Remember the silver snakestone lapel pin I sometimes wear on my jacket? It was cast by MaudPunk (who also makes the great Fairford Duck pendants that Kelley likes so well). Now, with my blessing, she has used two of my Pictish- and one Viking coin-inspired animal designs to cast pendants. (The raven is from the Norse coin.) Right now they’re only for sale in bronze, but in a week or two they’ll be available in copper—and maybe silver? (Not sure about that.) Also, though I’m not sure of the timetable, she’ll cast the designs as lapel pins.
Each image below links to its Etsy sale page.
Yffing boar in Pictish styleSprinting hareNorse raven
If metal isn’t your thing but linoprints are, another artist friend, Vicki Platts-Brown, is working on a couple of other images (flying heron and the boxing hares). More when I have it. And if neither metal nor paper work for you, I recently had a conversation with a ceramicist about mugs. Stay tuned!
The change began rolling out a few weeks ago, and user frustration
is mounting. On Reddit, there’s a growing thread of Netflix
subscribers saying they are canceling their subscription
because of this change to the Apple TV app. [...]
The change also means you lose access to full payback
controls using the Apple TV Remote app on your iPhone. You
can’t enable Enhance Dialogue from the video player. That
clever Apple TV feature that automatically enables subtitles
when you rewind? Gone.
One of my most-used tvOS video player features is the ability to
tap the Siri Remote to see when what I’m currently
watching will end. It’s great for trying to decide whether you
have time for one more episode before bed. That feature is gone in
Netflix as part of this change.
Someone tried to argue with me when I complained about this horrendous regression that Netflix users somehow want consistency across different platforms — that users want the same Netflix player on Apple TV as on Roku, Amazon Fire, Google TV, and whatever crap is built into their “smart” TV. Nonsense. Why would users of one platform care what the Netflix player is like on other platforms? Apple TV users buy Apple TV boxes because they want the Apple TV experience. Maybe Netflix wants to present the same experience everywhere. Maybe Netflix wants to save on engineering costs by having a write-once-run-like-shit-everywhere video player. That’s a Netflix concern, not a user concern.
From the perspective of users, this change to the tvOS Netflix app just sucks. There’s no upside at all. Nothing is better, much is worse, and a slew of cool platform features are now gone.
The process requires the victim to have Express Transit Mode
enabled for payments, and a Visa card linked for those payments,
among other steps. As it turns out, it’s a Visa-related security
loophole rather than an iPhone issue, and it doesn’t work with a
Mastercard or an American Express card because other cards use
different security methods. It also doesn’t work with Samsung
Pay on Samsung devices, and it requires the specific combination
of a Visa card and an iPhone. Apple told Veritasium that it’s an
issue with the Visa system, but something unlikely to occur in
the real world.
The video, hosted by the Veritasium YouTube channel, but starring Marques Brownlee as the victim, takes over 15 minutes before clarifying that the exploit only works with Visa cards, and only when a Visa card is set as your card for Express Transit Mode. Until then, the video implies that the exploit can work against any iPhone that has Apple Pay configured, with any sort of credit card. The technical explanation of how the hack works is pretty good though.
As I wrote a year ago (when Apple was looking for a new partner to replace Goldman Sachs as the bank for Apple Card), Visa is the most popular credit and debit card in the U.S., by a significant margin. If you don’t use Express Transit Mode, you’re safe. If you do use Express Transit Mode, I suggest any card other than a Visa.
About a year ago, I got prescribed a CPAP machine. Very important for, you know, supplying oxygen to my brain while I sleep, but one doozy of an adjustment period. It took me about a month to adjust to wearing it at night, and during that month I lowkey felt like I was dying. I was getting very little sleep, and that in small bursts. I was exhausted all the time, and exhaustion made me stupid and slow.
I work in a compliance-related role. My job involves assessing regulatory liability for my employer and potential misconduct by licensed employees. If I find against an employee, it’s the kind of thing that could follow them for the rest of their career, whether at my firm or any other they move to. If I find in favor of my firm where I should have found fault, that can open us up to regulatory complaints and investigations.
