Webcurios 28/04/23

Hello! Happy Friday! IT’S A BANK HOLIDAY!

I know that they’re ten-a-penny this year, but this feels like a good one, mainly because at no point is anyone going to try and persuade me that the coronation is A Good Thing or indeed that any of the people present at it shouldn’t in fact be sacrificed for food and fuel.

(Apologies to any of you reading this outside of the UK and who as a result don’t have a three-day weekend to look forward to, or a coronation looming; console yourselves with the fact that, well, you don’t live in the fcuking UK and that as a result you might currently be enjoying things like ‘temperatures above 6 degrees’ and ‘a functioning health and education system that hasn’t been eviscerated over the course of a decade by some of the very worst cnuts in the world’).

I am still Matt, this is still Web Curios, and I think ‘Unicorn Kingdom’ may well be an all-time nadir for this fcuking country.

***SPECIAL ADDITIONAL LINK OF SELF-AGGRANDISEMENT WHICH YOU CAN ALL IGNORE!***

I appreciate that the number of people who subscribe to this newsletter and want to listen to a podcast in which I spend 15 minutes talking about AI stuff is, in all probability, zero, but I feel honour-bound to include this as, well, they pay me and so it feels like the least I can do. So, er, here. CLICK AND LISTEN! Or, if you don’t want to hear what I sound like – HORRIBLE, is the answer – then why not click

By Zach Henderson

WHY NOT KICKSTART YOUR BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND WITH SOME (VERY) HARD TECHNO COURTESY OF 3.2KM? THERE IS NO GOOD REASON!

THE SECTION WHICH WONDERS WHETHER IF WE ALL FORM SOME SORT OF HUMAN SHIELD WE CAN IN FACT PREVENT CORDEN FROM RE-ENTERING THE UK, PT.1:  

By Marcella Mastrorocco

I AM HAVING SOMETHING OF A WEIRD “I REALLY MISS TAKING DRUGS AND GOING TO CLUBS” MOMENT THIS WEEK, SO TO ‘CELEBRATE’ WHY NOT ENJOY THIS SUPERB CALLBACK TO WHAT I USED TO ENJOY DOING WHEN I WAS YOUNG COURTESY OF THIS EXCELLENT HARD TRANCE MIX BY OBERON FROM 2002? 

THE SECTION WHICH WONDERS WHETHER IF WE ALL FORM SOME SORT OF HUMAN SHIELD WE CAN IN FACT PREVENT CORDEN FROM RE-ENTERING THE UK, PT.2:          

