Laurence Penney

Fonts (variable), maps (one-dimensional & Ptolemaic), books, cataloguing. Creator @axis_praxis and Samsa, co-creator @FauxFoundry and @LetterLuvvers.

[Laurence Penney @Lorp]

I just launched my Axis-Praxis tool, for playing with #variablefonts in the browser :) Video intro https://t.co/nFmgduVUPQ https://t.co/5V1YCpS9bs

[Axis-Praxis @axis_praxis]

Introducing Axis-Praxis, my new tool for playing with #variablefonts in the browser https://t.co/5X3IVwq5Hk

[Laurence Penney @Lorp]

@Athens_Stranger @hallerite John Carroll’s Humanism (1993) was the first book that made me think about this. Do you rate it?

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

1/n
A physical book is a real object, anchored. If you read a particular edition, you remember not only the contents but the object itself: its cover, typography, smell, even where a passage sat on the page.
Books organize themselves in memory by place --the ancient method of loci.
Digital text does not exist.

[Max Lawton @maxdaniellawton]

The greatest harbinger of end times is not plague or war, but the sudden enormous proliferation of Xerox-quality POD editions (unmarked! no warning!) from houses like Penguin.

[Laurence Penney @Lorp]

@AntigoneJournal Polytropos is now well on its way to being naturalized in English. Result!

[Joshua A. Streeter; ὃς μάλα πολλὰ/πλάγχθη @PlaidBarbarian]

Christopher Nolan asked the Oracle of Delphi, "Will audiences love my adaptation of the Odyssey?"

And the Pythia replied, "They will discuss it non-stop for months before it even premieres."

And away he went, glad in this heart, poor fool.

[Laurence Penney @Lorp]

@AntigoneJournal Hoping for this set, despite Guthrie’s “deference and good manners” failing him “in a task which requires more boldness, even recklessness” when we get to volume 4 (J.M. Rist, 10.2307/1087338)

[One-dimensional maps @longthinmaps]

It was an honour to have a 1D map from my collection feature in an @underware talk last year at @ATypI Copenhagen. The video of the talk has just been published.
https://t.co/oa1pFsMEvs

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

Destroying the @InternetArchive's @WayBackMachine would be the equivalent of the burning of the Library of Alexandria - one of the worst losses of knowledge in history.

Media giants are now threatening to do this.

We can't let this happen.

Pass it on.

[Laurence Penney @Lorp]

@michael_galant https://t.co/rWSWNudfmP

[Laurence Penney @Lorp]

@RichardDawkins I don’t mind endnotes but they’re unpleasant without running heads to indicate page range

[One-dimensional maps @longthinmaps]

清明上河图 (Along the River During the Qingming Festival, 12th century), the painted scroll sometimes called China’s Mona Lisa, has been brought to life digitally before, but AI is taking it to another level 👏

[One-dimensional maps @longthinmaps]

Why not use the giant screen to scroll along the entire Tapestry from left to right?

[Laurence Penney @Lorp]

@mike_matas I assume the ease transitions are shown here in 0.1x slo-mo. Otherwise any racing driver or fighter pilot (or even gamer) would be aghast at such meaningless, ornamental and disrespectful delays in a HMI.

[Laurence Penney @Lorp]

@latinedisce “Ally. Look it u”

— Learn Latin @latinedisce
(Yes, really. Look it up.)

[Laurence Penney @Lorp]

@GuyInFlight @LUDENClassics I remember it differently, that the pesky engineers had intentionally taken design decisions that made a V installation hard because they feared management demanding it take the Rover V8.

[Samuel West 💙💛 @exitthelemming]

‘The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.’

Tom Stoppard 1937 - 2025

[Laurence Penney @Lorp]

@Athanasius_45 E.R. Dodds devotes several pages of “Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety” to this theme, crediting the verse to Palladas

[Marsh's Library @MarshsLibrary]

Galileo explaining the cosmos to the muses. The frontispiece from the first edition of his collected works, printed in Bologna 1655-6.

[Laurence Penney @Lorp]

@mcgillmd921 The ‘father of lies’ is feeling overlooked

[Laurence Penney @Lorp]

@alex_usyd I very much enjoyed @EdwardWilsonLee’s book on Pico, published earlier this year. There’s a good review of it (and Copenhaver’s new translation of the 900 theses) in the LRB https://t.co/B1iOAHZ0d5