Something To Read On A Lazy Weekend Day

https://lithub.com/tag/fonts/

(I did not find this bit in there, so here it is from my email. It’s a start! There are a few more, all interesting and totally off topic.)

The Times introduces your favorite (?) typeface, Times New Roman.

What font do you write in? People may argue all day on the internet about their favorite typefaces, but it’s a fair wager that the most ubiquitous font of all, whether it’s your personal go-to or not, is Times New Roman.

Whence this towering behemoth, you may wonder? It was invented in the 1930s by type designer Stanley Morison, who, after criticizing the London Times for their dated font, was asked to make them a new one. “Morison enlisted the help of draftsman Victor Lardent and began conceptualizing a new typeface with two goals in mind: efficiency—maximizing the amount of type that would fit on a line and thus on a page—and readability,” writes Meredith Mann, Assistant Curator of Manuscripts at the New York Public Library. Morison’s new font was taller and narrower, but the letterforms were weighted in a new way that made them easier to read, despite the cramped spacing. (The weighting meant that the font also required more ink, which meant more money—a main reason that the font wasn’t immediately picked up by other papers.)

Once the new font was approved, The Times published a pamphlet explaining the switch. “It is evident that there must be changes in typography as long as our social habits are open to variation,” the editors explained. “When it was founded, The Times was largely read in coffee-houses; in the nineteenth century it came to be read in trains; today it is largely read in cars and airliners. Reading habits, dependent on social habits, will not remain constant. Neither must newspaper typography remain constant.”

Indeed not, especially when you’ve got such a splashy new font to brag about. “The new [font] will be employed on and after October 3, 1932,” the notice declares. “The Times, for generations the best printed paper, will, by present-day optical standards, be the most comfortably readable journal in the world.”

The paper held onto the exclusive rights to Times New Roman for a year, and after that, other publications—once they’d decided it was worth shelling out for—began to follow suit. By now, it’s trickled down into just about everybody’s personal computers and for many, simply become the default.

“Times New Roman is a workhorse font that’s been successful for a reason,” writes Matthew Butterick, author of the impressively niche Typography for Lawyers. “Yet it’s an open question whether its longevity is attributable to its quality or merely its ubiquity. Helvetica still inspires enough affection to have been the subject of a 2007 documentary feature. Times New Roman, meanwhile, has not attracted similar acts of homage.”

Why not? “Fame has a dark side,” Butterick writes. “When Times New Roman appears in a book, document, or advertisement, it connotes apathy. It says, ‘I submitted to the font of least resistance.’ Times New Roman is not a font choice so much as the absence of a font choice, like the blackness of deep space is not a color. To look at Times New Roman is to gaze into the void.”

(Or perhaps you are merely a novelist, who knows that if your paragraph looks good in Times New Roman, it will look good in anything. Too often have we been fooled by the slender affections of Garamond!)

By the way, Butterick points out, lawyers should beware: though it’s as much the standard font for them as everyone, the highest court in the land (such as it is) forbids its use. Something to remember for when you get there.

A Coupla Comics Apropo Of Nothing (or, maybe they are…)

https://www.gocomics.com/furbabies/2024/10/03

FurBabies by Nancy Beiman for October 03, 2024

FurBabies Comic Strip for October 03, 2024

==========

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2024/10/03

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for October 03, 2024

Calvin and Hobbes Comic Strip for October 03, 2024

A Bala Cynwyd woman got a fake letter notifying her she’d have to house migrants under a nonexistent Biden-Harris program

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/fake-letters-pennsylvania-voters-immigration-housing-20240927.html

The republican’s know their policies and ideas are very, very unpopular. They can’t win on them, so they are forced to cheat and drum up fake fears to scare voters to vote for them. Hugs. Scottie

‘Congratulations’ the fake letter reads, ‘you have been selected as a Wayward Steward exchange home for homeless immigrants and victims of foreign wars.’

A Bala Cynwyd couple received a fraudulent letter from the Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs this week informing her that she’d been selected as a “wayward steward” to house five refugees. The office does not exist, nor does the program. Elizabeth Bennett holds the letter on Sept. 27, 2024.Read moreCharles Fox / Staff Photographer

by Julia Terruso

Published Sept. 27, 2024, 10:34 a.m. ET

A Bala Cynwyd voter got a detailed letter this week from the made-up Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs notifying her that her household had been selected to house five migrant refugees.

No office exists, nor does such a government-mandated housing program, but the letter, doctored to look like an official government document, provided specific details designed to mislead someone less attuned to a scam — and laid the blame for the fake program at the feet of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during a heated and close election in which immigration has increasingly become a focal point.

“I’m concerned to find out how many people might have actually gotten it and to make sure the record’s set straight so people aren’t getting fearful or angry and deciding to vote another way,” Elizabeth Bennett, 62, said.

The letter says Bennett was selected as a “wayward steward” as part of “US5Ca12-B … written into Law by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.” No such law exists.

It advised Bennett she’d been selected based on property and income records and would receive an $80 weekly stipend for food costs. The letter suggested a “minimum of one bedroom be prepared with a minimum of 5 beds,” with a link to “government-approved” bunk beds.

The return address listed is for an intersection in front of the Capitol building in Harrisburg.

Neither the governor’s office nor the department of state immediately returned a request for comment.

Bennett is unsure why she was targeted. She has a large Harris/Walz sign in her front yard. Ironically, she’s also done volunteer resettlement work with immigrants for the last 30 years but she assumes that was just a coincidence.

“Of all the people they could send this to, I would be the one who is like, ‘OK let’s get the room set up, we gotta take care of these people,’” she said. But as she read on, she realized the program was fake and intended to scare people.

“I could definitely see, even for me reading this letter it felt threatening even though I’m very pro-immigrant because it felt like something that was being imposed on me,” she said.

It’s unclear if other Pennsylvanians received the letter. Bennett posted about it in small Facebook groups but hasn’t heard from others who received it.

But whoever created the letter took time to make it look like an official document, including an imprint of a fake Pennsylvania seal on the letterhead and a stamped date informing Bennett when to expect the migrants.

A listed phone number for the fake office, with a Harrisburg area code, goes to a voicemail for the named office where a messaging service invites the caller to press one for housing vouchers, two for reimbursements, and three to “expand your footprint to help more people.”

The letter Bennett received went on to specify garages or sheds without electricity and running water could not be used.

“Thank you for your dedication to the health and safety of these future Americans!” it concluded.

Misinformation about migrant resettlement and illegal immigration has been rampant in the campaign. Former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance have made it a focus of their bid for the White House claiming that migrant resettlement has drained resources from small towns and that illegal immigration has driven crime and economic hardship, with little evidence.

The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement does invite people to be part of a government hosting program but participation is entirely optional.

State Rep. Joe Hohenstein (D., Philadelphia) is an immigration attorney who called the letter “a betrayal of the actual spirit of our country.”

“It’s definitely designed to make people think that there’s a broader government program to resettle refugees and my guess is that the intention is to stir up fear of immigrants and refugees,” he said. “That’s reprehensible It’s a betrayal of the actual spirit of our country of being a welcoming beacon to people who are seeking freedom.”

In the next week, Hohenstein is cosponsoring a bill to establish an Office of New Pennsylvanians, which would help provide support services for refugee businesses and migrants fleeing persecution in Pennsylvania.

“This would provide help to people who need it,” he said. “It would not be a mandate to anyone.”

Julia Terruso

I cover politics and our divided electorate. I’m interested in what unites and separates us, shifts in voting trends, and grassroots movements.

Autumn Poetry

Words for Wednesday

Book bans have increased nearly 200%. Florida and Iowa are partly to blame

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/09/book-bans-have-increased-nearly-200-florida-and-iowa-are-largely-to-blame/

However, a quieter form of “soft” book bans also threatens free speech and LGBTQ+ representation in schools.

By Mira Lazine Monday, September 23, 2024

Photo: Shutterstock

Over 10,000 books have been banned across the entire United States over the past school year. The trend has seen a particularly strong increase in states with a strong Republican presence, according to the free-speech nonprofit PEN America.

This is a major increase compared to the 2022-2023 year, which saw a total of 3,362 books banned across the country.

Related:

School district will return 36 books removed under anti-LGBTQ+ book ban law

The books were accused of having “obscene” material. One of them was a children’s picture book about gay penguins.

Florida and Iowa are leading in the total number of bans, with over 8,000 recorded between the two states. This number is largely due to the increasingly strict laws on book bans.

The banned books include Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie; the famous work on anti-Black racism Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 by W.E.B. DuBois; Alex Haley’s book about the lived experience of slaves, Roots: The Saga of an American Family; and James Baldwin’s autobiography Go Tell It On the Mountain.

Iowa’s bans stem from Senate File 496, a law restricting LGBTQ+ books from grade seven and below along with total bans on books deemed to contain sexual content. Florida’s House Bill 1069, backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), resulted in a similar ban, albeit a much more strict one.

PEN America cites other laws from Utah, Tennessee, and South Carolina as contributing to these increase in banned books as well.

Individual school districts have also had a hand in banning many books. The Elkhorn Area School District in Wisconsin, for example, banned over 300 books over a several month period.

PEN America says that the types of books banned “includes books featuring romance, books about women’s sexual experiences, and books about rape or sexual abuse as well as continued attacks on books with LGBTQ+ characters or themes, or books about race or racism and featuring characters of color.”

The organization also emphasizes that these numbers are an undercount of the actual amount of banned books since many book bans go unreported. Additionally, the organization says schools have also implemented “soft” book bans, including policies that cause greater hesitancy to check out books from libraries, restrictions on who can check out restricted books out, book fair cancellations, and the removal of classroom collections.

Six major book publishers are currently suing the Floridian government after hundreds of their books were pulled from libraries, cutting severely into their profits and discriminating against their authors.

A Florida school district recently agreed to re-shelve 36 books to settle a lawsuit concerning multiple banned books, including And Tango Makes Three, an often banned children’s book about a gay penguin couple raising a chick.

Iowa’s book ban was recently brought back into law when a permanent injunction against the ban was overturned by an appeals court.

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So I did a thing a few days ago,

I do it now and then, hadn’t in a while but really liked one so I did it but didn’t turn it in. (It’ll become clear.) Then I got a bunch of GOTV postcards done, and there it was, at the bottom of that stack. It so happened that another came along that I really liked (this one below,) so I added it, then submitted it. It got posted today, and even though it’s really not at all good, it’s funny, it was fun, and I thought I’d share. I’ve sent in several over the past year; dotted amongst the posts. The best one was of two dogs discussing a thing; a similar scenario as below, but not exactly the same. And I might try this one, too. I can draw fish. Anyway, here is this.

Cartoon Eight Nine Four by Josh Lieb

Limits Read on Substack

Underwater. A group of fish laugh at a wild-eyed fish, who glares at them with impotent rage. One of the laughing fish says: “Go ahead, Throckmorton! Tell us more about the ‘land’ outside the pond.”

First they laugh at you…

It’s Two-for-Tuesday, and that means for the second day in a row, we’re graced with an Ali Redford original. Today she tries her hand at eight nine one:

It’s simple, it’s bleak — I love it. And I love what a great contrast it makes with Margreet de Heer’s version from last week. Margreet, of course, is one of the world’s great cartoonists; Ali is a writer like me (though she does draw better than I do). It’s fascinating to see what the same cartoon looks like filtered through two very different brains.

Margreet’s doomed souls strained helplessly to pull the lever. Ali’s sufferer merely looks at it, puzzled. It’s the same set-up, the same pieces of furniture, but the joke is very different. This is the beauty of collaboration.

Thanks, Ali (and Margreet again). It’s great.

The rest of you — get off your duffs (or, more accurately, on them) and draw. (snip)

So now you know I thing I do when I’m not writing postcards or congresscritters, or cleaning house, or walking Corky, and so forth. Once in a while, I “draw”, sometimes even manage to really draw a cartoon based on a professional writer’s scene.

The Internet Archive Lost Their Latest Appeal

I don’t know how many remember the Internet Archive; we heard more about them during the pandemic, but also when books began to be banned and removed from libraries that were accessible to young people. Meanwhile, Big Profit was fighting the Archive even during the pandemic, but now there is some sad news.

The Internet Archive lost their latest appeal. Here’s what that means for you.

Peace & Justice History for 9/21; also Have A Wonderfully Peaceful International Day of Peace today!

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september21

British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I’ve Read

Nate White

(This is linked on Ten Bears’s blog, and it is most succinctly excellent. I’m only putting a snippet; it’s well worth the click to read it.)

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. (snip-a bit MORE)

https://londondaily.com/british-writer-pens-the-best-description-of-trump-i-ve-read