‣ Design is a minefield of ethical dilemmas, incentivizing companies to work with exploitative clients and making it difficult for employees to say no. Elizabeth Goodspeed spoke with a few designers, writing in It’s Nice That:Questions about client ethics are tricky enough when you know exactly who you’re working for. Things get even murkier when work is licensed, resold, or embedded with no direct link between creator and end user. For type designers, this is the norm. Once a font is released, it can surface almost anywhere, often without warning. Jesse Ragan, cofounder of XYZ Type, says custom projects feel relatively straightforward to assess ideologically: if he doesn’t believe in a client, he can simply turn down the work. Retail fonts are a different story. A typeface is made in isolation long before it’s used, and can be licensed anonymously or simply pulled from Adobe Fonts without the designer’s knowledge. Jesse has seen his work turn up in porn, conservative Christian campaigns, and even materials for a far-right Texas militia. “It’s always a shock to see,” he says, especially given his left-leaning politics. He describes designing a typeface as a slow, intimate process – “every little letterform, it’s like, ‘hello, friend’, when I see them” – which makes it all the more jarring when it gets into the wrong hands. Rutherford Craze, founder of foundry Mass Driver, shares this feeling. “Some type designers feel that once they release a typeface, where it ends up is no longer their concern. I strongly disagree,” he says. “It’s not feasible to make a living and keep a spotless conscience, but it’s our responsibility to find the most equitable balance we can, whether that’s through [dis]incentivising certain usage, or turning down work for clients we disagree with.” ‣ Noguchi Museum Rights, an anonymous group of workers at the New York institution, penned an essay flagging longstanding allegations of racism and artwashing at the museum. They write in Everything is Political:Given that the keffiyeh is a cultural garment, meaning it is protected under city and state laws, and is the only thing ever explicitly targeted by this policy, how does the selective enforcement of this policy not discriminate against individuals who would wear a keffiyeh as a cultural item? What is the distinction between cultural and political in this context, and how is that dealt with by museum leadership?Why were board Co-Chairs Spencer Bailey and Susan Kessler so involved in enforcing the keffiyeh ban, and in what ways does enforcing the ban relate to their responsibilities?The leadership is not for the community, despite running a community museum founded by an activist artist who would be appalled by the current conditions. While people and organizations have stopped partnering with the museum, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints have been filed, the staff has unionized, and the museum has received terrible press, those in leadership positions have simply crossed their fingers in the hope that the public will forget about it all. The Noguchi Museum is a community non-profit, and as a member of the community, you deserve answers.‣ The Moomins exhibition at the Brooklyn Public Library was easily one of the highlights of my summer, and for the New Yorker, Jon Allsop articulates the role these deeply human trolls can play in an age of anxiety and repression:The Moomins’ association with escapism is not a new thing: Jansson once wrote that she created them when she “wanted to get away from my gloomy thoughts” and enter “an unbelievable world where everything was natural and benign—and possible.” When, in the nineteen-fifties, a London newspaper that commissioned a Moomin comic strip stipulated there be no politics, sex, or death, Jansson is said to have replied that she didn’t know anything about the government, that the Moomins can’t anatomically have sex, and that she once killed a hedgehog, but nothing else.And yet the books that Jansson wrote about the Moomins contain, sometimes explicitly and other times by way of metaphor, political themes—war, displacement, imminent annihilation, environmental catastrophe—that hardly serve as distractions from the many dangers of the world, then or now. Earlier this year, the author Frances Wilson wrote, in a New Statesman essay about the “dark side” of the Moomins, that “one of the oddest aspects of the Moomin phenomenon is how these complex tales of apocalypse, breakdown and disfunction have been consistently misread as cutesy celebrations of domestic life.”Time to box up the mugs, then? Not exactly. While some of the Moomins’ newer online fans might be ignorant of the angst—not to mention weirdness—of Jansson’s œuvre, I don’t see any incompatibility between her cute illustrations and the ambient existential dread that pervades their adventures. If anything, this juxtaposition makes the Moomins perfect guides through our muddled moment, online and off. Ultimately, we could all usefully spend a little less time doomscrolling, and a little more time Moomscrolling.‣ Trump’s inhumane “Alligator Alcatraz” has finally been ordered to close. Monica Uscerowicz spoke with Indigenous leaders about the victory and the importance of environmental protection to Native sovereignty, and vice versa, in Atmos:Though the lawsuits centered on environmental impacts, advocates say the fight to see the permanent closure of Alligator Alcatraz is inseparable from issues of Indigenous rights, immigration enforcement, and racialized policing. The facility’s very design turns the environment into a tool of state violence, deploying wildlife and weather as threats against “criminals” whose own ancestors knew how to steward the land better than today’s officials. The court’s ruling reflected at least part of that broader case.“This impacts our communities as well,” said Tenorio. “The people interned at this detention center, and the people in our community, have been displaced by imperialism, climate change, extreme poverty, and foreign policy decisions made by the U.S.” For Tenorio and others, the Everglades is a place of connection where multiple communities co-exist honestly and authentically. “I’m first-gen, trying to hold onto the cultural practices of my own lineages,” she added. “[Betty’s] prayer walks, being in nature—it makes you feel beholden to becoming a better steward of the place where your feet land.” ‣ A shady think tank released a list of words it thinks are hurting the Democratic party, with an unsurprising emphasis on “activist” vocab. For String in a Maze, Peter Shamshiri crunched the numbers to identify whether Democrats actually use these terms, exposing the agenda behind the list itself:Third Way’s memo conveys what reads like useless advice to elected Democrats. But that’s because Third Way is not in the business of giving good advice to Democrats; Third Way is in the business of representing corporate interests within the Democratic Party. The point isn’t necessarily that Democrats win, but that the balance of power within the party tilts to the favor of big business.A few months ago they published another memo stating that Democrats should “[m]ove away from the dominance of small-dollar donors whose preferences may not align with the broader electorate.” In the context of the group’s funding, the implication is clear: small donors should be ignored and corporate donors should be listened to.That same memo said that the party needs to “feel more comfortable saying NO to activist groups[.]” In that frame, the latest memo – the one about Democrats’ vocabulary – makes a little more sense. Policing the use of activist terminology by elected Democrats is a secondary goal. The primary goal is to wrest control of the party away from liberal interest groups on behalf of corporations.There’s a lesson here about the exact contours of the challenge facing the Democratic Party. The people looking to shift the party right want to present the struggle for the party as existing between overeducated activists and regular people. Many commentators have argued that the party is too intertwined with “the groups,” their term for a broad network of progressive interest groups. Ritchie Torres said last year that Democrats are beholden to “a college-educated far left that is in danger of causing us to fall out of touch with working-class voters.” This creates the impression that when power is stripped away from activists and interest groups, it will naturally settle into the hands of ordinary, working-class folk. But what will actually happen is that it will accrue to the corporate patrons of Third Way.‣ The incomparable Jamaica Kincaid just published a collection of essays from across the course of her career, thoughtfully reviewed by Mychal Denzel Smith in the New Republic:Another fact: Kincaid hates England. It was her homeland Antigua’s colonizer and supplied the island with everything from Kincaid’s morning porridge to her father’s underwear, so it isn’t difficult to understand why; it’s as simple as the oppressive mother’s subjugation of the daughter. Kincaid shows little interest in drawing such parallels, though; when she writes of England, she would like for it to not be conflated with anything else. “I did not know then,” she recalls of her childhood schooling, “that the statement ‘Draw a map of England’ was something far worse than a declaration of war, for in fact a flat-out declaration of war would have put me on alert, and again in fact, there was no need for war—I had long ago been conquered.”It’s by virtue of essays such as “On Seeing England for the First Time,” in which the above passage appears, and the aforementioned A Small Place, that Kincaid has become known, to some, more for her politics than her prose, a position I bemoan in solidarity. It was her politics that brought me to her, but Kincaid’s politics are not the totality of what makes her work worth engaging. What she is able to do with her seemingly simple language choices is speak what is true while capturing her desire for it to not be.Goodreads this, Letterboxd that. What if we all stopped telegraphing our reading, listening, and watching habits for social consumption and approval? Lucy Wilson writes for Dazed:Over-tracking is a pattern many of us have fallen into. Often, it begins with wanting to form healthier habits, but it’s easy to get addicted to hitting targets and closing rings. Eve Menezes Cunningham, a trauma-informed therapist, supervisor and coach, and host of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, explains further. “Tracking can be incredibly helpful when it comes to figuring out what you enjoy; monitoring health symptoms, perhaps so you can remember what to say at that medical appointment; and things you’ve been proud of yourself,” she says, adding that this can be particularly useful for people with ADHD and trauma who often suffer from ‘success amnesia’. But she suggests that this can take the form of just a short sentence at the end of each day. “Life is not an assignment. You don’t have to report back on things that you feel you should be doing.”‣ Insects are truly little jewels, and one 16th-century Flemish scientific illustrator dedicated his practice to capturing their shine through art. The National Gallery of Art breaks it down (entomophobics beware!):‣ In a simultaneously beautiful and heartbreaking story, Palestinian music teacher Ahmed Abu Amsha is transforming music into a balm for the children of Gaza: View this post on Instagram A post shared by AJ+ (@ajplus)‣ The face behind the iconic TikTok sound is exactly who she thinks she is: @nbcnews “Nothing beats a #Jet2 holiday!” Meet the British actress behind the TikTok sound of summer 2025. ♬ original sound – nbcnews – nbcnews ‣ With AI bots like these, who needs enemies? @mattheperson ♬ original sound – Matt Taylor Required Reading is published every Thursday afternoon and comprises a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.