Christopher Slye

I legit don’t know if I will ever get past this ad I saw walking to an appt this morning in soho. And yes, it’s a company that uses human sounding AI voice bots to take over your customer service calls.

Everything about this is, of course, horrific. (Well worth your time to read it all.) But meanwhile I look forward to saying “I put it in my 24 font” the next time I need to explain away my failures.

75 quakes in one day: Is this East Bay city among the most seismically active places on the planet? Earthquakes have been a common occurrence in the Tri-Valley region in recent months. A recent two-month tally was among the area’s highest on record.

Ha, turns out there were 75 earthquakes there that day.

Following a clear lineage from her Lo-Res to Modula to Program, Zuzana Licko’s newest design is the perfect marriage of her past experiments with variable technology: www.emigre.com/Fonts/Modula... #ZuzanaLicko #EmigreFonts #Fonts #TypeDesign

Garcia, holding up photos of Trump and top administration officials:

"These people, every single one of them, has to be held accountable for the crimes, for the terror, and for the murders that are happening to our own people in this country."

In the world there are a few certainties: Death, taxes, and there is always a new update for the Zoom client.

An earthquake map showing a cluster of earthquakes just south of San Ramon in the San Francisco Bay Area’s eastern suburbs.

Just south of our house, the small earthquakes just keep coming. Most of them aren’t big enough to feel, but yesterday morning we felt two of them. It must be fun to live on top of them in San Ramon, though!

Taaka vodka ad: "Ladies / 'Lib' it up tonight with / TAAKA / VODKA / Mixes easy . . . just add people!"

Fingers really on the pulse, here. Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, 1975.

I worked at Adobe for a long time and saw sooooo many products come and go.

they should make a movie series about how it’s irresponsible to use technology to mess with the natural order of things for profit

Roy Rogers — born Leonard Slye.

Jami Cassady, keeper of father Neal Cassady’s Beat Generation legacy, dies at 75 For two decades, Jami Cassady worked to secure her father’s place in Beat history, most notably by fighting to publish the long-lost “Joan Anderson Letter.”

I’m pleased to see such a thorough obituary for Jami. She (and Cathy and John) was often there at family gatherings during my childhood. Her mother was my “Aunt Carolyn” (my mom’s aunt, actually), and I have vivid memories of visits to their home in Monte Sereno, which was filled with artifacts.

The California State University system spent $16.9 million last year giving ChatGPT to all students, faculty, and staff. We are asking the CSU chancellor not to renew the contract with OpenAI when it expires.

Anyone can sign the petition — link below!

a (most likely irrelevant) technical question: what's going on with the substitution of "=" for seemingly random letters/symbols/spaces in the DOJ's Epstein email library?

I’m not too surprised – but the history has always been interesting to me. In the early days, web fonts were new and confusing, and Typekit et al. just figured it out. As the years went by, everyone got more familiar and comfortable with it, and decided it was better to just self-host.

How is Melania the only person with a bespoke font in the Epstein Files?

Just a reminder, the greatest living American historian filmmaker, Ken Burns, released a 720 min exploration of every facet of the American revolution using zero generative AI and paying for all of its assets instead of cobbling it from stolen data, then he gave it away for free on PBS this year.

Letterform Live Join us March 14, 2026 for an unforgettable party to celebrate the Archive turning ten.

Come party with @letterformarchive.org (and me) on March 14th! “Letterform Live” will celebrate 10 years of the Archive’s amazing work. Discounted early bird tickets are available until February 7th, so get them now. I hope I’ll see you there!

There are lots of things that should be written into law, but it’s a completely pointless exercise so long as they are free to break the law and there are no real enforcement mechanisms and no consequences. These are rogue lawless people and removing them is necessary for anything else to matter.

It’s paywalled, but just the opening paragraph is immediately disqualifying: “You have no reason to fear if you are in the United States legally. Let me repeat that plainly: you have no reason to fear if you are in the United States legally.”

You don't murder people for using the word "kidnapper" (which, I'll add, is an accurate description of grabbing people and locking them up without due process.)

If you do, you're a fascist.

❤️

Sadly Hugo has passed away, but I think the critters are definitely emboldened now that he’s no longer around.

A Stellar’s Jay looking at some seeds in a dish.

A robin at a birdbath.

A Scrub Jay in a tree.

A squirrel on the ground eating some seeds.

I’ve been seeing some hungry critters in the yard in recent days.

A parked car with a large and a small dog sitting next to each other in front staring straight out the front window.

Coming out of the grocery store today, I passed these two characters.

Neat! I used to walk past the auditorium every day on my way to the Lake Merritt BART station on my commute into Berkeley.

Trump budget office orders review of funds to Democratic-controlled states President Donald Trump said his administration would cut off federal resources to “sanctuary cities” on Feb. 1.

Californians contribute more in federal taxes than we receive back in federal spending. But now the Trump Administration is considering cutting off even more funding because he disagrees with the politics of our state. Not only are these actions illegal, but they are also deeply un-American.

How is/was it? I am due for a visit to Santa Barbara.

RIDLEY SCOTT’s iconic television commercial (pulling heavily on George Orwell’s most famous novel) introducing the Apple Macintosh personal computer, aired 42yrs ago today in 1984.

#SuperBowlXVIII

People are kidnapping preschoolers and macing fully restrained protesters because they like the power to make others suffer, and I need us all to burn into our memories what they’re doing now because they’re definitely going to be asking for grace and forgiveness in the not too distant future.