Bar Far combines an art gallery and a bar
“Passion envelopes what precision builds.”
— UNKNOWN
This time we’re colliding web design, dinosaurs, speeding tickets, bakeries and the shape of learning.
Please skip around, read what you want to. Find something interesting in your own internet travels? Send me a link
—JH
Article
By Paul Johnson.
10 curious links that would have killed the cat
📝 How I do web design. 7 years of writing down lessons learned, condensed into 30 points. Most are practical and many relate to the work around the work itself.
Koos Looijesteijn ∙ Blog Post
🍻 Bar Far imagines what it’d be like to throw a bar and an art gallery in a blender together. It’s open in Rome through March 14. Just in case you’re, you know, in the neighborhood.
Colossal ∙ Article
🐴 Enclose Horse, a game where you have limited walls to create the largest possible horse pen. I’ve been pulling this up between pomodoros.
Shivers ∙ Game
Kottke / Wall Street Journal ∙ News
💸 In Finland, speeding tickets are based on speed—and income. A businessman just got a $141k ticket for going 50mph in a 30mph zone. “I really regret the matter,” said Anders Wiklöf. Finland calculated the fine as being equal to one week of his disposable income.
The Guardian ∙ News
Francisco Negroni captured lava-illuminated clouds in Chile
📸 The best science images of 2025. That’s my favorite above, but they’re all incredible.
Nature ∙ Article
🥖 Fancy bakery Jolene’s logo was drawn by a six-year-old. The brief included a “forward-looking ethos and commitment to preserving soil for future generations”. Who better to brand it than a future generation? Love this.
The—Brand Identity ∙ Article
📚 The God of the Woods and The Husbands were the two best books I read last year. The first is a moody mystery over three connected time periods, the latter a funny existential romp about relationships.
Recommendations ∙ Books
💔 Grief is unexpressed love—we never get “enough” time with each other. Actor Andrew Garfield discusses grief and art in an oldie-but-goodie interview with Stephen Colbert. I have a strict “no bummers” policy for Collider but I don’t actually think this one is a bummer.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert ∙ Interview
🦖 Looks like dinosaurs are headed to the ‘26 Olympics. “Thousands of dinosaur footprints found near Winter Olympics venue,” The Independent reports. "This is one of the largest and oldest footprint sites in Italy, and among the most spectacular I've seen in 35 years,” says paleontologist Cristiano Dal Sasso, I assume visibly psyched about the idea of Olympic dinos.
The Independent ∙ News
in Greenville, SC
Over December our developers sneaked in a few tasty updates—a couple dozen, by my count. Two highlights for you:
Over the holidays we made a significant performance improvement to Blocks—especially in long Steps with lots of Question Blocks. If you’ve ever had a big Step, quiz, or test that felt sluggish to design, it should feel noticeably snappier.
We shipped a substantial upgrade to our Media Manager’s file uploader and the file uploader for learners, including:
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Reliably upload files from Google Drive.
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When uploading from Google Drive, Dropbox, or another third-party file location, logins are stored securely so you don’t have to re-sign-in-yet-again so often.
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Uploading files is smoother with pause/resume support and a bit of UI polish.
This second week of the year finds your humble editor back in the Labs on a couple projects.
I gave my mind a vacation over the holidays. Read a lot, watched movies a lot, drank tea a lot. It’s great to feel my mind figuring things out again without a year’s worth of thoughts in its pockets.
Hope there’s more gas in your mental tank too!
High five,
Justin Hall
Editor, Partner at Pathwright