John Brownlee
Somerville
As seen in:
Medium,
WIRED Magazine,
Fast Company,
Flipboard,
The Next Web,
Boing Boing,
Cult of Mac,
Washington Examiner,
Geek.com,
Eastern Daily Press
and
No longer on Twitter! Find me on Mastodon: mastodon.social/@drcrypt
Articles by John Brownlee
Trade Fraud Is Now a Top DOJ Enforcement Priority: What Your Company Needs to Know
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has elevated customs and trade fraud from a civil collections issue to a core white collar enforcement priority, backed by a dedicated task force, data analytics and whistleblower incentives. A single tariff-evasion scheme may expose a company and responsible individuals to multiple proceedings, including a Tariff Act penalty action, False Claims Act (FCA) suit and criminal prosecution. The government's recent suit against Uni-Tile & Marble Inc.
Does Privacy Exist at the U.S. Border?
Every year, millions of travelers, including American citizens, enter and exit the U.S., unaware that as they pass through seaports, land ports and airports alike, the privacy protections they enjoy elsewhere in the U.S. are greatly diminished. If the U.S. Department of Justice gets its way, they may have none.
New DOJ-DHS Trade Enforcement Guidance: What Companies Need To Know
Ashley Akers’s articles from Holland & Knight are most popular: with Senior Company Executives and HR in United States with readers working within the Business & Consumer Services and Insurance industries The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on July 14, 2026, issued the Resource Guide to Trade Fraud Enforcement (Resource Guide), the first comprehensive statement of DOJ's enforcement approach to customs and trade fraud.
New DOJ-DHS Trade Enforcement Guidance: What Companies Need to Know
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on July 14, 2026, issued the Resource Guide to Trade Fraud Enforcement (Resource Guide), the first comprehensive statement of DOJ's enforcement approach to customs and trade fraud.
The Resurgence of Pacific Bluefin Tuna: Is It Threatened?
BY JOHN BROWNLEE and AFTCO staff Sportfishing community leaders unite to help ensure the Pacific bluefin resource stays healthy and anglers continue to have access to it the population of Pacific bluefin in the eastern Pacific reached a low point from overfishing by the commercial purse seine fishery. From there, the quotas were lowered, and by 2016, the Pacific bluefin population began to recover faster than expected.
I helped pass the net ban, and I’m voting for Amendment 2
Thirty years ago, I was proud to be a part of the team that lead the historic “Save Our Sealife” net ban in Florida. We built a bi-partisan coalition, rallied support, and passed an amendment to forever place a net ban in our state constitution. This November, Floridians once again have the opportunity to monumentally preserve conservation efforts while protecting our rights to fish and hunt.
"Cardiac Magnetic Resonance to Evaluate Percutaneous Pulmonary Valve Im" by Cesar Gonzalez de Alba, Fernando Molina Berganza et al.
Experience with cardiac magnetic resonance to evaluate coronary arteries in children and young adult patients is limited. Because noninvasive imaging has advantages over coronary angiography, we compared the effectiveness of these techniques in patients who were being considered for percutaneous pulmonary valve implantation. We retrospectively reviewed the cases of 26 patients (mean age, 12.53 ± 4.85 yr; range, 5–25 yr), all of whom had previous right ventricular-to-pulmonary artery homografts.
Community Voices: Recalling the time Eddie Elgar’s band was supposed to play at graduation
Welcome to NewsBreak, an open platform where diverse perspectives converge. Most of our content comes from established publications and journalists, as well as from our extensive network of tens of thousands of creators who contribute to our platform. We empower individuals to share insightful viewpoints through short posts and comments.
Community Voices: Recalling the time Eddie Elgar’s band was supposed to play at graduation
The familiar music played at every graduation ceremony in the United States is called “Pomp and Circumstance,” written in 1901 by Sir Edward Elgar. I know this very well, for his music was at the forefront of my first mistake as a graduate. In the spring of 1981, I was tasked with giving the opening remarks at my graduation from Palo Verde High School in Blythe, Calif. Our principal was Ted Arneson, a tall man with a short temper.
DOJ Makes Significant Revisions to Corporate Enforcement Policy | JD Supra
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), through Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr., announced on Jan. 17, 2023, "the first significant changes" to its Corporate Enforcement Policy (CEP) since 2017.1 The revisions are aimed at offering companies that discover misconduct "new, significant, and concrete incentives to self-disclose" to the DOJ, cooperate fully with the department and timely remediate.
Exhibit Mines For Links Between Dyslexia And Creativity
Dyslexia, which affects around 4% of the world’s population, is often thought of as a learning disability. Jim Rokos thinks that’s absurd. The London designer believes dyslexia is just a different type of brain structure, whichm yes, makes those who have it worse at reading and spelling than most people–but also primes them for a life of creativity. His new exhibition, the aptly titled Dyslexic Design, aims to prove it.
Watch Six Artists And Designers Draw In Virtual Reality
Tilt Brush–a VR painting app which Co.Design previously described as Microsoft Paint for the Year 2020–is a literally godlike tool that allows artists and designers to create awesome three-dimensional sculptures in mid-air. But how do actual artists and designers use it? The latest Google Chrome Experiment is a project called Virtual Art.
Smart Highways That Can Charge Your Electric Car Are Coming To The U.K
If you’ve got an electric car in the United States, the distance between charging stations could make a long road trip fraught with anxiety. But what if the highway you’re riding on recharged your car as your drove it, no stops required? The U.K., through a group called Highways England, is about to begin trials on electric highways which will see inductive charging equipment fitted underneath roads.
To Preserve Digital Design, The Smithsonian Begins Collecting Apps
At the most abstract, a museum is an ark that we are continuously packing to preserve our contemporaneous culture from being extinguished by time. But the curators of these arks face a new problem in the 21st century: How can museums preserve the apps, software, and other digital ephemera that increasingly define us as a culture? How do you preserve the intangible?
A Pot That Unfolds As Your Plant Grows
At least when I do not own them, plants are living things. They grow, and they need space to do so. But the pots we put our plants in aren’t up for the task. Made of clay or plastic, they do not grow alongside the plants they are designed to house. It’s time to take a different approach to the humble plant pot, says designer Emanuele Pizzolorusso.
iPad 5 To Be Announced At WWDC On Monday? Gumdrop Cases Says So.
News Top stories Casemakers are known to gamble on upcoming iOS product launches. Every day they can have their product on the shelves closer to launch is a day they have a leg up over their competitors in the hyper-competitive case market. Case in point, here’s a story about Hard Candy Cases gambled (and lost) $50,000 on iPhone 4S moldings from China to get their cases first-to-market.
How To Design A Wearable For LeBron James
Designing a wearable for elite athletes like LeBron James is no small feat. The Cleveland Cavaliers forward needs the ability to precisely measure his performance on and off the court, share that data with his coaches and trainers, and visualize it to make sense of everything–all at an extreme level of detail that would be overkill for regular users. That requires a wearable he can wear literally 24/7—one that’s lighter, more accurate, and fits better than any other wearable on the market.
What Google.com Would Look Like With A Material Design Revamp
Arguably, there’s no better example of efficient web design than the Google homepage. Every little design tweak goes through rigorous A/B testing, and yet the homepage does not look than it did 10 years ago. In fact, it’s so simple and iconic that, back in May, lead Google homepage designer Jon Wiley told us that he wasn’t sure if the design would ever fundamentally change. But what if it did?
How Your Desk Has Evolved Over The Past 35 Years
The Rolodex, the dictionary, the fax machine, the telephone, the calculator, the globe. These are just some of the objects that have disappeared from our desks over the past 35 years, as technology has consolidated our daily necessities into a single laptop to rule them all. To see how far we’ve come, check out this video by the Harvard Innovation Lab. Called the Evolution of the Desk, the video shows just how many radical technological shifts we have experienced over the past 35 years.
This Map Shows What It Was Like To Fly In The Roaring ’20s
For all of our complaints about the agony of domestic air travel, if you jump on a plane in New York right now, you could be in San Francisco in less than six hours. Maybe you add a couple hours because you miss your connection in Chicago. Either way, you’re done in eight hours. As this incredible illustrated map should make abundantly clear, we’ve got it pretty good compared to the transcontinental air travelers of the Roaring ’20s.
The Surprising 1960s Origins Of Hillary’s Official Typeface
The Hillary Clinton campaign might just have the most comprehensive brand identity in presidential history. In stark contrast to the clumsy, ham-fisted efforts of her design-challenged opposition, every aspect of Hillary Clinton’s brand identity has been agonized over, from the Pentagram-designed arrow logo to the campaign’s Pantsuit UI, all thanks to a world-class design stable that includes industry titans such as Michael Bierut, Jesse Reed, and Jennifer Kinon.
The Mµseum Is A Truly Puny Contribution To The Arts
This month, Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone of Somerville, Massachusetts, cut the ribbon on Union Square’s latest addition, a small museum dedicated to highlighting the work of New England artists. By any measure, it was a surreal event. For one thing, uncharacteristic of any administration, the press release issued by the City of Somerville announcing the event didn’t bother bragging about the size of Curtatone’s commitment to the arts.
17 Haunting Dioramas Of A Post-Apocalyptic World
The mind has a difficult time wrapping itself around the notion that one day humankind will be extinct. Armageddon itself is easy to imagine, whether by nuclear fire, worldwide pandemics, zombie hordes, or death from above. The apocalypse, after all, is still a drama that plays out in the theater of man; it’s what happens when the actors have gone home and the theater is empty that is so hard to relate to.
What Bendable Screens Mean For The Future Of UI
Bend your smartphone today, and it’ll probably break. Bend it three years from now, and it could snap a photo or turn a page in an e-book. So suggests Roel Vertegaal, a professor of human-computer interaction at Queen’s University’s School of Computing in Ontario. Vertegaal thinks that the time is fast approaching when deformable screens will inform not just smartphone design but pretty much all computers.
20 Ways To Describe Pantone’s Color Of The Year
Every year since 1990, the Pantone Color Institute has nominated a Color of the Year, which supposedly predicts the single hue that the design world will go nuts about for the next 12 months. Last week, the color institute chose the 25th Color of the Year: Marsala (Pantone 18-438). What is Marsala?
There’s Finally A Modern Typeface For Programmers
Whether you’re coding apps or banging out short stories, the typeface you choose to write in is important. But most typefaces out there are designed with writers, and not coders, in mind. A new typeface by digtal studio Font Bureau is trying to change that. Called Input, it’s designed with programming apps in mind, but which can still be used by people who wouldn’t know a line of C++ from a command line.
An Intimate Look At The World’s Refugee Crisis
Thanks to the effects of war, economic instability, and climate change, the world is currently enduring the worst refugee crisis since World War II. According to annual figures released from the United Nations, there are almost 60 million refugees and internally displaced people around the globe right now. To put that in perspective, that’s one in every 122 people, or about how many Americans would be displaced if everyone living in California and Texas found themselves suddenly homeless.
What’s The Difference Between A Font And A Typeface?
One of the major traps, when talking about type, is mixing up fonts with typefaces or treating them as synonymous. Many a typographic expert has haughtily corrected a beginner for mistakenly using the word font when he or she should have said typeface. To those of us who think about fonts only when choosing one in Microsoft Word, the distinction between the terms can seem confusing, esoteric, and even arcane. In brief: A font is what you use, a typeface is what you see.
The Day Sean Connery Almost Killed Barbara Walters
Forget Bond, this one minute clip of Barbara Walters interviewing a matter-of-fact Sean Connery about whether women sometimes "jush need a little shlap" is the most entertaining moment in the latter's career. In fact, the rumor is it's the reason Sir Sean was knighted: the Queen was afraid he'd belt her one if she didn't. I especially love the subtle undercurrent of physical threat in the interview.
How A Small Dutch Town Made Fake Bridges On The Euro Real
Just outside of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, there is a small island township called Spijkenisse that’s criss-crossed with imaginary bridges. But how can bridges be imaginary when they physically exist? You steal their designs from the Euro.
4 Lessons Designers Could Learn From The Hoefler & Frere-Jones Split
Two weeks ago, type designer Tobias Frere-Jones filed a blistering lawsuit against his erstwhile partner, Jonathan Hoefler, claiming that he’d been cheated out of his half of Hoefler & Frere-Jones, one of the world’s most renowned type foundry. The creation of the world’s preeminent digital type foundry was predicated upon a leap of faith.
A Short History Of Typewriter Art
One quality that seems to define humanity isn’t just its compulsion to create art, but to create art in the most impractical ways. For proof, look no further than Typewriter Art: A Modern Anthology, by graphic designer Barrie Tullett. It’s a visual history of more than 100 years during which artists have used their typewriters not to write words, but to create graphic art.
How Ideo Helped Reinvent The Pillbox
Take all of the pills in your medicine cabinet that you have to track–the prescription drugs you need to remember to take two or three times a day, the multivitamins and fish liver pills you’re not sure make a difference–and imagine that instead of all coming in separate bottles, they came packaged together in a pre-assorted, chronological ticker tape of medicine.
It’s Official: Music Gets Louder Every Year
“The music kids listen to these days is just too dang loud!” For the better part of 65 years now, this crotchety complaint has exploded in a cloud of dust from the gummy maws of clueless septuagenarians all over the world. But as it turns out, Gramps is right: Music is designed to be louder than it was when he was a kid, and thanks to machine listening, we can prove it.
Artist Invents A Machine To Create Life From Scratch
At the University of Michigan, conceptual artist Adam W. Brown has assembled an installation of glass beakers, hot plates, and rubber tubes. It doesn’t seem terribly imposing–it has the look of random props left behind on a mad scientist movie set–but what Brown is trying to do with this assemblage of lab equipment is nothing short of profound: it’s called ReBioGeneSys, a self-contained world, and it’s designed to create life from nothing, then set it on its own distinct evolutionary path.
An Alarm Clock Designed To Train You To Sleep Better
Alarm clocks that simulate police SWAT teams busting down your door. Alarm clocks that roll off your side table and around the floor, hysterically caterwauling until you get up. Alarm clocks that have helicopter propellors, so they can literally fly around the room, cacophonously blaring until you awaken. Alarm clocks that literally fire off laser-guided rocket launchers when you oversleep. And so on.
A Beer With Brains Designed To Taste Like The Dead
What does it taste like to be dead? Drink this beer and find out. That’s the surprise selling pitch of Walker, a new brew from Philadelphia’s Dock Street Brewing Company that tries to reproduce the musky rotmouth of zombies. And for added legitimacy? Walker is brewed with a special ingredient: brains. “Our tagline is ‘It’s All In Your Head!’ says Marilyn Candelero, Dock Street’s head of marketing.
A Watch That Smells You The Time
Created by Aisen Caro Chacin, the Scent Rhythm watch is a wrist-mounted timepiece that emits unique aromas at different times of the day, allowing you to not just tell the passage of time, but to smell it. Chacin is a hardware designer at The New School. Her watch doesn’t give you a precise time, but rather a general “feel” of time, thanks to the release of perfume vials mapped to six-hour periods of the day.
Inspired By Asian Body Pillows, A Mattress Designed To Prevent Bedsore
Chinese designer Horatio Yuxin Han has leveraged the design principles behind common Asian products to solve problems that afflict the less fortunate. His Unifold affordable shoes were inspired by the folding art of origami. Han’s latest creation, the Air Cocoon, is no exception. Inspired by an Asian body pillow, the Air Cocoon is a new kind of mattress designed to keep bedridden or paralyzed patients from developing bedsores. Han’s inspiration came from the chikufujin–also known as a bamboo wife.
Turn Color Into Sound With This Synesthesia Synthesizer App
What does a piece of pizza sound like? Unless you have synesthesia, you’ve probably never heard the secret music of melted mozzarella and pepperoni for yourself. But thanks to a new app, you can. Called Roy G Biv, this iPhone app will let you use the colors of the world around you and turn them into music. Named after the acronym for the colors of the rainbow’s spectrum, Roy G Biv is essentially a synesthesia synthesizer.
Infographic: Would You Make A Good Superhero?
