David Sleight is a design and product director who makes interactive things—mostly for the web, but always for humans. This is his website. 2026-02-04T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/ David Sleight feed-reply@stuntbox.com 2026-02-04T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/the-em-dash/ <p>This <a href="https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/658-the-em-dash/">recent episode</a> of <cite>99% Invisible</cite> is catnip for a type-lover’s soul.</p> <p>I’m a proud member of Team Em Dash, and have had its keyboard shortcut burned into muscle memory for decades. As the podcast notes, this lovely typographic device can help build or break up the rhythm of a text, letting it work more like how you and I actually speak.</p> <p>Usage? No surrounding spaces for me, please—it’s wide enough already. And web browsers figured out how to line break them ages ago, so I’ll hear none of that. (Also, not that you asked, but en dashes for pure numerical ranges like “2005–2025” when publishing tools allow, please and thank you very much.)</p> <p>While years of working with <abbr>AP</abbr> style-tinged newsrooms has curbed my usage, I still think it stinks that ChatGPT has saddled the em dash with a new stigma divorced from its merits.</p> <p>Anyway, listen to it. Then go put an em dash somewhere someone told you it doesn’t belong—you’ve earned it.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: The Em Dash">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2026-01-27T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/the-toss/ <p><cite>DPReview</cite> has coverage of a <a href="https://www.dpreview.com/interviews/6336791578/john-abernathy-pierre-lavie-protest-photographers-ice-minneapolis-thrown-leica">remarkable moment</a> between two photographers at the Minneapolis <abbr>ICE</abbr> protests.</p> <p>The incident is striking on its own, but also renewed a long-standing wish of mine that camera manufacturers take photographer safety and data security more seriously.</p> <p>For years we’ve had the ability to quickly force a passcode-only unlock of our phones, preventing authorities from compelling access via biometrics like Face ID. Despite <a href="https://stuntbox.com/blog/photojournalists-call-on-camera-manufacturers-to-add-encryption/">years of advocacy</a>, there’s still no widely adopted equivalent for cameras—and the memory cards that can be yanked out of them—that I’m aware of, leaving photographers to improvise ways to protect their work in moments when it matters most. Hence Abernathy tossing his camera to a perfect stranger.</p> <p>(Aside/rant: The idea that you can’t be forced to divulge a passcode for your phone, but somehow <em>can</em> be compelled to unlock that same device with your face or fingerprint, is something I think the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_ID#:~:text=courts%20in%20the,to%20biometric%20data.">courts keep getting wrong</a> and needs to be remedied by lawmakers.)</p> <p>I’ve been lucky to have only been hassled by authority-types a few times while photographing something. Once, hilariously, a security guard tried—very loudly—to stop me from taking photos of my own office building while I was on assignment and standing on a public sidewalk. Another time, a <abbr>DEP</abbr> officer ordered me to hand over my driver’s license, while leaning in with a gap-toothed sneer to say he’d take my film too—or worse—if I didn’t cooperate. (A wildly illegal threat, to be clear. But since there was no one in sight for miles of wilderness in every direction, I complied and, after some more hassling, kept his paws off my film and myself.)</p> <p>But working photojournalists? They deal with this crap <em>all the time</em>.</p> <p>I’ve lost track of how many times I, or a lawyer I was working with, had to get on the phone with local authorities to get them to back off of a photographer we had out on assignment. In every case, that photographer was fully within their rights. Over and over again, the people charged with enforcing the law either didn’t understand it or chose to ignore it.</p> <p>I still walk around with a copy of the <a href="https://www.krages.com/phoright.htm">The Photographer’s Right</a> and the <a href="https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/bustcard_eng_20100630.pdf">ACLU bust card</a> in my camera bag. But I know they won’t get me very far if the person wearing the badge is ignorant of the law, acting in bad faith, or both. More protection is needed.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: The Toss">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/it-could-be-either/ <figure class="art art--lg"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/nye-fireworks-2025-DSF4450.jpg" alt="" class="is-dark" data-camera=" " data-lens=" " data-focal-length="" data-exposure=" sec" data-f-stop="ƒ/" data-iso="ISO " data-profile="Display P3"><figcaption>Last night’s New Year’s Eve fireworks above Prospect Park, Brooklyn, as photographed by the author.</figcaption></figure> <p>Most years since we’ve lived in Brooklyn, my partner and I have ventured out on a cold late Fall morning to take part in the familiar Gotham ritual of cheering on the runners in the New York City Marathon.</p> <p>It’s always a good crowd and a great scene. People turning out to cheer on perfect strangers who are doing something hard. Really hard. The kind of hard that takes training and focus and heroically sustained effort.