Americans who sacrifice their lives for our country are losers and suckers. Americans who sacrifice their lives for Trump are winners and patriots. Let’s face it. We are heading toward totalitarianism if we don’t vote him out.

Back in April, David Jonathan Ross sent me a demo version of Roslindale variable font upon my request. I hadn’t a chance to try it out until a couple of days ago when I had the idea of redesigning Trịnh Công Sơn’s lyrics sample page, which I had created to show off Vietnamese typography. In the previous version, I set each quote using various fonts from Font of the Month Club, which I am still a member. It was playful but distracting reading experience. Furthermore, the performance was terrible because of the amount of fonts. In this redesign, I wanted to take the opposite approach.

Although this version of Roslindale is still a work-in-progress, it demonstrates the power of the variable font technology. With just one file, I can use Roslindale for large display, body text, and everything in between. The level of control the designer placed in the typographer’s hand for setting text with variable fonts is unprecedented. As you can see on the page, the author’s name is set in ultra weight. Each song’s title is set in bold display. Each song’s lyric is set in text. Each song has highlighted quotes setting in thin italic display.

I am not sure who reads this page, but I read it all the time. Trịnh Công Sơn’s lyrics are filled with poetic prose. I love to read them when I have nothing else to read or if I need to kill time. It’s a great way to learn Vietnamese and to figure out Trịnh Công Sơn’s spellbinding lyrics. I have been using this page more than I had originally thought.

Many thanks to David for letting me experimenting with demo. I can’t wait to see the final release of Roslinsdale. I know it will be amazing.

Đạo, my twelve-year-old son, has been fascinated with guns. He reads about guns and observes all of their components. I asked him why he is interested in guns and he told me that he liked the history and the mechanism behind them.

He loved telling me his latest creations. He walked me through the features he had created based on various guns. From the magazine holder to the front sight, I was impressed with the way he translated what he saw from real guns into his LEGO creations.

Building LEGO guns is one of his favorite activities when he’s not on the computer. He used to build tanks, airplanes, and helicopters with LEGOs. I am sure gun is just what he is into right now before moving on to something else. I am glad that he finds his creative passion, but I can’t help being a bit concerned given the gun violence in America.

Đán, my eight-year-old son, on the other hand, has been fascinated with the Rubik’s Cube after watching Netflix’s documentary The Speed Cubers. Unlike his brother, he just spends time messing around instead of following instructions. He figured out how to solve one side, but showed no interest in solving all six.

I used to be able to solve all six sides when I was a kid. Now I can only solve one. In the past few days, I spent a bit of time reading instructions and watching YouTube videos trying to solve it. I got pretty close and messed up at the last step. I wanted to solve it so that I could teach him, but I got frustrated and gave up. He is just going to have to figure it out on his own.

After trying out four pairs of rollerblades, I settled on Men’s Zetrablade Inline Skates from Rollerblade. With this pair, I can skate up to half an hour before my feet get too painful to continue. With the previous three pairs, I could only skate up to five minutes.

To be fair, the previous inline skates were youth size. Even though they can be adjusted up to size 8, the width was very tight for me. I bought the Zetrablade for men; therefore, it is more comfortable to skate. That could be part of the reason. I have skated the Zetrablade for three times. It fits better and less painful each time. I am hoping that the pain will go away after I get break into it.

I am enjoying rollerblading more and more. It is getting less scarier, especially with protective gears. I enjoy rollerblading in the morning with a cup of ice coffee. That’s my only exercise of the day.

I wake up every morning and ask myself, “Is it November yet?” I am waiting for November like my life is depending on it. My life does depends on it. America is getting crazier and crazier each day just because of one individual. I don’t know how I am going to live with four more years of chaos under this fascist.

American politics is becoming like gangster rap in the 90s but in a much bigger scale. The rival between East and West started words, but quickly escalated with the gun down of 2pac and Biggie. The divisiveness in American politics started with words, but it has quickly spilled out to the streets. Americans are being killed and yet the fascist is doing nothing to stop it. Instead of taking responsibility for his incompetent leadership, he blames on his opponent. The lies are just getting ridiculously absurd each day.

If he gets re-elected, democracy will die. No one will stop him from doing anything. The Republicans can’t do anything now. Once he has absolute power, they will just follow his order. The ones who speak out against him will be punished or vanished. It will become reality if he wins again.

I am terrified. I am losing sleep. I am stressed the fuck out. We need decency. We need empathy. We need unity. We need democracy. We need to put an end to this madness. We need to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Harvey couldn’t sleep after the unfortunate outcome of Brexit. Every time she closed her eyes, the image of her cousin who died alone in his apartment two days before anyone knew about his death. Her insomnia continued for a year. Unfortunately, I got lost in her subconscious writing. Since it is a short book, I read all the way through, but could only pick up bits and pieces about her visits to the doctor and her sleeping pills. Perhaps, my own insomnia had distracted me from the book. I might come back to it in the future for a second read.

Don Windslow’s #OpenLetterToRepublicans video is powerful. It’s a must-watch. I hope there are still sensible Republicans who can see the danger of this authoritarian regime. We need to unite to put an end to this American tragedy.

George Packer writes in The Atlantic:

Two days after the shooting, with her son fighting for his life, [Julia Jackson] begins her public remarks softly, almost inaudibly, but her own words seem to give her growing strength, and finally a profound resonance. She says that her son would not be happy with the damage to his community. “As I have prayed for my son’s healing, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, I also have been praying, even before this, for the healing of our country,” Jackson says, and she goes on: “We are the United States. Have we been united? Do you understand what’s going to happen when we fall? Because a house that is against each other cannot stand. To all of the police officers, I’m praying for you and your families. To all of the citizens, my Black and brown sisters and brothers, I’m praying for you. I believe that you are an intelligent being just like the rest of us. Everybody, let’s use our hearts, our love, and our intelligence to work together to show the rest of the world how humans are supposed to treat each other. America is great when we behave greatly.”

Packer concludes:

[Biden] should speak for justice and for safety, for reform and against riots, for the crying need to bring the country together. If he says these things half as well as Julia Jackson did, we might not have to live with four more years of Trump.

The headline is an unfortunate clickbait, but the article is worth reading.

Susan B. Glasser writes in The New Yorker:

Even for a salesman like Trump, it was never going to be an easy deal to close, what with a deadly pandemic, mass unemployment, nationwide protests over racial injustice, and even a killer hurricane smashing into the Gulf Coast hours before his speech. Some seventy per cent of Americans currently believe that the country is on the wrong track, according to recent polls. Who can blame them?

This should be devastating context for a President, any President, seeking reëlection, a true picture of American carnage to replace the false one that Trump conjured four years ago. Yet the strategy of Trump and his team is now clear: to talk about how bad things would be in Joe Biden’s America, a violent socialist ruin in which freedom itself will no longer exist and rampaging protesters, like those now committing “rioting, looting, arson, and violence” in “Democrat-run cities,” will be coming soon to a suburb near you. “The hard truth is, you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” Vice-President Mike Pence said on Wednesday night. “No one will be safe in Biden’s America,” Trump said on Thursday night. To say this sounded a bit off in actual America, Trump’s America, does not do justice to the bizarre dissonance of this year’s Republican Convention.

If he gets reelected, not even democracy will be safe in Trump’s America. We need to vote for Biden.

The Republicans and their incompetent-in-chief applied the same fear tactics they used four years ago. They sounded like someone has been running our country instead of the orange idiot. They didn’t mention any progress in the last four years because they have failed to make America greater or safer.

They have no plan or vision in the next four years. They promised that he would bring back the economy he himself has driven to the ground. They said nothing about the unemployment numbers under his watch. They ignored the pandemic because they have failed to keep America safe. They made it seem like our country is in deep shit and he’s the only one that can pull us out of the shithole, in which he is currently in charge of.

The lies are beyond comprehensible, but they seem to work for his base. If you lie repeatedly, it will become the truth and that’s how fascism works. We are heading that direction if we won’t vote him out on November 3.