Bloop

Check out my latest issue of “Reflections” in honor of Pride!

Forgot a word in Spanish, while speaking Spanish to me, but remembered it in English. Became weirdly quiet as they seemed to lose their entire sense of identity.

Used a literal translation of a Russian idiomatic expression while speaking English. He actually does this quite regularly, because he somehow genuinely forgets which idioms belong to which language. It usually takes a minute of everyone staring at him in confused silence before he says “….Ah….. that must be a Russian one then….”

Had to count backwards for something. Could not count backwards in English. Counted backwards in French under her breath until she got to the number she needed, and then translated it into English.

Meant to inform her (French) parents that bread in America is baked with a lot of preservatives. Her brain was still halfway in English Mode so she used the word “préservatifes.” Ended up shocking her parents with the knowledge that apparently, bread in America is full of condoms.

Defined a slang term for me……. with another slang term. In the same language. Which I do not speak.

Was talking to both me and his mother in English when his mother had to revert to Russian to ask him a question about a word. He said “I don’t know” and turned to me and asked “Is there an English equivalent for Нумизматический?” and it took him a solid minute to realize there was no way I would be able to answer that. Meanwhile his mom quietly chuckled behind his back.

Said an expression in English but with Spanish grammar, which turned “How stressful!” into “What stressing!”

The Little Damage ice-cream shop near downtown LA has unveiled a new, superblack soft-serve flavor called “Almond Charcoal” whose coloring comes from activated charcoal.

The gothy appearance has made it a social media superstar, and it’s very useful if you happen to suffer from acute poisoning.

I was JUST thinking to myself, man, I wish I had a t-shirt with @laraantal, @ellenlindna, @robinhaart, and @hannahbae’s faces on it… WELL, HOLY EFFIN’ SHIT!!!

TABULA IDEM has less than $1k to raise for our second stretch goal!

We’re formally entering our final week; the Kickstarter ends Tuesday May 2nd, 12PM PDT! We’ve unlocked one stretch goal, but can’t get to the other ones without your help; our next goal of $39k will get our artists a $50 bonus. After that? Color insert pages for the tarot card artwork, another artist bonus, and then super fancy packaging for all tarot decks! For now, however, let’s join artist gray Dupe Folie for an aside about Death. 

DEATH

Zodiacal Ruler of Scorpio

Archaic Title - “The Child of the Great Transformers”

An at-times intimidating card that comes between The Hanged One and Temperance, Death is often a marker that we must ultimately surrender something in order to gain another thing,  that we must return to the earth that we once came from to grow new seeds. While Death is a frightening thing, we must accept it as a part of the universe, and that the end can also be the start of a new beginning.

GRAY DUPE FOLIE

Drop Out || Website

Folie is an intersex lesbian trying to combine a strong interest in sequential art and a natural knack for pseudo-fictional prose into the form of comics. Their stories focus on topics they feel are largely neglected in media. With furries.

Robin Sloan’s Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is one of those instant geek classics that gets right into the romance and magic of high-tech, a book akin to Cryptonomicon or Microserfs.

Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is one of those instant geek classics that gets right into the romance and magic of high-tech, a book akin to Cryptonomicon or Microserfs. It’s the story of Clay Jannon, a broke ex-high-tech worker who gets a night-shift job in poky, weird bookstore whose highest shelves are stocked with curious ancient volumes, These books are only ever requested by furtive, weird customers who come in the middle of the night and request them by name, and it’s Clay’s job ot scale the rolling ladders that run the length of the shelves to retrieve them.

Thus begins the setup of a book that explores cryptic codes (the books are filled with odd, incomprehensible type), the awesome might of parallel computation (Clay’s girlfriend, a Googler, helps him recruit untold computing power to put to work on deciphering the mystery of the books and the customers), secret societies (the furtive customers who come in the night), and the quest for immortality through the ages (a subject I can’t write much about without getting into major spoiler territory).

This is what a book like The DaVinci Code could be if its author loved the world, rather than resenting it. This is a geek’s love poem to the twenty-first century, to design, to networks, and to the delightful world of problems with chewy, crunchy solutions. Every page is filled with sweet humor and delightful, dorktastic people who are nerding out in the very best way about the stuff that matters to them.

Mr Penumbra is, at the end, a book about passion – for books, for history, for the future. It’s full of (often made-up) technological details that nevertheless ring true, the kind of stuff that nerds fantasize about doing a lot, and get to do a lucky once in a while. It’s the perfect nerdish fantasy, full of secrets behind bookstore shelves, unimaginable computational power, and deep geekery about RPGs, dataviz, narrow-targetted mobile ads, and typography. There is nothing in this book that I didn’t love.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel

Y’know, in case you were wondering how a blubbery critter enters the water after sunning itself on the beach for an hour.

This remarkably looks like me getting out of bed for early morning fieldwork.