Operating on broken and insufficient sleep for a month while facing those potential consequences for bad calls scared the dickens out of me. I had productivity numbers to meet, but I simply could not stay focused enough to work at the normal speed, and awareness of the potential stakes of an error of judgment made me extra cautious. I was operating at about 40% of our expected performance, and even after I adjusted it took me some more time to fully get back up to speed as I paid off the sleep debt.
But a month-plus of turning out a fraction of the work I’m expected to do had a predictably terrible effect on my career. I wound up on a performance improvement plan and lost a lot of credibility with my boss. And unfortunately for me, my boss is the kind of guy who doesn’t really understand exhaustion as an excuse. As he sees it, either you’re so badly off you should take PTO or you’re fine and coming in to work and doing what needs doing. But I couldn’t exactly take an entire month of PTO, that’s far more than my allotment! And I don’t think short-term disability can be applied here.
I had a similar situation early in my career, too, when I was prescribed a strong bronchitis medication that interfered with my judgment and focus during the two weeks I was taking it. I only had five days’ sick time and had used half of it, so the only option I saw was to go to work high, which even at entry-level stakes is a bad idea.
So, how does one navigate these situations? My understanding is that accommodations for health are meant to offer you support to maintain the expected productivity, not to make it okay to underperform. Are there ways to approach an “I know I’m underperforming but I can’t do better until my body stops doing a stupid thing, which is some indefinite number of weeks away” conversation that could actually sound credible? How do people navigate this?
The wording you want is, “I’m dealing with a medical situation that is making it hard to be at 100% right now. I’m working with my doctor to resolve it and we’re hopeful I’ll be back to normal soon, but I wanted to mention it in case you notice me seeming off my usual game.”
Or, “I want to let you know that I’m dealing with a medical condition that has been wearing me out lately. I’m working with my doctor on a treatment plan and I don’t expect it to continue long-term, but I wanted to mention it in case you notice me seeming off.”
You don’t need to disclose details — just you might notice this, I’m working on it, and I’m hoping it will be resolved soon.
It’s ideal to say it before your boss talks to you about changes in your work, but if you didn’t, you can still say it once they do. The idea is to give your manager context for what’s happening so they don’t have to wonder if you’re just being careless or aren’t invested in your job anymore, or otherwise draw the wrong conclusions about what’s going on. Most managers will give you a lot more slack if you explain that yes, you’ve flagged it too, there’s a reason for it, and you’re working to resolve it.
If the very idea stresses you out, I want to give you permission to send me just your bit of feedback without any greetings, or small talk, or “compliment sandwiching.”
(This is one of the meta posts about this very blog. If that’s not interesting to you, skip to the next one!)
I thought I’d share a few of the small design details I am proud of for this small blog!
1.
After years of being annoyed at Slack for mishandling image sizes, it was important for me to show the screenshots (at least the desktop UI) at their 100% precise size, if possible. I think that helps to get a better sense of a scale and feel of things. This was harder than I expected (since I still want images not to grow too wide or too tall), but hopefully works well now.
2.
I wrote some extra code so that if an image has edge transparency or even soft shadows, it will be aligned accounting for all that. I think that feels elegant – especially on a blog that practices asymmetry probably to a fault.
3.
If the images or videos blend too much into the background, they get a lil border to separate them – but only in light or dark mode as needed. This is so that the whole page rhythm holds better together. (Manually assigned so far. Would be curious if one can make this automatic.)
4.
Speaking of dark mode, I almost figured out how to make videos with transparent pixels so that they look good in both dark and light mode. (Chrome only. Still working on it for Safari.)
5
I want autoplay videos (without sound!) so that it’s easier to see interaction design – basically, a modern version of what GIFs used to provide. This has been challenging and required adding some JavaScript, and is still not done! But it’s starting to feel nice.
6.
Given all the quotations I do, I added hanging quotes to text. Wildly, they are still not really supported by CSS (Safari is a sole exception), so that required some manual intervention.
7.
Short lists are (automatically) spaced differently than long lists. I’ve always wanted to try that.
