31 Days of Halloween
— for the ninth year, Laura E. Hall's popup daily newsletter of spooky stuff is posting every day of October #
Rolling Stone’s oral history of School of Rock
— charming inside story of making the movie from the cast and crew #
The Curse of Dialup World
— inside story of a wildly mismanaged dialup ISP in the late '90s , the billing process alone made me scream (via) #
Songs That Stop on the Word “Stop”
— Todd in the Shadows made a perfect supercut, over 30 minutes long! (via) #
Folding Ideas’ “This Is Financial Advice”
— Dan Olson's new video essay is a 2.5-hour epic about the apocalyptic doomsday cult of GameStop short sellers #
Restoration Magic
— love this channel pointlessly "restoring" used objects, from old pencils and dollar bills to crumpled paper and Coke cans #
Epic Games sells Bandcamp amid 16% workforce layoff
— definitely worried about the future of the singular indie music platform, a lifeline for many artists #
On its 5th anniversary, Dropout drops the CollegeHumor brand
— amazingly, they've managed to make a subscription streaming video business that's independent and sustainable (via) #
24 hours in the loneliness epidemic
— The Pudding visualizes social isolation in a sample from the American Time Use Survey #
The new WGA contract will change how Hollywood works
— raises, new limits on AI-generated content, transparency around streaming data, and a whole lot more #
Eternal September
— from the creators of Incredible Doom, a new serialized comic about proto-blogging teens #
Wired on the cottage industry of YouTube obituary reading videos
— these are embarrassingly low-quality, we're moments away from someone automating this with AI avatars flatly voicing them (via) #
404 Media on a viral TikTok account doxing random people with facial recognition for clout
— unlike TikTokers using OSINT techniques to identify people with consent, all this takes is a $30 Pimeyes account and no ethics #
Conlextions
— if NYT's Connections game is too easy for you, try all of Lex Friedman's devious puzzles instead #
The world’s oldest active torrent turns 20 this week
— I'm seeding The Fanimatrix, so if you download it, you might get part of it from me #
There I Ruined It deepfakes Red Hot Chili Peppers
— continuing their series of delightfully cursed AI remixes #
Legal Eagle on the copyright issues with reaction streamers
— some of the most popular streamers are freeloading off other creators' videos with little original commentary for views and cash (via) #
Photographing NYC’s singular independent storefronts
— James and Karla Murray have been photoblogging over on Blogspot for ten years this December #
Surviving and Dying in the Comics Industry
— Heidi McDonald writes about Peepshow creator Joe Matt, who died suddenly this week from a heart attack at his writing desk #
Mastodon releases major improvements to search, onboarding, and more
— finally, full-text searching posts from accounts who opt into indexing #
Why Scalpers Can Get Olivia Rodrigo Tickets and You Can’t
— interesting look at all the ways scalpers win at presale lotteries, from specialized web browsers to black market verified accounts #
Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth on being targeted by Trump and Musk
— a strategic effort to erode the safety and integrity of online platforms, with employees bearing the brunt of the consequences #
10 Years of Emulation at the Internet Archive
— The Emularity project became a ridiculous success, making vast collections of software and systems instantly available to millions in the browser #
How facial recognition apps are used to identify sex workers with little recourse
— an excerpt from Kashmir Hill's new book investigating the invasive history of Clearview AI (via) #
OpenAI announces DALL·E 3
— integrated into ChatGPT, it can handle more complex prompts and will decline generating images in a living artist's style #
Dream Scenario trailer
— finally, a movie about the universal experience of having Nicolas Cage randomly appear in your dreams #
With democracy on the ballot, the mainstream press must change its ways
— "be truthful, not neutral" (via) #
Well Wishes My Love, Your Love
— like Kottke says, a unique animation style to match the unusual narrative #
Casey Newton on lessons learned in three years of running Platformer
— essential reading for anyone interested in journalism #
Managing a game dev community with GitHub Actions
— fascinating look at the devops infrastructure supporting A Little Game Called Mario, a Godot platformer anyone can contribute to #
A literary history of fake texts in Apple’s marketing materials
— Max Read sifts through the Wayback Machine to go back to 2011 with the launch of iMessage in iOS 5 #
The Rise of Tech, According to Sandra Bullock Movies
— escape is impossible when you're caught in The Net (via) #
It’s Nice That talks to designers behind fictional brands for TV and film
— worth it just for all the high-res fictional brand images made for Wes Anderson films and Barbie #
Elon Musk’s X continues to throttle links to competitors
— shortened links to Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, and Substack wait an additional 2.5 seconds before redirecting (via) #
Spiral Town and Checkered Village
— using the same technique as the Stable Diffusion QR codes, guiding ControlNet with black-and-white patterns can lead to amazing results #
The Artists and Cartoonists Who Designed Pee-wee Herman’s World
— first of a two-part feature with never-before-seen sketches and photos from the artists' personal archives #
Boss Fight 3D Render Challenge
— hypnotic montage of CG artistry with music by Disasterpeace, if you want more, the full video with all 2,880 entries is over 3.5 hours long (via) #
21st Century Roguelike Pac-Man
— Pac-Man reinvented as a dungeon crawler with quests, crafting, mining, and of course, hats (via) #
Major publishers sue Libgen for “staggering” copyright infringement
— the shadow library's operators are entirely anonymous so they're suing 50 John Does, "persons of unknown identity" #
River, a visual connection engine
— Max Bittker made a CLIP-based image browser, similar to same.energy (via) #
British Seaside Simulator
— I love Matt Round's dev threads where he shows what goes into making all these ridiculous projects for Vole.wtf #
a clock where the time is made of news headlines
— Russell Samora continues his Data Clocks series for The Pudding #
Reddit activity plummeted since API changes and moderator protests
— average daily posts and comments for most major subreddits dropped 50-90% compared to a year ago #
Taylor Lorenz on Julia Allison’s vilification as an early influencer
— an excerpt from Extremely Online, Lorenz's upcoming book on the history of social media and internet fame #
The George Lucas Eggsperience
— a new remix by Neil Cicierega, only slightly stranger than the original ads #