I can’t stop thinking about comics these days. I just finished up an online comics-making course with an illustrator I’ve loved from afar for years, and it’s been so energizing, not least because as a beginner, I just can’t expect perfection, which means I get to be free of perfectionism. (My fellow writers of any stripe, you know exactly what I’m talking about.) I wrote it up at my other blog (and included some new masterworks, natch), and keep dreaming of nonfiction comics and some of the illustrated journalism I’ve loved in the past. Most of it is memoir, but reported comics? This is a thing I can’t wait to try out.

• Popular Mechanics visited an event called, no joke, the Stupid Hackathon. It’s a perfect illustration of why we need play, both for ourselves and to drive innovation — especially if you think that dumb thing you’re perfecting has no practical use. You could be surprised.
• I’m really taken with St. Vincent’s recent video about designing a guitar that’s better for women’s bodies. Mental Floss has the best link round-up, including the video. I am a paused ukulele player, and even I can see where St. Vincent is coming from.
• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was my first Aaron Sorkin show, and in the pilot, Judd Hirsch gives a great onscreen polemic about art and commerce. Andy Baio calls attention to that tension with a great Medium piece, “Never Trust a Corporation to Do a Library’s Job.”
• Civil Eats is new to me, but I’m impressed by the first piece I’ve seen from them, “Quitting Season: Why Farmers Walk Away From Their Farms” (paywall after first clickthrough).
• In one last “this industry is foundering and we should honor those who exemplify its best parts” link, Poynter has a brief but great write-up about how a local paper was able to break the story of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.