTTP request. It’s basically just a small, ultra-lean blog focused on maximum resilience and accessibility. The Service Worker takes it a step further from there so if you’ve visited the site once, the information is still accessible even if you lose network coverage. The end result is just a set of static files that can be easily hosted on cloud infrastructure and put on a CDN. Netlify does this out of the box, but other providers or privately owned servers are possible as well.

The style of pizzadude has always been inspired by graffiti and comics, and has had a loose and goofy appearance. My fonts have been spotted all over the world and have been used by restaurants, sport clubs, stores and TV shows and have been used for book covers, toys and even tattoos!

Mitigation can buy us time, but only suppression can get us to where we need to be. --- All of the difficult actions we are taking now to flatten the curve aren’t just intended to slow the rate of infection to levels the health-care system can manage. They’re also meant to buy us time. They give us the space to create what we need to make a real difference. […] Some Americans are in denial, and others are feeling despair. Both sentiments are understandable. We all have a choice to make. We can look at the coming fire and let it burn. We can hunker down, and hope to wait it out—or we can work together to get through it with as little damage as possible. This country has faced massive threats before and risen to the challenge; we can do it again. We just need to decide to make it happen. […] All of the difficult actions we are taking now to flatten the curve aren’t just intended to slow the rate of infection to levels the health-care system can manage. They’re also meant to buy us time. They give us the space to create what we need to make a real difference.

Researchers report we face a horrible choice: lockdown for months or a year, or let hundreds of thousands die in the Covid-19 pandemic.

Health care reporter Caroline Chen dug into the projections to learn what to make of them. Forecasts are fuzzy, but the takeaway is clear: Stay home. --- Trying to get clarity on exactly how many people are infected in your city shouldn’t be your goal, if you’re a regular member of the public. Rivers and Majumder agreed on this: There’s no difference in what action you need to take, whether the models say there will be 10,000 or 20,000 infections in your state within a certain number of days or weeks. There isn’t a single expert I’ve talked to who said case counts won’t continue to soar. There are two reasons for this: As testing becomes more available, cases that already exist will be revealed. Secondly, of course, the virus is continuing to spread. The trends are crystal clear, and the call to action is indisputable. ”If your state has reported community transmission, the message is the same no matter the number of cases: engage in social distancing immediately,” Majumder said.

Why helping people victimized by forces outside their control is a good idea. --- The only villain is an impersonal natural force; everyone with a face is a victim, an Us to be tended. In the face of a virus, only the conventionally feminine approach of mutual care is useful. That leaves the lens through which the authoritarian sees the world (domination and submission) blind, and the tools available to him (scapegoating, exclusion, retribution, violence) impotent. There is no one to punish, no one to make suffer. Without that, the authoritarian is scarcely able to process the threat as a threat at all. A threat without an Other is like a wavelength of light that is invisible to him. […] Trump, his administration, and his coalition are in politics to help friends and destroy enemies. All they know is zero-sum competition, domination, and submission — and with no one to dominate, no one upon whom they can impose ritual cruelty to appease the bloodlust of their base, they are ... adrift. They simply aren’t confident, or competent, in expressing, organizing, and administering care. Many thousands of lives will likely be lost as a result. […] All across America, millions of people live in precarity, one step ahead of financial ruin, with lives that can be upended overnight by a health or employment twist entirely outside of their control. Metaphorically speaking, this country is full of viruses — poverty, poor health care, inequality, systemic discrimination, loneliness, and isolation — that infect innocent victims every day by the thousands. Those victims deserve care as well, and not churlish, moralistic, “means-tested” care. Just care, enough to get by and to live a life of dignity.

Read an exclusive interview with Andreas Tilliander and Axel Willner, discussing Stockholm's underground music scene and such projects as TM404, The Field, Mokira and Lars Blek.

A lot has changed since this went out, with more and more areas of the country being put on shelter-in-place orders, but this is helpful nonetheless. Staying home will stem the coronavirus outbreak, but what if you’re healthy — and bored? Is it ethical to go to the gym, get your hair done, or order delivery?

Congratulations on your purchase and welcome to the exciting world of the Raspberry Pi!

Pretending to be black on social media, even without the face paint, is a form of blackface. --- Access to other cultural groups can be found online, of course. However, the access is limited and usually not a direct educational exchange, often inhibiting, rather than cultivating, a deeper understanding of other groups. Many teens learn about other cultures from the media they’re constantly consuming, rather than having real-life relationships and friendships with people who belong to the cultures they’re tapping into. As a result of their real-life segregation paired with their access to social media, not only are young people unconsciously perpetuating racist stereotypes, they’re appearing foolish to millions of people online in the process. For example, in these two videos (one and two) that have gone viral on social media, several young white people are seen throwing up gang signs, seemingly unknowingly, as a funny trend. It can be assumed that they saw these signs somewhere online, thought they were cool, and taught them to their friends. They may very well know nothing of the meaning or connotation of these signals—context that probably would be provided in a more diverse circle. But who is available to let them know the actual meaning of what they’re doing, if their schools, neighborhoods, and social circles are not diverse?

Check your risk for COVID-19 based on best clinical practices, CDC guidelines, illness severity and risk factors like age and pre-existing conditions.

I’m not saying that you SHOULDN’T be pretty if you want to. (You don’t owe UN-prettiness to feminism, in other words.) Pretty is pleasant, and fun, and satisfying, and makes people smile, often even at you. But in the hierarchy of importance, pretty stands several rungs down from happy, is way below healthy, and if done as a penance, or an obligation, can be so far away from independent that you may have to squint really hard to see it in the haze. […] I was going to make a handy prettiness decision tree, but pretty much the end of every branch was a bubble that said “tell complainers to go to hell” so it wasn’t much of a tool.

The message of inclusivity is meant to be helpful, but it can actually do harm. --- Challenging social norms about who can be beautiful is vital work, and of course it is true that representations of beauty in the media are pathetically white, thin, able-bodied and hetero, and of course this should change. But somewhere along the way, the message of inclusivity went from “every kind of person can be beautiful” to “every person is beautiful.” I’m increasingly convinced that this message isn’t only less radical than we might like to believe, but also actively harmful. Wouldn’t it be freeing to admit that most people are not beautiful? What if we stopped prioritizing pleasing aesthetics above so much else? I wonder what it would be like to grow up in a world where being beautiful is not seen as a necessity, but instead a nice thing some people are born with and some people aren’t, like a talent for swimming, or playing the piano.