8.
I’m having a blast with the pixel fonts I recreated from PC/GEOS. I keep adjusting the glyphs, adding kerning pairs, etc. It’s fun to keep improving a font as you’re improving its surroundings; I just redrew the @ glyph you can see above!
(This is one of the meta posts about this very blog. If that’s not interesting to you, skip to the next one!)
At Unsung’s 250-postiversary, if I reflect on where this blog has been, and where it might be going, this is what comes to my mind. I didn’t start the project by writing all this down, but I held a lot of this in my head. This feels like a nice moment to capture all this more deliberately, and perhaps some of you might find it interesting.
Goals of Unsung:
Highlight hard, good, invisible design work that makes things better, but doesn’t often get spotlight.
Find deeper meaning in craft, past the pretentious platitudes and surface-level delight. (Details matter not just in some abstract “craftsmanship” sense.)
Help expand what craft means: highlight relations between things, show connections between history and present, talk about things that are hard to describe and impossible to measure.
Revel in being pragmatic. Share useful things, not just hollow inspiration.
Be fun to read.
DIRECTIVE 6: CLASSIFIED_
Higher-level principles for this blog:
Don’t ever share boring stuff, even if the concepts are good, or out of completeness. If you’re not enjoying reading or watching something, assume the audience won’t either. (You can occasionally salvage something boring by providing a non-boring commentary, but try to use this sparingly.)
When you share something, always try to add your perspective or connections. At the very least, excerpt the most useful thing. This blog is QT, not RT.
Find a good balance between positive and negative examples.
In general, offer variety. The weekly digest should have both depth and breadth. (For the last two points, I made a little dashboard to give me some insight, although the sentiment analysis there right now is pretty worthless.)
Be opinionated, but also humble and curious. You don’t know everything.
Be candid, but not cruel. Punch up, not down.
Avoid ridiculing, “walls of shame,” and so on. Even if the work you share is horrible, turn it into a lesson or two.
This is not about people, but about work – except in some occasions it might be about people, so be candid when that happens.
More links is better than fewer. Good linking rewards curiosity and is a form of curation (example 1, 2, 3). However, the post should stand on its own even if one doesn’t follow any of the links.
Make an effort to showcase work by women, people of color, underrepresented minorities, and so on.
Visuals are engaging and helpful. Think about them, but do not add gratuitous, irrelevant photos just to meet the quota (example 1, 2, 3).
The best way to teach something general is to show something specific.
Lower-level principles:
Credit people by full name.
For longer videos, offer their duration to make it easy for people to make decisions about when they want to watch them.
Avoid linking to X and Substack. (It really breaks my heart how much of the design community still supports particularly the former, given all the damage we know X inflicts on society.)
Don’t use this blog as an example (e.g. by screenshots of itself), as this is generally confusing.
Personal goals:
Practice writing things that do count in less than thousands of words.
Do things differently – this blog is authored in Apple Notes, for example, which is kinda weird to a person like me who always writes straight in HTML.
Have fun and learn working on this (completely custom) blog platform on the side.
Give back some of what I learned in my career over the years.
Practice stating my opinions and standing by them.
Learn new things (about what I’m writing and about publishing on the web); the only way to teach something is to understand it yourself first.
One of my employees has asked for a massive raise. He has good reasons for wanting a raise: his responsibilities have ended up being very different than what he was originally hired for, he’s been doing very well with them, and he’s definitely paid below market for what he’s ended up doing. We hired him at $15/hour for an entry-level position with no hard requirements, and based on some quick market research, I’d say the work he’s doing now is closer to a $20-$25 range, so I’m actually in favor of giving him a pretty substantial increase.
The trouble is that he’s asked for an increase to $40/hour, and he’s only been here for four months. That’s more than I make, and I’m honestly shocked that he thought this was reasonable to ask for. He says he did some market research, but that number hasn’t been supported by anything I’ve been able to find. Four months also seems like a short amount of time to me, but I don’t know if the significant change in duties should override that.
