I’m the type of liberal that believes government is the single greatest agent for social justice that mankind has ever invented. I believe in strong regulation of business, because the market does not prevent unethical behavior, nor does it punish such practices in an effective fashion. Without regulation, our water would be undrinkable, our air would be unbreathable, our cars would be deathtraps, and our collective life expectancies would be years, if not decades, shorter, due to all the carcinogens our bodies would absorb. Without the flawed financial regulations we have, tens of millions of us would be living in abject indentured servitude to banks.

I believe in progressive taxation and the social safety net. I believe in investment in infrastructure. I believe in sensible national defense, and that the military-industrial complex has siphoned away trillions of dollars too much in my lifetime. I believe it is a travesty that although we have the greatest economy the world has ever seen (that crown will be, or has already been, given up, depending on the source), we do not have universal healthcare for our people.

I am horrified by the role money has taken in our politics since the Citizens United ruling. Politics, as described by Robert Caro, has always been about the acquisition and distribution of funds. Whichever politician has control of the most money also has the most power. But, the ability of a small number of wealthy Americans to influence members of Congress with their riches has overwhelmed the system, reducing the significance of a single vote.
—Bryan Larrick, A Voter’s Lament

—Zhuo

This week Michael and Bryan discuss Yosemite gripes, Helvetica sucking on screens, Apple iterating too fast with software releases, the end of Byran’s Horror Show Reviews, staying away from adverbs, the horror flick Oculus and how poor cars are as a form of transportation. This episode opens with the exhaust from a Bugatti Veyron.
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What an interesting guy:

Over the last 10 years, Nolan has emerged, along with Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson, as one of Hollywood’s most visible advocates for film, with its exacting texture and granularity of hue, over the Styrofoam flatness of digital. Nolan is a gestalt thinker and entertainer, and he thinks that it’s technical details like these, even the ones we register only unconsciously, that make the theatrical experience a vivid and continuous dream: “At the movies, we’re going to see someone else put on a show, and I feel a responsibility to put on the best show possible.”
I always love how a person’s formative years help define the course of his life:
To hear Nolan tell it, however, the film’s true origin story begins much earlier, when Nolan was 7; his father, a British advertising copywriter, took him to see, within the span of about a year, the initial release of “Star Wars” and a theatrical rerelease of “2001.” The age of 7, perhaps not coincidentally, was also the year in which he started to make his own movies, on a Super 8 he borrowed from his dad. Those two movies — one that helped inaugurate the auteur-driven New Hollywood, and one that inadvertently ushered in the era of the reinvigorated, blockbuster-based studio system — have remained his touchstones, and “Interstellar” represents his opportunity to repay his debt to both of them at the same time. Jonah, when he came to visit the set and saw the spaceships, said to him, “Of course we’re doing something like this; this was our whole childhood.”
And:
His childhood was apportioned between London and Chicago. Jonah, who is six years younger, told me that his very earliest memories were of his older brother making stop-motion space odysseys, painstaking processes of tweaking the gestures of action figures. They went to the movies constantly, and Jonah recalls that they brooked no distinction between the arty and the mainstream; they’d go to Scala Cinema Club in London to see “Akira” or a Werner Herzog film one month and then go to the Biograph in Chicago to see “The Commitments” the next. (When Jonah was 13 or 14, Nolan gave him two Frank Miller volumes, “Batman: Year One” and “The Dark Knight Returns,” which the two revered.)
I’m really looking forward to Interstellar.

Nathan Kontny with some great analogies to the creative process of stealing, breaking down and reconstructing:

Professional car thieves know that as soon as you steal a car, your next immediate task is to get it to a chop shop. A chop shop is an illegally operating garage that specializes in taking a car and almost literally chopping it into pieces. In less than an hour, a stolen car is chopped. Seats, windshield, airbags – every individual item is removed. Things with VINs are dumped, destroyed, or melted down.

Now, thieves have extremely valuable parts on their hands. Wheels, entertainment systems, air bags – all can go for hundreds to thousands of dollars on their own. Even melted down. A catalytic converter contains platinum going for $1500 an ounce.

And in their sale, they can’t be traced back to the original owner or the crime.

Everything is a remix.

JP Mangalindan from Fortune on the Amazon Fire Phone:

In an interview with Fortune, Amazon Senior Vice President of Devices David Limp acknowledged Amazon bumbled the phone’s pricing. Traditionally, Amazon AMZN 1.30% undercuts the competition on hardware, pairing lower prices and solid features. But with the Fire phone, Amazon stuck to standard industry pricing, asking $199 for the 32 gigabyte model and $299 for the 64 gigabyte. On that front, Amazon, well, misfired.
Right, it was the price. Couldn’t have had anything to do with being a gimmicky turd.

