We have a 92-week publishing streak. In Q3, we published 7 articles, 7 weeknotes and maintained our ◍ Quarternotes newsletter schedule.


Hunter Gatherers and Agriculturalists
Where does your next paycheck come from?
https://optional.is/required/2026/07/02/hunter-gatherers-and-agriculturalists/
⸻
Misseristal: Aukanætur
The old Icelandic calendar needed a short extra week to keep it inline with the solar year.
https://optional.is/required/2026/07/17/misseristal-aukanaetur/
⸻
Rest: Music Player
Our iOS offline music player app for the rest of your music collection.
https://optional.is/required/2026/07/30/rest-music-player/
⸻
Newsletter Badges
An ever evolving badge for subscribers.
https://optional.is/required/2026/08/14/newsletter-badges/
⸻
UK Public House Names
1 in 5 UK Pubs have an animal, plant of body part in their name.
https://optional.is/required/2026/08/27/uk-public-house-names/
⸻
Backups 3.1: pg_dump
As we continue to make sure everything has backups, our online databases are now doubly protected.
https://optional.is/required/2026/09/10/backups-3-1-pg_dump/
⸻
Cable Identification
A quick pro tip to keep your cables organized both for yourself and others.
https://optional.is/required/2026/09/24/cable-identification/
⸻

📰 optional.is/newsletter/
🗓 optional.is/required/category/weeknotes
📡 optional.is/feeds/

Haint is an alternative spelling of haunt, which refers to a ghost or a witch-like creature.

Haint blues are various pale shades of blue-green traditionally used in the Southern United States to paint porch ceilings.

It is used to ward off haints by mimicking the appearance of the sky which tricks the ghost into passing through or mimicking water, which ghosts traditionally cannot cross.

We know it's time to print calendars when we're booking events for 02027.

This will be our 11th year of creating giant A-series annual wall calendars. We started by designing them by hand, then moved to code. There is a small PHP script we run to generate the SVG output.

We've included Icelandic holidays, old Icelandic Months, full moons, equinoxes and solstices, and a few more surprises, but feel free to add your own holidays and translations.

A 02027 print-ready PDF and the source code are both available on GitHub.

https://github.com/optional-is/calendaring/blob/master/A0-Yearly/02027-Misseristal-A0.pdf

If you're looking for something smaller, the A4 02027 calendar folds nicely into a comfortable bookmark.

https://github.com/optional-is/calendaring/blob/master/A4-Quarterly/02027.svg


FYI: 02026 had 53 ISO weeks, so 02027 starts on the 4th. There are 7 days missing at the end of 02026 calendar before the 02027 one starts!

This painting is the subject of scholarly debate as to whether the thumbs-down gesture was common in Roman times.

If it happened or not, this is the source for our modern assumption of thumbs-up 👍🏻 for life and 👎🏻 down for death.

The painting currently hangs in the Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, USA.

If you are a subscriber, you'll notice something new in the footer of the email. Everyone has a custom badge.

Depending on how long you've subscribed, your badge evolves over time and participation.

This is just the first version of the design and we'll continue to iterate, clean up and add more accessories to the inventory.

You can read more at:
https://optional.is/required/2026/08/14/newsletter-badges/

You can look up your badge and subscribe from here: https://optional.is/newsletter/badge/