Event series Pop-Up Magazine calls it quits — they cite the pandemic, but also went through a painful acquisition breakup in 2020 #

Joni Mitchell’s full catalog is now on YouTube — her six-album run from 1970-1976 is basically flawless (via) #

The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI — easily capable of outposting every human on earth, ChatGPT and LLMs like it will flood the web with a neverending tsunami of SEO bullshit #

LOL Verifier — Brian Moore made a device that only lets you type "lol" if you're actually laughing #

Shift Happens — excellent site promoting Marcin Wichary's upcoming book about keyboards; don't miss the interactive 3D view at the top #

The Strangest Computer Manual Ever Written — the only manual that references The Dukes of Hazzard, meatloaf, and the territorial imperatives of trumpeter swans #

Why Not Mars — Maciej Ceglowski returns from hiatus with the first in a series on why sending humans to Mars is a bad idea #

Tom Scott debunks an urban legend about 18th century firefighters letting buildings burn — he hired a historical researcher to uncover the real history of a subject he covered in 2021 #

As of today, copyrighted works from 1927 enter the U.S. public domain — Sherlock Holmes, Metropolis, The Jazz Singer, Puttin’ on the Ritz, My Blue Heaven, and so much more #

Draw SVG rope with Javascript — even if I never implement it, I love interactive explainers like these that explain how something's made (via) #

The Professional — ridiculous pay-what-you-like game for Windows/Mac/Linux that's like QWOP attempting a jewelry heist #

Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things — Catherynne M. Valente penned a barnburner about the cycle of value extraction and destruction of popular online social platforms #

Ars Technica on Mastodon, ActivityPub, and the pros and cons of open decentralized social networking — "the dreams of the 90s are alive in the Fediverse" #

Recreating Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son” in Mario Paint — fascinating and funny process video from the very talented Cat Graffam #

Ted Gioia on Barnes & Noble’s surprising turnaround — he attributes it to the new CEO's decision to drop paid placement deals and give more control to the stores #

Erik Grankvist spent three years alone building a log cabin — a wordless, serene 90-minute compilation of going off the grid in a Swedish forest, reminiscent of Primitive Technology's videos (via) #

Tom7’s PAC·TOM Project — very entertaining video documenting a 16-year-long project to run the length of every street in Pittsburgh, over 3,600 miles #

Where are the pirated movie screeners this year? — no screeners have leaked this awards season, unconfirmed rumors of a pirate group bust are swirling #

The LastPass disclosure of leaked password vaults is being torn apart by security experts — The Verge rounds up reactions to their deceptive statement, including one from 1Password's security architect #

Reverse engineering the prompts for every Notion AI feature — entertaining post explaining creative techniques for getting GPT-3 to leak its source prompts (via) #

How human is your dog’s name? — "Andy is a mostly dog name" (via) #

Mastodon founder rejected multiple six-figure investment offers to preserve nonprofit status — building on decentralized protocols makes the network more resilient than any centralized platform #

Atlas of Blobs — Zach Lieberman asked ten writers, artists, and researchers to pick one of his blob forms, then give it a name and describe it (via) #

The Originals — wonderful animated short where five old friends recount life growing up in Brooklyn in the 1970s #

NYT on Steamboat Willie entering the public domain in 2024 — the early version of Mickey Mouse will be theoretically free for reuse, but still trademarked and actively policed by Disney (via) #

picoSYNTH — modular synthesizer made in the PICO-8 fantasy console #

Why The Super Rich Are Inevitable — The Pudding's visual explanation of how our current economic policies inevitably created massive income inequality (via) #

Jealousy List 2022 — the stories that Businessweek writers wished they'd written, a roundup of some of the year's best journalism #

Productivity Blocker — instead of blocking online distractions, this Chrome add-on only blocks websites that help you get work done (via) #

Tom Lehrer releases discography into public domain — he donated all his lyrics/music in 2020, but at age 94, just added all recording/performing rights (via) #

Jacked directly into the feed — "Twitter is currently doing to one man’s psyche what it has done to countless societies around the world" #

Twitter starts blocking links to many popular Mastodon instances — links in tweets, DMs, and profiles are all now blocked, and clicking links in existing tweets are blocked for being "unsafe" #

Twitter starts banning high-profile journalists with no explanation — reporters from NYT, WaPo, CNN, Mashable, and The Intercept, plus Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann, and the official Mastodon account #

Inside the world’s biggest tech bazaars — from Bengaluru to Tokyo, pictorial reporting on how eight major tech districts fared during the pandemic (via) #

Benj Edwards on ArtStation’s anti-AI artist revolt — the ArtStation homepage has looked like this for days #

Databots and Silverstein’s Fake Feelings — 26-hour, 1,000-song album of "AI emo" trained with permission on a post-hardcore emo band's discography #

The Luddite Club, a group of NYC teens opting out of smartphones and social media — “I still long to have no phone at all… My parents are so addicted. My mom got on Twitter, and I’ve seen it tear her apart.” #

The Doors of McMurdo Station — from the excellent Brr.fyi, a Bay Area IT contractor blogging about life in Antarctica #

Ghostwriter, a haunted AI-powered typewriter — hacking an Arduino and Raspberry Pi into a Brother AX-325 to make a typewriter that replies to you #

“Just Go to Work” — props to the foley artist on this (via) #

Apple orders Mythic Quest spinoff based on its bottle episodes — I loved "A Dark Quiet Death" more than the rest of the series, so excited to hear this #

Riffusion — open-source AI music generator powered by fine-tuning Stable Diffusion on spectrogram images (via) #

Life Universe — infinitely-recursive Game of Life (via) #

Web Yule Log — reminiscent of Yule Log 2.0, an annual project where artists animated a yule log for a looping website #

Nilay Patel interviews Matt Mullenweg on how the Tumblr acquisition is going — great conversation about ownership and moderation, contrasting Automattic's thoughtful approach vs. the Twitter garbage fire #

Genders.wtf — growing collection of absurd, but real, gender form fields #

Tumbleword — Jer Thorp's challenging new daily word game, built around a letter tumbling mechanic #

STRG.SNEK — outstanding free VVVVVV-esque game that controls like Snake (via) #

The history of Christmas kiddie monorail rides in U.S. department stores — Peter Dibble does a thorough deep dive into a quirky holiday tradition I've never heard of #

Benj Edward’s secret life as an 11-year-old BBS sysop — this feels like it's ripped from the pages of Incredible Doom #