Jonathan Alter explains in The Daily Beast:

Under Warren’s plan, inspired by Thomas Piketty’s influential 2014 book, Capital in the 21st Century, and drafted by Emmanuel Sanz and Gabriel Zucman of Berkeley, Americans with a net worth of more than $50 million would pay two percent a year on their wealth over that $50 million. American billionaires (who number around 680 right now) would pay three percent on their wealth over that $1 billion. In most years, two or three percent is far less than the appreciation of their assets. The vast majority of people paying the tax would still be getting richer every year.

Thời tiết thay đổi thất thường và ngủ không đủ giấc nên cuối tuần vừa rồi lại bị cảm. Bị bệnh nên chỉ quanh quẩn trong nhà. Dạo này tinh thần không được tập trung. Nhiều chuyện lo ngại tuy ngoài ý muốn. Biết rằng không thể làm được gì nhưng lại vẫn bâng khuâng để tự trút phiền muộn vào thân.

Chắc là cái bệnh của những kẻ chưa nếm mùi đau khổ. Có mái ấm gia đình. Có công ăn việc làm. Có cuộc sống đều đặn. Vậy thì chuyện gì mà phân vân? Chẳng lẻ sướng quá đâm ra bị trầm cảm? Tôi không hiểu chứng bệnh trầm cảm nhưng tôi biết mình chưa đến đoạn đường đó.

Tôi chỉ bất mãn với chính mình cho dù tôi tự biết những suy nghĩ như thế chỉ tự hại bản thân. Nhưng nếu tôi thoả mãn với chính mình thì cuộc đời này đâu còn gì thú vị nữa. Tôi chỉ không thể giữ thăng bằng giữa thoả mãn và bất mãn. Nên tôi vẫn tìm cho chính mình một vị trí không dậm chân tại chổ mà cũng không hy vọng quá xa xôi. Cái gì cũng có cái giá của nó.

Elizabeth Warren has announced that she be taking money from big donors. This is a move to differentiate herself from other Democratic candidates. She is not letting big money in politics influencing her campaign and policy. If you would like to help her campaign, don’t wait to donate.

In the past, I worked directly with the client. For any design project, I would come up with the best solution to present to the client. I would make the change if the client’s feedback is valid or I would explain to the client the reason behind my decision. The approach was effective and time-saving.

Recently I was asked by a freelancer to update a header. It was supposed to be a quick job since I just needed to update the photo. It turned out that the freelancer sent it to the director. The director emailed back to the freelancer asking me to come up with several more designs to give the client a few choices to pick from. I understand that the director is new and desperate to please the client. I was not going to provide any additional versions, but it was a quick job and didn’t want to be seemed as difficult to work with. As a result, I did another version.

The freelancer came back to me and told me that the director wanted a few more variations of the second version in Arial and in different fonts. At this point, I had no choice, but to straighten them out. My job as a designer is to provide my client the best choice possible and then go from there. Asking me to substitute Arial for a branded typeface, which is Myriad Pro, is not helping. If my client has to choose between Arial and Myriad Pro, what is my role for? That is the type of decision I should be making instead of my client. If the client can choose between one over the other than the client doesn’t need my design expertise.

It doesn’t make any sense to go through people who do not make the decision before getting the feedback from the decision maker. It is such a waste of time and resource to go through the middle people. They are not designer and their mission to to please the client instead of helping the client to make the best decision. I can’t deal with the design blockers.

Kevin Roose writes in The New York Times:

A few weeks ago, the world on my phone seemed more compelling than the offline world — more colorful, faster-moving and with a bigger scope of rewards.

I still love that world, and probably always will. But now, the physical world excites me, too — the one that has room for boredom, idle hands and space for thinking. I no longer feel phantom buzzes in my pocket or have dreams about checking my Twitter replies. I look people in the eye and listen when they talk. I ride the elevator empty-handed. And when I get sucked into my phone, I notice and self-correct.

Meghan Kruger writes in The Washington Post:

Warren’s plan would dramatically increase demand for an already-limited number of day-care slots, as out-of-home care suddenly becomes “free” or much less expensive for millions of families. The plan would also be available to parents who stay at home with their children, encouraging families to use day-care services they don’t necessarily need.

Parents who choose to stay home with their kids not because they don’t need daycare, but because day care is too damn expensive. Right now the cost for day care is about $2,000 a month for one child. If parents have two young children, that’s almost $48,000 a year. Does it make sense for one of the parents to go to work just to pay for day care or better to stay home with their kids? When parents don’t have to worry about daycare they can go back to work.

With Warren’s plan, parents only have to pay seven percent of their income. If they make $100,000 a year. That’s only $7,000 a year.

When I brought this up to my wife, her question was how the government going to pay for all of this. It can be done through investment, benefits enhancement, and major system overhaul. I’ll let the expert explains them.

In his second issue of “Web Fonts & Typography News,” an excellent weekly newsletter, Jason Pamental shares some tips on creating a drop cap on the web. As demonstrated in Jason’s technique, making a drop cap with the first-letter property requires some finessing until the initial-letter property is supported in major browsers.

In the latest iteration of this blog, I wanted to create a drop cap, but ended up with a swash cap instead. As you can see, the first letter in the opening paragraph of each blog post is a bit fancier than the rest. Pliego, designed by Juanjo López, has some beautiful OpenType features including swashes and stylistic alternatives. To activate them, I simply need one of CSS:

p:first-of-type:first-letter {font-feature-settings:"swsh","salt";}

The initial letter is subtle, but does add a nice touch to the text.

Let it be known that I am a strong supporter of Elizabeth Warren. She is an intellectual figure who has serious policy proposals. If you are considering her nominee for the primary, I urge you to zone out all the noise on her background. I highly recommend and encourage you to read her first book, A Fighting Chance, to find out for yourself how she has been fighting for the middle class. Let’s give her a chance.

George Zornick has a fantastic piece on Warren in The Nation. He writes:

What Elizabeth Warren has going for her is the fact that Democratic voters have never particularly liked Wall Street bailouts or big international “free-trade” deals. She, for one, won’t have to renounce her record to appeal to their beliefs. Her presidential campaign is a bet that someone who has been a strong critic of the political system and the Democratic Party can become the leader of both by being consistent, credible, and right.

Paul Krugman explains:

The logic of the Warren plan is fairly simple (although some commentators are trying to make it sound complex). Child care would be regulated to ensure that basic quality was maintained and subsidized to make it affordable. The size of the subsidy would depend on parents’ incomes: lower-income parents would get free care, higher-income parents would have to pay something, but nobody would have to pay more than 7 percent of income.

Sounds logical to me.