solflo's artlog
so much good stuff in here, lots of overlapping interests of mine (novels in particular)

crotovane's wrapped
always a treat to visit this site and admire its classy styling.

What Else Is On?
really enjoy how this is its own dedicated site now, like it's a specific place to stop by every month.

leaf litter
love these themed little roundups. a guaranteed nice perusal, like turning over a rock to look at all the fun stuff happening underneath.

interesting links roundup
lots of lengthy articles and essays in here that i would otherwise never read due to my quick judgment of their titles...

as always, you can leave a comment on any checkout counter post. thanks for reading!

The Checkout Counter #40

where i am it's light at 5pm again :) take care, and thanks for reading 💛

Books

The Fire Concerto, Sarah Landenwich¹
Mystery. A former child prodigy inherits a metronome from her estranged piano teacher, drawing her into a mystery of centuries past.

Film

The Ugly Stepsister (Den stygge stesøsteren), 2025²
Fantasy, horror, comedy. In a fairytale kingdom where beauty and pain go hand in hand, Elvira goes to extreme lengths to catch the eye of the prince.

Best in Show, 2000
Comedy, mockumentary. Contestants from across the United States prepare for the annual Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show.

Wendy and Lucy, 2008³
Drama. On her crosscountry journey to seek out work in Alaska, Wendy's car breaks down in Oregon.

Music

Compendium V, DIM
Dark folk, dungeon synth

Illinois, Sufjan Stevens⁴
Folk, Americana

Warm Welcome, Griddlekeep
Ambient, synth

Nothing's About to Happen to Me, Mitski⁵
Alternative

Games

list animals until failure, Vivian Rose⁶

Saltwrack, Antemaion⁷
Interative fiction, horror, post-apocalyptic

Out, crotovane
Interative fiction, romance

Articles & essays

The Mysterious Eugenics of Aesthetic Taste, Michael Rossi

Morally Erect, Carta Monir

The hidden threat eating away at museum treasures, Elizabeth Anne Brown

Blogs

Three feet of snow, man, MSD

LLM Slop Will Make Us Antisocial, Mimidoshima

i can't stop thinking about goodreads' top 100, woolgathering

Link, Please!, Mike Egan

reclaiming my writing, Doruk Balcı

ASCII characters are not pixels, Alex Harri

Around the web

HTML colors sorted by edibility

Desire Paths for Wikipedia
Browser userscript

Lisbon Metro Tumblr

Design tenets of my website

OpenBenches
Mapping memorial benches

The Wikipedia article for the pasilalinic-sympathetic compass

WalkmanLand
Walkman database

Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus⁸

Whole Earth Index⁹
Archive of Whole Earth publications

Notes

1. The Fire Concerto
really enjoyed this! always a fan of stories that explore what "history" actually means and how it's deliberately shaped to fit concise narratives (much like mysteries...!).
i was charmed by the romances, both in the present and past—that final reveal in the last few paragraphs was very sweet. wish i could listen to the fictional music that's described here, though in these cases it's probably best left to the imagination.

2. The Ugly Stepsister
lol this was stylish and fun. cinderella and her two stepsisters are all sympathetic here. the silkworms bit was inspired!

3. Wendy and Lucy
all the mundane and bland shots of oregon made me a little homesick to be honest! lot of gut wrenching stuff here (the crumpled-up bills she's handed...!)

4. Illinois
funny to listen to a universally acclaimed, two decade-old album all the way through for the first time and think, "yeah this is pretty nice". i've always been familiar with the more well-known songs on this album, but i thought i should give this a real listen after seeing the lyrics of chicago written on a public feedback wall at an art exhibit. this track is my personal favorite.

5. Nothing's About to Happen to Me
gorgeous instrumentation! love how americana/folksy this is (are those even the right words…). very drawn to this title/cover/art direction overall—feels the most narratively and sonically cohesive of her albums.