I want to advocate for my employee with our company’s owner (who is very reluctant to spend money), but I am suspicious that bringing the employee’s $40/hour request to him will make my employee (and potentially me as well) look completely out of touch with reality. Our owner is extremely hands-off — we’re all remote, and I talk to him maybe once every month or two for about 10 minutes. I told my employee that $40/hour was more than I make and gently suggested that asking for a lower number might be a better idea, but he shrugged that off and said he isn’t set on that number, but sees it as a good “starting point.”
Any suggestions for how to approach this?
I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.
This is the Brennan Monorail, a train from the early 1900s that seemed to defy the laws of physics. Not only did it keep itself perfectly balanced on a single rail, but it mysteriously leaned into corners without any driver input.
It’s kind of incredible how well Brennan’s system worked. It’s ingenious. (via messy nessy)
One more thought re: the item I posted this week speculating on what Apple will name their much-rumored two-screen folding iPhone this year. If they do name it “iPhone Ultra”, I think Apple using that name for the folding iPhone will imply that they have no plans whatsoever to ever make a “rugged” iPhone — a model akin to Apple Watch Ultra.
I suspect Apple has no plans for a dedicated rugged iPhone. People who want that just buy extra-thick cases for regular iPhones. A watch is different. I know some people put their Apple Watches in ungainly protective “cases”, but they look hideous, which is why you see so few people using them. For aesthetically pleasing ruggedness, the watch case itself needs to be designed for it. But maybe there is a large enough potential market for such an iPhone — especially if such a device had significantly longer battery life than any regular iPhone, as an Apple Watch Ultra does relative to a regular Apple Watch.
But if Apple calls the folding iPhone “Ultra”, stop holding your breath for such an Apple-Watch-Ultra-style iPhone. In the same way that “Air” means very different things on Mac, iPad, and iPhone, so too might “Ultra”.
Feature story and short film, well worth watching, from Apple:
One winter day in January 2024, 16‑year‑old Rory Goss experienced
something jarring while in construction class at Abbey Christian
Brothers’ Grammar School in Newry, Northern Ireland. He could no
longer see the whiteboard at the front of the room.
As a straight‑A student in 11th grade, Rory was in the midst of
studying for his A‑levels and was about to start applying to
university. Passionate about golf and cars, and eager to start
driving lessons, he had no idea what was happening to his
eyesight.
Within weeks, he was diagnosed with Leber’s Hereditary Optic
Neuropathy, a rare genetic condition that damages the optic nerve
and can lead to sudden, severe vision loss. Over the next six
months, his vision deteriorated by 95%, meaning he was legally
blind as he began his 12th grade exams.
Apple just posted this feature this week, but it’s serendipitously aligned with my recent (and not-so-recent) posts about the screen zooming features in MacOSand iOS. Goss zooms in and out with extraordinary dexterity and fleetness. It’s quite extraordinary. Particularly moving for me is his illustration — created on an iPad, using Apple Pencil — where he attempts to illustrate what his vision now looks like.
The Scientific Method is immensely helpful, but so is literal magic. Would the power of science prove to be more powerful than the power of wizardry? It’s tough to say, but author Cameron Johnston certainly speculates on the idea in the Big Idea for his newest novel, First Mage on the Moon. Read on to see how the Space Race might’ve happened with the help of a wizard’s staff.
CAMERON JOHNSTON:
For a bunch of wise folk that meddle with reality and break the rules of standard physics on a regular basis, wizards and mages in fantasy media seem a remarkably uncurious lot. Sometimes magic users are far more interested in other dimensions and eldritch creatures than in the mortal world they themselves inhabit. How many of them look up at the stars and wonder what they are, or gaze at the moon and ponder what that shining silver disc really is…and how they might get there?
First Mage On The Moon was born from a single Big Idea (OK, OK…the idle thought of a fantasy-fan): Without science, how would wizards describe gravity? Inevitably, that grew arms and legs and tentacles and thingamabobs into: What would they make of outer space? How would they breathe in a spacecraft when they don’t even know what oxygen is or why air ‘goes bad’. What about aerodynamics? and a whole host of other questions I didn’t then have answers for. When you only have a magical understanding of the world and the closest thing to science is the semi-mystical and secretive practice of alchemy, well, then things get complicated if you want to build something to visit the moon. Magic is not going to solve everything if you fly straight up and try to hit a moving object like the moon, and don’t factor in the calculations for orbits, gravity… or indeed the speed/friction of re-entry.
