Tessera

Ben Mitchell

@ohbendy.bsky.social

I research and make fonts for Southeast Asian scripts! 🇪🇺 🏳️‍🌈 He/him 🧑‍💻 www.fontpad.co.uk 📷 https://www.flickr.com/photos/ohbendy/albums

72 Posts423 Follower 155 Folgt

Dr Luke Walker @drlukewalker.com · last mo.

🔥 What a combination - @zackpolanski.bsky.social and @willdalrymple.bsky.social! So much here: - Palestine - India - absence of colonial history in schools - wilful ignorance of politicians & media - and the East India Company's lasting corruption of British democracy 🤑 youtu.be/13zQVPW9LjU?...

The British Empire’s Downfall: From India to Palestine | William Dalrymple

YouTube video by Bold Politics with Zack Polanski

youtu.be

Ben Mitchell @ohbendy.bsky.social · 2mo ago

With such a mixed patchwork of ethnicities, languages and scripts, and many areas inaccessible to international linguists, it no longer surprises me when encountering undocumented writing systems in SEAsia...

Ben Mitchell @ohbendy.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I've just completed studying and documenting the use of generic combining marks in minority language orthographies using Thai script: fontpad.co.uk/Documents/Ge... As always, comments/corrections very welcome!

fontpad.co.uk

Ben Mitchell @ohbendy.bsky.social · 4mo ago

My pal Bayu has published some super interesting research about Indonesian perceptions of different writing systems in branding: journals.itb.ac.id/index.php/jv...

Typography of Culture-Specific Scripts in Interior Branding: Preliminary Data from Indonesian Consumers in the Case of Ethnic Restaurants | Journal of Visual Art and Design

Badan Pusat Statistik, Food and Beverage Service Activities Statistics 2022, vol. 6, Badan Pusat Statistik, 2023. (Text in Indonesian)

journals.itb.ac.id

Jen Richards @smartassjen.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Casting notice for UK trans women! I've been working on this passion project with my friends & mentors for years, and we are now looking to cast a young trans actor for one of the lead roles. This is an incredible part, one I hope to help make a future star.

Caroline Lucas @carolinelucas.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Starmer should immediately & unequivocally ban access to British airspace to US warplanes. The UK should not be accomplice to a US President who is threatening more war crimes. Period.

Ben Mitchell @ohbendy.bsky.social · 4mo ago

That is astonishing!

Dr Paul Dorfman @drpauldorfman.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Each year nuclear adds only as much net global power capacity as renewables add every two days.

Ben Mitchell @ohbendy.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Very interesting! Can't find any info about this unusual script used by the Aka / Hrusso tribe in Arunachal Pradesh.

Sign for Panchattatva temple, Arunachal Pradesh, showing an undocumented script for the Aka (Hrusso) language. The letters are mainly O, U and C shapes hanging from a headline with many diacritic dots inside and around the letters.

陰茎　2つの陰茎　陰茎たち@nqp.bsky.social · 4mo ago

@ohbendy.bsky.social Sorry for the unsolicited message. Do you happen to have any information about this writing system? The photo was taken in southwrstern Arunachal Pradesh (27.0236, 92.6338). I couldn't find any record of it in the Scripts-of-SEAsia or other online resources.

William Moss @williammoss.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This is quite something from Singapore's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vivian Balakrishnan, in an interview with Reuters. The end of the post-war order, diagnosed in technocratic language. www.mfa.gov.sg/newsroom/pre...

A screenshot with a block of text:

Minister: The US is now a revisionist power. For 80 years, the US was the underwriter for a system of globalisation based on UN Charter principles, multilateralism, territorial integrity, sovereign equality. It actually heralded an unprecedented and unique period of global prosperity and peace. Of course there were exceptions. And of course, the Cold War was still in effect for at least half of the last 80 years. But generally, for those of us who were non-communists, who ran open economies, who provided first world infrastructure, together with a hardworking disciplined people, we had unprecedented opportunities. The story of Singapore, with a per capita GDP of 500 US dollars in 1965.
Now, lit is| somewhere between 80,000 to 90,000 US dollars. It would not have happened if it had not been for this unprecedented period, basically Pax Americana and then turbocharged by the reform and opening of China for decades. It has been unprecedented. It has been great for many of us. In fact, I will say, for all of us, if you look back 80 years. But now, whether you like it or not, objectively, this period has ended. There is no point trying to assign blame or pejorative adjectives. That is not helpful. Basically, the underwriter of this world order has now become a revisionist power, and some people would even say a disruptor. But the larger point is that the erosion of norms, processes, and institutions that underpinned a remarkable period of peace and prosperity; that foundation has gone. What you are seeing now, whether you watch the war in Ukraine, in the Middle East or elsewhere, including in Asia, to me these are symptoms of the underlying tectonic rupture. Big powers and even lesser powers have a more narrow definition of national interest.

🌙Evil Sonny Ross🌞@sonnyross.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Old news to us but some of you still just don’t fucking get it so

Alan Baxter@alanbaxter.bsky.social · 5mo ago

You absolutely cannot separate the artist and the art without contributing to the persecution of trans people. Boycott everything Potter.

Advocate: J.K. Rowling uses Harry Potter wealth to fund anti-transgender organization.

Joseph Fink, we're going to win @planetoffinks.bsky.social · 6mo ago

This is starting to get like universal basic income where every single objective study shows the same result but the people who don't like that result go "uh, well there's just really no way to know"

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 6mo ago

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW: “.. In our in-progress research, we discovered that AI tools didn’t reduce work, they consistently intensified it.” hbr.org/2026/02/ai-d...

Ben Mitchell @ohbendy.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Disappointing to see Google Translate thinks 'Myanmar' is a language. Myanmar/Burma is a country, home to over a hundred languages. One of those languages, the official language, is Burmese, but it's incorrect to call it anything but Burmese because it is the language of the Burman people.

Ben Mitchell @ohbendy.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Entirely predictable…

Count Mysterioso@mysteriosox.bsky.social · 7mo ago

This is quite a post www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/reality-is...

feeb 💜🖋️ Make Yuri DTIYS!@magicmooshka.bsky.social · 7mo ago

it’s come to my attention that my tumblr post has been crossposted to bluesky, so I’m posting it on my account here #AntiAI #GenAI

recently my friend's comics professor told her that it's acceptable to use gen AI for script-writing but not for art, since a machine can't generate meaningful artistic work. meanwhile, my sister's screenwriting professor said that they can use gen AI for concept art and visualization, but that it won't be able to generate a script that's any good. and at my job, it seems like each department says that AI can be useful in every field except the one that they know best.

It's only ever the jobs we're unfamiliar with that we assume can be replaced with automation. The more attuned we are with certain processes, crafts, and occupations, the more we realize that gen AI will never be able to provide a suitable replacement. The case for its existence relies on our ignorance of the work and skill required to do everything we don't.

Ben Mitchell @ohbendy.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Futura 100 Myanmar now supports Asho and Western Pwo, in addition to Burmese, Eastern Pwo, Mon, Palaung, Pa'O, S'gaw and Shan. ☞ www.type-together.com/futura100-my...

Futura 100 Myanmar's glyph set for Asho language, in six weights.

Futura 100 Myanmar's glyph set for Western Pwo language, in six weights.

Ben Mitchell @ohbendy.bsky.social · 7mo ago

My top 10 books of 2025! Hit a bit of a slump this year and only managed 20 books in total, but enjoyed a mix of different kinds of fiction. Special favourite for fantasy lovers: 'The Garden of Delights' by Amal Singh. #booksky #sff

Selection of books:
The Book of Fallen Trees by Marcus Attwater
The Garden of Delights by Amal Singh
Silver in the Wood by Emily Test
The Owl Men of Shanidar by Coy Hall
Dissolution by Nicholas Binge
Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler
The Ancients by John Larison
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Matthew Noe @noethematt.bsky.social · 9mo ago

"I DON'T NEED YOU TO FUCKING REWRITE WHAT I'VE JUST WRITTEN!"

Typotheque @typotheque.com · 10mo ago

People perceive thickness of letters very individually, and that’s why we are conducting Font Weight Survey to understand the regional preferences of font weight. Could we ask you for 10 min of your time? The findings will be published publicly once we have some results. tptq.com/weight

Ben Mitchell @ohbendy.bsky.social · 11mo ago

New release! Futura မြန်မာ ខ្មែរ ລາວ ไทย and more!

TypeTogether@typetogether.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Introducing Futura®100 /// TypeTogether is proud to announce the first release of Futura®100, the iconic font family. Original intention, modern conventions — now made for your world. Find out more: www.type-together.com/new-release-... #typography #fonts #graphicdesign #fontsky #multilingual

Ben Mitchell @ohbendy.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Having trouble getting Myanmar fonts to trigger the Myanmar shaping engine on Word/Windows — reordering isn't even occurring — does anyone have troubleshooting suggestions? I fear having too many Unicode ranges (geometric shapes etc) selected might be interfering with USE handling?

Ben Mitchell @ohbendy.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Had a little time over the last few days to make progress with this pair of typefaces. Couldn't find a Lao version of the Stranger Things logo so here's my guess how it could look, along with Thai, and the geo-grotesque interpreting how a contemporary loopless design might have looked in the 1980s.

Lao and Thai interpretations of a Benguiat display font and a loopless geometric grotesque. Text reads 'Stranger Things' and 26 November

Ten weights of my in-progress geometric grotesque loopless Thai typeface

Ten weights of my in-progress geometric grotesque loopless Lao typeface

Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC)@csmc-hamburg.bsky.social · last yr.

New documentary out now! Around Luang Prabang is one of the world’s few regions where traditional manuscript culture still thrives. Researchers Agnieszka Helman-Wazny & Volker Grabowsky spent years capturing the voices of those keeping this legacy alive. 🎞️Watch the full film here: uhh.de/csmc-laos

Ben Mitchell @ohbendy.bsky.social · last yr.

This book, The Garden of Delights, is a real treasure! Such a joy to read! Deeply imaginative, deliciously written, multi-layered story with magic, gods and flowers. Stunning! Thank you @amalsingh.bsky.social

Photo of paperback book The Garden of Delights by Amal Singh.

Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · last yr.

The fundamental miscalculation that the ruling elite in the UK are making is that they can have polite fascism against trans people. You cannot contain it. Don't be surprised if Reform UK is elected into power with Farage as PM in the next few years and plunges the UK into authoritarianism.

Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · last yr.

This is why they can't fix it: it's not broken It's *structurally indifferent to truth*

Dr. Damien P. Williams has to go the way his blood beats@wolven.blacksky.app · last yr.

Again, @ft.com reporters or whoever else needs to hear this: "Hallucinations" are not the result of "flaws," they are literally inherent in & inextricable from what LLM systems do & are. Whether an "AI" tells you something that matches reality or something that doesn't, *it is working as designed*

Companies have rushed to adopt AI to boost efficiency but some tools, including customer service bots, have faced embarrassing and costly mistakes. Such mistakes can occur, for example, because of flaws which cause AI language models to “hallucinate” or make things up.

The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · last yr.

On hatred.

I hate all of this in almost every way a thing can be hated. I hate the factless waffle that surrounds Big AI’s every improbable goal. I hate how insipidly stupid, or just plain evil, those goals so often are, and the yawning chasm between them and any form of achievable reality. I hate that Big AI’s successes are inflated and its failures ignored — or are even categorised as hilarious mis-steps, like when AI chatbots tell people to eat poisonous mushrooms, put glue on pizza, or make air diffusers from chlorine gas.

I hate that Big AI consumes so much energy that every time you generate a six-fingered portrait of Anne Frank or a scene from the Vietnam war in the style of Studio Ghibli, you might as well just kill a polar bear with a crossbow. I hate that it can run roughshod over every copyright law and environmental protection on the planet in pursuit of the data it needs to continue failing, with no consequences save for the enrichment of the worst people on Earth, who have managed to make all of this magical bullshit seem sensible to an intellectual class comprised of people I wouldn’t trust to print an email.

Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · last yr.

We persistently underestimate the vulnerability of democracies to authoritarianism, because we treat tyranny as something that attacks democracy from the outside. We need to recognise it as something that can grow up within democracies, and that wins support by latching on to democratic ideas.

Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · last yr.

Monumental three-volume Handbook of Epigraphic Cultures to be published by De Gruyter, early next year hopefully. Open Access eBook! Includes chapters on Khitan and Tangut epigraphy.

Flyer publicizing two forthcoming Handbooks on Material Text Culture from De Gruyter: Handbook of Medieval Book Ornament [ISBN 978-3-11-141107-1] and Handbook of Epigraphic Cultures (3 volumes) [ISBN 978-3-11-124094-7]

Dorian Lynskey @dorianlynskey.bsky.social · last yr.

Don't use generative AI

David Aja@davidaja.com · last yr.

Again, please, Generative AI (chatbots, image generators...) demands crazy amount of energy and water and increases carbon footprint. When you use it, you are not just stealing copyrighted material and looking super clumsy, you are also accelerating global warming.

Prof Julia Steinberger 🌹🌱🌍 #ClimateAction #Fightfascism @jksteinberger.bsky.social · last yr.

As promised, here are the slides I shared with students to convince them to NOT use chatGPT and other artificial stupidity. TL;DR? AI is evil, unsustainable and stupid, and I'd much rather they use their own brains, make their own mistakes, and actually learn something. 🪄

NO CHATGPT Or other artificial stupidity: motivation
First, clarity on distinguishing AIs:
Non-generative: grammar aid, translation, dictionary, text-to-audio (e.g. Natural Reader): no problem
As long as you use the appropriate tools (least intensive in data and server energy use).
Why? Because you provide the content. Your brain is doing the most important work
Generative: ChatGPT & Co.
You only supply the prompt, the AI supplies the content.
Why is this delegation of work problematic?
3 domains: ethical, environmental, intellectual engagement.

(Caveat: generative is probably ok for computer programming, where it can be useful and save time. Not relevant to this class.)

1) AI and ethics
Mass theft of all and everything
«learning» on books, articles, blogs, social media, images, music, cultural production, without permission of authors/creators, and leading to their mass joblessness. Profits are not reditributed to originators.
Permanent destruction of the mental health of underpaid precarious tech workers in the Global South (Kenya, Philippines …):
«correction» to avoid production of violent and pedophile contents etc, tech workers are obliged to watch and correct super violent contents for days on end, leading to extreme psychological suffering and trauma, from which recovery is doubtful. No or little compensation (certainly not at the level of the suffering inflicted).
In short, an industry built on theft of real human creation and sacrifice of real human health, profiting a few megafortunes.

2) AI and (un)sustainability

Massive consumption of electricity, water, server capacity for generative AI.
Outcome: keep fossil fuel companies in business, using up new renewable capacity, without any satisfaction of basic human needs.
Massive misappropriation of the finance necessary for climate and ecological action (renewable generation, efficiency and retrofit for buildings, public transit, infrastructures for cycling etc) towards AI industry.
Overall: undermine climate action, reinforce fossil industry, waste resources necessary for human development.

3) AI and intellectual engagement

First, what learning is (or should be) about:
The goal should not (only) be the reproduction of «correct» knowledge,
But mainly personal engagement and experience of thinking about topics of interest. Personal engagement = using one’s own brain.
The most important activity for learning and intellectual engagement is the experience of making one’s own mistakes, by trial and error, corrections based on new ideas, starting over again. Learning to recognise nuances, knowledge gaps, better explanations
This kind of learning is possible only through using your own brain, not AI.
Also, Ais are not «intelligent». At all.
They simply reproduce pre-existing patterns. They «bullshit», invent false references, false facts, false data, simply because those sound plausible. VERY DANGEROUS.
If you learn how to NOT use AI, and how to research facts and data on your own, this will serve you and your communities for the rest of your life.

Prof Julia Steinberger 🌹🌱🌍 #ClimateAction #Fightfascism@jksteinberger.bsky.social · last yr.

Blessings of the morning: going over student weekly reading reports, and as requested, they didn't use chatgpt. It's all full of life and originality and actual thinking, confusion, brain work. 😍😍😍 Will share the anti-AI motivational slides I showed them, French and English versions, a bit later.