Issue 011
The January Edition
elcome to the January newsletter. Free book, insert-pun-"about-time", a community takes on AI, and another pun about being cheesy.
stay ready
via taurean
1 — accessibility for everyone
Laura Kalbag’s accessibility book from 2017, originally published by A Book Apart, is now free to read online. The book is nine years old, so some tools and job titles have shifted, but the fundamentals haven't. With how much is being vibe coded these days, it's on us to stay diligent about what's actually being built. Accessibility isn't just about compliance or covering your bases. It's about protecting the people in our community and making sure things are still usable for us if when we come to need those accommodations ourselves.
2 — date is out, temporal is in
Sorry designers, I know this one is boring but I'm so excited about the Temporal API coming to JavaScript. Part of it is my weird hyperfixation on anything related to time, but mostly because the existing Date API is, as Mat Marquis captures it, hell on earth. Zero-indexed months but not years or days. Hyphens and slashes parsing differently. Mat walks through all of it, then shows how Temporal fixes the mess with a cleaner mental model and methods that return new objects instead of mutating the one you're working with. It's already in Chrome and Firefox if you want to kick the tires.
3 — mona & hubot sans
I am begging you, stop using Inter. You don't have to use Inter. You don't go to jail if you use something else. Mona Sans is GitHub's in-house typeface, designed with Degarism. It's a variable font with three axes (weight, width, and slant), open source under the OFL license, and free. There's also Hubot Sans if you want something more geometric for headers. You have options. Blink twice if you are being forced to use Inter.
stay curious
via pedro
1 — responsible prompting with analog intelligence
The topic of generative AI and its greater impact on the world and the communities it affects is one that is often dismissed by tech bros and people who seem to think that creating silly photos is the cure for world peace. This initiative was shared with me through a colleague of mine, where a community in Santiago, Chile, for one day (if you’re reading this on January 31st, it’s today), they will be your "AI." Need a recipe? Andrea, who is a chef, will create one for you. Want an image? Benji, who is an illustrator, will draw one. Real humans. Real impact.
2 — the only cheese sauce recipe you'd need
My wife’s and my favorite appetizer is nachos. So much so that, for the last few birthdays she’s had, I’ve been making her homemade nachos at her request. The biggest gripe has always been the cheese, though. Typically, store-bought queso is…undesirable, to say the least. I’ve also experimented on my own with a couple of recipes before ultimately landing on this one. This has been the most consistent and successful cheese sauce recipe I’ve made. Give it a go (or a whisk).
3 — daily programming for the web
Earlier this month, I was in a coffee shop with a friend of mine who shared this incredible site that pairs nostalgic practices with the modern web. Remember those channels of daily programming where you could scroll and see what would be coming up next? Now imagine that, but with websites.
updates
- Missed the December issue? View last month's archive channel on Are.na.
- Our February meetup will be another "Several people are typing..." where we catch up over lunch (or dinner, depending on your timezone) and dig in on some burning hot topic of the day.
- For March, we would like to either go back to a presentation or maybe experiment with our more-approachable format of critique. If there's something that you're working on and you would be open to discussing it with a group, reach out.
from the community:
We wanted to know what's been interesting in your world, and you delivered. Here are some links from the community.
- Cin Cin 2026 is a calendar screen printed on a towel. Centered around local tradition and culture, this calendar is "designed to easily be tied into a Japanese furoshiki bag, in which you can carry something you’ve found in the world, to a dear friend." Thanks Akshara for sharing!
- Submissions to the 2026 Framer Awards close today (January 31st). 10 winners with over $100k in prizes. If you're a master of Framer and have a beautiful site that you want to show off to the world, don't forget to submit! Thanks Carla for sharing!
Send us something cool, it might make it into the next newsletter!
We’re already a month in. This year is going to fly by, I can feel it. We've got more ideas brewing and we're excited to keep experimenting with how we do things. Thanks so much for sticking with us. See you in February.
Did you enjoy this article?
Recommend it — Standard Reader surfaces well-loved writing to more readers across the network.