• The Artefact Shop: My friend John makes Artefact Cards, tools designed to help creatives and strategists and people who like to wear slightly-too-short trousers and matelot tshirts and have at least one stick-and-ink tattoo to THINK and IDEATE and come up with ideas. He has a new website where he’s selling this stuff, and, whilst in general I tend to be hugely sniffy about frameworks and processes and things (in the main, because I am a lazy and un-rigorous thinker), I think these are genuinely useful and can help you think ‘better’ (or at the very least, a bit obliquely).
• Banknote of the Year 2022: Did you know that there’s an annual contest, organised by the International Banknote Society, to reward the best-designed new banknote introduced by a country’s mint over the previous 12 months? No you DIDN’T, don’t lie! This came to me via Kristoffer’s Naive newsletter (as did a bunch of the cuter/cooler links in this section; you should subscribe if you can handle more things in your inbox), and is GREAT – the winning note this year was from the Philippines and features, amongst other details and somealmost-certainly impressive technical specs, a FABULOUSLY-angry looking bird on one side, but all of the featured notes are pretty cool-looking (and I had no idea that the new Scottish £100 note was such a nice piece of design tbh).
• The Breakfast: I think it’s important to be clear from the outset that I think making fun of people for an imperfect command of a second (or third, or whatever) language is a sh1tty thing to do, and that I wouldn’t for a moment judge somebody for their inability to turn a perfect sentence in English when it’s not their mother tongue (I mean, I do have at least a small degree of self-awareness). That said, I feel I ought to confess that I totally lost it when I landed on the homepage of this website and saw the legend there displayed “Would you like to have The Breakfast?”. WOULD I?!?!?! Is it just me, or does ‘The Breakfast’ take on a genuinely sinister air when delivered like this – like the author night be inviting you to break your fast with a nice spread of human flesh, say, or that your coffee and OJ might be accompanied by one of Aleister Crowley’s legendary ‘cakes of light’. It’s not, though, or at least it doesn’t seem to be – instead it’s an app that offers to pair you with a new person every day for breakfast. It’s based out of Lisbon and as such I have no idea how widely its userbase spreads, but if YOU fancy being algorithmically-matched with a stranger to enjoy THE BREAKFAST (literally crying here) with, then why not give this a try? NB – be aware that EVERYONE using this will be a terrifying type-A sociopath who probably runs marathons before breakfast; I am *reasonably* sure that Web Curios readers tend…not to be like that, so caveat emptor my fragile pretties.
• A Living Archive of Milton Keynes: Look, I didn’t ask for this; you didn’t ask for this; noone, to the best of my knowledge, has requested a living archive for England’s second-most-mockable urban centre (Swindon will ALWAYS take the crown) – and yet, here such a thing is! Despite my slight snarkiness, though, this is genuinely great – “Conceived as an antidote to the assertion that ‘new towns have no history’, and nurtured by the belief that ‘everybody has a story to tell’, our work collects, preserves and shares the stories of residents’ lives, building a sense of place and using old memories to create new ones and bring communities together.” – and if nothing else I would like any of you with any sort of musical talent whatsoever to navigate immediately to the Milton Keynes Songbook and see what you can do with the gems contained therein.
• Small Worlds: As Twitter continues to be ground into dust, small projects like this offer an occasional reminder of what we will lose when Elon finally hubrises the site into oblivion once and for all. “In 2023, I’m creating an illustrated tiny sci-fi story every day”, wrote the account’s owner at the beginning of the year, and they have been true to their word; there’s no fixed format for the shorts, but they tend towards the “You buy a time machine on eBay. It arrives six days ago”-style; each is presented as a vintage book cover with a suitable illustration, and, honestly, this is SUCH a lovely creative exercise and I would read every single one of the books it imagines.
• What I See When My Eyes Are Closed: This is over a decade old, but is stil a really interesting project both in execution and conception. ““What I See When My Eyes Are Closed” is an online data visualization project that documents the approximate colors seen by users when their eyes are closed. The data was gathered using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a site for crowd-sourced labor. Participants closed their eyes while facing a white screen, they then recorded the color they saw. Their name and location, when provided, are associated to the color.” I’m Una from Serbia, tag yourselves.
• Text Art: OH THIS IS SO GOOD! Text Art is a collection of copy-and-pasteable bits of…er…text art! The link takes you to a list of hyperlinked subjects – click one, and you’ll be taken to another page where you can enjoy a variety of text-based art depicting whatever it is you chose, from ‘pancake’ to ‘italian’ and everything inbetween. Even better, you can copy and paste the artworks with ease, meaning that if you want to use this stuff for whatever creative purpose you conceive then it’s simple and easy (and, equally, if you want to spend the rest of the day communicating with people solely via the medium of textual images of broccoli then that’s totally possible too!).
• The Collective Noun Database: Everyone knows that crows come in ‘murders’; we’re all familiar with the concept of a ‘pride’ of lions; I’m pretty sure that the collective noun for PR people should be ‘irrelevance’…but there are LOADS more of these, and you can find them all (probably) at this link, which takes you to a Google sheet offering information about the exact word one ought to use when describing a collection of things (both material and non-, abstract and organic), and, honestly, this is AMAZING. Did you know that one ought to refer to a ‘billing’ of consultants? A ‘carbuncle’ of architects? Beautifully and recursively, it also taught me that one ought to refer to a ‘clutch’ of collective nouns. It’s not entirely clear to me the extent to which these are ‘real’ vs ‘wishful’, but, honestly, I don’t care and neither will you – if you like English you will absolutely adore this link.
• The Mala Project: This is the website for a Chinese restaurant in (I think) Brooklyn, which I appreciate is of limited interest to the 99.9% of you who don’t live in Manhattan – I am including it because it PERFECTLY nails the aesthetic of 1980s television, and in particular a certain sort of colourtone and…fcukit, sorry, ‘vibe’ that is so redolent of a specific time period that it’s almost like time travel. No idea whatsoever what the food here is like, but the webdesign is fabulous.
• The Burp and Fart Piano: On the one hand, there is nothing funny about toilet humour (sorry, I can’t help it; it’s the Italian in me, Italians don’t really ‘do’ fart gags); on the other, this is a keyboard on which you can play Paganini in C entirely as though performed by Barney from the Simpsons and, honestly, you can’t really argue with that. I promise you that if you have a small child this will be simultaneously the best and worst link you will have seen all year.
