links week fifteen

Welcome to your weekly installment of “what’s Brook reading and clicking on now?” The quarantine here in the Bay Area is 4 weeks on, I think, and today I briefly saw a friend outside while dropping off groceries. It was nice. I hope you’ve had some distant human contact this month too. I’ve also been buying wine from Ordinaire, along with various tinned fishes, because this shit sucks, but wine and mackerel are delightful.

Also delightful? Detroiters—a show about a small Detroit advertising firm by Tim Robinson, also know for I Think You Should Leave. I’m savoring this show, but tonight I watched an absurd episode that was all about riding that hog.

I found out last week after a few somewhat failed photo links that my setup blocks “hot links”, something that one reader (hi Drew) commented on with:

“lol, wild that that’s enabled by default? Is hotlinking still an internet crime in 2020?

I hereby swear to avoid hot linking, unless it’s a lovely chorizo.

Ok, let’s get down to it: here’s the links!

• I often find myself with little chunks of text, links or errata that I need to store temporarily, or add too here and there. Luckily, there’s now an app for that named Tot. It’s not a notes app, per se, but more like ephemeral sticky notes. I created a global shortcut, so I can always throw things into Tot, and sharing it out, or copying it elsewhere is super simple. If you work with strings, links, or junk, this is a great app. I haven’t put it on my phone at this point, but I also feel less need to store things that way on iOS.

• Speaking of random junk, do you find outdoor advertisement to be annoying? In my opinion outdoor ads are the shitty banner ads of the real world, and I wish they didn’t exist. There’s a global movement to ban them, and I really hope somehow they succeed.

• This week I spent some time thinking about Pogs, those little milk-caps that folks who’re in their mid-30s fell in love with as kids. It turns out their history is more complicated than I thought, but I’m still unable to find out if there was a regulation slammer size.

• Here’s a brief plug for very good coffee that shows up in your mailbox: YesPlz. I have consistently enjoyed this stuff ever since my old boss (hi David) turned me on to them. The beans come from a guy named Tonx, who previously ran a coffee service with the same name. Previously I bought Ethiopian beans from Four Barrel or Sightglass, but YesPlz has taken over as my only coffee supplier, especially during this pandemic.

• Now that you’re hopped-up on caffeine, time to do some terrible work. That’s right, it’s a competition to make a shitty logo. I’ve done a few of these in the past, and I really, really love making nightmarish designs. Here’s what I came up with:

• This week’s long read is about my favorite Swedish-speaking Finnish lesbian cartoonist, Tove Jansson. If you haven’t ever read Moomin, I highly recommend it. There are tv shows as well. Often overlooked, but a real treat, are her novels.　I’m also low-key fascinated by how obsessed Japan is with Moomin.

I hope that’s given you a few weird places to play online for the next week. How’re you doing? Are you up to anything cool or fun? Drop me a line and say hi if you feel like it. As always, stay healthy and happy—see you next week, space cowgirls~