danah boyd on "real name" policies — there are very valid reasons why people choose pseudonyms for display names #

NYT Magazine feature on Kickstarter — nice glimpse into how, and why, projects are moderated and featured #

Things That Look Like Other Things — I'm a fan of the subgenre of disposable things made into permanent objects #

How to Build a Newsroom Time Machine — college journalism class ditches digital for manual typewriters, developer fluid, and paste-up #

Betabeat on how 4chan spawned the Bronies community — the show continues to inspire, despite its flawed physics #

The Stanley Parable — excellent metagame about free will and video games; if you're on Windows, use the Desura installer #

Why Ryan Barrett is weird about privacy — the sad truth is that his abnormal, but justified, behavior makes him a bigger target of suspicion #

SMBC's story of a dying cat — be sure to click the red button at the bottom for the twist ending #

Humble Indie Bundle #3 — incredible chance to get the best of the indie gaming scene in one swoop; Braid, Machinarium, VVVVVV, Osmos, Cogs, Minecraft, and more #

Johann Sebastian Joust — a no-graphics, music-based, physical jousting game for groups using motion controllers #

A Dot-Com Memoir — Levi Asher's story of riding the dot-com boom and bust at Pathfinder and iVillage #

Longshot Magazine #2: Debt — funded on Kickstarter, the 68-page magazine and website were produced entirely in 48 hours from submissions #

VVVVVV beaten in 14 minutes with no deaths — not tool-assisted, this is one of the most impressive runs I've ever seen #

John Mayer on why he quit Twitter — "I realized about a year ago that I couldn't have a complete thought anymore." (via) #

Space Trek, background scenery from Star Trek episodes — reminds me of Meme Scenery (via) #

Distorted scans in Google Books — fingers and all (via) #

Kirby Ferguson's The Language of Christianity — short "Everything Is A Remix"-style video commissioned by CNN #

Boing Boing's collection of hacker stock art — "malicious virus; Install;" #

RiffTrax's five-year "best of" reel — the Jurassic Park episode with Weird Al is particularly great #

Neil Illusions — see also: Illusion Illusions #

Sergey Brin on "To Tell the Truth" in 2000 — that's one well-prepared bowler #

CrowdDB, answering queries with crowdsourcing — academic paper proposes SQL queries backed by a Mechanical Turk engine (via) #

Rorschmap — don't miss James Bridle's thinking behind it #

Kevin Slavin's TED talk on how algorithms shape our world — Roombas, recommenders, and financial algorithms terraforming the Earth (via) #

MTV News on The Internet in 1995 — when Moby had hair #

Kevin Huizenga's Time Travelling — from the always-excellent What Things Do #

Topiary from LulzSec arrested — his last tweet: "you cannot arrest an idea" #

The Crowdfunding Cargo Cult — companies are trying to clone Kickstarter and the iPhone without understanding why they work #

Danny Choo on 3D printed vanity dolls in Japan — deep in the uncanny valley, dolls that looks exactly like you #

0-DAY ART — related: Street Show, a dead drop for art in NYC (via) #

Stereogum's tribute to the Strokes' Is This It — love the Owen Pallett, Frankie Rose, and Real Estate covers #

Selected — Mike Guppy replaces classic art with marching ants selections #

This American Life's brilliant episode on Intellectual Ventures and patent trolling — meant to be listened to, not read #

NYT on how the deficit got this big — the chart that should accompany every article on this topic (via) #

Adventure Time with Fionna & Cake preview — gender-swapped episode featuring Neil Patrick Harris as Prince Gumball #

12×8 pixel display built in Minecraft — don't miss the ridiculous reveal of the redstone circuits at the 2:10 mark (via) #

Infinite Mario in HTML5 — porting Notch's original to Javascript; source on Github (via) #

Mini-doc tells the story behind the Eli Porter rap battle viral video — even if you've never seen the original, watch this now; I want this treatment for every meme (via) #

Rob Ager's detailed analysis of set design flaws in The Shining — obsessively-compiled, he concludes it was deliberate; that Duke Nukem map is neat, but I prefer the N64 version #

The Internet Tidal Wave — Letters of Note reposts Bill Gates' 1995 memo about the future of networking (via) #

Clay Johnson tests engagement on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ — unscientific, but interesting; like Clay, my Google+ followers are rapidly catching up with Twitter #

NYT Magazine feature on Dwarf Fortress — awesome to see roguelikes get some mainstream attention #

Etsy promotes Chad Dickerson to CEO — woo, congrats Chad! #

Papers from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society — torrent of 18k pre-1923 scientific papers released by an Aaron Swartz supporter (via) #

Fake Apple Store knockoffs in China — even the employees think they're working for Apple (via) #

Ze Frank revisits the "Brain Crack" episode — possibly my favorite episode from The Show #

Madeon's "Pop Culture" — or watch him perform it live with a Novation Launchpad controlling Ableton Live #

Kickstarter hits $15M pledged, 10,000 successful projects — another interesting data dump; love the video of every project #

Benjamin Shaykin's Lo-Res Books — famous book covers abstracted to the edge of recognition #

A real person, a lot like you — Derek Sivers' call for Internet civility; short version: don't be a jerk, we're all humans here (via) #