</p> <p>One of the first years we did this, I remember spotting a runner charging by in a full-on banana costume. The bright yellow foam body, the crude oval cutout for the face, the black itchy-looking leggings, white Mickey Mouse gloves, everything. An <em>oh man you must be dying in that thing</em> kind of costume. (Disclaimer: This was early in the runners-running-in-novelty-costumes trend. We’ve seen this enough since that the folks who run the event have set up, like, <em>rules</em> for this, man. Consider this guy a trailblazer.)</p> <p>I turned to my wife and asked: “Do you think he lost a bet, or is he winning one right now?”</p> <p>Without skipping a beat, she replied, “It could be either.”</p> <p>I still want to know which.</p> <p>As we close the book on the <em>thing</em> that was 2025 and look ahead to 2026, I think about that moment a lot. Will this new year continue the downswing of the pendulum towards utter lawlessness and corruption, or will it be the turn towards a place where we reclaim ourselves?</p> <p>It could be either.</p> <p>Will we know in the moment? Probably not. Best to keep running.</p> <p>See you at the finish line.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: It Could Be Either">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2025-12-23T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/cybertruck-design/ <p>Normally, I wouldn’t feel compelled to pile on to what other’s have rightly called “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/22/style/elon-musk-tesla-cybertruck.html?unlocked_article_code=1._E8.cH6d.BfokELR-YxqQ&amp;smid=url-share">a culture war on wheels</a>.”</p> <p>But <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/cybertruck-crash-design-lawsuit/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9">this story</a> from <em>The Washington Post</em> is reporting that I’ve expected to see for awhile. It lays out how design decisions baked into Tesla’s Cybertruck may actively hamper rescues from otherwise survivable crashes.</p> <p>I say “expected” because I grew up around first responders and attended more than one demonstration of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_rescue_tool">jaws of life</a> at my hometown fire department. Combined with my time working on usability as a designer, the risks of some of Tesla’s choices have always struck me as obvious and the consequences inevitable. Or, as the legal filings cited in the reporting put it, “highly foreseeable.”</p> <p>I’ve <a href="https://mastodon.social/@stuntbox/115021745990672741">joked before</a> that flush car door handles are a solution in search of a problem. But manufacturers like Tesla push well past novelty and <a href="https://www.ford.com/support/how-tos/keys-and-locks/door-locks-and-alarms/how-do-i-use-ford-mustang-mach-e-elatch-doors/">over-optimization</a> when they remove obvious <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance">affordances</a> and accessible mechanical backups in the shift towards fully electronic, software-dependent systems.</p> <p>That shift isn’t inherently wrong but it carries consequences, and those consequences should be thoughtfully considered and <a href="https://www.motortrend.com/news/autonomous-driving-mode-lighting-changes">designed for</a> with accountability. Failing the basic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY96hTb8WgI">Norman door</a> test—let alone putting people in mortal danger during an emergency—is a red flag that more of that work still needs to be done.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Highly Foreseeable">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2025-12-19T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/niemanlab-predictions-2026/ <p><em>Every December, the good folks at <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org">Nieman Journalism Lab</a> ask people in news and media for their predictions about the coming year. What follows is a lightly edited version of <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/finding-a-candle-in-the-dark/">my contribution</a> to this year’s round-up.</em></p> <p>Predicting the future of journalism with any precision can be a fool’s errand, though the broad—and mostly bleak—contours are obvious enough: local news will still face collapse; public trust will continue to buckle under the twin pressures of social media brain rot and partisan echo chambers masquerading as “news.” AI experimentation will carry on, though previous overinvestment will hopefully cool, and most of the genuinely useful applications will wind up being internal tools instead of profitable consumer-facing products. Meanwhile, newsrooms skittish about maintaining their own technical expertise will keep buying “safe” products from tech firms that have never cared about journalism except as a delivery vehicle for their profits, and that will drop us the moment we become inconvenient. And, oh yes, our own governments will continue to be a headlining risk on our threat assessments.</p> <p>To top it off, we are living in a second Gilded Age. An openly racist, misogynist, xenophobic, and anti-fact era that assigns value by transaction and demands loyalty over truth. Institutions that once held civic or moral authority now defer far too often to wealth and raw political power. We aren’t drifting toward autocracy and oligarchy; we’re already knee-deep in them.