INTEROPERABLE 016 Joy as an Act of Resistance, Eno, and The Red Cross
Photo: An open and overgrown BT / Openreach street cabinet. Alexadra Palace Park, London, UK June 2025. Photo by the author.
Ciao amici miei!
It's Tyler here—that Sicilian waiter who was happy you were trying your rudimentary Italian and brought you a limoncello on the house—I wanted to drop a line and spill some ink on some things floating around in my brain since publishing INTEROPERABLE 015:
Joy as an Act of Resistance
Polyphonic's brilliant video essay, IDLES' New Vision of Masculinity, succinctly summarises my thoughts on our masculine landscape better than I ever could. Noah Lefevre's writing and filmmaking are brilliant. Come to learn about the brilliant band IDLES, stay to hear Noah's heart-wrenching personal revelations, and maybe love yourself a bit more on the other side. Besides being a groundbreaking album, Joy as an Act of Resistance is also excellent advice—you can laugh and have fun, which is essential in the face of tyranny or stupidity, whatever it is we're going through right now. The long-form, music, video essay is perfect indulgent escapism, and Lefevre's Polyphonic is at the top of the form. ★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2
Brian Eno on the New Yorker Radio Hour
A fond memory I have of the early iPhone days, when things were slow at the fruit stand, was playing with Brian Eno & Peter Chilvers' seminal early app Bloom, which was the first 'generative' audio I experienced and my introduction to the world of Brian Eno. On the simple interface, you could tap out individual notes or chords on the iPhone's screen, and as the melody would loop, the app would generate new notes woven through your taps. Running around with my manager, Tom, to set up and let 20+ phones play evolving twinkly melodies while we finished closing up the store was one of the first times I ever "played" at work. Listening to a recent New Yorker Radio Hour interviewing Eno took me right back to a place of playful creativity. If you enjoyed the linked interview, you'll also like Gary Hustwit's 2024 film Eno, which you should absolutely see if there is ever a screening near you, or they figure out how to package the generative film for streaming online. ★ ★ ★ ★
Double Crossed
An annoying design thing, a la Norman Doors or Bad Kerning, that is giving my eye a twitch is the misuse of the flag of Switzerland (A) when the symbol of The Red Cross (B) should be used. From Tacticool "Medic Patches" to entrances to actual emergency departments have me thinking, is the Swiss army hopelessly lost? Is this a Swiss medical outpost in Denver, Colorado? All joking aside, Philip F Stahel's (a dual Swiss-US citizen and trauma surgeon) editorial in the journal Patient Safety in Surgery Swiss flag or Red Cross emblem: why the confusion? goes into lovely detail on the topic, must read. ★ ★ ★ 5/8
Em Dashes and AI.
Okay, I've avoided talking about AI here because I'd rather have my eyelids slit open and have a juicy colostomy bag slowly emptied into my fresh wounds than "share my thoughtful comments around the state of AI." I just want to say that the use of em (—) and en (–) dashes is the sign of a complete fucking nerd, not that something was necessarily glopped out into your weary retinas by the slop machines (see The Em Dash Dilemma: How a Punctuation Mark Became AI’s Stubborn Signature). Frankly, I was on the path to becoming a bit anti-em dash—is this a punctuation mark too rude in its length, and length of pause—something too immodest to be shared in a polite publication such as this? I've come to the realization that the answer is—emphatically no. If the AI dorks want to take away my em dash—fuck 'em—I'm all in on team dash now. We all know the true scourge of the punctuation world is the semicolon anyway.
How to pretend to be an AI:
On Windows—hold down "Alt" and type in 0150 on your numpad.
On Macintosh—press Option + Shift + Minus.
On Linux—let's be honest—you aren't reading this anyway.
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I'm Tyler Dickey—and this is my newsletter INTEROPERABLE—where I jot and trot over my affections for reliable, available, and maintainable systems like RSS and telephony. Here, I write about topics that interest me: art, reading, making things, and punctuation marks. Please consider subscribing or following me elsewhere on the internet: Website | Instagram
