November 12, 2022
Mastodon’s Eternal September begins
— thoughtful post on the different cultural norms and expectations between Twitter and Mastodon #
Tumblr launches Important Blue Internet Checkmarks
— a real steal at two for $7.99, with up to 24 per user #
Inside the Twitter meltdown
— Platformer reports on Elon Musk's ongoing self-inflicted train wreck #
Abortion Bus
— fundraiser livestream of a Desert Bus-esque simulation of the 23-hour drive South Texans need to make to get an abortion #
The Infinite Conversation
— an AI-generated never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek; more details on Hacker News #
Josh Millard finishes his grandfather’s stained glass project
— I followed every step of this as he documented it on Twitter since learning about it in 2019 #
AI-generated art sparks furious backlash from Japan’s anime community
— very relevant to my new post #
Diana Smith’s pure HTML/CSS Varga-style pinup
— inspect the source for some comedy, and be sure to try it in older browsers #
Welcome to hell, Elon
— Nilay Patel points out the obvious and inevitable conflict between Elon's dreams and Twitter's reality #
Matt Levine’s The Crypto Story
— for the second time, following Paul Ford's "What Is Code?" in 2015, Businessweek devoted an entire issue to one 40,000 word article #
The Misremembered History Of The Internet’s Funniest Buzzer-Beater
— wild update to Brian Feldman's article I linked to in July, a story of false memories and local folklore #
DiscMaster
— browse and search Archive.org's massive collection of 11 terabytes of vintage files, mostly from 7k CD-ROM compilations #
Stayin’ Alive, performed by a werewolf
— Bee Dee Gee's Hee Bee Bee Gees is Brian David Gilbert's followup to AAAH!BBA, his Halloween-themed ABBA cover album #
The Commodordion
— Linus Åkesson made an 8-bit accordion out of two C64s and a bellows made of floppies #
William Shatner writes about going to space
— "My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral." #
“Through the Fire and Flames” in Trombone Champ
— by law, DragonForce must be in every rhythm game ever made (via) #
Kevin Costner’s Waterworld
— turning a 10-second joke from a 1997 episode of the Simpsons into a free full game #
NYT short doc on Sally Schmidt, creator/chef of the French Laundry
— the pioneering Napa Valley chef overshadowed by Thomas Keller's success after selling him the restaurant (via) #
Words Against Strangers
— The Pudding made a clever word game where you play asynchronously against one random stranger per day #
The Battle for the Soul of the Web
— Kaitlin Tiffany on the blurred lines between the DWeb and Web3 movements #
Imagen Video
— impressive output, but I'm increasingly skeptical that Google will ever release any of this work #
New Yorker profiles the creator of NTP and its evolution
— deep dive into its transition from benevolent dictatorship to open-source consensus #
The Pandemic’s Legacy Is Already Clear
— Ed Yong is taking a six-month sabbatical because of burnout from pandemic reporting #
For once, the hurricane shark is real
— after a decade of "street shark" hoaxes, the AP confirmed this one was real #
Louie Zong’s “Business!”, an album of retro corporate music
— commissioned by Brian David Gilbert for his "terrible guide to the terrible terminology of U.S. health insurance" #
Teenage Engineering’s PO-80 Record Factory
— a recreation of Gakken's Toy Record Maker, make your own lo-fi 5" vinyl records #
Google is shutting down Stadia
— predicted by virtually everyone since it launched, it'll close in mid-January #
Meta announces Make-A-Video, a text-to-video AI generator
— like Google's Imagen, I expect an open-source model to come out before this is public #
The Guardian interviews one of the admins keeping Discworld MUD going
— online for over 30 years, the community has created over 20,000 detailed rooms with 12 million lines of code #
Matt Mullenweg on the challenges of hosting adult content in 2022
— like Matt, I'd also love to understand why Twitter and Reddit are an exception to Apple's anti-porn policies #
Folding Ideas on “passive income” con artist entrepreneurs
— Dan Olson wrote a 25,000 word book in 25 days to fully understand how one ghostwritten audiobook grift worked #
Darth Vader’s Voice Emanated From War-Torn Ukraine
— James Earl Jones signed over rights to Darth Vader's voice, replaced by AI from a Ukrainian startup #
webЯcade
— impressive open-source web frontend for 20+ emulated game systems and support for custom feeds #