John Cassidy:

On just his second day in office, the new President was dealt an unprecedented and massive popular rebuke. No longer can he claim that he draws bigger crowds than anybody else—or not in the way that he would like to make that boast. For years and decades to come, the sight of countless women (and men) walking, laughing, shouting, and singing in their pussycat hats will remain fresh in the memory. Indeed, it will go down in the history books as Trump’s first achievement. After just twenty-four hours in office, he turned many of America’s public spaces pink.

Amy Davidson:

As a candidate, he seized on the darker moments of the American past to turn voters’ discontent into disdain, their doubts into conspiratorial suspicions. His speech was a warning of how deeply he might be willing to divide the country in order to deflect attention from his own policy failures, and how dangerous the resentments he blithely plays upon could be.

Yesterday was a shitty day for America. Today her spirit has been uplifted. Thank you to everyone who has participated in the Women’s March. You have reinvigorated America to fight against an authoritarian populist. Even in the time of divisiveness, you have demonstrated that we are stronger together.

Tupac Shakur:

And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it’s time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don’t we’ll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies that make the babies
And since a man can’t make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one
So will the real men get up
I know you’re fed up ladies, but keep your head up.

The Economist:

All populists are at heart conspiracy theorists, who pretend that easy solutions exist to society’s woes and have only not been tried to date because elites are wicked and deaf to the sturdy common-sense of decent, ordinary folk.…

This new vision for popular government, with its patriotism tests and demands for total allegiance, is not tolerant of dissent or even of those expressing qualms.

John Cassidy:

We’ve never had a President who has adopted the public persona of a professional wrestler, baring his teeth, railing at his opponents, and trying to fling to the canvas anyone he deems to have crossed him, even members of his own party. We’ve never had a President with a far-flung business empire that he has refused to give up, placing him, according to many ethics experts, in contravention of the Constitution. We’ve never had a President who seems to spend most of his time watching cable news and firing off salvos on social media. We’ve never had a President who openly expresses admiration for an authoritarian Russian leader while simultaneously pouring scorn on U.S. intelligence agencies.

Finally, it’s hard to recall a President who had such little interest, or expertise, in the details of governing.

Never my President.

I am taking today off to get away from all the madness. I am going to spend time with my kids and unplug from TV, internet, and social media. It’s so depressing that we had gone from a historic leader to a horrific liar. The bar could not set any lower. Dark days are ahead, but let’s not allow the president “of birtherism, of Mexican ‘rapists,’ of Muslim registries, of ‘grab them by the pussy,’ of bankruptcies and lawsuits and colossal conflicts of interest” fucking up America.

David Remnick:

[T]he Constitution is not by itself an insuperable barrier against the authoritarian temptation… A President can at least try to constrain freedoms, issue racist decrees, intimidate, coerce. And, if that becomes the case, it will be on us, resolute citizens, to protect the republic—to demand, as [Benjamin] Franklin said, that we keep it.

After reading Houston’s The Book, I went back to read his previous Shady Characters with a much deeper appreciation. The backstory of the typographical marks including the pilcrow (¶), the interrobang (‽), the octothorpe (#), the ampersand (&), the @ symbol, the asterisk (*), the dagger (†), and the manicule (☞) is informing, enlightening, and inspiring. The beautiful hardcover, which is highly readable in Hoefler Text, reserves a place on my bookshelf to remind me these characters whenever I work on my typographic design.

In the past six months, I had been working on creating a network of websites for Scalia Law School. The goal for this project is to provide the law school community an online presence that is consistent with the Scalia Law branding. The experience was challenging and rewarding at the same time.

In the initial development, I was tasked with moving existing WordPress sites from our GoDaddy dedicated server to our in-house server. Instead of moving each individual installation of WordPress, I wanted to take advantage of WordPress MultiSite. In addition, I wanted to create a network of websites that looks and feels like the Scalia Law branding.

Rather than creating a theme from scratch, I relied on WordPress’s Twenty Sixteen as a starter. Other than the thick border around the edge of the browser, the simple and clean design of Twenty Sixteen allowed me to create a child theme for customization. The theme for SLS is fairly straightforward.

The challenging part was to convinced stakeholders to be part of this network. I am glad that twenty six websites has been on board and only one rejected the design. I expected the resistance to be higher, but one out of twenty six is not bad.