I edit my biography in a community app for Black professionals. Other people use the flags of their heritage, and I decide to do the same. Which one goes first, 🇳🇱 or 🇸🇹? I was born in the Netherlands, and consider myself not Dutch per se but definitely an Amsterdammer. Truth be told, I’ve never been to São Tomé and Principe, and the parent who hails from there left when he was ten. I wonder, brushing my teeth before bedtime, whether it’s appropriation for me to use the flag. And then I think of all the brown and Black faces I know, doing just the same, and entirely dignified and correct in doing what they do. It’s one of the prices of growing up Black in a white environment: I wonder when I’ll stop feeling like I’m the racist.

Hey dear Desi, a bit late, but as promised, here are some resources that may be helpful when diving deeper into UX:

• Don’t Make Me Think, The Design of Everyday Things, and 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People are books most UXers would recommend. In addition, Interaction Design Foundation has a great overview of books.
• The Guide to Design by uxdesign.cc is a great starting point
• Career Foundry has a nice overview of How to become a UX designer
• UX Matters is perhaps my favorite resource on UX topics
• UX Research Field Guide by UserInterviews.com. It focuses purely on research practice, but it’s a comprehensive overview of all things involved in focusing on the U in UX.

I’m surprised by the amount of tourists who came to celebrate New Year’s in Amsterdam, as well as by their shared urge to leave the country on January 1.

I can’t be the first one to see Jonathan Banks' character Mike in the Breaking Bad universe is strongly reminiscent of Kevin Spacey’s Lester in American Beauty.

New Year’s Eve is sweet. I spent the morning at Coffee Company Oosterdok working on my website. The girl barista and the guy who came to take over her shift are apparently dating. He’s got a full mullet and a geeky mustache. It’s that season of fashion again. He was the type of soft masculine only Gen Z-ers can be. At 36, I seem to be developing a habit of noticing how much I’m no longer an 18-year-old. Everyone who seems my age addresses me with the formal “u”. I also saw S in the street. It’s the first anniversary of her father’s passing and she was wondering out loud what could properly trigger an ugly cry. She offered me a red velvet “oliebol”, which looked like a fried dog treat. No thank you, ma’am. A friendly face in the neighborhood knocks on our window and tells me she has enjoyed getting to know us a little more, and that she hopes to be in touch more in 2024. 6pm and pizzas enter the oven. It took only 15 minutes for us to finally get into Better Call Saul. I expect I won’t even make it until midnight. Happy New Year!

• Updated the general UI of this website by adding a softer background color
• Added a splice method I used earlier to photo posts, which allows me to alter the size of the images served through Cloudinary
• Merged _notes contents into my _posts folder so that my dated content is organized in a single place (this is convenient for pagination purposes)
• Styled the tags page
• Updated layout of an individual tag page so that short notes and posts are grouped accordingly

In one way or another, the number 36 has felt like a milestone birthday for a long time. As a tween, I imagined the glamorous autonomy that came with being 36 because I was hooked on watching the televised adventures of a foursome of privileged White women in Manhattan. Now, finally at 36, it feels important that I could’ve had a child as an adult who would now also be an adult. I say “adult” but we all remember the …