First of all, there’s a new version of Spectrolite, and we’re working on another release with expanded imposition options. We went to Todo Mundo Art Book Fair, visited Gato Negro Ediciones for a studio tour, and met a bunch of rad students from Cornell University’s Image Text MFA program. Todo Mundo had inflatable giant flowers:
Mostly, I’ve been existentially mulling 2023 being a 1.5C year for climate change, thinking about Hansen noting that:
“We are not moving into a 1.5C world, we are briefly passing through it in 2024. We will pass through the 2C (3.6F) world in the 2030s unless we take purposeful actions to affect the planet’s energy balance.”
Process wise, Obsidian and linked documents continue changing my brain in interesting ways. Still too in the weeds to write about it yet.
Last week I gave my personal website, ameliagreenhall.com, a bit of a design refresh, and also added a /uses page — a list of computer hardware, apps, and printshop equipment. And I updated my /now and /contact pages. I love side notes and margin notes in publications, and am working on a prototype of side notes for my site. I found this amazing roundup of side notes implemented in web design. (And also, Tufte CSS.)
I’ve been contemplating a rewrite of my personal website’s architecture, and poking around the slow web / indie web / web of interesting personal websites. Right now it’s a custom static site builder that Adam made (more in the colophon) and we’ve been adapting for various sites since 2017ish. I’m wondering if it would make sense to switch it to a static site builder like Eleventy. That might help make building tags pages and an RSS feed a bit easier, with more code examples and plugins to use. Or is it more just a desire to be using Obsidian as my markdown editor? Or to not need to navigate to Contentful to make a new post? In any case, I really want to make an RSS feed for my personal website.
I switched all my RSS feeds from Feedly into Reeder, and laboriously (because of course no OPML exports, walled garden, etc) moved all the Substack subscriptions over there too. Personally, I don’t want to read newsletters in email and also don’t like reading in Substack’s web app, which I’d been trying. I do batch processing of similar types of info (reading, working, writing, email) and having multiple places to process the same type of incoming blog/newsletter content was not working for my brain. A single RSS reader is what I needed to get back to.
If you want to read this newsletter in a feed reader, it’s at https://newsletter.anemone.studio/feed (and you can put /feed after any substack url).
With Twitter dead and having slowly slid off IG over the past couple years (besides using it to look up friends, or announce new publications or events), I’m finding that I’m wanting personal websites. Give me the weird art projects. I need books and zines, and all sorts of artist publications.
Making the /uses page made me contemplate what I do on my phone. I mostly use my phone for:
taking photos and making notes (Obsidian or notes app, also google docs/sheets) to capture ideas, bits of beauty, things to do
texting (although I have iMessages/SMS and WhatsApp on desktop and will type there if I can)
music
calendar
looking timely stuff up in email or digital files
maps, and directions to walk or bike places, or transit
wallet - tickets and credit cards
weather
peloton strength / yoga workouts (but I’ll do it from the computer browser if I can)
meditation (I like this Pranayama breathing one)
podcasts, sometimes
hiking maps and GPS
and then there are supporting apps, like VPN and password manager
language translation
I don’t read content on my phone, and I hardly ever watch videos. And unless I’m at a small press event I usually keep Instagram off it and I haven’t ever really used any other social media on it. Last summer I had IG on my phone for PCT conditions info ahead of us on the trail, but I’m not sure it was worth the tradeoff of info vs the feeling of spending time on it. In general, I’ve found that basically any time I spend “consuming content” on my phone makes my body and brain feel bad, in a way that using the computer doesn’t. (There’s better adblockers on the computer; also it’s just less addictive and easier to batch process things?) I also carry around a kindle and a notebook and pen, so that any boredom impulses can be redirected to things that make me feel good.
(Phone/social media stuff is often tender — this is just what’s going for me at the moment, no judgement, no shoulds, etc!)
QUOTATIONS:
This part of an interview with Lyz Lenz:
I remember reading Candide by Voltaire and being so angry at the end. The main character is like nope, you just tend your own garden. You can't get involved with the crazies, you tend to your own garden. I remember being like, that fucking sucks, man! Get out in the world! I don't care if this is a brilliant satire! I hated it.
But now, I think I understand better. What it means is you find the thing that you can do, the good that you can do. It's going to look different than anybody else's. And so when people are like, oh, I'm despairing, I can't. You cannot solve all the problems, but you have skills, you have talents. They're probably the things you think are the worst things about yourself, by the way.
Really looking forward to reading her new book, This American Ex-Wife.
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I keep returning to this definition of being an artist:
“Art has saved my life so many times. For every weirdo freak artist I’m friends with, which is everybody in my life, the existence of art has kept them around and sane. This is the theoretical underpinning of my consulting practice— that artists are people who need to be in a creative practice in order to be well. That makes them different from people who don’t need that. Bodies are different. Humans need different things to have a connection to themselves and something beyond themselves, to have their spiritual interior feel well. When artists stop making their work or they get distanced from it or they feel disconnected from it, their quality of life goes down.”
— Writer and consultant Beth Pickens on why money won’t save you
READING:
Thought about it again recently, so: You Should Have Asked.
Behind the cover design of Katherine Dunn’s Toad.
Too many layers (a way to think about sound-based sensory overstimulation)
Why it’s vital to remember that big publishers and their sales departments know best.
LISTENING: Beyonce’s new single Texas Hold ‘Em — please, please, let this be a whole new country album.
— Amelia