Hand-Picked Links — April 2, 2025

Hey, everyone, it’s the one-year anniversary of Hand-Picked Links. The first edition was published on April 1, 2024. There were a total of 17 links posts in the past year. Without further ado, please enjoy this week’s #content.

Stay Gold, America

In January, long-time friend of Cotton Bureau Jeff Atwood revealed he had donated $8 million to “nonprofit groups working to support those most currently in need” and just a few weeks ago committed to donating another $50 million, half his net worth, over the next five years to work towards a future where “all Americans continue to have the same fair access to the American Dream.”

As someone born, raised, and still residing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I’m quite familiar with and have personally benefited from the philanthropy of one of the giants of the first Gilded Age, Andrew Carnegie. The global network of libraries he funded helped democratize information and remain committed to the goal of cultivating learning in local communities over a 125 years later. (Today’s infuriating system of digital rights management prevents free distribution of ebooks today, doing the exact opposite.)

You can partner with Jeff and Elizabeth in giving directly to low-income Americans in rural communities.

The Hardest Working Font in Manhattan

Over 6,000 words and 600 photos from Marcin Wichary, author of Shift Happens, on Gorton, a strange family of letters engraved directly into a multitude of materials across the globe and even into outer space.

Scrabble

If you’ve ever played a casual round of Scrabble with friends, you know at the end of the day whoever has memorized the most words is going to win. What if you had a photographic memory? You could be the best Scrabble player in the world, even if you didn’t speak the language of the country you were playing in, like Nigel Richards.

Thanks for reading! We hope you found it worth your while. Don’t forget to follow @cottonbureau.com on Bluesky if you like good things.