Stephen Coles
(he/him) Editorial Director & Associate Curator at @letterformarchive.org in San Francisco. Cofounder of @fontsinuse.com & @typographica.org.
Primarily on Mastodon: mstdn.party/@stewf
https://stephencoles.org
End the genocide. Cease fire now!
- #Oakland is not just underrated, it’s one of the most beautiful & livable cities in the world. @laureola.bsky.social & I spent the day downtown where we witnessed the grand reopening of The Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts. Our city’s auditorium was built in 1915 as a civic arena and theater.
- It hosted holiday pageants, Harlem Globetrotter games, operas, and rock concerts. It fell into disrepair, but is now renovated & fully open again for the first time in 20 years. Entertaining tour from architecture historian Scooter Marriner. (This portico by Sterling Calder sports a merman. C’mon!)
- Lunch next door at Town Fare, great soul food on Oakland Museum of CA’s sunny midcentury terrace overlooking #LakeMerritt. This public park is people-centered brutalism at its best. A multilayered rooftop garden of concrete & greenery, multiple access points, and endless picturesque views. #OMCA
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View full threadI feel privileged to live in this city & wish to share it with more people of all backgrounds. Which is why we need to build more housing now! Yes, in my backyard: #Rockridge, a transit-connected district near the city core. No, to pretend progressivism that makes exceptions for the wealthy. #YIMBY
- It’s a pretty great night when I get to bump fists with both Lateefah Simon and Sundra Manning at the mighty Paramount Theatre. #Oakland #LivingJazz #SlyStone
- Do you need another reason to cancel Spotify? Glad I never signed up and then felt locked in. I see how other people got there, but there isn’t really an excuse to stick around now.
- Another reason to boycott Amazon. If you haven’t heard, they are scraping indie shop data and using AI agents to purchase those products through Amazon’s shop. www.forbes.com/sites/johnko...
- Bookshop.org is one of the rare great things to happen to the internet in the last decade.
- “Since we launched, e-commerce revenue for bookstores has increased over 600%” — Check out our CEO and Founder, Andy Hunter, on Going Direct as they discuss how Bookshop.org works, the resurgence of local bookstores, and how we can continue to support them. goingdirect.substack.com/p/47-andy-hu...
- So far, the best corporate statement on AI is @buttondown.com’s: buttondown.com/blog/generat...
- Seen on the back of a tanker truck on the road yesterday. I am still puzzled.
- Nearly 20 years ago, after I first moved to SF, I had no idea what I was looking at as I posed in front of this rad shop window. Pleased to hear that MAC (Modern Appealing Clothing) was just named among the 50 Best Clothing Companies by the New York Times. The store opened in 1980. flic.kr/p/2nTsin
- The words here are hand rendered copies of 1970s and ’80s typefaces. Next time I’m in Hayes Valley I’ll stop by and ask who did them so I can make a credited entry on @fontsinuse.com. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
- I could watch a whole season of David Byrne talking music. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MEj...
- Who is the most influential person in your community or industry, but doesn’t post on social media?
- “Automakers aren't doing a good enough job of convincing consumers that EVs can have the same longevity as an old 1992 Honda Accord.” And lower maintenance costs overall! Maybe except for tires?
- A new study into battery longevity ranks the Kia EV6 at the top—and also reveals that degradation may not be such a big deal. insideevs.com/news/776907/...
- If you must use ChatGPT to look something up (you probably don’t), ask it to “always provide citations with answers”. This setting is saved for future chats. Then, at least, you can check the sources, the sources get credit for the content ChatGPT stole.
- And you retain some semblance of the open web (unlike ChatGPT’s new browser: www.anildash.com/2025/10/22/a...).
- @cyd.social is such a nifty tool. It’s rad to watch its creators dig into the details. Even radder to witness a team of hackers get together and build something so antithetical to corporate tech.
- Interested in what Cyd is, how it works, and other Lockdown Systems projects? We gave a talk at HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH! Check it out www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnbw... @micahflee.com @redshiftzero.bsky.social @yaelwrites.com
- To me, these people are so much cooler than whoever is at the top of the AI heap, or the makers of the hottest app. I’d be far more starstruck to run into Lockdown Systems than any of those stars.