Science is an amazing and collaborative process and Earth’s 20th-century Space Race was a species-defining moment, but what if that happened in a fantasy world of mages, golems, vat-grown killing machines and grinding warfare. What if a group of downtrodden mages sick of building weapons of mass destruction for their oligarch overlords decided to go rogue and divert war materials into building a vessel to go to the moon, the home of their gods, and ask for divine intervention in stopping the war. When you have no culture of shared science, where do you even begin?
All those thoughts and ideas stewed away in the back of my brain while I was writing my previous novel, The Last Shield. As all authors know, there comes a stage of writing a book when your brain goes “Ooh, look at the shiny new thing!” Very helpful, brain, coming up with magical rocket ships when I’m trying to write a book set in a fantasy version of the Scottish Bronze Age – thanks very much! That idea of wizard-science and magical engineering lodged there, immovable, and my next book just had to become First Mage On The Moon. Which was handy, as I was contracted to write another standalone novel.
While the US/USSR Space Race and modern science of our very own Earth was inevitably a huge influence on my novel, so too were the theories and writing of its ancient thinkers. Around 500 BCE, Pythagoras proposed a spherical world, and Aristotle later wrote several arguments for the same theory, such as ships sailing over the horizon disappearing hull-first and different constellations being visible at different latitudes (all of which may have given the Phoenician sailors and navigators certain thoughts too). And then comes Eratosthenes, Chief Librarian of Alexandria, and a very smart dude who was able to calculate the circumference of Earth by using two sticks in two locations and comparing the angles of their shadows. If those ancient Earth scholars could calculate such things, then surely fantasy mages, with all the magic at their disposal, could do more than fling fireballs at each other. There had to be some among them with the desire to explore beyond the bounds of myth and magic, gods and monsters, and given the opportunity to work with like-minds to build something that has never been done before, they would surely take it…despite the risks.
Found family, magical engineering, and mad ideas of actual science in a magical world all came together to form First Mage On The Moon. As much as I love my morally grey characters in realms of swords and sorcery, it was deeply satisfying to write something that little bit different, a hopeful story about human ingenuity in an increasingly fraught world.
I mentioned this book in a previous post but it deserves its own thing: Timothy Ryback’s 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy will hit shelves in September. A must-read for me.
Next Wednesday is Administrative Professionals Day, so let’s talk about the weirdest or most ridiculous requests you’ve ever seen made of assistants. To start us off, here are a few that have been shared here in the past:
• “In my first job out of college, my boss asked me to dry his shoes, which got wet in the rain. He plunked them down on my desk and said he needed them dry for a meeting in 15 minutes. I’m still not sure what he expected me to do because at a certain point, only time can dry things. The hard, unabsorbent paper towels from the bathroom weren’t going to cut it. I was a receptionist but in no way a personal assistant.”
• “I once had an office-assistant-type job at a wedding and event venue. Turns out, my MOST ESSENTIAL duty, which was not listed in the job description and did not come up in the interviews, was to make the GM’s meal-replacement shake at lunch and then check on him every half hour to see if he finished it, remind him to finish it if he hadn’t yet, then wash the shake container and return it exactly to the correct spot in the cabinet. Other work needed doing? If it was in the afternoon, it wasn’t getting done.”
• “We had a new associate one year who, come to find out, had grown up very well-off and was accustomed to being waited on, and then expected the support staff at the firm to take up where their household staff left off. I don’t even think they were a month in when their practice group chair came and had a chat with them about the fact that their administrative assistant was, in fact, not their personal assistant. For example, the AA would not be picking up any coffee order on her way in (much less the ridiculous one the new associate wanted), nor would she be getting their lunch every day. We also don’t ask our assistant, who sits further from the supply closet than they did, to get up and get them a single pen or two file folders, especially when the AA is working on a deadline filings or client billing. First year associates were generally expected to walk themselves the 10 feet to the supply closet and get their own stuff. The AA would also not be placing all of the first year’s calls, picking up their dry cleaning, nor getting their personal credit card billing issue straightened out.”
