Posts and notes from Nick Simson

Engels in the Outfield → For The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik reviewed Metropolitans by A.M.

Check out Ron’s Musical Retrospective detailing 21 years of listening data from Last.fm.

Bookmarked Progressive Web Components by Ariel Salminen.

Baseball allegiances, no explanation: Mets a two- or three-inning nap on a Sunday afternoon Albuquerque Isotopes Hiroshima Carp Watching historic plays and calls on YouTube People still rocking Expos gear Ice cream sundae served in a little plastic helmet…

Bookmarked Principles for Knowing When to Stop Designing by Ben Brignell.

Yesterday longtime Mets radio broadcaster Howie Rose announced his retirement at the end of the 2026 season.

I love the metaphor Wilfred Stephen Anfield chooses for blogging in this introductory post, “Why the porch”: I designed this digital porch lined with Mason Jar Notes to work in a different way.

Likes Take your own pulse by Joe Crawford.

Likes Everybody Needs a Rock by Naz Hamid.

This is my entry for the March 2026 IndieWeb Carnival, on “museum meories”, hosted by James.

Likes Icky by Gary Peters.

For March’s IndieWeb Book Club, I chose The Timeless Way of Building (ISBN 9780195024029), a 1979 book on architecture by Christopher Alexander.

Hamilton Nolan, on why the country that starts the war is wrong: Opening the door to things like “preemptive wars” to head off some form of (real or concocted) threat has the same effect as saying it is okay to shoot someone if they make you nervous.

Likes There’s no King in No Kings by fromjason.xyz.

Bookmarked Wishcessibility by Nic Chan.

My daughter is becoming quite good at drawing “humans”.

Joe Crawford argues we are in a web renaissance now: I like getting asked questions about the web.

I received my signed vinyl copy of Ratboys’ Singing’ To An Empty Chair today, a few days early from the album’s Feb. 6 release.

Bookmarked Purveyors of Packaging.

I recently borrowed the 2024 edition of Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, by Karl Marx from the library.

Bookmarked Bandcamp Fridays Return in 2026.

I recently finished reading The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman, a memoir in essays by Niko Stratis.

Winston has written a little on what life looks like in the Twin Cities right now: Right now the Federal Government is the disaster, and ICE are the chaos agents, and my community is a beautiful defensive force that will not be defeated.

Bookmarked Don’t Inherit the Box Model by Miriam Suzanne.

The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make and could just as easily make differently.

Here’s a great introductory post written by Rob Arcand on his brand new blog: Why Bother?

Go read Coyote’s latest post, Which Part of the Indie Web Ethos is the Bigger Priority?

Bookmarked oklch.fyi by Jakub Krehel.

‘Tis the season to look back at various data I kept track of for a full year, including music data.

Henry (from Online) published A website to destroy all websites, a transcription of a talk delivered at WebDevConf in Bristol in 2025.

Bookmarked Why AI is exposing design’s craft crisis by Dolphia.

Every year it is my annual tradition to inventory my reading for the calendar year.

Bookmarked Penpot’s AI whitepaper by Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz.

Ed Simon on The Egalitarian Vision of Nativity Scenes: In all its artistic iterations across millennia, the nativity — the birth of Jesus in a humble manger — remains inherently political.

Paul Scheer made a mini-doc about Swiftie Dads on YouTube: In 2023 I became obsessed with videos of dads in cargo shorts waiting in parking lots during Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

David Velasco (former editor of Artforum), on How Gaza Broke the Art World: I don’t know why I thought we were an exception.

Bookmarked Against markdown by Elliott Cost.

Screw it… I’m sprucing up the ol website today with a holiday theme.

It’s actually easier than I thought to switch music streaming services.

Bookmarked Our Mistakes by GiveWell.

Peak: The highest point or level; the maximum point, degree, or volume of anything.

Giles Turnbull, How to use Pooh case Pooh case should be used sparingly.

Following November’s IndieWeb Book Club pick Understanding Comics, December’s IndieWeb Movie Club invites us to watch Ghost World, a film adaptation of a comic.

Doug Wilson interviewed Tobias Frere-Jones on designing Gotham: Trying to write about Gotham as we approach the 25th anniversary of its release feels like trying to write about air: yes, it is made up of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide, but that isn’t

Bookmarked Strangers, By Spring by Red and Henry.

I haven’t seen any of Better Call Saul yet, but I think I’m going to skip right to Pluribus.

I’m reading They Said It Couldn’t Be Done, Wayne Coffey’s book about the 1969 World Series.

Bookmarked I ranted about frontend build steps at MagnoliaConf 2025 by Blake Watson.

I got a new computer recently and I think I configured NVM, NPM, and all the dependencies this site runs on correctly so I can update my website from this new machine.

Bookmarked remove ai by Rek Bell.