Comparing Rolling Stone’s Top 500 albums for 2003, 2012, and 2020
— fascinating to see who wins and loses cultural cachet in the eyes of Rolling Stone critics (via) #
The Election That Could Break America
— Trump continues to undermine the election and will never concede, setting the U.S. up for a constitutional crisis #
How Reddit squashed its QAnon problem
— enforcing their doxing and harassment policies by wiping out entire subreddits turned out to be pretty effective #
Leaked messages show far-right group’s plans for Portland violence
— open discussion about hurting or killing Black Lives Matters protestors and violence towards elected leaders #
No officers charged for “wantonly and blindly” killing Breonna Taylor
— a disgusting miscarriage of justice for what Louisville's police chief called an "extreme indifference to the value of human life" #
Casey Newton leaves The Verge to launch Platformer
— a new publication covering dedicated to covering social network companies and holding them accountable #
Mark in the Middle
— Casey Newton got access to months of revealing internal Facebook Q&As with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg #
Blacklight
— real-time website privacy inspector from Surya Mattu and The Markup, with accompanying pieces on why and how they made it #
Final Cut – Ladies & Gentleman
— feature-length mashup of clips (some NSFW) from 451 movies, used without permission to tell a single love story #
Vulture interviews Demi Adejuyigbe about his September 21 videos
— "a source of pleasant nonsense in a world increasingly full of a more malicious chaos" #
Justice Department threatens to cut federal funding to Portland, Seattle, and NYC over protests
— blatantly unconstitutional, but that's hardly stopped this administration before #
Schitt’s Creek sets an Emmy record, sweeping comedy categories
— just using this as an excuse to tell you not to sleep on this show, which has a big heart and is so much more than its title suggests #
TikTok and WeChat both managed to avoid Sunday app store bans
— a useless Oracle/Walmart deal delayed TikTok's removal by a week, and a federal judge blocked WeChat's removal #
Twitter’s image previews appear to favor white faces
— inadvertently discovered as part of a thread about Zoom's failure to recognize Black faces #
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, champion of gender equality, dies at 87
— I can't even begin to process this loss #
Fast Times At Ridgemont High virtual table read
— with Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Aniston, Matthew McConaughey, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, John Legend, Sean Penn, Ray Liotta, and Shia LaBeouf as Spicoli #
Monster Mash
— playful sketch-based modeling and animating of 3D organic shapes in a 2D domain (via) #
ACLU, Instagram CEO slam WeChat and TikTok bans
— the EFF similarly filed a brief against the ban, arguing it censors speech and violates First Amendment rights #
Trump administration bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores beginning Sunday
— they're also ordering U.S. networking companies to end support for WeChat on Sunday and TikTok on November 12 #
Magma Studio
— powerful multi-user painting/drawing tool, free for public drawings for up to 30 people #
Open Mike Eagle’s “Bucciarati”
— video features Paul F. Tompkins, directed by Demi Adejuyigbe; new album out October 16! #
Song Exploder becomes a Netflix series
— coming October 2 with Alicia Keys, Lin-Manuel Miranda, R.E.M., and Ty Dolla Sign #
In Search Of A Flat Earth
— Dan Olson's incredibly well-researched deep dive into QAnon and conspiracy theories (via) #
Nova, Panic’s successor to Coda, is out now
— native macOS code editor from the best in the business, with a free 30-day trial #
Annabel Scheme and the Adventure of the New Golden Gate
— Robin Sloan released his serialized detective story with a lovely UI and open-sourced the code #
Never post photos of your boarding pass online
— Qantas was exposing passport details, phone numbers, and staff comments in JSON, but it's patched now #
How Did MTV Become the ‘Ridiculousness’ Network?
— in late June, MTV aired the comedy clip show for 113 of its 168 hours of programming #
Dave Grohl escalates drum battle with 10-year-old Nandi Bushell
— the ongoing social media war between these two is incredibly adorable #
Scientific American endorses Joe Biden
— the first presidential endorsement in their 175-year history because of Trump's damage to science, health, and truth #
Whistleblower alleges mass hysterectomies, medical neglect at ICE detention center
— The Intercept has more information in their coverage #
City of Louisville agrees to $12M settlement, police reforms with Breonna Taylor’s family
— the officer who blindly shot her apartment and killed her was fired, but none of them have been charged #
windows 95 dreamscapes
— Louie Zong used made a bunch of 3D landscapes with Windows 95 programs and set it to a Windows 3.0 MIDI #
Bill and Melinda Gates say “shocking” US pandemic response is due to “terrible leadership”
— Bill Gates is a constant target of ridiculous and dangerous conspiracy theories #
Cameron Hunter’s gesture-triggered comic book messages for video calls
— made with Snap Lens Studio and the Snap virtual camera for PC/Mac #
Super Mario Bros 3 three-minute speedrun explained
— fascinating breakdown of manipulating enemy positions to change values in memory #
Facebook ignored global political manipulation, says data scientist turned whistleblower
— she posted the 6,600 word memo on her last day after being fired this month #
NYT tracks USPS mail delivery times
— delivery times are better than during the public outcry in July and August, but still slower than earlier this year (via) #
It’s A Bird
— Christian Cooper wrote a comic inspired by his racist encounter while birdwatching in Central Park, available free #
Feds seize OnePlus Buds, mistaking them for “counterfeit” AirPods
— their excited tweet and press release are still up #
Russell Brandom on Oracle’s bizarre TikTok deal
— ByteDance refused Microsoft's offer and won't sell the code or algorithm, raising questions about Oracle's "partnership" #