</p> <p>Carl Sagan saw this coming. In his final book, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World"><em>The Demon-Haunted World</em></a>, he warned how a public stripped of critical reasoning and scientific literacy would be easy prey for demagogues and misinformation. That prophecy has arrived. So how, as he asked, do we find a candle to light this darkness?</p> <p>I don’t pretend to know, but the past offers clues. We’ve stood in moments like this before. The grotesque excesses of Tammany Hall and its peers eventually provoked the reform-minded Progressive Era and the rise of muckraking journalism. And it’s useful to remember that it wasn’t just governments and businesses that were plagued with misdeeds. This was also the era of so-called “yellow journalism,” when jingoistic propaganda routinely masqueraded as front page news. The sensationalism and toxicity of Fox News and its ilk isn’t a modern invention. Recall that our industry’s <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org">highest award</a> is named after a publisher who embodied both our worst impulses and the possibility of course correction.</p> <p>The pendulum can swing so far in the wrong direction that reversal becomes inevitable, either through rupture, reform, or both. That’s one path forward.</p> <p>Another is deliberate, open collaboration: joining hands across newsrooms and disciplines to build tools, standards, and practices we actually control, instead of outsourcing the fate of our work to companies that treat journalism as expendable. It also facilitates the collective defense of our profession and its practitioners through coalition building and legal action. I hope and expect to see more of this in 2026, as the initial shock of the current administration’s all-out assault on the press wears off, and we realize both our collective power and the limits of their supposed invulnerability.</p> <p>At the risk of oversimplification, it’s also worth acknowledging that forces far larger than journalism shape our fate. We keep trying to “fix” the news, but we’re up against an equally deep societal crisis in education and other civic institutions that shape how people understand our work. All the staggering facts we report and misdeeds we heave towards the light are useless if society can’t distinguish evidence from preference or think beyond conditioned biases. If you want a better future for journalism, you want a better educated public. You want broad respect for a well funded, well maintained public education system, among many other things. Without those, nothing we build holds. So pay more attention to, and participate in, the fields outside our own that help reinforce and ensure a lasting social contract.</p> <p>We still have a singular role, of course. Journalism can jolt the system to its senses, sometimes with a single revelation, but more often through the steady drumbeat of accountability. But we reach people late, and long after their habits of perception, reasoning, and civic imagination have formed. Our industry can nudge those in healthier directions, but they form far more resiliently when the systems surrounding citizens support them constructively from the start.</p> <p>So know that journalism can be the candle in the dark, but be someone who helps others find the light from every direction—through education, institutions, and daily choices that refuse the comfort of darkness.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Finding a Candle in the Dark">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2025-05-25T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/mozilla-closes-pocket/ <p>Mozilla quietly announced that it’s <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/building-whats-next/">calling it quits on Pocket</a>, the time-shifted reading app it <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/news/mozilla-acquires-pocket/">acquired in 2017</a>. The news didn’t make a big splash, but it caught my eye as it overlaps with a bit of my own professional history.</p> <p>Years ago, I was an advisor to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readability_(service)">Readability</a>, a pioneer in the <a href="https://alistapart.com/article/orbital-content/">read-it-later app space</a>—Apple used the open source version of their code to <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1494993">build Safari’s Reader view</a>—and I remember thinking, even back then, that Pocket’s earlier incarnation might become the one to beat.</p> <p>They were quickly building features the audience actually wanted and stacking up the funding to make it happen. Critically, they were also quietly sidestepping much of the angst Readability and Instapaper were kicking up with traditional publishers, who still thought of anything happening with their content <a href="https://alistapart.com/article/orbital-content/">outside of their websites</a> as theft. (Indeed, I had a palpable sense at the time that my invited presence as a consultant at Readability was meant to double as a kind of diplomatic cover: a familiar face that signaled to publishers someone from their own ranks was okay with this kind of thing. For the record, I was, and still am.)</p> <p>Mozilla was both an unlikely buyer and an intriguing fit. Nonprofit foundations are hardly known for creating the “exit events” venture funders lust for, and they were entirely untested to boot—Pocket was their first acquisition. But the pairing had a certain appeal. Both had a principled respect for users <em>and</em> the content they were built to present.</p> <p>I’m genuinely sad to see Pocket go, and think we’re worse off with fewer tools like it. Time-shifted reading remains essential to me. I use <a href="https://www.instapaper.com">Instapaper</a> daily, and occasionally put <a href="https://omnivore.app">Omnivore</a> through its paces. I don’t know how others survive without them. (My hunch is more organized folks are using multivariate note-taking apps like Notion and Obsidian, but that the majority of users are straight-up leaving a bazillion tabs open in their browsers, a thought that sends shivers down my <abbr>OCD</abbr>-afflicted spine.)</p> <p><em>Hat tip to NiemanLab’s indispensable daily newsletter for the <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/05/mozilla-shuts-down-pocket/">heads-up</a> on this.</em></p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Out of Pocket">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2024-12-17T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/port-authority/ <figure class="art art--xl"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/port-authority-DSF8521-p3.jpg" alt="The eastern face of Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal lit by high contrast winter sun" class="is-dark" data-camera="Fujifilm X-T5" data-lens="Fujifilm XF 27mm ƒ/2.8 R WR" data-focal-length="27.0 mm" data-exposure="1/250 sec" data-f-stop="ƒ/8" data-iso="ISO 125" data-profile="Display P3"></figure> <p>A view of the eastern face of Manhattan’s much-maligned Port Authority Bus Terminal, graced by the afternoon winter sun. Under the right conditions, even this place has its charms.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Port Authority">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2024-11-07T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/four-years-later/ <figure class="art art--xl"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/grand_army_DSF8003.jpg" alt="Blurred, abstract photo of the Grand Army Plaza Arch with colorful light trails" class="is-dark" data-camera="Fujifilm X-T5" data-lens="Fujifilm XF 33mm ƒ/1.4 R LM WR" data-focal-length="33.0 mm" data-exposure="4.5 sec" data-f-stop="ƒ/8" data-iso="ISO 125" data-profile="sRGB IEC61966-2.1"></figure> <p>Last night I walked up to Grand Army Plaza and just sat for a few minutes, staring at the spot in front of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldiers%27_and_Sailors%27_Arch">Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch</a>. It was there, four years ago, where I <a href="https://stuntbox.com/blog/election-day/">shot a photo</a> of the spontaneous celebration that erupted when the 2020 Presidential election was called for Joe Biden.</p> <p>We were six months pregnant with our son then, and I remember being grateful that he would be born into a world freed from a President and administration that openly sanctioned our darkest impulses—the racism, misogyny and bigotry, the punching down, the greed and prizing of personal gain above all else.</p> <p>I remember a time when the biggest historical demarcation in my life was “before 9/11” and “after 9/11.” The years immediately “after” felt like some load-bearing strut had been yanked out from under the American body politic, and lots of previously reasonable-seeming folks took full leave of their senses. Many never returned to them.</p> <p>I worried then whether it was a mania born from the wound, or if we were seeing our true face. In darker moments, I suspected the latter. I hoped the moment was singular.</p> <p>Then came Trump. Then <abbr>COVID</abbr>.</p> <p>Each time, the face showed itself.</p> <p>And here we are, again.</p> <p>Like many of you, I need time to sit with this. In the meantime, my focus remains on our son, and the work needed to build and defend the kind of world I want him to be able to live in and—eventually—make his own.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Four Years Later">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2024-02-29T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/soho-construction/ <p>Ever more construction in the office neighborhood.</p> <figure class="art art--lg"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/construction-DSF5279.jpg" alt="A partially open temporary green door covered with warning signs at a construction site, with an excavator visible in the background" class="is-dark"> </figure> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: What’s He Building in There?">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2024-02-25T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/flaco-the-owl/ <figure class="art art--xl"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/flaco-DSF2405.jpg" alt="Close-up portrait of Flaco the owl while still in captivity" class="is-light"> </figure> <p><abbr>RIP</abbr> Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who became a pandemic-era totem of <abbr>NYC</abbr> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/nyregion/flaco-owl-central-park-zoo.html">resilience and hustle</a>.</p> <p>Whether you regard his year in the urban wild as the result of an act of <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/what-should-be-done-about-flaco-eurasian-eagle-owl-loose-new-york">vandalism or emancipation</a>, his untimely demise is lamentable and sets back conservation efforts—however imperfect—of a species under threat. Regardless the cause, we all would have preferred a different ending.</p> <p>I shot this image of him way back in 2017 during a visit to the Central Park Zoo, while I was renting what a photographer friend would call a “crazy sports guy lens.”