• Taquitos: I know that there are various websites that celebrate THE GLORIOUS INTERNATIONAL WORLD OF SNACKS AND SWEETS (on which point – I know that China, Japan and Taiwan are revered for their sweet and savoury snacking options, but imho Mexico wins hands down; you can get stuff from Mexican cornershops that contain so many chemicals you actually feel like you’re having an out-of-body psychedelic experience, and most of them contain lime juice so you can also avoid scurvy – win/win!), but I think that this might be the best one. “We’ve eaten and reviewed 10,593 snacks over the past 23 years, covering 86 categories from 1924 companies in 90 countries, with more than 157 major brands and 125 flavors” says the blurb, and who am I to argue with that sort of dedication? NO FCUKER, etc! Amusingly, their list of ‘the worst EVER snacks’ contains Pickled Onion Monster Munch at number 5, which to my mind suggests a sophisticated palette but which I concede for some of you might mean that you can’t take anything they say seriously.
• Darc Room: Some really nice webdesign on display here – this is the professional portfolio of photographer Darko Pašalić, which lets you explore his work by mood, time of day and colour, and which offers a genuinely interesting and unusual set of ways of exploring his (generally excellent) work and style.
• Dwelling: Do YOU want to embark upon a new social media journey? No, of course not, as previously discussed we are old and tired and Coming To The End, and the last thing we (OK, fine, the last thing *I*) want is to start ‘building online communities’ all over again. Still, if you’re feeling a bit more positive about the idea of ‘hanging out with people on the internet’ than I currently am, and if you REALLY want to loook at photos of other people’s houses and flats and yurts, then you could do worse than checking out Dwelling which is basically (as far as I can tell) an app that encourages you to post pictures of your house and interior decor and enjoy those of others whilst secretly hating the fact that their DIY project appears to have gone MUCH better than yours and FFS Tony when will you finish wallpapering the spare room. Sounds AWFUL, to my mind, but I appreciate (and occasionally feel very grateful for the fact that) I am not necessarily representative.
• The American Prison Writing Archive: “The United States holds nearly two million people in its prisons and jails — a larger share of its population than in any other nation on earth. Yet there remains widespread ignorance of conditions inside. Amid the unprecedented American experiment in mass incarceration, the American Prison Writing Archive (APWA) hopes to disaggregate this mass into the individual minds, hearts and voices of incarcerated writers.” This is so so so interesting and there is SO much in here – I won’t pretend that all the writing is brilliant, but every piece I have read here has been interesting and emotional and that feels like recommendation enough for you to explore the collection.
• Mouthpad: In one of the year’s earlier Curios I featured a prototypical device that was designed to let the user control a computer via the medium of…of…ok, there’s no other way to say it, via the medium of fellating a specially-modified dildo. Now, a few short months later, we have the more socially-acceptable version – Mouthpiece is, from what I can tell, a sort of dental retainer-type bit of tech which can be manipulated with one’s tongue in order to allow hand-and-voice-free typing and computer interfacing. Which has potentially interesting implications for all sorts of people with disabilities, and could be hugely useful to people with debilitating neurological conditions…but also, SPIES! Spies and whistleblowers and journalists oh me oh my! This feels quite fun and exciting, and very much the sort of thing that might have been sold in one of London’s infamous spy emporia back in the day.
• Scale of the Universe: This is an OLD site – you will doubtless have seen it before online; you know the one, it lets you zoom in and out and see how BIG stuff is relative to other BIG stuff – but it’s recently been revamped for the modern age and it’s a really good example of how to update a classic internet property in a way that feels coherent but also BETTER.
• Iconic Moronic: Long-term readers may be aware that I have something of a problem with the word ‘iconic’, mainly as a result of my time working with the sports team at H+K and wincing each and every time a brief came in and someone would suggest doing some ‘iconic’ photography (GYAC MATE IT IS NOT YOU WHO DECIDES WHETHER A PHOTOGRAPH IS ‘ICONIC’ FFS) (but, er, they were lovely young men really) – anyway, I fcuking hate the word ‘iconic’ and if you do too then you might enjoy this Chrome extension by Monkeon which will replace the word ‘iconic’ with ‘moronic’ at the press of a button.
• The Submarine Cable Map of the World: Stuff that genuinely amazes me if I stop to think about it for more than approximately 3 seconds, part x of y – the fact that the internet only works as a result of gigantic physical cables running along the ocean bed at a depth and pressure that would reduce us to pate! This is a map of those cables and where they sit and what they are called, and, I promise you, you cannot help but be amazed at the engineering on display here. Honestly, this is MIND-BUGGERNG.
• Spiral Wishing Wells: A HUGE thankyou to reader Elizabeth Huntley, who sent this to me last week – it is SO GOOD! You know those charity donation boxes that you roll 1p and 2p pieces into (insert appropriate local coinage here), and which when you do spiral around and around and around like some sort of incredible kid-hypnosis tool? OF COURSE YOU DO! But did you know that there is a whole website devoted to them, and the man who invented them, and his myriad other inventions? YOU DID NOT! This is so, so, so good – terrible, old-school web design, a degree of sincerity and enthusiasm and, frankly, pride, totally out-of-step with the subject matter, not a little hubris in the general vibe of spiral wishing well inventor Steve Divnick…honestly, this is perfect and surprisingly-interesting, and I promise you that spending 20 minutes looking around this site will be better for you and your state of mind than whatever crap task your paymasters are currently asking you to complete.
• Hairy Barbie: Look, I don’t understand why someone is selling what appear to be Barbie dolls with pubic hair trimmings stuck to their faces – but they are, and therefore it is The Law that I share them with you here.
• Discord Ghosts: OK, I haven’t personally tried this, but it looks interesting and like it could be a fun thing to play if you and your friends are the D&D/TTRPG-type of crowd. Discord Ghosts is a ruleset for a roleplaying game played over, er, Discord, in which some players play ghosts and some players play ghost hunters, exploring a haunted mansion and trying to discover its secrets. The mechanics suggest and interesting mix of voice and text, as the ghosts scare the hunters and the hunters try and scry the spirits, and it feels like you could have a good time with this with the right group of players.
• Cat Park: Finally this week, a game that’s also basically an EDUCATIONAL TOOL, but which is still quite fun and so deserves a look. Cat Park is a gently-educative interactive storygamething in which you explore some of the techniques used by Bad Actors to foment division and conflict online, to peddle false narratives and to deliberately promote lies in pursuit of specific-but-hidden agendas (could never happen here!) – it’s not super-sophisticated, fine, but it’s a nicely-designed and easy-to-understand tool for exploring some of these concepts. Imagine, though, how much more interesting and sophisticated this could be if you combined it with the sort of setup seen in the AI-only social network I linked to right at the top – imagine how fun it would be to seed lies in a community of AI agents to see which took hold, and what the consequences were?

By Melody Tuttle

FINALLY IN THE MIXES THIS WEEK, RECOVER FROM THE LAST TWO WITH THIS BEAUTIFUL, CHILLOUT-Y MIX THAT IS PERFECT FOR A BANK HOLIDAY AFTERNOON – THIS ONE’S BY SOMMERBAD! 

THE CIRCUS OF TUMBLRS!

THE TROUGH OF (INSTA) FEEDS!

• Thieb: The Insta account of a French graphic artist who is posting a bunch of images and videos of some lovely, cuddly-looking pastel CG robot things (all a bit reminiscent of that big white robot from that kids’ animation a few years back…Baymax! That’s it!) which I found very charming and which I hope you do too.
• Violet In Question: Back in the early days of the web there was something of a vogue for anonymous blogs which presented a character or a mystery and which skirted the line between fact and fiction to interesting effect; some, like Diary of a Call Girl and Girl With A One Track Mind ended up being real; others, like She’s A Flight Risk, remained shrouded in mystery. It’s impossible to replicate that era of storytelling online, sadly – the internet works differently, and everyone’s been so trained in infosec these days that anyone attempting to present a veiled and anonymised version of their life, or pass off a creepypasta as a real-life blog, would be outed and doxxed in seconds by the mad mob, but it’s nice to see projects that channel a similar sort of vibe, and this is such a thing. Violet In Question is the Instagram feed of one ‘Violet’, investigating strange goings on in Question Mark, Ohio. This feels like another nascent ARG/transmedia project, the second in as many weeks – hang on, does that mean…transmedia is COMING BACK?!?! Honestly, if anyone fancies paying me an inordinate amount of money to scope out a multilayered narrative-led campaign whose ROI will literally be a fraction of its budget, COUNT ME IN!

LONG THINGS WHICH ARE LONG!

By Matt Bollinger

AND NOW, MOVING PICTURES AND SOUNDS!: