Links #123

Heather Cox Richardson on Biden stepping down from the race. “In a time of dictators, Trump tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and install himself in power against the wishes of the people. President Joe Biden voluntarily turned away from reelection in order to give the people a better shot at preserving our democracy. He demonstrated what it means to put the country first.”

Dave Karpf on Biden and Harris. “I believe Kamala Harris is going to win. The party is excited and unified. She is positioned to exploit every one of Trump’s glaring flaws. Many of the attacks that Trump will use against her will backfire, revealing that the Republican Party is currently run by crooks and creeps who hate a lot of America and a lot of Americans.”

Jason Kottke on Peter Ablinger’s talking piano. Wow. That’s…crazy.

Behdad Esfahbod on the state of text rendering in 2024. (Esfahbod is the author of HarfBuzz, the predominant open source shaper.) Fascinating read. I also liked Some Font Tools, his presentation with Marianna Paszkowska on some new fonttools features.

GT Academy, a series on how to design a sans serif typeface.

Benjamin Reinhardt on what it takes to get new materials out of the lab and into mass production. “Despite university teams regularly announcing triumphantly that they’ve created a material with seemingly magical properties like artificial muscles made out of carbon nanotubes or ‘limitless power’ from graphene, new materials-enabled human capabilities have been rare in the past 50 years. Why is there such a gap between headlines and reality when it comes to new materials? Is there anything we can do about it?”