Everyone wants to be a superhero, but let’s face it. Some people just aren’t cut out for the job, for any number of reasons. They don’t look good in spandex, they drive a Nissan Versa, they’re allergic to bee stings and perfume, etc. But let’s say you’re struck by a bolt of mystical lightning, or trapped in an irradiated fog mist, and wham!–all of a sudden you have superpowers. Is this an opportunity you should be taking seriously?
How Flat Design Is Preparing iOS For The Gadgets Of Tomorrow
When we talk about Jony Ive’s massive overhaul of Apple’s mobile operating system in iOS 7, we tend to think about it in terms of a mere facelift. First unveiled in June and inspired by the work of legendary German designer Otl Aicher, Ive embraced a flat look in iOS, 7 largely marked by the use of bold colors, lots of white space, elegant typography and simple geometric shapes.
How Tobias Frere-Jones Discovered NYC’s Lost Neighborhood Of Type
In the aftermath of his dramatic split with erstwhile partner Jonathan Hoefler, type designer Tobias Frere-Jones has been keeping busy. He has launched a new blog at Frerejones.com, and in his first post, he explains how he discovered an entirely new district in the heart of New York. Forget Tribeca, Soho, or Chelsea: In the early 19th century, New York once had an entire neighborhood dedicated to typography.
From Amorphism To Zoom, The Field Notes Of Graphic Design
You can never have too many notebooks. My girlfriend, for example, has a set of 50 colorful Field Notes, one for each state, which she writes all of her ideas in when she goes on road trips. I like to think these A-B-C-Design notebooks are the perfect analog: Little bound volumes that artists, illustrators, architects, and others can use as they explore design concepts, ranging from amorphism to zoom. The notebook series is the second alphabetic design concept by Turkish designer Volkan Olmez.
iTunes Is Irrelevant. Now What?
A tumorous coalescence of features added higgledy-piggledy over 13 years, iTunes is the definition of a Frankenstein app. It’s a media player! It’s a media manager! It’s a mobile device manager! It’s a podcast client! It’s an audiobook app! It’s a way to store your music in the cloud! It’s a way to stream local movies and music to your TV! It’s a digital storefront that sells music, apps, movies, and books! It’s, well, a mess.
Twitter’s New Design Looks A Lot Like Facebook, And That’s A Good Thin
After months of testing, Twitter has announced a new design that makes the popular micro-blogging service look a lot more like Facebook. But don’t let that fool you. Twitter’s as dedicated to being a digital stream of consciousness as ever. The redesign just makes it easier for others to track your thoughts. If your old Twitter was Finnegan’s Wake, the new Twitter design integrates CliffsNotes inside the text.
Google Is Shaping The Future Of Apps Like Lego Bricks
The biggest companies on the Internet are trying to turn the apps on your smartphone into a network they own. Facebook announced a host of new services that would allow the social network to become the central nervous system connecting your apps together, and now Google has come up with its own take on the idea. A major new feature in Google’s Maps update, released yesterday, is Uber integration.
4 Tech Trends That Will Define 2015, Selected By Frog
Update: Frog Design has just unveiled their complete list of Tech Trends for 2015. Make sure to check it out for 11 other trends Frog thinks will hit big this year! Around this time every year, global innovation and design firm Frog predicts what the biggest trends in tech will be in the coming year. In 2014, Frog predicted that drones, augmented reality, and self-driving cars would all be big trends (and they were mostly right).
Why We Need A Haptic Design Language For Wearables
There’s a disconnect between what wearables can be and what they currently are, says Chris Ullrich, who heads up user experience at Immersion, a firm known for its haptic feedback innovations. Right now, even the most advanced smartwatch is really just a mirror of the smartwatch in your pocket. Your phone receives alerts from the world, and instead of pulling it out the screen in your pocket, you look down at the screen on your wrist.
Apple Finally Learns AI Is The New UI
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like,” Steve Jobs once said. “That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” It’s an ironic quote, given the countless examples of Apple making “how it works” an afterthought, especially in software. What about iTunes, MobileMe, and Apple Maps?
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with John
Contact John, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack