Published
TIL that the U.S. had a 22-year travel ban preventing HIV-positive immigrants, residency/work permit applicants, and visitors from entering the country.
I’m incredibly embarrassed that I didn’t know about this before. The travel ban was enacted in 1987. President George W. Bush started the repeal process in 2008, and President Obama finalized the end of the ban in 2010. It is WILD that it took so long for it to be repealed.
Published
If you’re lucky to have them around for long enough, you will eventually reach an age where you have existed for more than half of your parents’ lives. You suddenly go from being around for less of their experiences to being around for most of their experiences.
There’s something significant in that, but I’m not quite sure what… Ask me next summer.
Published
I think the best creative advice I ever got was from my tutor at CSM.
Don’t dot every I and cross every T, don’t tie up every loose end. Leave some questions unanswered. A piece of art, a movie, a song, a performance, they all tend to be more compelling when they leave you wondering.
I tended to be very goal-oriented in my visual art practice, with an idea of exactly what I wanted the final product to be. This usually left me with frustration when I couldn’t quite get it there, and a piece that was overworked and somehow boring, despite my efforts. When I spent a little more time just focusing on the process and letting go of the result, it was both more fun and far more interesting to look at in the end.
I don’t have much of an art practice at the moment, though sometimes I look at this website as one big, long-haul creative endeavor.
Published
It’s been a little over four months since B arrived. These are some of my experiences or things I’ve learned so far, plucked at random.
I’d say that the books, conversations, and classes prepared me pretty decently in theory, but the physical and emotional reality is almost impossible to prepare for. Being a parent has been much more visceral than I expected.
Published
I’m working on a site with a complex entanglement of blend modes, SVG backgrounds, gradient backgrounds, positioning, and transitions. I’ve run in to a bunch of issues with mix-blend-mode not working as expected, and it almost always has to do with an inappropriate stacking context.
For posterity, this StackOverflow answer is a really good run-down of CSS combos that create new stacking contexts.
Now to see what I can do about browsers rendering color profiles slightly differently… 💀
Edit: UGHHHHHH it’s different in different browsers. Check out this CodePen in Chrome and Firefox vs Safari. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Edit 2: See the answer to the cross-browser problem from the previous CodePen, via Gregory Cadars (view thread). So Safari is actually behaving correctly, but it’s still a stacking context issue.
To recap: I’m trying to display a “fixed” gradient background with content that scrolls over the top of it. Within this content, only the images have mix-blend-mode: overlay. In the original CodePen, I’m achieving this via a fixed position, 100% width + 100% height element with a linear gradient. This is within the same wrapper as the content.
My example is working in Chrome and Firefox. In Safari, it is effectively as if the blend mode hasn’t been applied. Though I’m not sure why the difference between browsers, it does make sense that a fixed position element would still create a new stacking context regardless of its parent.
In Gregory’s example, he’s removed the fixed position element with the gradient and instead applied the gradient background to the wrapper, as well as background-attachment: fixed via the background shorthand. This achieves the exact same effect, without stacking context issues.
The only thing that gives me pause is performance… I remember running in to some issues when I considered using background-attachment: fixed for Elizabeth Peyton’s Eternal Return. I can’t remember what it was exactly but it had to do with repainting on every scroll event (so, a lot!). I think that this article may give some context, but I’ll have to dig in to it further.
Related: See this CSS gradients resampling tool by Rutherford Craze for smoother gradients, shared by Gregory in the thread.
Twitter is a crappy place a lot of the time, but I love it for things like this.
Published
Four years ago today, in the V&A’s porcelain courtyard expansion not long after it opened. Was getting ready for an evening rehearsal outside, very chilly.
Published
Dried mango (amchoor) powder is a sneaky all-star ingredient.
It adds a tangy-ness to food without being sour. Instead of lemon or lime’s brightness, it adds depth. And unlike sumac, it changes almost nothing about the food visually since it’s such a fine powder.
Obviously it’s super in curries, but I’ve also added it to non-West Asian food like chili and smoothies with great effect. I imagine it would also work well in marinades, salad dressing, all sorts of things.
Another sleeper ingredient (at least to my palate!) is black salt. It’s got a pink tinge, confusingly. It has a distinct sulfurous smell which makes it super useful in vegan egg salad recipes, but I imagine it would be great in other stuff as well.
Published
We’re moving to NYC! 🎉 Cross-country with a 3 month old! 😬 Wish us luck! 💫
Published
When you get home, unbundle your herbs, wash immediately, and shake off excess water.
If you’re storing cilantro/coriander: Cut the bottoms so you have a fresh edge on all stems. Fill a glass with an inch or two of water. The glass should be large enough to hold the stems comfortably, don’t pack it in. Place the stems in the glass, and then place a plastic bag over the top to create a little “dome” over the leaves. I tend to use a quart bag, but you might need a bigger one depending on how long the stems are. Be sure to replace the water every once in a while.
For pretty much any other herb as far as I can tell: Lightly wrap the herbs in a slightly damp paper towel, then place in a large, open ziptop bag. Every once in a while, replace the damp paper towel or redampen it if it feels dry.
Finally figured out how to keep cut herbs fresh in the fridge for more than a few days. No more green slime. 👍
Cilantro, parsley, thyme, sage, and rosemary have all done well in my fridge with this technique. The cilantro has lasted weeks, which is shocking.
Mint did really well too, but I feel it might last slightly longer if treated like cilantro. Will experiment.
Published
Diaper changing in the middle of the night.