Have you ever wanted to eat stinky tofu while binge watching reruns of the Bionic Woman? Or fall in love with a boy named Pajamas?Have you ever thought there was an alien in your stomach trying to kill you?
Coming out is hard when you have two gay moms. At least it is for Simon Bugg. It’s his senior year, and nothing’s going as planned. When his mom scores a dream job, Simon’s world is turned upside down. Stuck at a new school in a strange town, he spirals, torn between the only friends he’s ever known and a growing circle of freaks and geeks who welcome him in.
Things start to look up for Simon when he meets the handsome PJ in drama class. That is, until he derails their first date in spectacular fashion. With a little help from his friends, Simon finds his way back to PJ. But how can he have a relationship with the boy of his dreams when he’s convinced he’s going to die?
No one knows about the nightly alien attacks at 11:22. Why then, and why are they getting worse? Simon must face a dark secret before he loses his chance with the boy he loves.
1: Stinky tofu is pretty damn tasty…in fact, it’s delicious!
Everyone deserves to see themselves represented in books. So, when I set out to write Somewhere in Nowhere, I made diversity a priority. I wanted my cast of characters to be as colorful and vibrant as the friends I had growing up in Montgomery County, Maryland. This approach opened doors to new experiences as I did research for my characters.
When I first learned about stinky tofu, I was obsessed.
This can’t really be a thing, can it?
Turns out it is.
Okay, but people don’t really eat this, do they?
Yep. They do!
And how bad does it really smell?
Pretty bad!
I had to know more. I investigated its history and the intense fermentation process it goes through to become the odorous, night-market delicacy beloved across Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China. But one thing was missing. I had to try stinky tofu for myself.
It wasn’t easy, but when I found a restaurant with stinky tofu on its menu (East Dumpling House in Rockville, MD if you’re asking), it was steps away from where my protagonist and his merry band of misfit friends go to high school. A stinky match made in heaven.
For the big, taste-testing night, my spouse and I took friends to East Dumpling House. I don’t want to give too much away, because I put it all in the novel, but I’ll tell you my spouse sort of liked it, but it was a gag-worthy moment for our friends. What about me, you’re wondering? I loved it! Every stinking bite. The fun part for all of us, though, was experiencing a new culture and trying foods out of our comfort zone.
I’ve since learned about hairy tofu. Who’s up for the challenge?
2: Sorry, Ripley. The only alien in my stomach is a-n-x-i-e-t-y.
At the risk of sounding clichéd: it’s okay to not be okay. This is a lesson I’ve had to learn more than once in my life, and it was never more poignant than when I was writing Somewhere in Nowhere. I was in the throes of crippling anxiety and panic attacks. I would be up all night. Then, in the morning, I would lay my experiences bare on the page. What Simon was feeling and going through was what I was feeling and going through.
I needed to take my own advice, and I wanted to share this message with readers who may be going through their own mental health struggles. (Spoiler alert: the alien isn’t real.) Simon’s challenge is my challenge. And it may be yours, too. Though his story is fiction, the anxiety and panic Simon experiences is very much my story and my truth. And writing this novel was way cheaper (and did more to help me) than all my years of therapy.
3: Are you there, Hector? It’s me, Simon, and I can’t breathe.
When I set out to write my debut novel, I knew it had to be three things:
a classic LGBTQ+ coming-of-age story
about a boy dealing with mental health challenges
written in the vein of Judy Blume (my favorite childhood author!)
Judy Blume’s books were everything to me as a kid. They were the ones that kept me reading. I learned about the world from her—things my parents didn’t tell me. She also helped me feel not so alone, and she inspires the books I write today. YA that deals with tough, real-life issues. I think this was where the seed was planted for my dark-meets-light writing style. I want my readers to feel all the feels. To laugh, and to cry. That’s real life, after all.