6. list animals until failure
266 animals listed
🐻‍❄️🐻🐻🐼🐻🦝🦊🦊🐺🐀🦘🐦👩‍💻🦧🦍𓆈🦎🐍🐍🐍🐍🪸𓇼🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🌈🐟🐙🐋🐳🫍🐊🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦🐦🐦🐦𓅪🐦🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🦭🦭🐦🐦🐧🦒🦏🦓𓃴🦛🦁🐯🐅🐘𓃰℥🐆🐞🐜🐜🪳🐛🐛🦋🫅🐛🐍🐛🦅🦅🦅🐦🦉🦉🦉🦉🦉🦉🦉𓅃🐦🐦🐕🐈‍⬛🐦🐦𓅳🐣🪿🦢🐎🫏🦄🕷🐄🦙🕸️🐛🐛🕊️🕊️🕊🕊🐦𓅦🦚🦩🐦🐦🐦𓅣𓅣🦌🦌🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🐟🐟🐟🐠🐟🐟🦕🦖🦕🐦🦆🐟🐍🐟🪰🪰🪲🪰🪱🪱𓆏🐸𓆏🐦🦥🦣🐟🐦𓅃🦉🐟🐟🐢𓆉🐟🐛🐛🦭🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦐🦀🐛🐝🐛🐛🪰鯉🐟🦬🦎🐿🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐦𓅧🐦🦋𓅨🐦🐦🐨🦌🧝🐖

7. Saltwrack
yes!!! incredible atmosphere and use of minimalist styling. what a strange and terrifying world.

8. Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus
truly know nothing about halt and catch fire other than the fact that lee pace is there. a book club-syllabus-website for favorite shows/movies/etc. is such a fun idea and alternate way of thinking of fan shrines.

9. Whole Earth Index
and now there's a search engine for the archive!

as always, you can leave a comment on any checkout counter post. thanks for reading!

The Checkout Counter #39

whew january felt long. who knew 31 days could be stretched so infinitely. in other news the cold front here has lasted so long that 20°F (–6°C) now feels genuinely pleasant. thanks, as always, for reading 💛

Books

Butter, Asako Yuzuki (tr. Polly Barton)¹
Literary, crime. Rika, the only woman in her news office, is determined to get an exclusive interview with Manako Kajii, a talented home cook convicted of murdering several men. With each visit to the detention center, Rika is drawn further into Kajii's orbit and gourmand way of life.

Short fiction

Never Eaten Vegetables, H.H. Pak²

Onion Jack, Zarina Muhammad

Film

Happy-Go-Lucky, 2008³
Drama, comedy. Nothing will break the stride of Poppy, an optimistic and cheery schoolteacher in North London.

Hard Truths, 2024⁴
Drama, comedy. Follows two sisters and the polar opposite households they run: one sterile and hostile, the other inviting and warm.

No Other Choice (어쩔수가없다), 2025⁵
Crime, comedy, thriller. A man goes to extreme and violent lengths to eliminate his competition in the job hunt.

Dial M for Murder, 1954
Thriller, crime. A man orchestrates the murder of his wife by coercing a former classmate.

Sentimental Value (Affeksjonsverdi), 2025⁶
Drama. Two sisters reunite with their estranged and world-renowned filmmaker father, who steps back into their lives for the creation of his next film.

Dinner in America, 2020⁷
Comedy, romance. After setting a suburban house on fire, Simon evades the police with the help of Patty, a former classmate and devoted punk rock fan.

Music

Kokyuu (呼吸), Lily Chou-Chou
J-pop, ethereal wave

L.W., King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Psychedelic rock

One Stop Shop, twen
Alternative, rock

KNOWER FOREVER, KNOWER
Electronic jazz-funk

Atrium of Time, Atrium of Time
Ambient, dungeon synth

Comics

Cry Wolf Girl, Ariel Slamet Ries
Fantasy. Dawa, having grown up with the tale of the boy who cried wolf, doesn't know what to do when she starts seeing wolves of her own.