</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: RIP, Flaco the Owl">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2023-06-07T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/nyc-wildfire-smoke/ <p>For the third time in as many years, the fallout from far-flung wildfires reached New York City. The eerie ochre pall it cast over Manhattan recalled recent scenes from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Skies_Day">West Coast</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires_in_Australia">Australia</a>, and at least one dystopian sci-fi movie (yes, <a href="https://vfxblog.com/2018/01/31/blade-runner-2049-las-vegas-framestore/">really</a>).</p> <p>I was in the office during the worst of it and grabbed my camera, heading up to the roof to document what I could.</p> <figure class="art art--xl"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/smoke-DSF2806.jpg" alt="East-facing view of Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood under orange-tinted sky" class="is-dark"> </figure> <figure class="art art--xl"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/smoke-DSF2805-239x1.jpg" alt="East-facing view of Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood under orange-tinted sky" class="is-dark"> </figure> <figure class="art art--reset-margins"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/smoke-DSF2794.jpg" alt="People on a building rooftop in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood under orange-tinted sky" class="is-dark"> </figure> <figure class="art art--reset-margins"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/smoke-DSF2797.jpg" alt="Upper part of a building in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood under an orange-tinted sky" class="is-dark"> </figure> <figure class="art art--xl"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/smoke-DSF2791-185x1.jpg" alt="Rooftop water tower in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood under orange-tinted sky" class="is-dark"> </figure> <figure class="art art--xl"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/smoke-DSF2789-239x1.jpg" alt="East-facing view of Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood under orange-tinted sky" class="is-dark"> </figure> <figure class="art art--xl"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/smoke-DSF2807.jpg" alt="Building rooftops in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood under orange-tinted sky" class="is-dark"> </figure> <p>All of these images were exported using Fuji’s Provia color profile, the one used as the default or “standard” profile on my X-T5, without any additional color adjustments. Gives you a sense of how dramatic it was.</p> <p>If there’s a silver lining, it’s the hope that this made an impression on some people who’ve thought they were unaffected by the ongoing destruction of our habitat. As New Yorkers who’ve now gotten a crash course in <abbr>AQI</abbr> levels can attest, no one is invulnerable. It’s a small planet. What happens in one part of it can—and often will—affect others.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Smoke City">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2023-04-03T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/prisencolinensinainciusol/ <p>Last week’s episode of <cite>Ted Lasso</cite> resurfaced a 51-year-old Italian pop song that’s the perfect anthem for the generative <abbr>AI</abbr> boom.</p> <p>A montage late in the episode plays out to the tune of Adriano Celentano’s 1972 Euro-hit “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisencolinensinainciusol">Prisencolinensinainciusol</a>.” If you don’t pay close attention it’s easy to miss that, while it sounds like Adriano is singing in English, it’s actually <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1497401513790707">complete gibberish</a>.</p> <p>It’s been covered by Boing Boing (<a href="https://boingboing.net/2009/12/17/gibberish-rock-song.html">multiple</a> <a href="https://boingboing.net/2015/09/03/what-does-english-sound-like-t.html">times</a>) and NPR’s <cite><a href="https://www.npr.org/2012/11/04/164206468/its-gibberish-but-italian-pop-song-still-means-something">All Things Considered</a></cite> before, but if you’re unfamiliar with it, the song recreates what American English sounds like to someone who doesn’t speak the language.</p> <p>I may have heard it on the radio as a kid without realizing it, but the first time I really encountered it was at an Alamo Drafthouse screening of <cite><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(film)">Arrival</a></cite>, where they played it in the pre-show reel (a brilliant touch). I remember how much it messed with my head and how I had to <em>really</em> concentrate to tell my brain that the words I thought I was hearing weren’t actually words.</p> <p>I hadn’t connected the two before, but that makes the song a close spiritual relative of the current crop of chatbots—pattern recognition machines that mimic the order of language, but lack any sense of true meaning.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Mixed Messages">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2023-03-23T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/ftc-click-to-cancel/ <p>If you’ve ever tried to cancel a newspaper or magazine subscription, you likely know how maddening it can be. While a lot of effort goes into making signups as frictionless as possible, let’s just say the industry swings the other way when it comes to unsubscribing.