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Absenter

Friend Naz just relaunched his dedicated photo blog, Absenter and it’s, of course, excellent. I love the background color keying off the photo, the simplicity of the one photo per day, and the single-word titles. As often happens when I see a project from Naz, my first thought is: “Damn, I wish I’d thought of that!”.

Current fave: “Cruiser”.

And a bonus quote from Naz’s personal site that I think helps contextualize projects like Absenter:

Artists are now just content creators chasing engagement, views, and memberships to gain sponsorships so you can buy some AG1. It’s ads all the way down.

If we don’t like what we’re seeing in the world—in culture, in politics, but especially in art—it’s a good antithesis to produce work that flows in the opposite direction and I think that’s what Naz is doing here.

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EV Stupidity Checklist

To help the industry get back on the right track, I’ve created a checklist for car designers. Make sure your new car—EV or otherwise—checks all these boxes to avoid making the same stupid mistakes that have plagued modern cars for years.

In a way that is quintessentially Siracusa, he has created an excellent list of everything wrong with modern car design including its fetishization of disappearing door handles and kitchen-sink touchscreen controls.

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What Does a Trillion Dollars Look Like? Here’s $1 Trillion, Visualized.

In an earlier iteration of this site I linked to one of my favorite pieces of interactive and functionally-enlightening art: Wealth shown to scale.

Sadly, it’s time for an update and The Wall Street Journal—of all places—did the honors.

Is a billionaire good for humanity? Is a trillionaire? Humans are bad at understanding scale. Sigh.