4:How a 20-sided die made me a better storyteller.
The idea for becoming an author came about at the Gaithersburg Book Festival. As I passed The Writer’s Center booth, someone asked if I was a writer. When I said no, they probed further, asking what I did for a living. When I replied, “singer-songwriter,” they said: You’re a writer. It’s in your title. It was a light bulb moment for me.
I thought about that conversation a lot over the next year andwhen the pandemic wiped out my work as a performing songwriter, I decided it was time to sit down to write that novel. But I still wasn’t sure I could do it. After all, I drew cartoons and daydreamed during school. I got Cs and Ds in English class. I loved books my whole life, and escaped into them, but never thought about myself as an author. And I certainly didn’t know how to write a book. Or so I thought.
Then it hit me, I’ve been telling stories for most of my life. Most recently, it’s been through four-minute folk songs, but before that, it was as Dungeon Master for countless Cheeto-dusted D&D games. As a kid, I never wanted to be a playing character, I wanted to create the world and tell the story of the game. This is where I learned about pacing, foreshadowing, and planting clues. Turns out, I’d been preparing for novel writing my whole life. Let’s go!
5: My Jewish family guilt has nothing on your Taiwanese family guilt.
“I swear to God, Mags, you have the nagging skills of a middle-aged Jewish mother.”
“Fine! Make fun of the weird girl! Who just happens to be worried about you! Also, you should know better than to bring up this old feud. You know very well that your Jewish family guilt has nothing on my Taiwanese family guilt. My mother’s guilt, and her mother before her, and her mother before her, and so on and so on, is steeped in a long lineage. It’s basically science. How many times are we going to have this argument?”
I mentioned earlier, representation matters. And own voices in literature are important. That’s why it was clear to me that Simon needed to be gay and Jewish. These are things I know and can write about from an honest place. A place of lived experience. That doesn’t mean Simon and I are the same person, we’re not. But we share a common denominator in lifestyle and experiences. These identities have not always been easy in my life. I had my own struggles coming out as a teenager, and I have never been a religious person. But I discovered in writing this novel that we tend to fall back on our traditions when times get tough. I realized there’s comfort and lessons to learn in accepting these truths about ourselves and our community.
Bonus Thing: Bread and water can so easily be toast and tea.
Sure, you might open a mostly empty refrigerator and see nothing to drink and only stale bread to eat. Or you could brew a cup of delicious tea and make that stale bread all hot and toasty. Mmmm.
Sure, you might lose your work and not know how to pay your bills. But you were also given a gift of time. How will you use it?
Sure, you haven’t slept all night because your anxious mind was trying to kill you. But you can pour this trauma into your art and write about it from an honest place.
So, to sum it all up, the main thing I learned was: put the kettle on, toast the bread, and write your truth.
Steven Gellman is an award-winning songwriter turned author. Inspired by his early love for Judy Blume’s groundbreaking stories, Steven has found his passion for writing coming-of-age fiction that centers LGBTQ+ voices and the real-life challenges of navigating adolescence in an ever-changing world. He has long championed authentic queer storytelling — first through song, now through fiction.
When he’s not writing, Steven can be found sipping a cup of Dark Rose tea and plotting new adventures for his book club, Tea & Peril. Steven lives in Maryland’s Piedmont region with his husband and a houseful of rescued companion animals. Somewhere in Nowhere is his first novel.
Well, the 2026 game awards season has finally begun. The American Tabletop Awards have been around since 2019 and they feature an interesting division of games into four categories. The winner in the Complex category is Molly House, designed by … Continue reading →
As part of his RealTime series, artist Maarten Baas has created The People’s Clock, a timepiece that lives in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. To create the clock’s “workings”, Baas recorded more than 1000 volunteers moving as the clock’s hands over a 12-hour period. If you look carefully, you can see a single individual dressed in orange at the edge of the circle acting as the second hand:
Each of the installed clock’s faces is a looped video of that recording, synced to the current time. Here’s a quick behind-the-scenes video of how the clock was made:
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