Most House Republicans did what the rioters wanted
— 66% of the House GOP tried to overturn election results with no evidence and no accountability #
Song Exploder interviews Yusuf/Cat Stevens on recreating “Father and Son” 50 years later
— for the 200th episode, Hrishikesh talks to the legendary singer-songwriter about duetting with his 22-year-old self #
The Emoji That Nearly Weren’t
— Jennifer Daniel writes about how the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee used zero-width joiners to ship new emoji for 2021 #
Janelle Shane digs into the drawings of DALL-E
— you can play with more variations in their OpenAI's announcement post from last week #
VOC-25, a vocal synth made with 25 sets of plastic teeth
— inspired by Simone Giertz's teeth wall (via) #
Mining Parler metadata to pinpoint Capitol crimes
— Archive Team grabbed 56 terabytes of public data from Parler in its last day online, including EXIF metadata #
How a Presidential Rally Turned Into a Capitol Rampage
— NYT's visual investigation into the insurrection at the Capitol (via) #
Apple gives Parler 24 hours to remove incitements to violence and detail moderation plan
— they rejected the app and will remove it from the App Store if they can't comply #
Open Mike Eagle pays tribute to MF DOOM
— reflecting on working with one of his heroes on "Phantoms" and "Police Myself" #
The end of Mr. Boop
— after ten months, Alec Robbins wrapped his absurdist NSFW meta-comic about his very real wife, Betty Boop (via) #
OpenAI’s DALL·E generates images from text
— finally, a neural network that can create illustrations of Pikachu wearing a Christmas sweater and drinking a latte #
Simulating the PIN cracking scene in Terminator 2
— if you have a spare Atari Portfolio hanging around, please send it to Bert #
Emily Pothast on Bean Dad and Gen X irony
— Roderick posted an apology this morning, which is a start #
50 Years of Text Games
— each week this year, Aaron A. Reed will profile a text-based computer game from 1971-2021 #
Today In Tabs returns
— after five years away, Rusty Foster revives his excellent media newsletter on Substack #
Caitlin Dewey’s top 25 internet culture reads of 2020
— great list from one of my favorite linkbloggers #
Museum curators react to 2020’s best video game museums
— also great this year, the museum of lockpicking, Virtual Lo-Fi Museum, and the Gallery of Anything (via) #
Internal pay data shows Coinbase underpaid women and Black employees
— at least 60 employees left after their CEO instituted a ban on political activism earlier this year (via) #
Perplex City’s Satoshi finally found after 14 years
— the last of two unsolved challenges from the pioneering ARG was finally solved (via) #
The complexities of Covid vaccine prioritization
— an interesting counter-argument, laying out the case for factoring in more than age #
Brian David Gilbert finally unravels Pokémon Edibility
— after three years, BDG is leaving Polygon to work on new things (via) #
Throat Notes
— Double King creator Felix Colgrave released another bizarre animated short; don't miss the computer UI at 3:40 #
How the Police Killed Breonna Taylor
— NYT's visual reconstruction shows their negligence and reckless indifference to human life #
Why is there a bucatini shortage in the U.S.?
— deep-dive into a low-stakes mystery that traces back to ramen noodles in World War II #
Where Year Two of the Pandemic Will Take Us
— Ed Yong looks at the challenges facing the U.S. in its coronavirus response next year #
WSJ on how Amazon clones and crushes rivals and partners
— the world's largest retailer routinely knocks off products and then suspends or hides their listings #
Disney made a plaza restaurant
— the latest in Jack Plotnick's Disney studio satires, where he inserts himself into vintage footage #
Interview with an anonymous AWS engineer
— plenty of speculation and gossip, but that just makes it more fun to read (via) #
Garbage Day explains Tumblr
— a brief guide to how it works and what makes it special, along with some recommendations #
How Bad Is Your Spotify?
— The Pudding and Mike Lacher made a music snob AI that mocks your listening habits #
Underunderstood digs into the mystery of grocery store animatronic bands
— this goes unexpected places, including the office of a sitting state senator #
Congress passes disastrous copyright measures without debate in coronavirus relief bill
— opening the floodgates to a new era of copyright trolling #
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny dupes spy into revealing how he was poisoned
— the full video of the call is unreal, detailing the FSB's failed assassination and attempts to cover it up #
The truth in Black and white
— the Kansas City Star reports on, and apologizes for, its own racist history (via) #
Videlectrix finishes Stinkoman
— days before Flash dies, the Brothers Chaps finished their 15-year-old game with help from Jez, SmallBu and Paul and Storm (via) #