My girlfriend @Fiora Sunshine loves Janus's writing on simulators and AI, so I made her a physical copy she could keep on her shelf. Not print-on-demand or a binding service, but handbound from raw materials. A unique Artifact.

For the cover I laser cut brass inlays into burgundy cloth over bookboard. Most books just have foil imprints or plain impressions but I wanted something that felt substantial, something that would look awesome on her shelf rather than being Paperback #784. The text block was done with French link stitches using waxed linen thread and a golden ribbon bookmark to match with the brass on the cover.

The text block itself is printed on 28/70 flecked cream paper. I typeset the whole thing with Next.js and Paged.js, which was honestly way more pleasant than fighting with LaTeX. Here's the PDF if anyone wants to see the layout. You would not believe how much time I spent thinking about things like margin ratios and footnotes and chapter breaks.

This is only the second book I've made and it came out way better than I expected. The brass looks amazing against the burgundy cloth and the whole thing feels hefty and satisfying to hold.

I did the binding and most of the typesetting, but Fiora edited Janus's essays to clean them up for the print format, made numerous suggestions on the design, and even wrote a preface for the whole thing.