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, Nagata Kabi
Memoir. An autobiographical glimpse into a young woman's relationship with self-harm, sex, and intimacy.

Articles & essays

The Eyesore, Zarina Muhammad⁸

The Clock, Marcin Wichary

Butter, Gabrielle de la Puente

Down In Bermuda (2019): The Cozy Erasure of an Entire Territory, Oma Keeling

Medieval mobility aids, Jude Seal

Blogs

the recipe metaphor, kavita poduri

linklog #006: very specific photo collections, loren

computer, Show Me Less Like This, Stillness.Digital

Games

enclose.horse⁹
Daily puzzle

Game Poems, Issue #1
Playable literary magazine

Around the web

bimbo
Static site generator

How Many Apples Are You?

Kaomoji Cool Club
Kaomoji builder

wikiview
Visual exploration of Wikimedia Commons images

gradient.horse
Draw a horse and let it run

Inhabit, Outhabit¹⁰
Videos of collective housing projects from around the world

The Watterson Archives
Calvin and Hobbes archive

Notes

1. Butter
one of my go-to quick and easy meals is butter over rice drizzled with maggi sauce, so it was fun to see that same, simple meal (albeit with soy sauce) written so luxuriously here.
i ended up really loving this despite taking months to get through the whole thing, and it took a lot of turns that i wasn't expecting. so many thoughts about hunger and desire and pleasure and indulgence…! rika is really living the dream at the end. good for her.

2. Never Eaten Vegetables
i love you NEV-476!!!

3. Happy-Go-Lucky
i love movies that drop in on an ordinary person's life, going about their ordinary days. poppy and everyone around her feel so alive and realized, as if they all have their own histories that will continue long after the credits roll. there's a moment where poppy comments on how beautiful the sky is, and it's just the ordinary london sky. lovely.
the plot point that sticks with me the most is poppy learning how to drive and her relationship with the driving instructor—it's so crazy how that specific type of paranoid, racist, woman-hating guy is everywhere now. or maybe they were everywhere in 2008, too, and were just quieter about it.

4. Hard Truths
excruciating watch! this is barely a comedy to me lol—the way pansy berates everyone from customer service workers to her own son is agonizing. very distinctly a post-covid movie in how pansy is afraid to leave the house and such.
really liked the scenes with chantelle's two daughters, especially when they meet up for drinks and lie about how their work days went. so much unsaid!

5. No Other Choice
feels considerably less biting than park chan-wook's previous films, but there's still a lot of fun in here. the metaphor (of killing your competition) is obvious and its obviousness is weirdly comforting—yes, it is like that. yes, it does drive everyone crazy. so it goes. perfect ending, too.

6. Sentimental Value
this is one of those movies that's impossible to even attempt to look at objectively because of how it gets into my guts and puts to screen things i could never vocalize myself. eek! great performances though, i can definitively say that.
wish the subtitles could've differentiated between norwegian/swedish/danish. that renovation at the end was evil lmao

7. Dinner in America
manic pixie music boyfriend!
the first ~20 minutes of this felt pretty obnoxious lol but i really warmed up to it by the end. i was trying to figure out when this was set (80s? 90s? now?), but it doesn't truly matter and that nebulous time period feels perfect for the small midwestern town they're in. emily skeggs is such a star, cast her in a bunch more movies now!!

8. The Eyesore
funny to read this in my bedroom where i have a postcard print of the great wave, visual filler so my wall isn't blank.

9. enclose.horse
constantly baffled by the number of people who manage to 100% this

10. Inhabit, Outhabit
i happened across an exhibit for the architecture biennial and spent an unexpectedly long time there, so i was glad to see my favorite part available online (for now?). i love architecture and how it visualizes how we want to live and interact with others, and i love how clearly this exhibit showcases that. there are so many different models of housing that steer us away from individualist and car-centric and nuclear family existences…a better world is possible, and we can make it happen!

as always, you can leave a comment on any checkout counter post. thanks for reading!

thanks!