The picture above is the main treasure I brought back from my quick maintenance trip to Italy, where the sky was gray the entire time, and the air just humid enough to make the constant 12°C feel like the vegetable aisle at Market Basket. (The picture is the treasure, not the shells, which I’m not bringing back to the US.)

I also brought back my old copy of Italo Calvino’s Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, which I hadn’t read since high school. An appropriate read in these insane times, I thought.

Notes and links

• Not just one, but two links about coffee, and my own opinion about it

  This will reveal one of my biggest contradictions.

• Apple’s new Creator Studio subscription is a mixed bag

  And the bag smells of Adobe shit.

• Unsung heroes: Flickr’s URL schemes

  Those URLs have been my inspiration a couple of times.

• Put the ZIP code first (or second)

  It’s hard to break out of established design paradigms.

• A beautiful way to gaslight your annoying neighbor

  Hilarious.

• If it were for audiophiles you’d never listen to music

  Music, mud, and bananas.

• How to listen to records

  A good complement to the previous link.

• 36 hours in Bologna

  Ignore this, and go crowd some other city instead.