</p> <p>The most infamous variation on this theme is making readers call to cancel subscriptions, even if they signed up for that subscription digitally. Then they’re forced through a gauntlet of upsells and <em>yes but are you sure you’re sure</em> questions in an attempt to turn them back. In the industry it’s known as, “click to subscribe, call to cancel,” and the FTC is <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/federal-trade-commission-proposes-rule-provision-making-it-easier-consumers-click-cancel-recurring">pushing back</a>.</p> <p>This paragraph from NiemanLab’s <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/03/the-ftc-proposes-a-formal-click-to-cancel-provision-for-subscriptions/">writeup</a> has the gist of it:</p> <blockquote> <p>Specifically, “if you can sign up online, you must be able to cancel on the same website, in the same number of steps,” according to the FTC. Sellers must also “take ‘no’ for an answer” instead of continuing to pitch new offers when customers call to cancel a subscription.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Click to Cancel">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2023-03-22T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/dpreview-shutting-down/ <p>Well, this sucks. After almost 25 years, <a href="https://www.dpreview.com/news/5901145460/dpreview-com-to-close">DPReview is shutting down</a>.</p> <p>It’s hard to understate what a go-to resource DPReview has been over the years, especially their excellent technical reviews. Literally every digital camera purchase I’ve made for over two decades, from the slightly goofy but fun-as-heck <a href="https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikoncp995">Nikon 995</a> to my current <a href="https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilm-x-t5-initial-review">Fuji X-T5</a> workhorse, involved checking in with one of their reviews. And its user forums were actually useful, too. (Shocking, I know.)</p> <p>But Amazon is pulling the plug. The surprise announcement is short on details, but promises more posts between now and April 10, after which the site will be “locked.”</p> <p>I hope some of those entries will speak to the business fundamentals. Was it making money? Was it enough to be a modest self-sustaining business, but not enough to satisfy the balance sheets of a massive corporate parent? Did it drive a substantive amount of referral purchases to Amazon from readers clicking through those reviews? Did they float the idea of a sale? Subscriptions? (I would have paid for one in a heartbeat.) Sponsorships from camera manufacturers, who all benefited from the attention the site brought to their gear?</p> <p>Also, there’s this worrying bit about the site being available after it’s locked “for a limited period.” Is a generation’s worth of digital photo history about to disappear?</p> <p>Meanwhile, the popular stars of their YouTube channel, themselves snagged from another photo venue five years ago, have <a href="https://petapixel.com/2023/03/21/chris-niccolls-and-jordan-drake-join-petapixel-to-lead-its-youtube-channel/">already landed</a> at a surviving competitor. The show must go on, it seems.</p> <h2 id="update-june-20-2023" tabindex="-1"><a class="header-anchor" href="https://stuntbox.com/blog/dpreview-shutting-down/#update-june-20-2023"><span>Update, June 20, 2023</span></a></h2> <p><em>Phew</em>. After a weird month or so during which the site was “officially” shut down but mysteriously still posting new content, DPReview has <a href="https://www.dpreview.com/site-news/8298318614/dpreview-com-looks-forward-to-a-new-chapter-with-gear-patrol">announced</a> that they’ve been acquired by Gear Patrol. The short (and good) version is that the site will continue on.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: RIP, DPReview">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2023-03-15T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/graffiti/ <figure class="art art--xl"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/graffiti-DSF6154.jpg" alt="A boarded up fence graffitied with red and white hearts" class="is-dark"> </figure> <figure class="art art--xl"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/graffiti-DSF6155.jpg" alt="Pigeons resting in front of a boarded up fence covered with graffiti" class="is-dark"> </figure> <p>Scenes from the office neighborhood, shot one year ago to the day.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Graffiti">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2023-02-07T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/getty-sues-stability-ai/ <p>More legal <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/6/23587393/ai-art-copyright-lawsuit-getty-images-stable-diffusion">shots fired</a> in the <abbr>AI</abbr> world, this time by a heavyweight.</p> <p>Getty brings a player into the mix with the resources to mount a substantial and sustained legal challenge, as well as the deep experience of a large corporation whose entire existence revolves around vast intellectual property holdings.</p> <p>Despite all the drama, this legal challenge seems like the most straightforward and mundane question in the whole debate: Do <abbr>AI</abbr> companies have the right to snarf up all these images to create their works? (When it comes to the <em>copyrighted</em> material of Getty and others, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say, “Hell no, obviously,” but that’s for the courts to decide.)</p> <p>The more complex questions still lie ahead, when we start to consider the legal status of the works created by these tools once the inputs are clean.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Getty Sues Stability AI">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2022-12-19T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/leaving-twitter/ <figure class="art art--lg"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/dead-twitter-bird-DSC6158-2.jpg" alt="A dead Cooper’s hawk lying on its back on a white background" class="is-light"> </figure> <p>Twitter was an accident from the start, and not always a happy one. Years of feckless leadership have brought it to the present crisis, a bit like that famous line from <cite>The Sun Also Rises</cite> about how Mike Campbell went bankrupt: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”</p> <p>Enter you-know-who, an erratic billionaire whose own tweets long ago crossed the threshold of self parody. Touting Silicon Valley’s dozy brand of techno-libertarianism as an operating principle, his ownership sends clear signals that any hopes for thoughtfully guided decency and community on the platform have likely gasped their last.</p> <p>For those of us who’ve been around “the bird site” since the beginning, it’s a bitter coda. The place has been heading south for a good long while, but it’s also where lots of us found—and re-found—our tribes. For web nerds of my generation, first came blogs, then came Twitter. (Okay, okay. There was Usenet and message boards before that, but c’mon, really.) You might think your home town sucks sometimes, but that doesn’t mean you’re any happier watching an arsonist burn it to the ground.</p> <p>If there’s a silver lining, it’s the little glimmer of creative urgency coming from everyone figuring out where to head to next. With bad actors sitting atop all the other dominant venues it feels like a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS2Bsq5PDmU">Kang vs Kodos</a> moment. Something new (or old?) is needed.</p> <p>Suddenly, all my journalism colleagues are jumping on Mastodon. Tumblr has returned from the dead with a new marketing push. People are even posting on LinkedIn, for Pete’s sake. And then there are the old-timers like me. The ones with <em>blogs</em>, who once again are whispering the letters “RSS” like a mystical incantation.</p> <p>For my own part, I plan to ramp my Twitter usage down to pretty much nil. I’m not deleting my account because A) I want to retain control of my identity on the platform, and B) on occasion there might be something work-related that <a href="https://twitter.com/stuntbox/status/1603451517142536192">deserves to be broadcast to the widest possible audience</a>, “ick factor” be damned. I’ve dusted off <a href="https://mastodon.social/@stuntbox">my Mastodon account</a> and will be posting stuff there that would otherwise have gone to The Bad Place.</p> <p>I’ve also made a technical tweak to this site that I’ve scratched at for years but wasn’t motivated enough to follow through on until now: the ability to create title-less posts, which lets me publish <a href="https://stuntbox.com/blog/note/">short notes</a> here that are on the level of a tweet/toot. We’ll see how that experiment goes.</p> <p>You can’t go home again. I don’t imagine any of these will fill the Twitter of Old-shaped hole in my online communities, but it’s a path that leads someplace else. And right now that’s where lots of us are headed.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Anywhere But Here">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2022-10-31T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/creepy-houses/ <p>To me, nothing says “haunted” like a tumbledown house with a mansard roof. Turns out <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/10/27/why-victorian-houses-look-haunted/">I’m not alone</a>. Happy Halloween, y’all.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Creepy Houses">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2022-04-26T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/gowanus-painting-crew/ <figure class="art art--xl"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/gowanus-DSF6359-5x4.jpg" alt="Workmen in a construction crane basket" class="is-light"> </figure> <p>A paint crew works on a building overlooking the Gowanus Canal. Shot during a morning walk.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Gowanus Painting Crew">Reply via email 💌</a></p> 2021-11-04T00:00:00Z https://stuntbox.com/blog/reverb/ <figure class="art art--xl"> <img src="https://stuntbox.com/bucket/reverb-DSF5411.jpg" alt="Saxophonist playing facing into corner of subway platform" class="is-dark"> </figure> <p>A saxophonist catching some reverb in the downtown Canal Street 1 train station. Shot three years ago, during the before times.</p> <p>This reminds me of a story about Opus 40, near where I grew up. Sonny Rollins—known for exploring how sound bounced around and changed as he moved through different performance spaces—infamously jumped off the stage there in middle of a concert, broke his heel, and spent the rest of the gig playing <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xayp5/when-jazz-is-punk-remembering-the-time-sonny-rollins-kept-playing-with-a-broken-foot">flat on his back</a>. Depending on who you ask, he was either trying to hear how it would sound, ticked off at his newly re-lacquered sax, or maybe just a little high. Possibly all three.</p> <p><a href="mailto:feed-reply@stuntbox.com?subject=Re: Reverb">Reply via email 💌</a></p>