Smallbu Animation’s Daffodil shorts — absurdly charming, just like Alex and Lindsay in real-life #

Making Escher, a web-controlled robotic Etch-a-Sketch — not open to the public, probably because they don't want it covered in penises and swastikas (via) #

Turning animated GIFs into pure CSS — impressive but horrible hack, converting GIFs into hundreds of vertical linear-gradients #

Building a Slack client for Windows 3.1 — they had to find and read "books" to figure it out #

FlowingData’s best dataviz of 2019 — the sleep blanket is stunning #

NYTIMES ALL CAPS — yesterday was only the fourth of the year #

NYT analyzes a database of 50 billion locations from 12 million phones — an anonymous source from an unnamed location data company provided the 2016-2017 dump (via) #

Kubito’s Secret Base — there's something so satisfying about detailed miniatures, but the electronics take it to the next level (via) #

Trump impeached — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress #

Fake AI-generated faces used for fake Facebook accounts promoting right-wing content — this month's release of StyleGAN2 makes these images much harder to recognize #

Emily Short’s retrospective of the year in interactive fiction — intriguing list, all but one were new to me #

Song of Bloom — new iOS game from Philipp Stollenmayer, one of my favorite game designers #

The Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in HyperCard — Voyager created this expanded version for the Mac in 1991, emulated in browser on the Internet Archive (via) #

The Far Side relaunches official site — with classic comics posted daily, sketchbooks, and a letter from Gary Larson about why now #

Joe Sabia’s list of groundbreaking internet videos — much of Joe's work belongs in that list #

Endless Jingling — hilariously bad generative Christmas carol mashups, click on the window to hear the audio #

USE CUPS — Adult Swim short co-created by Don't Hug Me I'm Scared's Joe Pelling #

Go to Sleep, Baby Yoda — The Auralnauts take on The Mandalorian #

AI Dungeon released for iOS/Android — if the Google Colab version scared you off, this is a simple way to try one the most interesting projects of the year #

The Dweetabase — an archive of all 13k+ tweet-length generative JS art from Dwitter (via) #

The Verge reviews Wattam, the new game from Katamari creator Keita Takahashi — out tomorrow for PC/PS4, so excited to finally play it #

Bee videogames reviewed for accuracy — "the Citizen Kane of beekeeping games" is available for free on Itch.io #

Ars Technica’s Timothy B. Lee on making his own deepfake — good video cards are expensive, but cloud GPU fees add up quick #

Creators of “virtual influencer” Lil Miquela criticized for fictional sexual assault vlog — reminder that the agency behind it, Brud, raised $6M of venture capital from Sequoia #

The Verge’s Casey Newton talks to moderators responsible for removing violent extremism from Google/YouTube — there are serious mental health consequences to reviewing a high volume of disturbing and graphic content #

Dual Axis Rotation Illusion — JS version of this year's winner of the annual Best Illusion of the Year Contest #

The Moon Is Right — the moon is right #

Circle World — Cyriak's looping animations are always hypnotic and vaguely disturbing #

100 Memes That Defined the 2010s — Katie Notopoulos, Julia Reinstein, and Ryan Broderick turn in the definitive list with useful context #

Face the Music — finally, I can make dubstep with my face (via) #

Happy Hues — curated color palettes in context of a real-world example site (via) #

Display.land — new app for generating, sharing, and editing 3D captures of physical spaces (via) #

Huginn — build agents to perform automated tasks for you online, like IFTTT or Zapier that you control (via) #

Why Nukemap isn’t on Google Maps anymore — Google's interest in small developers is fickle, shifting over time as products evolve #

NYT uses infrared cameras to show industrial methane leaks in Texas — great mix of investigative reporting and undeniable visual evidence #

Click Here to Kill — Harper's feature on the rise of dark web assassination marketplaces (via) #

All Star played on melons — see also: Toto's Africa on sweet potato and squash #

Postlight launches Yap, an ephemeral free chat room for small groups — Rich Ziade explains more on their blog #

Urban Archive — newly out-of-beta platform for uncovering local history, like this building that's still very special to me #

The Age of Instagram Face — Jia Tolentino on the increasing use of plastic surgery to resemble FaceTune-filtered photos in real life #

OpenStreetMap Haiku — generative poetry based on your location; more on how it works (via) #

Nvidia releases StyleGAN2, state-of-the-art generative image modeling — clears up many of the visual artifacts of StyleGAN, see it in action on This Person Does Not Exist #

“They” is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year 2019 — nice to see the continued mainstream acceptance of singular they #

Pico-8 Advent Calendar 2019 — a new game for the fantasy console every day until Christmas, don't miss the flawless Snowcraft demake #

YouTube expands anti-harassment policies — a clear reaction to their failure to act in the Carlos Maza/Steven Crowder incident #

Twitter announces Bluesky project to develop (another) decentralized open standard for social media — ActivityPub was tailor-made for this use, but they seem committed to reinventing it on the blockchain #

Vulfpeck Live at Madison Square Garden — I watched them play for a small crowd at XOXO, and four years later, they're selling out MSG with no label, manager, or advertising #

XOXO’s Worldbuilders fundraiser for Heifer International — we're giving away prizes from our own collection of XOXO history, and would love your help hitting the goal by December 17 #

Wired Magazine’s cover story on Simone Giertz — after surviving her brain tumor, she hopes to move on from shitty robots to space exploration (via) #

Twin Peaks VR — I still wonder what the cancelled Twin Peaks for the NES would've been like (via) #