Things aren’t looking good for Samsung:

What is Samsung’s “nightmare scenario,” you ask? That it will become just another low-margin Android vendor. For years, Samsung has literally been the only Android smartphone vendor to consistently turn a profit. Indeed, Samsung and Apple for a long time have accounted for all of the smartphone industry’s profits as smaller players have had to force themselves to fight over scraps.

But two things are happening right now that are sucking the life out of Samsung’s smartphone profit machine: It’s getting squeezed at the high end by Apple, which has finally released a phablet capable of taking on the popular Galaxy Note, and it’s getting mauled at the low end by vendors such as Xiaomi that are cranking out phones with strong specs that sell at rock-bottom prices.
Maybe if Samsung keeps copying Apple things will turn around?

This post is about the newest version of Apple’s desktop operating system, Yosemite. It’s a short post, because I’m only focusing on one aspect of it: the typography.
In short: Helvetica is a horrible choice for a system-wide, screen font.
I work on a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro and I connect to a 27-inch, non-Retina display. My comments are equally applicable to both screens.
So what’s the problem with Helvetica as an operating system font?
Helvetica reads poorly at small sizes.
As it does in Finder windows. There’s too much letterspacing, but even if letters were tracked tighter together, it would still be less readable than Apple’s previous system font, Lucida Grande.
Helvetica was designed in 1957.
Yep, 1957. It was designed as a display face, and when it’s used as a display face at large sizes, like on a lock screen of your phone or better yet in signage, it can be beautiful.
I’m sure there have been modifications to Helvetica to make is work better on screen, but that’s like upgrading a ’57 Chevy with satellite navigation, new suspension and a new engine. Sure it’s going to ride better than the original, but a brand new, 2014, entry level Toyota Corolla will still drive better.
I came across a post by Eric Karajaluoto, he has a different opinion:

“What about this change to Helvetica?” you ask. It ties to the only significant point in yesterday’s iMac announcement: Retina displays. Just take a look at Helvetica on any high-fidelity screen, and you see a crisp, economical, and adaptable type system.

Sure, Helvetica looks crummy on your standard resolution screen. But, the people at Apple are OK with this temporary trade-off. You’re living in Apple’s past, and, in time, you’ll move forward. When you do, you’ll find a system that works as intended: because Apple skates to where the puck is going to be.
Deciding to use Helvetica is not designing for the future. I’ve seen the future on my retina display and still looks like shit.
Apple could easily spend a tiny fraction of their billions and commission a custom typeface that works twenty times better than Helvetica.
It’s a missed opportunity.
[Imagine if Apple evolved Helvetica the same was Porsche evolved the 911: modernize the face while maintaining it’s essence, it’s Helvetica-ness]

PAN AM knows how to motivate.
[via Designer News]

Ignition Creative London recut the trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and it’s great:

Remember, this movie was released in 1968.
1968.
[via Flavorwire]

THE best escalator to opportunity in America is education. But a new study underscores that the escalator is broken.

We expect each generation to do better, but, currently, more young American men have less education (29 percent) than their parents than have more education (20 percent).

Among young Americans whose parents didn’t graduate from high school, only 5 percent make it through college themselves. In other rich countries, the figure is 23 percent.
—Nicholas Kristof, The American Dream Is Leaving America
[*title is a quote from George Carlin]

Paul Boag on how our day-to-day jobs are soon going to be very different:

This means that those of us working in high-end agencies need to think about our long term position. The chances are we will see a growing number of agencies close their doors over the coming years. Those of us who work for those agencies may well find ourselves joining in-house teams. That or becoming much more specialised in our role.
I worked at design studios/agencies for 12 years. Last year I moved in-house as a creative director. Boag is spot-on in his predictions. I have a handful of friends who also moved from studios to companies like Facebook and Fidelity Investments. It’s happening.
On the rise as software as a service (SaaS):
Unfortunately for some, web design is no exception. There was a time when self employed web designers could produce cheap websites from home and make a reasonable income. Today that is becoming hard with services like Squarespace allowing people to build their own website.
I’m a web designer and when people come to me with freelance opportunities to make website, I constantly refer them to Squarespace. Why? It’s just too damn good (I use Squarespace for my own portfolio site).
Boag’s post is short, but it’s a must-read if you’re in the tech/design world.

Like I said, this shit is very interesting: