By Reuben Wu

  THE SECTION WHICH, IN DEfERENCE TO SOCIAL MEDIA WEEK, I AM THIS WEEK REFERRING TO AS THE MOST IMPORTANT STUFF IN THE WORLD; THE LODESTONE OF TRUTH! THE APOGEE OF EXISTENCE! THE CRUX OF THE HUMAN CONDITION! THE CURE FOR ALL THAT AILS US! THE UNIVERSAL PANACEA! YES, THAT’S RIGHT, SOME STUFF ABOUT S***** M****:

• Facebook Mobile Payments: Dull and practical but important, this is Facebook working with Paypal and others to introdduce one-click payments. Welcome to the future in which you neber need to leave Facebook for anything; coming next week, Facebook partners with Ocado to offer grocery shopping through The Social Network, complete with discounts for those who ‘Like’ bananas and Fray Bentos pies and the like. Probably, anyway. Go on, Fray Bentos, MAKE THE CHANGE YOU WISH TO BE.
• Facebook AI: What would you do if you had access to possibly the greatest repository of data about human interests and behavoiur which has ever existed in the history of humanity? THAT’S RIGHT, you would build SkyNet. Which is effectively what FB announced this week, with their foray into advanced machine learning. Don’t worry, though, it’s only nascent tech and so you don’t yet have to be terrified about the fact that the banal utterings you spout on your timeline could be quite easily replicated by a server stack in Colorado (yet. Give it a year). My girlfriend and I were at a lecture this week about neuroscience and there was a lot of talk about human intelligence being, according to current thinking, largely due to the variety and density of neurons in our brains. There’s almost certainly a poorly thought-out analogy between groupings of individuals and the hive mind, and the sort of stuff Facebook could potentially do with the billion+ people on its books. Let’s be honest, this is almost certainly the beginning of the end. Enjoy it!
• Google Change Commenting FOREVER: This is really quite significant, not just from a Social Media point of view but actually socioculturally (no, really, come back). Google are looking to address the swampllike horror of the below-the-video area on YouTube by changing everything, and prioritising comments by people you know (and famouses, because that’s the world we live in). Also, obviously, they’re building G+ into the system; see Skynet quote passim, and all my previous cant about a universal online ID that I used to spout a few years back when I was young and interested. One big thing about this is that it gives brands – even the most risk-averse and unpopular – no reason at all to do the craven ‘no comments’ thing on YouTube anymore, and makes the service FAR more attractive to people who were previously put off by the whole ‘OMIGODBIGGAYFATDYKESCUMFAGYOLO’ horror which was the below-the-line YouTube environment. That, and the more general social point about us having (potentially) reached a tipping point in online culture where the absolute right to say anything you like is outweighed by the importance of not being an absolute tool. Maybe. Anyway, Google aren’t the only people to announce this sort of thing this week – online science journal Popular Science banned comments this week; their rationale is interesting and coherent and worth a read.
• Google Glass Banned Here: This is slightly crazy but also an amazing insight into the world in which we will live, like it or not, in approximately 3-5 years from now. Don’t fight it; just sink into dystopia with a wry smile and a sigh. It won’t hurt a bit. 
• Free Background Music For Videos: Basically just that. Useful for brands, though, as at least it means you won’t have to have that awful conversation with the client where they ask for Pachebel’s Canon as a bed, and you say how much it will cost, and they make you play it on a Bontempi organ to provide the backing and you wonder how your life became this way and where your childhood went. Just me? Oh. 
• Twitter Emergency Alerts: Actually really useful and an interesting development in Twitter’s increasingly core position at the heart of breaking news. This is a service which, although only available to US, Japanese and Korean organisations at the moment, will allow users to subscribe to mobile or email alerts from certain feeds – and then allow said feeds to tag tweets as ‘important’ and have them mailed / texted to aforementioned opt-in users. If you work with an environmental NGO this is potentially huge – also if you’re, say, the Metropolitan Police, or actually even local / regional police forces. Clever by Twitter not only functionally but strategically – make the service essential for globa infrastructure and it can NEVER DIE (hyperbole, but). 
• Twitter Magicrecs: I’m slightly annoyed about this, in a Lord of the Flies ‘I FOUND THE CONCH’ sort of way. Magicrecs is an awesome little Twitter hack that has been running for a couple of months and which alerts you via DM to accounts or Tweets which you may find useful / interesting – effectively if x proportion of people you follow all start following a certain person, or read / RT a certain tweet, it tells you so that you don’t miss out. Clever, but I felt all smug about finding it and using it and now I have to let you all know about it and I no longer feel all special and privileged. 
• Being a Vine ‘VJ’ is Now Apparently an ACTUAL JOB: Actually properly mad, but an interesting piece to reference when beating clients over the head about how vital it is that they pay you more money to make 6-second shorts about car insurance BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE KIDS WANT, YEAH?!
• Pinterest ‘Read Later’ Feature: Interesting largely as an indicator of what Pinterest could become (that is, the universal memory service). Were I the people behind the infinitely more powerful Evernote I would be a little concerned about this stuff. 
• Netflix Spoilerfoiler: Smartest campaign-y thing of the week from Netflix around the finale of that bloody series about meth. Smart because a) it’s a good idea; and b) because it’s totally ripped off from this by some woman earlier in the year which I seem to recall I mentioned on Web Curios and which means that I am basically responsible for the Netflix thing on some level.
• Minecraft OS Maps: Second smartest thing of the week comes from Ordnance Survey, who used their map data to recreate the UK in Minecraft. Tapping into a massive geek phenomenon is helpful fashion (the maps are downloadable and playable for users who feel that way inclined)=massive internetgeeknews. LEARN.
• Not Really Internetty But Still Brilliant: So this really is wonderful. A vending machine-centric stunt by chocolate people Milka, whose vending machine which requires people to form human chains to activate is just *lovely*, and contains so much remarkable INSIGHT that somewhere a planner is reclining on cushions made of pure gold and being fed chocolate grapes for eternity. 
• Remember What I Said About Buzzfeed and Politics Last Week?: No, of course you don’t, you weren’t paying attention. Anyway, this is what I meant.

Literally no idea who this is by, sorry

MUSIC! HAVE A BREAKUP-INSPIRED HIPHOP MIXTAPE BY SOME BLOKE!

A Selection Of Finds From Across The Internet Which This Week I Am Writing Up In Slightly Hurried Fashion Due To Having A Lot Of Things To Do Including Another Wedding This Afternoon Which I Didn’t Mention Up There Because Even I’m Bored Of Me Whining About This Stuff But Really How Many Nuptials Must One Man Attend In A Year (Rhetorical), Pt 1:

• Sh1t PR Ideas: You will have seen this already, I am sure, but it is SO SO TRUE. Although possibly needs more social media wankery.
• The History Of The Internet In Timeline Form: More the techy stuff than the ‘oh look, so that’s when grumpy cat became famous’ stuff, but still interesting – a nicely arranged look at the major milestones in the development of the web, with reasonable annotations and links and stuff. I imagine if you are a teacher this might be useful, but also just generally interesting as a sort of ‘this is how we got where we are oh god how did it get so bleak after all our early optimism’ sort of way. 
• Smart Christmas Lights: I am no particular fan of Christmas (I know, I know, but it’s organised fun and I abhor organised fun – yep, I really am that much of an horrendous curmudgeon), but these look BRILLIANT. Smart LED lighting, with companion app technology which lets you pick any colour from the spectrum at any point for them to display, allows programmable cycling, linking of multiple sets, and all that sort of geeky stuff which might make you care. They’re made in Australia and come out soon, and I really want to put some all over my house and cycle through the most upsetting colours in the spectrum whilst a choir of sinister children sing carols, backwards, at my flatmates. I won’t do that, though, largely as rereading that sentence has made me temporarily question my own sanity. 
• Slowmo Video On The New iPhone: There was a new iPhone launched last week, in case you missed that fact (you didn’t). Apparently it now lets you shoot video in HD slowmo – this is a short video showcasing that, and should serve as an example to all community managers who can jazz up their moribund content calendars with some suitable and brand-linked slow-motion VT. How about this, Dulux – watch paint dry in slow motion! It’s brilliant, I know. That’ll be £500 – ta. 
• Intel Is Bringing Us The Robot Companion We Have Longed For: This is still all very prototype-y, so may never come about at all, but the people at everyone’s favourite (the only one anyone’s ever heard of) chip manufacturer Intel are working on a modular robot which, the theory is, will be printable on home 3d printers and the software for which can be downloaded and manipulated. So, effectively, this is the first step in a process which will see any alienated, dysfunctional middle-class teen with access to the internet and 3d printing make their own army of semi-sentient killing machines in their basement. GREAT! Obviously I am being hyperbolic, and this is simply ushering in an era of us all having a ‘plastic pal who’s fun to be with‘ – you would be a fool and an alarmist communist to think anything other. 
• A Map Of Female ‘Easyness’: Havcing done a bit of digging around this I *think* it might be ‘satire’, but nevertheless it’s sort of jaw-droppingly awful. The key did make me laugh, though, I must confess. 
• Notezilla: Interactive, clickable sheet music. A very clever learning aid for anyone who’s looking to get their head around this sort of thing. 
• The Command-Prompt Radio Player: completely pointless, as most of my favourite things are, this is a Soundcloud hack which replaces the traditional, modern, user-friendly interface with a command-line alternative straight out of 1993. No reason at all that I can see other than sheer bloody-mindedness, but if you’re of a certain age this will send powerful waves of nostalgia washing over you.
• PinSex: This may have been around for ages, I have no clue, but I stumbled across it this week (no, really, I did!) and it made me laugh (not a euphemism) – mainly due to the shameless nature of the way in which this Pinterest-for-pr0n (for that is what this is) is designed. Totally NSFW in any way shape or form – it is BONGO CENTRAL, ladies and gents. I am guessing that the user stats are probably skewed towards men rather more than Pinterest.
• Bicycle Built For 2000: 2,000 random internet users, recorded singing that ‘Daisy, Daisy’ song, and arranged online. INCREDIBLY creepy – but also interesting in terms of how they were recruited (via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service) and where they’re from and stuff. I wouldn’t play this as your children’s lullaby, mind. 
• Sex Lexis: Basically Urban Dictionary but for sex, this is a website which collects information about the meaning of English-language terms for sexual acts in one place. In no way prurient, it’s strangely buttoned-up but also fascinating – 5 minutes on here and you will learn a lot of new phrases for things that you potentially didn’t even know that people actually did or said – feak, for example? Really?
• Postcards from Google Earth: I’m slightly in love with these. A gorgeous collection of glitched-out shots from Google Earth, arranged as hi-res screencaps in traditional postcard size. No real reason for them, but they please me immoderately. 
• Morrissey Christmas Jumpers: I’m genuinely sorry for mentioning the C-word in September. Think of it as getting in early. Anyway, this is a website celebrating that annoying trope which is the HILARIOUSLY TASTELESS CHRISTMAS JUMPER (can you all just stop, please? It’s boring and mass-market and played out). but with Morrissey on them. They are available for sale. Some of you – you know who you are – will find this pant-wettingly brilliant.
• Another Week, Another Webcomic: This one’s called Decrypting Rita, it’s cyberpunky and rather nicely written, and the art-style is (I think) lovely. Enjoy. 
• Spirograph!: This is brilliant (and a bit pointless). A little webtoy that does Spirograph except without the tedium and broken pencils and missing gears and the crying and inevitable feeling of disappointment when you just make a big smudgy mess. You can fiddle with the settings to make different stuff, and the results are strangely lovely. HB Pencils, or maybe Crayola – rip this off NOW and turn it into a Facebook app. Go on, do it. 
• Genius Terrible Inventions: I have no idea who is behind this, but this they are a genius. The toothbrush alone is patent-worthy. 
• What People Watch Where On YouTube: Very interesting tool to compare popular YouTube videos RIGHT NOW in different countries. This allows you to select a country and see what the most-watched videos of the moment are, which other countries have similar tastes to them, and which videos people there are watching that noone else is looking at. This is the sort of thing that will provide a near-bottomless repository of totally spurious ‘insights’ with which to persuade clients to spend money on a 90-second clip of a dancing cat or somesuch – you can thank me later. 
• California Law Lets Kids Erase Their Digital History: This is potentially HUGE, and weirdly underreported. As of 2015, California law will require web companies to listen to and comply with requests from minors to remove content about them from the internet. OK, so it’s riddled with holes and flaws (how you do apply this if the servers are elsewhere? Oh, whoops, the people drafting this don’t actually understand the internet!), and it only applies to self-created content (so you can ask FB to take down that appalling status update about how high you were aged 15, but not the video of you self-penetrating with your ex’s toothbrush which your best friend kindly chucked on Vine), but as a test case this is very much worth watching. 
• The Winners of the Google Science Fair: Read this and realise that there are teenagers now living who are smarter than you will ever be. Simultaneously brilliant and depressing; these kids are SO IMPRESSIVE, though, and will give you a momentary glow of hope for the future of the human race (until you realise that you will still die old and alone). 
• Jurassic Park / Dr Seuss: Models of dinosaurs made up to look like characters from Dr Seuss. No real reason for this that I can see, but why would there be? JUST ENJOY IT!
• MapDive: This was presented by Google at one of their keynotes in May this year, but I don’t think was playable to the public until now (anyway, what do I care – the internet is not a race, after all (it totally is)). Anyway, this is a game/hack using Google Earth / Maps data to create a fun little playable sjydiving game which will be sort of familiar to anyone who ever played Pilotwings on the SNES. Enjoyable, and very nicely coded. 
• The Naked Scare House: So ‘Haunted Houses’ have been a thing in the US for a few years now, and have yet to translate to the UK for reasons I don’t entireky understand but am actually sort of happy about. Basically the premise is that organisers create a sort of immersive theatrical experience for people who want to have a really, really deeply unpleasant evening – these can involve physical and verbal abuse, borderline torture scenarios, and, in one memorable account I read, being buried alive (do read that link, seriously – WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!?!). Anyway, this lets you have all the scare-based fun in the world, but…er…naked. Because why not?
• 300 Sandwiches: This is a blog by a woman who a) has convinced herself that her boyfriend will propose to her after she has made 300 sandwiches for him; and b) obviously thinks there’s a book deal in this. I really, really hope that he ends their relationship when he’s done eating – the sandwiches look lovely though, and there’s a lot of good stuff in here for foodies – just don’t read the ‘about’ bit unless you want to get irrationally angry about all sorts of genderpolitical issues thrown up by the project.
• The National Selfie Gallery Comes To London: Art week is almost upon us – calloo, callay, etc. I do rather love art week – it’s actually lots better than Fashion Week for people watching, particularly at Frieze opening night which is the only place I’ve ever seen actual people wearing couture in the wild (so to speak). Anyway, this is one of the NYC galleries coming to London to flog their wares in mid-October who are presenting an exhibition based around the concept of the selfie – there are so many potential ideacues for certain brands here (anyone cosmetic-related, for example) that I can’t really be bothered to do your creative work for you. Just think., ok? Jesus.
• Hometown:  A truly lovely photoproject from the New York Times, which collects pictures by American teenagers of life in their home towns. Gives a thumping reminder of how massively BIG the US is, and how culturally diverse – I would be fascinated to see this replicated for India, China, Russia and other megapopulous nations. The UK would, let’s be honest, just be a little less interesting.
• Another Colour Website For Designers: This is called ‘Colourhexa’, and gives information about colours – complementary shades, scales, etc. Probably only useful for designers / developers, but maybe also if you’re decorating the spare room and want to minimise the arguments you’ll have over the best match for that particular shade of duck egg blue you’ve chosen for the spare room (KILL ME NOW). 
• Casual Misogyny On A Friday!: This website is called ‘Return of Kings’, and is a men’s interest ‘magazine’ for (as far as I can tell) the PUA community. It’s just HORRIBLE, but strangely compelling at the same time. I don’t really know why I’m linking to this other than to share the pain that I experienced when reading some of the stuff on here. It’s slightly embarrassing being a man sometimes. 

By Jeremy Olson

MUSIC! HAVE DELTRON 3030’s LONG-AWAITED (BY ME) 2nd ALBUM!

A Selection Of Finds From Across The Internet Which This Week I Am Writing Up In Slightly Hurried Fashion Due To Having A Lot Of Things To Do Including Another Wedding This Afternoon Which I Didn’t Mention Up There Because Even I’m Bored Of Me Whining About This Stuff But Really How Many Nuptials Must One Man Attend In A Year (Rhetorical), Pt 2:

• I Love The Civil Service: I had a brief and very ill-fated/considered stint working at DWP a few years ago. Jesus, it was bleak. Anyway, this image, captured at the Foreign Office at Open House last weekend, neatly encapsulates the wonderment of our very own bureaucratic clusterfcuk.
• Minimalist Philosophy Designs: Philosophical precepts given the minimalist book cover treatment. Gorgeous designs, and if you too spent 3 years at university smoking marijuana and attending approximately 6 hours of tuition a week you will find these reminiscence-inducing.
• The Hackalizer: If you are an engineer or a DIY-er or just a bit of a construction geek, this will rapidly become your new favourite website. A new tip every day designed to make life easier – each of which requires a degree of effort and technical ability which is frankly baffling to me. My mate Tom will LOVE this (hello, Tom!). 
• The 7 Deadly Sins, Visualised: By Spanish designer Jose Bernaba. I think ‘Lust’ is particularly fine. 
• Buy Stuff Off That Meth Show: Blah blah blah best TV show EVER blah pinnacle of the medium blah blah blah. Anyway, if you’re into it you can bid for ACTUAL REAL-LIFE PROPS (is that an oxymoron?) from the programme to grace your very own home. 
• Crowdfunded Funerals: Wow, this is actually a thing. You can, it transpires, submit your own or a loved one’s funeral or memorial service to this website and raise money for the send-off of dreams. I’m in two minds about this – on the one hand, I’m sort of glad that it exists; on the other, there’s something so, so sad about the fact that it has to. Not to mention the slightly distasteful nature of the vig placed on each fundraiser to pay the webmasters’ mortgages. Hey ho. 
• The Woman Who Inspired Jessica Rabbit: No, not Veronica Lake – this lady. All the faded Golden Era glamour you will need today, and a salutory reminder of the transitory nature of the fame monkey. Hear that, Miley?
• Tintin In Scotch: Tintin’s first adventure, The Dark Isle, rewritten in the style of Irvine Welsh (not actually in the style of Irvine Welsh, obviously – there’s no asphyxosex or casual violence that I can see) with PROPER SCOTS VOICES. Kind of brilliant, and will give a warm glow to anyone who ever read Oor Wullie. 

• Learn To Code (again) With Bentobox: Another week, another ‘hey, you too can make millions from your own revolutionary web-based project after just a few weeks of cursory nibbling at the edges of learning!’ website (clue: you can’t). Anyway, this one’s called Bentobox and is actually rather well put together- also links to loads of other stuff which is sueful in the same space, so worth checking out if it’s still on your list of ‘things I wanted to do in 2013 but didn’t quite get round to’.
• Pictures Of BodyBuilders: To those of you who have never met me, this is basically what I look like. Except less mahogany, obviously. 
• Short Films Featuring Beautiful People: Beautiful series of short films (very short) featuring gorgeous people doing…things…It’s quite hard to describe, but there’s a series of Dogme-esque rules in play here which govern the composition of each short, and some rather nice animation / FX work going on around the beauty. Seriously, though, there’s something almost uncomfortable about looking so closely about people who look like this. It feels a bit odd. 
• The 2013 Beard & Moustache Championships: These took place a few weeks ago in the US, and the photos are AMAZING. As a man whose ability to grow facial hair is comparable to that of a 13 year old, I am immoderately jealous of these men. 
• The Constitutions Project: The constitutions of the world’s nations, searchable and comparable online. Interesting and useful and you could lose HOURS in here making up your own constitution for the governance of your theoretical nation state. Or maybe that’s just me – Mattistan will be a utopian paradise, though, should anyone with a spare island be reading. 
• Misandrist Lullabies: These are brilliant – and, as a man, really quite unnerving. Gentlemen – read these and then imagine every single woman you interact with this weekend secretly thinking these lines and BE AFRAID. 
• I Think We May Have Reached Peak HTML Page Design: I can’t quite work out whether this is technically impressive or just an awful, busy mess – probably both, to be honest. 
• Where’s Your Money?: I occasionally do this thing, when I remember, of writing my phone number on banknotes with a bland exhortation to get in touch and tell me who you are. I now have a dozen or so Facebook ‘friends’ who I’ve met this way, and it’s curiously pleasing to have brief conversations on the phone with (inevitably drunk) strangers who just so happen to have handled the same currency as you. Anyway, this is a website that does much the same thing but with no need to hand out important personal information to a nation of strangers, which is probably better.
• Pen & Ink Drawings Of Muslim Prayer Carpets: Jonathan Bréchignac makes large drawings of Muslim prayer carpets using ballpoint pens. It takes him up to 8 months to finish one drawing. I think Jonathan may be a touch *strange*, but these are incredible. 
• The Maddest Thing You Will See All Week: I don’t mean mad in the sort of ‘wacky’ way – I mean in the sort of gimlet-sharp, starey, lunatic way. Click on this link, and keep clicking and then have a think about how deep it goes and then get a little bit scared. Just mental.
• Mapping Country Metaphors: This website tracks metaphors people make about countries or regions – you know, Cumbria is the Syria of the UK and stuff like that. Not particularly well-made, but actually really interesting if you dig a little bit.
• The Best Worst Website I’ve Seen In Ages: RJ Greengard is an industrial painter and his website is Flash-heavy and quite incredible. It also quite possibly hasn’t been updated in a couple of decades. 
• Games Part 1: Pong is like pinterest but for online games. It will EAT YOUR AFTERNOON. As will…
• Games Part 2: Retro games, again all browser-playable. An INCREDIBLE selection which includes Metal Slug and which cost me a large chunk of Tuesday. You’re welcome.
•  

THE CIRCUS OF TUMBLRS:

• The Swinging 60s: Just a great collection of pics from the 60s. No more, no less. 
• The 2 Heads Gallery: Curated by G Bernard, this is just a gorgeous collection of photography, mostly in black and white. Mildly NSFW in parts, but not in a way that should upset any but the most prudish of employers.
• Pr0n Comments On Instagram Pics: Juxtaposing the trenchant commentary of the commenters on the myriad of porn clip sites with the heavily-filtered photography of Instagram. Byturns amusing and just sort of sad, really. I do wonder what motivates people to write this sort of stuff after finishing a (one hopes) pleasing session of self-love. 
• Newspaper Blackout: I love this so much. A tumblr collection of examples of blackout art – that is, works which take the printed page and their starting point and then black out the text leaving only a few remaining words visible and creating a sort of combined textual/visual poetry. I could read this stuff for HOURS. Also, they take submissions – go make your own.
• What The Hell, Facebook Ads?: Collecting the most WTF?-y examples of Facebook advertising. People choose to promote some very, very odd things. 
• Windows High As Fcuk: I don’t really know what to make of this. It’s weird.
• Goppelldangers: Nell Frizzell dresses up as famous people and takes photos of the result. 
• Carved Crayons: No, really, that’s exactly what these are. Seriously impressive work. 
• This Is Not An Insight: As alluded to above, all the best insight and analysis from Social Media Week London in one place. All the better due to my friend Aden’s appearance on it. YOU GURU, ADEN!

By Meghan Howland

LONG THINGS WHICH ARE LONG BUT DUE TO THE WORRYINGLY RAPID PASSING OF TIME THIS MORNING ARE ONLY GOING TO GET A FLEETING EXPLANATION FOR WHICH SINCERE APOLOGIES BUT, YOU KNOW, I HAVE A SODDING WEDDING TO GET TO AS I MAY HAVE MENTIONED UP THERE:

• I Was A Hipster Meme: One man’s account of what it was like when a picture of him in Central Park became a popular culture shorthand for hipster douchery. Interesting and sad and may make you think a little more about who the person is in the funny picture that you are sharing with your friends for mockery purposes (it won’t though, will it? Jesus, you people).
• Cracking One Off On The Subway: I’m not sure if this is the sort of journalism Cosmo would have punted out a decade ago – I detect a certain ‘We Wish We Were Vice’ vibe (excuse the pun) about the piece. Anyway, this is a very funny account by Anna Breslaw of her attempt to masturbate on the NYC subway, as recommended by some rubbish self-help book or another. No idea about the finer points of this, what with being a man and all, but it made me laugh LOTS. 
• Why Nickelback Are Rich: Noone likes them, they don’t care – BECAUSE THEY HAVE ALL THE MONEY. Contains the oh-so-depressing line “They have applied 100 percent corporate efficiency to rock ’n’ roll. It’s so cool to see.” This may well be the day on which the music died.
• Doing Your Kid’s Homework For A Week: As a childless (to the best of my knowledge, anyway) man I have no idea how accurate this is – nonetheless, this account of a parent’s attempt to do the same amount of at-home work as his daughter is frankly terrifying. Is this the same in the UK, parents? I never did homework as a kid (no really) and I turned out fi…oh.
• The Zero Hours Future: The best piece of writing I read all week, this is a scifi short imagining the day in the life of one zero hours labourer 10 years hence. Really well written and full of incredibly believable details – do read, please, it will make you think.
• Obligatory Reddit Thread of the Week: 60 year old Redditors dispense advice to the younger generations. Terrifying – from what I can tell, my future is going to be full of pain. 
• Working At The Genius Bar: Helping people like you unfcuk their Apple devices sounds like no fun at all, frankly. 
• What It’s Like Being On ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’: Brilliant piece of writing about the experience of being on a high-stakes gameshow. You will get a bit sweaty-palmed just reading, I promise. 
• Second Life After 10 Years: Jesus, it’s only been 10 years? Anyway, this is a look at Linden Labs’ oft-forgotten virtual world and the people who still hang out there. Interesting for a variety of reasons, and also contains a mention of LAMBDAMOO which made me happy and reminded me of this book, My Tiny Life, which is still by far and away the best piece of social research and analysis into the dynamics of online communities that I have ever read. 
• A History of Myst: More nostalgia – for some of you I am sure that Myst brings back all sorts of memories. Get all nostalgic, go on.
• LONG Joss Whedon Interview: If you like the man’s work, you will LOVE this. Actually very interesting insight into the man’s creative inspirations, amongst other things. 
• Horse_ebooks Fooled Us All: I think I first wrote about this in January 2012…and now the big reveal that it was an art project. Which frankly shouldn’t be seen as weird or upsetting, as this piece points out. Anyway, if you’re into internetty culturestuff this is all rather interesting, as is this chat with the people behind the whole thing. As is this, which is another one of their projects and which I can safely say after spending an hour with it last night is brain-fryingly odd an a lot deeper than it at first appears. 

By Jessica Harrison

NOW, FINALLY, MOVING PICTURES AND SOUNDS!:
1) This is called Nuance – it’s a digitally enhanced dance project and it’s probably the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all week. Mesmerising: 

2) Although this runs it a close second. It’s done the rounds quite a lot this week, and rightly so, so apologies if its old hat, but the combination of projection mapping and realtime movement is HUGELY impressive – the implications for theatre and dance and performance art overall are very exciting, and you can imagine Punchdrunk doing something really cool with this next time out (as an aside, if you’ve yet to see The Drowned Man yet then do get tickets – it’s wonderful):

3) This is The Smiths’ ‘Please, Please Please, Let Me Get What I Want’, cut with a selection of infomercials. It’s AMAZING, for reasons I can’t quite explain. You will either laugh or cry, but you won’t be left unmoved:

4)  Sexual violence against women in India has been getting a lot of attention this year; this sketch by Indian comedy troupe AIB 365 looks at the attitudes behind it. Actually really quite horrible and sad, but it’s interesting to get a flavour for Indian society and culture and the way that intelligent women are reacting to culture:

5) I’m not a massive fan of this song – it’s fairly generic jump-up D’n;B with an uninspiring female vocal over the top (though I concede it’s earwormy). The video, though, laying out a 5 year relationship in statistics, is GENIUS and will be ripped off by advertisers in literally MINUTES (oh, ok, I know that it is itself a collation of ad tropes that ave been around for ages, but it’s very very well-observed and put together):

6) Mega Plush is the best piece of animation I saw all week. Technically faultless – someone give this man a big budget. Gang war between soft toys, in hyper-HD choreographed brilliance:

By Xooang Choi

BITS OF INFORMATION WHICH LARGELY PERTAIN TO THE MAKING OF MONEY VIA THE MEDIUM OF ONLINE COMMUNICATIONS (OR THE PEDDLING OF SNAKE OIL – FEEL FREE TO CALL THIS WHATEVER YOU WANT, TO BE HONEST, AS I AM PAST THE POINT OF CARING) ARRANGED IN A CAREFREE FASHION WITH NO APPARENT TAXONOMICAL GUIDELINES BECAUSE, WELL, BECAUSE I CAN:

• How Machine Learning Will Make Glass Useful (and the future a terrifying dystopian nightmare): I’m starting with this one largely because it sort of scared the bejesus out of me, and in the spirit of SHARING I want it to scare the bejesus out of you too. Maybe everyone else had thought of this stuff already, but this piece about how machine learning (that is, pattern recognition, etc) will be applied to Google Glass is properly scary. The bits at the end about the tech being able to automatically detect when a user is looking at, say, a human face or something – HUGELY CREEPY for so many reasons. Not least the censorship / control stuff – let’s hope that wearable tech never takes off (and maybe that we all decide that everything past, say, bulletin boards was actually a terrible mistake and we go back to 1998 when everything was safe and we were young and my hair wasn’t falling out in clumps and my skin had the lustre of youth and OH MY GOD I FEEL SO OLD). 
• Glass For Fashion: Seeing as we’re talking about it, and seeing as it was Fashion Week this week (impossible to miss – were aliens to have taken a cursory glance at media this week they would have been reasonably convinced that all we cared about were unfeasibly tall, skinny women wearing moderately ridiculous clothes, and videogames), this piece is about some Glass hacks which pertain particularly to fashion. Some clever ideas here, and if you think about them enough they almost make you forget the scary machine learning horror of the last link. Think of it as a mental palate-cleanser. 
• Google Does Health: Just FYI, really – the CLEVER PEOPLE are looking into the healthcare market and pumping money into research to preemptively sort out the problems of 20 years hence. Do you know why they are doing this? SO THAT WE WILL NEVER DIE AND THEREFORE CAN BE SOLD ADVERTISING FOREVER. Trufact.
• Watch YouTube Videos Offline: Come November, YouTube will let people watch videos offline for a short period. Details are sketchy, but I presume it will mean short-term downloads of stuff. Anyway, there’s the potential for some clever usage of this – I quite like the idea of fourth wall-breaking allusions to where something is being watched, or the creation of videos that are designed to be watched solely on the Tube, say. It’s probably a dreadful idea, though. 
• Subway Dress: What’s the most Fashion Week thing you can think of? THAT’S RIGHT! Hypercalorific fast food with a strange and oddly unsettling chemical smell! Subway commissioned some designers at New York Fashion Week to design and make dresses using materials from the horrible chain restaurant. “THIS IS NOT INTERNETTY!”, I hear you cry…well, it sort of is, isn’t it – a prime example of someone, somewhere, thinking “Oh, ‘the internet’ (sorry Evgeny) will go nuts if we dress models up in sandwich wrappers – LET’S DO IT, and then webmongs will write about it in their webmongy blogs!”. And lo, it came to pass. 
• People Are Quitting Facebook For Reasons of Privacy: Hey look! Some research you can quote to prove to people that they should spend their money in a certain way! This is moderately interesting, although it’s also important to note that the people who are surveyed here are, like me, 30somethings. Do THE KIDS care about the privacy stuff in the same way (clue: no)?.
• Brand Pages Coming To Etsy: Crafty, folky marketplace Etsy is going to launch brand pages. I have literally no idea why this is happening, I have to say, and neither does the article I’ve linked to. Anyway, chuck this into your next presentation to any client whose target demographic is a little bit hipster. “Yeah, we’ll, like, pull together a collection of the best artisan craftsmanship to really anchor the brand identity to the craft movement, yeah?” stabstabstabstabstab.
• Pinterest Ads Are Coming: This makes a bit more sense. Again, details are a little sketchy but this seems to be planned to work by placing promoted pins in search results and category feeds – so if you work for someone selling interior design stuff or anything to do with weddings then get on this now.
• The Oddest Marketing Campaign I’ve Ever Seen For A Place: This is quite bizarre. Canadian island province Nova Scotia is promoting itself via a campaign which purports to be for a phone and then turns out to be for…er…a place. Leaving aside what they thought the link was between people who’d stumble across a phone called ‘Pomegranate’ and people who’d want to go to a snowy, cold, remote destination, you will finish this wanting the phone quite a lot, but feeling relatively ambivalent about Canada. The website’s quite nice, though – click on ‘release date’ for the big reveal.
• The Specsavers Crime Novel: I do rather like this, though. Specsavers is running a campaign whereby they’ve commissioned some (fairly big name) crime authors to pen a series of tales based on fragments of plot suggestions sourced from the wider world through Twitter, etc. Apparently this is borne out of the ‘insight’ that ‘people realise their eyes are a bit messed up when they struggle to read’ – I love the way agencies do that! – which is obviously a bit tenuous, and frankly the benefit to Specsavers here is somewhat unclear, but there’s something really rather nice about how people are engaging with the concept online. Check out the Twitter search – it’s actually rather cool. 
• Beer Brand Blocks Mobile Signal: I was in Regent’s Park the other week and was talking to someone about how long it would be before places with signalblocking fields would become an attractive thing – you know, the opportunity for proper disconnection, etc (actually, that’s quite a nice gimmick for a venue – signal near the entrance, where you can wait for others, text them to say you’ve arrived, etc, fading to no signal in the back where you head when you just want to talk to an actual person, face-to-face). Anyway, this beer brand’s made a beer holder thingy that blocks mobile signals within 1.5 metres, doubtless due to some total bollocks ‘INSIGHT’ that people want to drink their beer without interruptions from their phones (you know what, if they want that then they can TURN THE THINGS OFF). Cute, although KitKat did it with benches a year or so back, so no giant FIRST! award for these people.
• 240+ Slides on ‘Native Advertising’: This is FAR TOO LONG, but actually quite a useful read – basically it’s a whole rationalisation of why it’s really important for brands to do editorial partnerships with Buzzfeed. Obviously there’s a bit more to it than that, but effectively that’s the big takeout. 
• 160+ Slides on THE FUTURE OF MARKETING!: Again, far too long (why it couldn’t have been a Word doc escapes me), but not totally stupid and contains several examples of sensible stuff on brand behaviour online, etc, which you can lift – helpfully, it’s written in gratingly corporate language which means you can seamlessly integrate large swathes of it into your next meaningless presentation.
• Significantly Less Slides On What ‘Digital’ Is: This, on the other hand, really is quite smart. Clever overview of what digital is within an agency / organisation – if you have anything to do with running or growing digital business within a company this is probably worth a quick look. It’s much shorter than the previous ones, I promise.
• The Gif Is Dead: The United States Committee on Energy and Commerce has made this. I’m actually quite impressed with the creativity – you wait until the next election where EVERYTHING gets presented in Buzzfeed-style gif format. Including the manifestos. Seriously, you could actually start making these now. Labour, have this for free – “when the coalition first got into power, we were all like [INSERT RELEVANT ‘HUMOROUS’ REACTION SHOT OF SOMEONE LOOKING INCREDULOUS] and then they started with that austerity stuff and we were all like [INSERT RELEVANT ‘HUMOROUS’ REACTION SHOT OF AN INDIGNANT LOOKING CAT]…etc…etc…and that’s why we’re going to vote Labour – because AIN’T NONE OF US GOT TIME FOR THAT! [INSERT EMBEDDED SWEET BROWN VIDEO]”. You may think I’m joking, but I am TOTALLY going to be resurrecting this post come 2015.
• The Living Piano: I really, really like this. Simple and well-done and strangely happymaking. Go on, steal it and make it tawdry and horrible. GO ON. 

By James Blair for National Geographic

SOOTHING MUSIC INSPIRED BY THAT VERY POPULAR TV SHOW ABOUT THE DRUG DEALER!​

SOME THINGS I HAVE FOUND ON THE INTERNET THIS WEEK OH GOD I HAVE JUST LOOKED AT THE LIST AND I REALLY, REALLY NEED TO APPLY A LITTLE MORE EDITORIAL RIGOUR TO THIS OTHERWISE I’M GOING TO HAVE TO START WRITING IT ON TUESDAYS IF I’M GOING TO GET IT OUT ON FRIDAY LUNCHTIMES, PT. 1:

• A Small Piece Of Very ‘This Is The Future’ Graffiti From Twitter: Go on, save this in your ‘pics I am going to use in a presentation about digital sooner rather than later’ folder. I know you want to. 
• No-upload Image Hosting: This is quite clever, and also quite a convenient idea. Snag.gy is, as far as I can tell, a service which allows online image hosting with no upload or account – you can just cut & paste an image onto the webpage, whereby it will MAGICALLY APPEAR with its own shareable URL. Quite good for a variety of purposes, some of them potentially nefarious…
• Minimalist Football Team Logos: Some of these work better than others, but there’s something quite cool about the concept. You can make your own joke about Jonny Ive / Apple – I’ll just wait here til you’ve finished (judging you). 
• This Is What It Looks Like When Insects Bite You: Entomophobes, I suggest you don’t click this one. Photographer Alex Wild specialises in taking pictures of insects in superHD close-up. This is a selection of pictures of those insects feeding from him. Even if you’re not entomophobic you’ll probably wince a bit, particularly at the ones of the massive pincers quite clearly embedded in skin. They’re technically awesome photos, though, honest – I fear I’ve put everyone off now, sorry.
• Dating for Ghosts: As far as I can tell, this is just something that someone knocked up for fun, but there’s a surprising amount of depth to it for a single-serving joke site. Purporting to be a dating site for the ectoplasmic, it’s strangely compelling. A bit of digging revealed it to be one of a series of websites built for no visible purpose by some 39 year old mormon bloke – there may well be WEIRD religiosity buried in there somewhere.
• Hugely Impressive Origami: I know that these come around comparatively often, but these really *are* spectacular, not just for the technical execution but also for the imagination behind some of the designs. Also, there’s an origami poo – if at least one of you doesn’t spend the afternoon hiding by the printers and secretly using reams of A4 to try and recreate it I will be VERY disappointed.
• Posters For Villains: Scroll down a bit and you will find some great posters of film villains with apposite quotes. In fact the rest of the work on there’s pretty good too – take a look.
• Great Fashion Week Webwork: This is excellent, and a really good example of webdesign. The New York Times fashion editor’s picks of the catwalk shows, arranged in a beautiful, navigable way. I particularly like the thematic annotations beneath each fashion house’s selection, and the way the hover-over works (I really hope I’ve used semi-recognisable terminology there, as otherwise that last sentence was largely incomprehensible). 
• Totally Pointless But Rather Lovely: Move your mouse around. Then click, and HOLD. Keep holding. It’s lovely and will properly relax you, I promise. 
• Decals For Escalators: It’s boring and cliche to talk, as a Londoner, about the unique anger inspired by people standing on the left on escalators (but OH MY GOD IT’S INFURIATING WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU DO YOU HAVE NO SELF-AWARENESS AT ALL YOU SELFISH GITS?) – instead, let’s all quietly get behind this wonderful design innovation by Yoni Alter and make it happen.
• Drawing on Skin: Not tattoos, just ink drawings, but incredibly impressive technique. Maybe one of you who wants a tattoo can get this person to do the sketches? Go on. Get Thom Yorke on your left thigh, you know you want to.
• Man Makes Infographic For Own Wedding: In fairness, it’s sort of what he does, but I’m still quite unsure about this. It’s maybe just a little bit too internet for its own good. Is that unfair? Am I a loveless curmudgeon? Quite possibly, BUT I DON’T CARE. 
• YouTube Doubler: Tool to create YouTube mashups. Actually quite good, in a low-tech, ugly sort of way. The one linked to is a good example of how it works – community managers, that’s your Friday afternoon sorted. 
• Looney Tunes Characters Made Of Typography: Erm, that, basically. Very nicely done, though, and were it not for the horrific rights / licensing issues, the sort of thing which would make a nice ad campaign for….er…something which I can’t at present quite identify but which I’m sure will come to me this afternoon in some sort of crap esprit de l’escalier moment. Oh well. 
• Folding Is Like SETI But For Biology: Everyone should sign up to this. Much in the same way as SETI did with SETI@home, coopting the processing power of home computers to help the agency find aliens, this project aims to use collective computational resources to conduct data-intensive research into protein folding – the rearranging of proteins which, when it goes wrong, is a major cause of serious illness. I think that there should be a corporate charter thingy where large companies all sign up to this stuff automatically. Go on, WPP, BE THE CHANGE (ahahahahaha).
• Wikipedia’s Guide To Internet Phenomena: A wikipedia page listing some of the biggest memes of recent years. If, like me, you spend far too much time looking at this sort of stuff this will be a lovely trip down memory lane full of nostalgia and long-forgotten earworms. By no means comprehensive (Y NO SCUMBAG STEVE?), but interesting – and actually potentially useful for any students of web culture, or people who want to see if they can define any common themes in what’s memeworthy (good luck with that, though).
• Symmetrical People: Photograher Julian Wolkenstein takes portrait photos of people and then mirrors their faces on both sides. The results are as unsettling and borderline-creepy as you might expect.
• Add Cookie Monster To Everything: Like that ‘Add Ryan Gosling to every website’ website from the start of the year, except with Cookie Monster. Surely there must be a fairly easy script which can make these on demand? Go on, make one for me (I keep on writing stuff like this – it NEVER happens. God you’re cruel).
• Star Trek Next Generation vs Old School: A slightly odd project, largely because of the volume of pics and the quality of the photoshoppery – someone has taken the time to drop a load of characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation into stills from the original Shatner vehicle. No idea why – fans are STRANGE – but they’re actually rather well done. 
• Miniature Pop Culture Paintings on Coins: Yes, I know this was on Us vs Th3m, LEAVE ME ALONE. Anyway, technically marvellous miniature pictures of pop culture icons painted onto coins. Does this mess with their status as legal tender? If not there’s a variety of ways in which you can take this as *ahem* inspiration for campaigns…
• Generating Utopia: Interesting project creating shifting 3d maps of cities based on 4sq checkins. Its high concept is to imagine what cities would look like if their topography responded to a resident’s activity (leave out what it would look like, it would be TERRIFYING) – watch the video and read the blurb, it’s very clever indeed in an artytechcity sort of way.
• Sylvia Plath In Comic Form: Another week, another link to Zen Pencils, whose work continues to impress. This time it’s a piece from Plath’s The Bell Jar, illustrated in poignant fashion. WARNING – it’s Plath, so unlikely to make you feel all that sunny and warm.
• Multicolour Search for Flickr: Really clever search engine. Choose upto 5 colours, choose how much of each you want, and hit ‘search’ – the page then trawls Flickr for pictures that best match the colours and proportions you requested. Also it only searches Creative Commons images, so it’s properly useful too.
•  The Encyclopaedia of Life: Huge and incredible resource which effectively acts like Wikipedia but for biology. The world’s flora and fauna, classified and arranged into a website. I had NO IDEA that this even existed until yesterday – things like this are why the internet is wonderful. If you have kids who are interested in animals and nature and stuff, this might be a useful thing to plug them into for a while.
• Favimon – Pokemon With Websites: Erm, yes, that. Pick a web url and this site turns it into a Pokemon-type creature and lets you battle other websites. No idea why you’d want to do this, but Pokemon are still REALLY popular (no, really). My brother met his fiancee thanks to Pokemon, and they’re moving to Canada to live happily ever after, so it MUST be a good thing.
• Code The Star Wars Opening Text: You’ve probably got a small window where this is ok to do. This website gives you step-by-step instructions on how to code the whole ‘A long time ago…’ scrolling text from the start of the Star Wars films. Brands – noone wants to see your ‘funny’ takes on this (or at least I don’t).
• Meowmania: This week’s frivolous cat-related website. Click for cats and meows. Funnier than it ought to be.
• Picasso Superheroes: Your favourite superheroes as they would have appeared had they been drawn by stumpy Spanish genius (has he ever been so dismissively described? Sorry, Pablo) Picasso. Also the website of a very talented graphic designer who might sell the prints to you if you ask nicely.
• USB Condoms: Oh, the future, you give us so much. I had not even begun to imagine why such things will be necessary, but one day they will be – these are devices which will protect your device’s data integrity when you plug it into a ‘strange’ USB port. Makes perfect sense as we move towards a world in which we will use more and more public / shared USBs, but it’s also a bit sad.
• Dreamspace: A clever, well-written little dystopian cyberpunk webcomic with some very nice artwork and gif-y animation. Takes about 5 minutes, and it’s really rather nicely made.

By Robert Longo

A 200-SONG MASHUP BY SOME BLOKE CALLED MELKER!

SOME THINGS I HAVE FOUND ON THE INTERNET THIS WEEK OH GOD I HAVE JUST LOOKED AT THE LIST AND I REALLY, REALLY NEED TO APPLY A LITTLE MORE EDITORIAL RIGOUR TO THIS OTHERWISE I’M GOING TO HAVE TO START WRITING IT ON TUESDAYS IF I’M GOING TO GET IT OUT ON FRIDAY LUNCHTIMES, PT. 2:

• Google Mechview: Have you ever wondered what the world would look like as seen through the cockpit of a giant mechanical robot-type thing? OH GOOD. It’s weird how much superimposing a cockpit onto Google Street View images changes the way you see them.
• The Most Hipster/Artwanker Sunglasses EVER: You will see someone wearing these soon, and you will want to hit them, but you will also secretly want to have a pair yourself and the sense of self-loathing which this will provoke in you will stay with you for several hours. 
• Crime Scenes Then And Now: This is a brilliant photoproject taking old crime-scene photos of New York and seamlessly merging them with modern photos of the same locations. Very clever idea, and incredibly well-executed.
• The Best Response To A Customer Complaint In A Restaurant I Have Seen In Ages: Just brilliant. Take a bow, Chester’s The Sticky Walnut (dreadful name, though). 
• Make Better Websites: Inspiration, should you need some, for web design. Some very nice examples on the site; worth scrolling through to see if anything catches your eye.
• Secret Images From The Stasi Archives: Incredible, and really rather sad, photographs from an upcoming book looking at the Stasi. Your first instinct will be to laugh at the disguises – you have never seen secret policemen in disguise who look quite so much like secret policemen in disguise – but the shot of the bed and the child’s toybox, and the accompanying text, is chilling. I prefer my surveillance to be faceless and inhuman, thankyou very much – thanks, NSA!
• Speaking of the NSA, Get Caught By Them!: Another one of these – this week it’s Flagger, a Chrome plugin which automatically puts trigger keywords like ‘Semtex’, ‘Jihad’, etc, into the url of any web address you visit. Which I’m sure seems really funny now, but won’t be so much of a laugh riot when you’re serving year three of your infinite sentence in virtual Gitmo. 
• Reading ALL of the Penguins: A laudable but slightly unhinged project to collect and read every single Penguin paperback of which there are 3000. MENTAL. There’s a blogpost about each book – it’s actually a great site to browse if you’re looking for new, high-calibre reading material.
• Hulk’s Essential Reading List: As is this, actually – some very good recommendations in here. 
• The Most Hipster Arts Grad Job EVER: Middle Class? Arts degree? No direction or ambition, but an overweaning sense that you deserve a good life? Oh hi, nice to meet you, we’re exactly the same. Also, you could be a book therapist, apparently. CRAZY.
• Transmit Sound Through Touch: I don’t even pretend to understand how this works, but it seems to be tech, developed by The Mouse, which lets people transmit sounds to each other through touch alone. Or indeed can transform anything into a speaker with no need for modification of the object in question. The possibilities are HUGE – although the first thing I thought of was stuff that tells you off for touching it, which is really quite sad actually. I should have a word with myself.
• Disney Princess Magazine Covers: Speaking of Disney, this made me temporarily quite angry when I found it. This is basically everything that’s wrong with female-oriented publishing / marketing – and a really horrible example of how small children get indoctrinated without anyone really noticing. 
• Slyphone: Have an iPhone? Want to take pics of people without them knowing you’re doing so? You’re probably a pervert, in that case, but you may also like the Slyphone, which is a little clip on attachment which lets the phone take pics at 90 degrees. You can get one free by interacting with them on Twitter and telling them what you’d do with the tech (I’m guessing the most likely answer, ‘upskirts’, is probably not going to get you a freebie, though). 
• Utopia: A short story told through text and sound and 8-bit animations. Rather lovely, and will only take you 5 minutes. 
• Welcome To Fear City: In the 1970s, New York was quite a crime-ridden and scary place. This pamphlet, produced by the City in 1975, is intended to scare the living bejesus out of anyoe potentially visiting the city, and makes it sound like you would die within literally seconds of leaving your hotel room. Can someone paraody this for modern London, please? Thanks.
• The Guccione Collection: The incredibly hubristic website collecting the GENIUS of pronographer and publishing magnate Bob Guccione. There’s actually a lot of really intreresting stuff on the site, but the tone’s pretty offputting. Great photography, though. Anyway, I only discovered it as a result of THIS piece on VICE, which is an eye-opening account of the alleged sexual appetites of Chuck Berry, and which I wouldn’t read whilst eating. 
• A Quite Remarkable Obituary: Wow.
• License This Picture, Turn It Into Cards, Make Millions: I will take 3% of lifetime earnings, thanks.
• Keynes For Kids: This is AWESOME, and, it appears, just done for the love of it. An introduction to everyone’s favourite economist JM Keynes, designed for kids. It’s just brilliant, and made me spend a good 20 minutes playing around on it and dimly remembering the IB Economics I did 17 years ago (OH GOD 17 YEARS). Really well designed, the content is spot on…aside from your interest or otherwise in the subject matter, it’s worth a look from a design point of view alone.
• Bicycles Made Of Lobster: No more, no less.
• A Sick But Entertaining Ragdoll Sim Game: GTAV? PAH! THIS is a torture simulation. Also, really quite worryingly fun.

By Raphael Dallaporta

A MIX COMPOSED OF VINTAGE PR0N SOUNDTRACKS!

THE CIRCUS OF TUMBLRS:

• Bad Estate Agent Photos: If you have ever looked for property in London, this will resonate unpleasantly (and yes, I know you have already seen this this week GIVE ME A BREAK). 
• Glitches: Daily glitch art. Nice, if you like that sort of thing (which I do).
• Calvin And Dune: Another week, another pop cultuer Calvin & Hobbes mashup. This week it’s text from Frank Herbert’s Dune making the strip all DARK and EXISTENTIAL and stuff. 
• Awesome Posters: It’s quite hardto glean anything about who’s behind this, but no matter – this Tumblr collects posters designed by…er…someone, and they are AWESOME. In particular, they’ve designed posters for each and every episode of Star Trek, which is mental (see mad fans comment passim) but also rather cool. 
• Men Taking Up Too Much Space On The Train: I never do this, fyi. I am a lovely commuter. 
• JS Apps Failing Horribly: This is a very, very geeky joke. Sorry.
• Daily Otter: An otter a day to lift your mood and calm your nerves.
• Poetry Mashups: you’ll have to look a bit to find them, but on this Tumblr are a selection of readings of classic poems mashed up with modern pop music. The person behind them suggests that the purpose is to highlight the lyrical quality of poetry to young people – whatever, the results are AWESOME. No, really – go and listen to Dylan Thomas vs Miley Cyrus (I am not shitting you) and then feel your world change forever. 
• Things In Charlotte’s Mouth: I have literally NO IDEA.
• Bartkira: Akira + The Simpsons = this. One for you, Adam. 
• Sad Desk Lunch: Images of depressing food eaten at the desks of office monkeys. Go on, treat yourself today, you deserve it, you’ve had a long week. 
• Project Unbreakable: This has been going for a couple of years now, but the Tumblr is, I think, newish. Project Unbreakable aims to highlight issues surrounding sexual abuse and public reaction to it – it collects images of women who’ve been victims of abuse, holding cards showing things which were said to them by friends, family, the police or the perpetrator. It’s often incredibly uncomfortable, as it should be, and it will probably make you want to go and donate to these people or someone simliar. 
•  

A MIX OF MUSIC WHICH IS REALLY HAUNTINGLY BEAUTIFUL AND WHICH I RECOMMEND UNRESERVEDLY

LONG THINGS WHICH ARE LONG AND OF WHICH THERE ARE A LOT THIS WEEK SO GET A BIG POT OF TEA READY OR MAYBE SOME WHISKEY:

• Inside Nintendo’s Treehouse: An incredibly detailed look at how Nintendo make games, and the role of writers and translators in that process. Obviously if you like videogames this is going to be more interesting than if not, but the piece is actually worth reading as a more general look at the importance of integrating writers into each stage of the creative process. 
• Ladies! Control Men’s Minds With Your Vaginas!: No, really. The Hairpin (which, as a man, I think is one of the best women’s interest blogs on the internet and which I heartily recommend) takes a look at Copulins, which are basically pheremones, and how these can be used to CONTROL MEN. Just…just weird, really.
• On Being A Dominatrix: Really interesting piece on what it’s like to abuse and humiliate people for a living – or as it’s more commonly known, BEING THE CLIENT!!!! Oh God, I’m so sorry. 
• The Papal Interview: An astonishingly long and detailed interview with Pope Francis. Whether or not you are Catholic, or Christian, or religious in any way at all (or if you think that the Pope’s the leader of some giant illuminati-style paedophile ring which has been going for centuries), this is worth a skim – if nothing else, the Pope is still one of the most powerful people in the world (whatever Richard Dawkins might want) and it’s useful to know in what sort of direction he’s likely to point his several hundred million followers. Contains some positive noises on women and gays, which is A Good Thing in general. 
• Soho in 1983: Words and pictures from the seedy part of London back when it still was a bit seedy. An interesting slice of historyand OH MY GOD 1983 was 30 years ago. Jesus.
• On Jim Henson and Making Money From Art: Fascinating not only as a look at Henson’s early life and work, but also as a discussion / meditation on how artists can and should make profit from their output, and in so doing how they can avoid diminishing the quality of the work. 
• A Truly HUGE Piece On Post-Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush US Politics: Obviously if you’re in any way interested in US politics, this is a good read – even if not, though, it’s worth a look as a general look at what voters of a certain age are drawn to in terms of ideology, policy, etc, and the manner in which the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ have shifted in meaning in the past 30-odd years. 
•  The Boris Bike After The Apocalypse: A very weird piece of writing, imagining the role of Boris Bikes (well, actually Citibikes as it’s American) in a post-apocalyptic world. They do look sort of indestructible, come to think of it. 
• The Life Of Joyce: A brilliant story about how a class of schoolkids uncovered the life story of a truly remarkable 20th Century man. Read it, and then go and take a look at the website they put together archiving all the materials from the story. It’s BRILLIANT. 
• Do We Still Care About Syria?: This brilliant and slightly harrowing piece in the New Statesman is a convenient reminder of why we should, and why the whole place is such a potentially intractable mess.
• A Portrait of a 10 Year Old Girl: A wonderful portrait of what it’s like being that age and gender in a Western country – in this case Canada, but I would imagine applicable to here too. Would be fascinated to hear the thoughts of those of you with kids on this one. 
• The Cage Fighter, The Bad Debts and the Fake Death: Well this is a film waiting to be made. Also, the way the page is designed is wonderful – I love the HTML graphic novel-type panelling. 
• On Why It’s Hard Not To Look Like A Hipster As A 30 Year Old Man: Not actually long, but quite funny. My tip for avoiding this problem, incidentally, is to dress really, really badly. 
• The Poetry of the NYC Probation Department: This is a collection of verse by employees and clients of the New York City Probation Department. Some of it’s tripe, admittedly, but there are some genuinely affecting pieces in there and I am very much in favour of the idea (not that anyone cares what I think, but still). 
• A Chat With Norman Spinrad: I’ve had a looooooooooong relaionship with the work of Norman Spinrad, sci fi novelist and contrarian who wrote some AWESOME books that you really should read, in particular Bug Jack Barron (which basically did reality TV in the late 60s and is like Big Brother crossed with Austin Powers crossed with Superfly (no, really, it is)), The Iron Dream (which is a sci fi novel written as if by Hitler and is brutally brilliant) and The Men in the Jungle which I read when I was 10 and I’m pretty sure scarred me in some fairly deep-seated fashion. Anyway, Spinrad is always an interesting read, and this interview with him’s got a lot of interesting observations in it. Go read. 
• Why You’re Unhappy: If you’re in your 30s, at least. ENJOY!

By Andy Gillmore

NOW, FINALLY, MOVING PICTURES AND SOUNDS!:

1) First up, there’s a LOVELY montage of the final shots from a variety of films. Sounds boring, really isn’t – put on headphones and take 5 minutes to watch this through. Web Curios takes no responsibility for tears shed as a result (contains MASSIVELY EMO STRINGS): 

2) This is Majical Cloudz with their song ‘Bugs Don’t Buzz’. It’s a haunting and gorgeous track which I am 99% sure does some pretty serious ripping off of some other song, but no matter – it’s LOVELY. The video, on the other hand, gave me the formicating heebiejeebies and should only be watched if you’re not in any way creeped out by insects crawling all over people’s faces and similar stuff. Another one best avoided by the entomophobes :

3) Photographer Gioacchino Petronicce has taken a load of his photos and turned them into a video and it is a thing of gorgeousness and gorgeosity. Watch, it’s only 2 minutes and it will make you happy I promise:

4)  Yamantaka Sonic Titan is, apparently, a collective art project established in 2007. It’s largely baffling to me, but I stumbled across this song and video this week and fell in love with it. The music is really, really good, in a sort of dirty rock way and the video’s rather cool too what with all the dancing and slowmo and stuff. It’s called ‘One’:

5) This, on the other hand, is just a lovely slice of slightly jangly indiepop. Eleanor Friedberger, with ‘When I Knew’:

6) I think Kn1ght are French – it’s electro, anyway, and it seems to be something of a law that all electro artists must be French in 2013. Anyway, I LOVE the video for this – all 80s and neon, and it feels like a short action film which is never a bad thing. The song’s called ‘Last Moon’, should you care:

7) More electronica here, although this is a little more WARP than the above. The video is brilliant – glitchy, techy animation which gets progressively more angular and broken down as the song progresses. This is Aleph with Fourth Way:

8) I LOVE WATSKY. I keep saying it because it’s TRUE. Anyway, this is his new one, ‘Kill A Hipster’, from his very good album Cardboard Castles. I love him so much I’ll even forgive him for the zombies thing, as it sort of makes sense in this context:

9) Scarlet Chives are Danish, I think. This is their song Some Days Stay, which features a LOT of girl-on-girl and probably isn’t safe for work – the reason I’m including it is not, as some of you might be thinking, that I’m some sort of pathetic peddler of low-rent lesbongo, but more because the song’s lovely, and the video has the air of something which features two people who actually know and like each other rather than actresses, and has the sort of weirdly innocent vibe of 1960s documentaries on nudist camps:

10) Last up we have this, by FKA Twigs. It’s called Papi Pacify, and the video is beautifully shot and quite ambivalent about the relationship between the two protagonists and I think it’s gorgeous. I’m off to ANOTHER wedding now – bye, happy Friday, etc:

 
That’s it for now
See you next week. Please forward this onto as many people as your mail server can physically handle. If you’re reading this and have yet to subscribe, visit the Imperica newsletter page to do so.
 

No idea who first made this, sorry 🙁

THE BIT ABOUT S*CI*L M*D*A WHICH THIS WEEK IS MERCIFULLY SHORT, PERHPAS AS A RESULT OF THE WEATHER BEING BETTER AND VEREYONE REALISING THAT ALL THIS STUFF IS SIMPLY A COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME AND WHICH AS A RESULT I’M NOT EVEN GOING TO BOTHER TO SUBCATEGORISE SO YEAH, TAKE THAT, INDUSTRY!:

• Noone Looks At Your Facebook Posts: So the fact that Edgerank means that noone actually sees the crap that you spew out on The Social Network is nothing new, I don’t think, but this article on Buzzfeed was moderately interesting insofar as it highlighted the extent to which this is a problem for personal rather than professional users and the fact that it asks why Facebook won’t tell you, ever, what percentage of people who are your ‘friends’ have actually seen what you post. Anyway, this isn’t surprising in itself – what is AMAZING, though, is the insane article linked to in the heading which Techcrunch ran, which is effectively a puff-piece written by Facebook’s PR people saying ‘but people don’t want those numbers! It would make them sad!’. Journalism, eh? A dying art.
• Channel 4 Use Twitter Cards: After that insanely tedious furniture shop, this week we have something marginally more interesting (but only marginally) – C4 news using Twitter to allow people to sign up to John Snow’s daily ‘funny’ teatime email (I am aware of the insane lack of self-awareness contained within those inverted commas, fyi). I’m only including this as a final ‘look, you really ought to start using this stuff, it’s probably quite useful’ pointer – promise that it will never be alluded to EVER AGAIN. 
• Google Glass – This Is How It Can Work: I didn’t know this, bit Sarah Willis is an INTERNATIONAL SUPERSTAR horn player, who plays with the Berlin Philharmonic. Anyway, she’s one of the Google Glass ‘explorers’ (sorry) and has a pair of the cyborg specs to play around with. This is a video which she made of her going on tour, and all of a sudden the whole thing just makes sense. There’s a very real, very exciting sense of being inside someone else’s head with this, and it’s the best example I’ve yet seen of why Glass is exciting from a storytelling point of view. Take a look. Oh, and as a bonus here’s a rather shonky but technically interesting example of how AR might work with glass. Ignore the UGLY visuals and think of the tech opportunities. If you want, obviously – alternatively just skip to the videos like everyone else. See if I care. 
• The Newswires Are Quicker Than Twitter (sometimes): Look! Sometimes, just sometimes, we can all agree that TRADITIONAL MEDIA STILL WORKS!!!! Except obviously this is still on the internet, so not that traditional – but an interesting point nonetheless insofar as the spread of information and INFLUENCER HIERARCHIES go.
• Twitter Verified Users – Visualised: Speaking of ‘influencers’ (SEAMLESS!), this is a viualisation of the links between all of Twitter’s verified users. Eye candy rather than useful, but it does, if nothing else, highlight both the insanely incestuous / closed network of the FAMOUS, and also how many people you’ve never, ever heard of who have verified accounts. 
• Use Instagram As A Shopfront: So this should really be in the LONG STUFF bit at the bottom (it’s a really interesting interview with New York-based, Senegal-born and Kuwaiti-raised artist Fatima Al Qadiri), but I’m shoehorning it in here – basically there’s a VERY SMALL mention of people in Kuwait using Instagram as an e-commerce shopfront in para 3, which if none of you steal as a ‘WORLD’S FIRST’ brand exercise I am going to be very, very disappointed in you. You whelps. 
• A Thing About Big Data: A nice little website by Ogilvy which wangs on about BIG DATA (so bored of that term) and how people like you can use it to make more money for Sir Martin Sorrell. 
• How Nordstrom Is Using Pinterest To Inform Real-World Shopping: This is very clever, in a slightly evil sort of way – the piece looks at how retailer Nordstrom is using the popularity of certain articles on Pinterest to determine how they should window dress their shops. Simple, but an excellent example of using digital to inform the physical and applying digital data analysis to the pursuit of filthy real-world lucre. 
• Why Paid Search Is A Waste Of Time – LOOK, ACADEMICS!: Do you work for an advermarketingpr agency whose clients are increasingly choosing to spend their budgets on search ads rather than your AMAZING creativity? FEAR NOT! Just send them this link to a dry-but-still-interesting paper on why paid search ads don’t work, at all, and then watch the pennies roll in (Web Curios accepts no responsibility for the non-arrival of aforementioned pennies). 
• A Load Of Slides With Stats And Case Studies: Next time you need to do a presentation with loads of numbers and examples of AMAZING SOCIAL MEDIA, take a long, hard look at your life / career – and then steal everything from this one. Valid for at least a month, I reckon, before it’s all hopelessly out of date.
• Tinder Now Being Hijacked By Brands: Tinder is the latest HOT dating app, which basically uses FB pics to let you make snap-judgements on the attractiveness or otherwise of complete strangers based on nothing more than the fleeting glimpse of one photo of them. Anyway, this is the latest platform to get people all sweaty with venal excitement about how they can use it to SELL MORE STUFF – TV networks in the US are starting to experiment with marketing through it. Look, this won’t work – noone wants to be sold television when they’re casually scrolling through a list of people who they could quite possibly have a really tawdry, disappointing and empty sexual experience with in a matter of hours. Can people not browse for partners for casual sex in peace, without being sold crap? OH GOD THE HUMANITY.
• Bet On Breaking Bad: Seeing as we’re talking about TV (SEAMLESS!), here’s a genius little app which will no doubt be ripped off by a betting company in the not-too-distant. This basically allows people to place bets with their friends as to what will happen in the final series of Breaking Bad – no actual money changes hands, but you can very easily see this being coopted by a big gambling conglomorate (Bob, this one’s for you).
• The Best Advermarketingpr Thing I Saw All Week: Just amazing by WWF – such a clever idea, brilliantly executed. LOOK AT THE ANTS! CARRYING BRANDED MESSAGES! WATCH AS WE BEND NATURE TO OUR WILL!!!!! Actually, on reflection, maybe it’s not that nice after all.

By Ben Dehaan

A Miscellany Of Summer Curios, Pt.1:

• The First Posts: A cute little Wayback Machine variant, this takes you waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in time and shows you the first EVER posts on a variety of BIG NAME websites. A strangely melancholic little bit of time travel, which has served to remind me just how old I am and how young the internet is.
• What 3 Words: A really clever solution to the problem of sharing map-links and directions online. Each and every location on a map corresponds to three words, which you can then share with someone else to give them the exact directions of where to be. Which, if you’re having an affair and think that someone’s on to you and want to arrange secret assignations with the object of your desire without anyone knowing where you’re meeting (look, it was the first thing that sprang to mind, ok?), could be really useful.
• How A Wife Should Undress: From LIFE magazine in the 30s. Go on, married men, send this to your wife and see exactly how well it goes down. 
• Rent Arcade Machines: As pointed out to me by someone when I linked this on Twitter, it’s an annoying tease as it’s only available in the US. BUT! Come on, kids – we can make this happen here! This service allows users to rent arcade cabinets – the whole things, delivered to you in your home – for a month at a time, for the incredible price of $75 per month. For men (look, we all know it’s most likely to be men, it’s ok) of a certain age, this is possibly one of the best things ever invented and a surefire passport to singledom / divorce. 
• Share Hotel Rooms With Strangers: Travelling alone? Want to save money on the exorbitant rates that hotels charge for single rooms? Well, why not use this website to find a complete stranger to share your hotel room with? What’s that you say? BECAUSE THEY MIGHT TURN OUT TO BE A PSYCHOPATH???? Fie on you, you paranoid ninny! When I posted this earlier this week, the people behind it got in touch rather sniffily suggesting that I was being unfair and misrepresenting the service. I felt bad for a bit, but then remembered that this was a truly dreadful idea which screams “HELLO DAHMER, PLEASE EAT ME”.
• The Art of Pi: This is gorgeous, if mathematical – some beautiful visualisations of Pi and the numerology around it. In the interests of honesty, I’m going to have to confess that I don’t really understand how they make the pretty pictures; the more numerologically-inclined of you may fare better. But look, PRETTY COLOURS!
• The Best Maths Website Ever: Staying on the mathematical tip (SEAMLESS!), this is a truly BEAUTIFUL website (also available as a mobile app) which takes you through 30 of the most exciting concepts in maths. Really, really clever, beautifully designed, and comprehensible even to a mathtard like myself. Worth a look.
• Probably The Worst Tshirt In The World: I don’t really have anything to add to this.
• Encrypted, Secure Phone Messaging: Heml.is is a clever little app which provides secure, untraceable phone-to-phone messaging, which is delivered in a really user-friendly and simple manner and with a friendly interface. Noteworthy as it delivers a service which is only usually available if you’re a bit techy and can cope with a properly hardcore UI; if you’re doing something you shouldn’t and are a bit of a luddite, this may well be of use to you. 
• Font Comparator: For those of you who LOVE your typography, this may be of interest. A neat little site which allows you to compare different fonts and see what the practical differences between them are. 
• London In Flickr: And, in fact, a whole load of other cities too. This is a wonderful project, and a total timesink if you let it be. Taking publicly visible Flickr images and mapping them across cities, this lets you see what people have snapped where. A really lovely way of seeing the city in which you live through someone else’s eyes, and there are some great photos on there too. Go, play, lose yourself for the rest of the afternoon.
• Picture Of Animals In Snappy Outfits: No, really, that’s EXACTLY what these are. No more, no less. Available to purchase too, should you suddenly decide that what your home really needs is a portrait of a parakeet wearing an orange velour hoodie. 
• Life In 5 Seconds: A cute project which takes some of our greatest stories / legends and reduces them to very, very short infographical representations. Some work better than others, but if these haven’t already been used in an ad (they have, haven’t they?) it can only be a matter of time. 
• SuperEmoFriends: Small, sad portraits of characters from popular culture. Far more affecting than it really has any right to be. LOOK AT SAD RONALD MCDONALD! 
• The Worst Portfolio Ever: An astute takedown of the current trend for online portfolios for designers, and the most egregious examples of their crapness. To be honest, this could be applied to all industries and the increasing propensity towards ‘clever’ online CVs. Although maybe I’m just bitter as I can neither design nor code. USELESS ME. 
• Beautiful Old Photos of Cincinatti’s Public Library: You can almost smell the dust. Takes you back to a happier time, when the internet hadn’t even been thought of yet and there was…er…malnutrition, sexism, racism and homophobia everywhere. God, it’s saddening when you look back and realise that being born any time much before the past 50 years would have been genuinely dreadful. 
• The New York Bench Library: Another book-based thing (SEAMLESS!), this is a gorgeous bench / library hybrid in New York that made me very happy when I saw it. Here’s an idea – brands, why don;t you just do loads of stuff like this with a little logo on it. Bollocks to the idea of whether it ‘fits’ with your ‘strategy’ – it will be a nice thing that people appreciate and like you for, and will be a whole load more valuable than a bunch of CONTENT that noone needs, wants or cares about. Go on. Do it. You arseholes.
• DJs, Back This Kickstarter: I don’t DJ (Jesus, this is turning into a litany of personal inadequacy), but for those of you that do this pocket mixer on Kickstarter might be just the thing that you want to pledge a lot of money to. 
• Snow Tunnels: I have literally NO idea what the text on these pictures says, but they are amazing. Some sort of crazy snow tunnel, somewhere in the world (look, I know that this is a dreadful description but my knowledge of Cyrillic is pretty patchy at the best of times).
• Eel Slapping: A small, pointless website which allows you to slap a man in the face with an eel. Cathartic (also, screencaps of this will be ENDLESSLY useful in what I believe we’re now honour-bound to call OFFICE BANTS!).

By Flora Borsi

A QUICK MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSORS: If you like Web Curios and what we do here at Imperica, then we would love to hear from you in our annual Imperica Reader Survey. The Survey helps us to find out how to improve our magazine, and what we should be doing in the coming year. It also helps us to make informed decisions as to how Imperica can remain commercially sustainable. We would be really grateful if you could take a couple of minutes to fill it in. It’s quick, honest. If you want to tell them to pay me loads more money, by the way, then please feel free x http://www.imperica.com/reader-survey-2013

A Miscellany Of Summer Curios, Pt.2:

• Quiet Places in NYC: I’m in two minds about this. On the one hand, it’s a lovely thing to get people to share their favourite quiet places in a large metropolitan city; on the other, by so doing you’re basically killing them. I think there should be some sort of secret version of this for London, which basically only my girlfriend and I have access to. That would be nice. Maybe I’ll let you in too, I’ve not decided yet. We’ll see.
• Worried About Aging, Wrinkles? TRY THIS: This is apparently a real thing. I think I’m going to buy it and see how it works.
• Course Texts For A Porn Postgrad: A wonderful imagined collection of 70s-style academic textbook covers for imagined tomes which might be used as part of a University course on the theory of pornography. I really, really want to read ‘New Directions In Squirt Sociology’.
• Hire My Friend: A great idea, this – taking the whole ‘My Single Friend’ concept (by the way, WHY isn’t that site called ‘Date My Mate’? SO MUCH BETTER) and applying it to the world of work and allowing people to advertise themselves for hire without actually advertising themselves, if you see what I mean. Currently skews towards tech, unsurprisingly given its genesis in East London, but still smart.
• The Best Wikipedia Entry Ever, No Joke: Look, you have to read this one. Really. Just incredible, and proof if it were needed that your life really is fundamentally unexciting and beige compared to that of Adrian Carton de Wiart, who is probably the greatest boy’s own hero ever to have lived. I’m going to paste one of the opening bits as a teaser – seriously, do take a look: “He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War; was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; survived a plane crash; tunnelled out of a POW camp; and bit off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them. He later wrote that “Frankly I had enjoyed the war” when describing his service in the WWI.”
• Sand As An Executive Toy: I don’t doubt that the chemistry behind this is mind-boggling, but all I can think is how much I want some. Just MENTAL.
• Crosswords. Really Hard, Inexplicable Crosswords: I don’t really ‘get’ these, I have to say, but they look interesting and I think that if you’re a logician or similarly mindeed then it may all make sense to you. Anyway, the crossword clues are defined using regular expressions – if that means something to you then congratulations!
• See Your Folks: Need a website to make you feel guilty about how long it’s been since you spoke to your parents? OH GOOD! This is a brilliant thing to send to a sibling to make them feel really, really bad about themselves. Or, in fact, your kids if you have any. Go on, troll your family.
• Missing Kids On Stamps: This is a heartrending little project, encouraging Canadians to take advantage of their postal service’s ‘Custom Stamps’ service to put pictures of missing children on your stamps. The sound effects on the website almost reduce me to tears each time (I’m not ashamed of this AT ALL). 
• Air Freshener FOR MEN: Are you upset because Glade or Airwick or whatever other sickly olfactory horror show you use to mask your home’s miasmic funk isn’t quite masculine enough for you? Help is at hand in the shape of Archer, the apparently-not-a-joke air freshener for MEN. With MANLY SCENTS. It looks like a parody, it smells like a parody, but it appears that they really do offer sprays with the scent of ‘Hunting Lodge’, ‘European Sports Car’ and, er, ‘Distillery’. Weird.
• Photos of NYC’s Drag Queens: Just wonderfully happy-making pictures. Each image links to its own slideshow, so have an explore as there are some great shots in there.
• Universal’s Kickstarter For Vinyl: I can’t remember if I linked to the Ninja Tune version of this earlier this year (OH MY GOD I DID); anyhow, now Universal are doing a similar thing but BIGGER. Interesting trend here for back-catalogue stuff being resurrected due to popular demand – watch this extend to food, etc, in the next year or so. Seriously – you think, say, Cadbury’s wouldn’t run a Kickstarter around bringing back some sort of limited edition thing? GUARANTEED MONEY, KIDS.
• Visualising Texan Executions: Following on from the Texan Last Words database from the other week, this is a project visualising the stats behind the deaths. As miserable as you’d imagine, really. HAPPY FRIDAY!
• Men Who Visit Brothels: Another one from the cheery side of the web, this is an excellent photoseries taking portraits of German men in the brothel they frequent, with short interviews with them as to why they’re there. Actually less depressing than you might have initially thought, honest. 
• Fuds: I like this. Mocking foodie idiocy in simple fashion. The menu is almost credible.

THE CIRCUS OF TUMBLRS:

• Bad Kids’ Jokes: I think that this one’s quite old, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it before, but it make me laugh so fuckit. Bad jokes from a moderator of a kids’ jokes website. 
• My Old Man: A new project collecting essays and thoughts about people’s fathers. You can submit stuff, if you’re so minded – it could develop into something rather lovely. 
• The First Vine ‘Album’: Lucky Pierre is Aidan Moffat’s solo project (it’s also a slang phrase for the middle-man in an all-guy three-way, but we won’t worry about that right now). Aidan used to be in Arab Strap and this is his take on what purports to be the first Vine ‘album’. It’s not quite an album, of course, what with the restrictions of the medium and all that, but it’s an interesting idea and some of the music is LOVELY, particularly with Vine’s autolooping which I suppose is the point. BONUS! Have what is apparently the first ACTUAL Vine song which is all about Ben Fogle’s involuntary acid trip and is pretty weird.
• What’s Your Ex Doing Now: Want to be reassured about how badly your ex-partner is doing without you, but in a softly whimsical fashion? OH GOOD!
• Epic Pukes: Pablo Iranzo has put together a collection of pictures of musicians, screaming, and painted massive jets of technicolour vomit emerging from their gaping maws. The ned result if vastly more aesthetically pleasing than it has any right to be. 
• Super Magritte: The paintings of Rene Magritte, recreated through the graphical style of Super Mario Brothers. What the everliving fcuk did we do before the endless creative outlet afforded us by the internet, eh?
• Famouses Wearing Black Flag Tees: You now how it’s now de rigeur for any famous who wants to appear a bit rock’n’roll to wear a Ramones tshirt or similar? Here’s a whole site dedicated to photoshopping Black Flag logos onto famouses tshirts. WHY NOT, EH?
• Visual Poetry: Erm, well, that really. It’s visual textual mashup poetry STUFF. Depending on your level of pretentious pseudery you will either love or hate this (clue: I love it).
• This Is Thin Privilege: Because being life-threateningly obese and having people perhaps react to that is simply ANOTHER example of how thin people ruin EVERYTHING. This privilege stuff would be funny were it not so deeply depressing.
• Sleeping Models: Male models snapped with their eyes closed. Basically a collection of really, really ridiculously good-looking people looking a tiny bit silly.
• Tinder Rejections: I mentioned Tinder up there (SEAMLESS!) – here’s a nice collection of screenshots of one person’s failed chat-up attempts on it. Basically it proves that being facile works on online fcukbuddymatching sites.
• One Star Reviews of Strip Clubs: Generally just a little disheartening, but the line about being thrown out for being deaf made me laugh like a donkey for about 5 minutes. 
• Your Barrister Boyfriend: Currently doing the rounds of every Chambers in the UK, this frankly incredible (in the ‘is this a parody? Oh sweet Christ it’s not, is it?’ sense) site collects London’s ‘hottest’ barristers in one convenient place. And rates them, in prose which is a bit creepily damp-palmed. Oh, who am I kidding – I’m just jealous because I’m nowhere near as successful, rich or handsome as these people. If anyone wants to set up ‘Your Webmong Boyfriend’ then feel free.

By Johannes Grutzke

LONG THINGS WHICH ARE LONG:

• On The Society Of Spectacle: Wow. One of those pieces that makes you realise that there’s nothing new under the Sun, and that we’re all simply racing around in circles around the same fundamental principles as we always have (maybe just racing a bit faster, and looking at stuff through different prisms). This is an essay by Guy Debord from 1967, looking at how society is focused more on the representation of things than the things themselves. Leaving aside the Platonic elements, this is incredible – look how little things have moved on (or, if you prefer, how incredibly prescient Debord was). Oh, and I know that this is Marxist philosophy but come on, THINK for once. 
• A Really Nice Interview With The Lovely Dave Grohl: Because if you read the above, you deserve it. Really interesting interview, though, and proof positive (if any further were needed) that Grohl really does come across as the nicest man in music.
• And Daniel Craig Interviews Thom Yorke: Well, yes, quite. I have no idea why this happened, but it’s actually a surprisingly good read if you discount the slightly ‘oh, we’re both kind of amazing’ vibe which permeates the whole thing.
• Russell Brand Is Quite Clever: I never really ‘got’ Russell Brand – his whole ‘Dick Emery meets Dot Cotton’ schtick always left me cold, and I found the serial shagger stuff very tedious indeed (again, probably jealousy). Increasingly, though, I’ve been forced to concede that he’s a very smart man – recent essays on drugs, race, politics, liberalism and Islam have been well-thought out and cogently argued. This piece looks at the man as a commentator rather than a comedian, and is a decent overview of why he maybe deserves a little more respect from useless armchair critics like me. 
• What Foxconn Workers Do In Their Downtime: How Apple’s slaves ‘enjoy’ their time off. Look, I know that no commissioning editors read this (WHY NOT??? Rhetorical, btw), but on the offchance can we all agree that this is a wonderful photo essay waiting to happen? Good. Now go and make it happen.
• The Prancersise Lady: You remember Prancersise, don’t you? You all got really excited about it a couple of months ago. This is a profile piece on the woman behind it, and what happened to her when she went megafamous. As per the norm with these sorts of stories, it will make you really hope that you never become internet famous (unless you’re a mental). 
• A Series Of Things On Trayvon Martin: There’s nothing funny to say about any of this. Here’s an interesting piece in the Atlantic looking at the whole thing from a PURELY legal perspective; here’s a piece on the whole affair with some really, really interesting comments (I know, this is UNHEARD OF on the internet, but they really are worth reading through), and this is Questlove of The Roots’ take on the whole thing, which is probably the saddest thing I’ve read all week. God, what a mess.
• Peggy Paula: The best short fiction I have read in a long, long time. Save, read, enjoy. 
• The Theory of Pixar: Have you ever, when watching Pixar’s films, thought to yourself ‘Hm, I think that there’s an overarching narrative superstructure here with a fairly bleak post-apocalyptic narrative at its core’? No? More fool you, then. This VERY LONG essay is either genius or madness (I think I’m leaning to the latter), but its comprehensive knowledge of the films is insane. I would love to see pictures of Pixar people’s reactions on reading this.
• The Confusing Merry-go-round Of Gay Identity Politics And Nomenclature: This is actually an essay about the word ‘Twink’ and its pejorative meaning, but sort of segues into a whole load of other stuff about gay subcultures and identity. I only found this because I had a haircut this week which basically makes me look incredibly twinky. 
• Clive James Takes Down Dan Brown: Ok, so it’s not really a fair fight but James, as ever, writes like God. 
• We Get The Films Which We Deserve: On Asylum, the film studio which is responsible for Sharknado (LOL!!!) and other memetastic favourites. Basically this is a pointer to a future in which EVERY SINGLE FILM EVER PRODUCED is ‘Snakes On A Plane’. Hi, future!
• The Third Golden Age of Television: We’re currently living through the third golden age of television, or so this article posits. A really interesting look at why this might be.
• The Bad Things Kids Do: A Reddit thread collecting examples of the worst things that people did as kids. The best argument for sterilisation I’ve read all week (but also dreadfully, awfully, guiltily funny in places).

By Dina Litovski

NOW, FINALLY, MOVING PICTURES AND SOUNDS! (OH, AND IF YOU’VE NOT YET SEEN IT HERE’S THE AMANDA PALMER DAILY MAIL TAKEDOWN):

1) Corey Feldman! Have you ever done porn, Corey Feldman? (sorry, that’s a line from this AMAZING interview that I know I’ve linked to about 30-odd times but which I will never tire of) Anyway, 80s teen heartthrob Corey Feldman now makes MUSIC, of a sort. This is the awe-inspiring video for his latest track ‘Ascension Millennium’. There is SO much WTFery in here that it’s hard to know where to begin. Just watch. Oh, and if you want to make yourself feel a bit sad, this is the website for Corey’s…er…well I’m not sure what it is, but it seems to be his attempt to do a Hugh Hefner with ‘Corey’s Angels’. SO GRUBBY and you can almost smell the coke sweat: 

Anyway, you don’t need me to tell you that. You don’t come here for scaremongering and a world-view so dark it’s practically painful to look at – NO! You come here for webmongery of the highest order, and each week I disappoint you with a mediocre collection of rubbish filched from other people’s websites. Sorry about that. So, with little further ado, let the weekly litany of mediocre prose and recycled links commence – OPEN WIDE, CHILDREN, WE’RE GOING IN. 

By John William Keedy

THE BIT ABOUT S**IAL M*D*A, ADVERMARKETINGPR, AND STUFF THAT YOU MIGHT, SHOULD YOU SO DESIRE, BE ABLE TO PASS OFF AS WORK-RELATED

Facebook:

• Facebook To Introduce Chatrooms: Well, potentially. If it does well in testing. The idea being that they’ll (potentially, again) introduce a feature which allows Page owners to create ‘chatrooms’ which, in theory, anyone who is friends with them can join and participate in. There’s also talk of friends-of-friends being able to gt involved, which the article describes as a GREAT WAY TO MEET NEW PEOPLE, but seems to me to usher in the sort of schizophrenically disparate shouty ‘ASL?’-type (NB – if you don’t know what those three letters mean in this context, you’ve probably lived a more fulfilling life than I have) atmosphere seen in late-90s community chat websites. Obviously (OBVIOUSLY!) there are potential implications for brands here – you can see the potential for live chats with celebrity ambassadors, etc, although it will need a LOT of pre-moderation and gating of participants to make it useful. Anyway, this may never happen. Let’s forget we ever mentioned it. 
• Your Ads Will No Longer Appear Next To Pages Advocating Infanticide Or Similar: Unless, that is, you want them to. Briefly, this is FB’s response to the ongoing furore about brands being upset that their averts occasionally appear on Pages featuring less-than-ON-BRAND! content. You’ll now be able to manually ensure that your adverts for your business no longer show up on, for example, any of these pages. So that’s good. 

Stuff About Short Videos (Really? Still?):

• Instagram Is Apparently Now Outperforming Vine: I’ll be honest, I have about as much enthusiasm for this as I do for people arguing about the relative merits of different games machines, but I probably ought to mention it. Here’s some analysis of how the number of Vines being produced has fallen since the launch of Instagram video, which OBVIOUSLY means that Twitter’s fcuked. Obviously. 
• Instagram Uses Half Its Active Users In A Month: Hang on, wait, scrap that. It’s Instagram that’s fcuked. Poor the Instagram!
• Why Making These Sorts Of Comparisons / Judgments Is STUPID: A welcome note of reasonable commentary in an otherwise impossibly hyperbolic maelstrom of cant and worthless rhetoric. Look, can we all agree that the platform ISN’T THAT IMPORTANT. And you know what? They’re short videos. PUT THEM ON BOTH IF YOU’RE THAT WORRIED ABOUT IT. Can we stop talking about this now, please? Good.
• Updates For Vine: Oh, ok, well after this then. Vine’s been updated a bit – technical updates in part, but also (more significantly) the inclusion of better tools for the discovery of videos, sorted by category, and with the ability to now track stuff under the heading of ‘on the rise’. Expect the junior editorial staff of Buzzfeed to be staring at this for 12 hours a a day looking for the latest 6-second viral extravaganza. He says, like the massive, stinking, hypocritical webmong he is. 
• The Top 50 Brands On Instagram: Yes, yes, I know, this isn’t JUST video. Go with it. Here’s a list of the top 50 brands on Instagram (obviously dominated by US companies, but think this is worldwide). You shouldn’t be surprised to see that these are all brands related to stuff that people like looking at anyway (clothes! sport! cars!), regardless of the internet (although the presence of that disgusting Monster energy drink does baffle me rather).  

Google+:

• G+ Is 2 Years Old: Time, surely does it fly. I don’t know whether Google have been doing some serious PR work around their little-loved social/notsocial/noonereallyknows platform, but I’ve seen increasing numbers of people online over the past 10 days or so writing ‘why G+ is actually quite good’ posts. Now, I still don’t really know anyone who uses it that much, not that that means anything, but this piece is a decent look at the platforms best / most useful features. Oh, there are some new plugins as well if you want to plaster G+ buttons and STUFF all over your website, which frankly you may as well. 
• Why Google+ Is Now Part Of The Comms Landscape: Ugh, ‘comms landscape’. Anyway, this is one of those aforementioned pieces about how actually it’s quite useful dontchaknow. Most interesting here are the examples – there are a few rather good public sector / internal comms-y things here which are worth a look if that’s the sort of thing that your mortgage repayments force you to concern yourself with. 
• G+ Is Good For Search: You knew this, but if you want to squeeze another few k a month from your clients by suggesting a G+ presence then this might help. SO CYNICAL, I know, sorry. 

Other Things I Find It Hard To Group Into A Semi-Coherent Whole:

Twitter To Launch More Tailored Ads: Blah, blah, blah, browser history, cookies, etc etc etc. You can opt out, which is something at least. Go and opt-out NOW. Obviously this is great for advertisers – plus ca change. 

We Await The Arrival Of The Paid-for Brand Armies: Oh. Oh dear. I thought that this stuff had gone away a bit, but evidently not. About 7/8 years ago there was a big boom in companies like BzzAgent offering Word Of Mouth marketing services – which effectively equated to paying people to go around saying how awesome your stuff was (a little like a slightly-less-dishonest version of ‘Soft’ by Rupert Thomson). Now it’s BACK (doubtless it never left). Thee are so, so many grey areas around this – not just about ethics and transparency, but also how these paid-for agents of BUZZ are found and recruited. I can’t help but think that this will basically end up like those market research companies who promise to do focus groups full of your TARGET AUDIENCE and KEY INFLUENCERS, but which end up delivering information based on the lies told to them by a bunch of bored students and ‘between jobs’ actors who will say literally ANYTHING for £50 and a free sandwich. Anyway, let’s accept the fact that everyone’s opinion and advocacy is essentially purchasable, and that you should never take anyone’s endorsement of anything at face value, and move brightly on into the glorious branded future.

• The History Of Advertising: This is HUGE, but very interesting (and it’s still Powerpoint, so don’t worry – you won’t have to read too much). A great look back at the evolution of advertising – it really does go into detail, and covers the past 200 years (and beyond). If you study this stuff, or are just interested in it, you might want to take a look.
• Alastair Campbell On The Evolution Of PR: This is one of the smartest things I’ve read about objectives, strategy and tactics (yes, I hate those words too) – if you do comms, make everyone you work with read this. If they don’t understand, sack them.
• Social Media Sells NOTHING: Brilliant. Piece in Wired US quoting research which suggests that email is vastly more important in terms of driving sales than Facebook or Twitter – by some sort of massive factor. PUGS IN PARTY HATS DO NOT EQUAL BUSINESS BENEFIT. Put that on a slide, GO ON. 
• A Decent Look At Free Social Media Monitoring Tools: The best thing about this is that it acknowledges how useful / important Google is for this sort of stuff. Another one to send round your agency with the appended instruction: “Learn”.

Some Campaign-type Stuff:

• Tweeting Badger: This is rather cute. Johannesburg Zoo have wired up their Honey Badger (yes, that one) enclosure with NFC, so as to allow the animal to ‘tweet’ about what it’s getting up to depending on where it is in the cage. You can follow it at www.twitter.com/zootweetslive should you so desire – it’s better-written and less annoying than it ought to be, and a really clever use of tech. 
• Feed The Pigs: Really nicely executed by charitable organisation Compassion in World Farming, which combines a big screen, Westfield shopping centre, a webcam and some REAL LIVE PIGS to create a cute ‘feed the pigs, donate some money’ game. If I were going to be critical / snarky, I might question the cost vs impact of this, but that would be mean. LOOK AT THEIR LITTLE PIGGY FACES!
• Coors Slapshot: Another shopping centre activation, this sort of thing would work beautifully for football. Has anyone done it yet? If not, why not?
• Yelp’s Map of London Hipsters: Such a clever (if internet-baiting) idea – Yelp maps the concentration of hipsters in a variety of cities (I’ve evidently chosen to link to the London version) based on the frequency of the word ‘hipster’ in reviews. Obviously in no way anything other than a piece of linkbait, it’s annoyingly interesting to look at. If you live in London, it’s unlikely you’ll be surprised by where the apparent concentrations are.
• IKEA Spoof Pr0n Site: Do you recall a few weeks back when I featured a website highlighting IKEA furniture’s appearances in actual bongo clips (no, I know you don’t)? It seems that IKEA saw that and created their own, slightly more SFW variant. Simultaneously funny and slightly disturbing when you realise how closely they’ve followed the copy style of certan websites. Ahem. 

FINALLY, SOME STUFF WHICH YOU MAY WANT TO BUY (NOT SOLD BY ME, I HASTEN TO ADD)

By Macoto Murayama

HAVE A FREE ALBUM FROM EL-P & KILLERMIKE! GOOD HIPHOP! FREE!

MISCELLANEOUS WEBSCRAPINGS TO AMUSE, BEMUSE, DELIGHT AND APPALL, PT.1:

• The Editorial Guidelines of the Washington Post: Yes, I know that this sounds dull, but I promise it’s more interesting than you’d think. Honest. Take a look at this list, and then create your own for your workplace, with a list of suitable fines for people should they slip up. No really, it will make you REALLY popular at work!
• Children’s Nightmares, Visualised: A really, really creepy selection of photos, turning the monster under the bed into a real, terrifying threat. I’m not a parent (which is probably for the best), but I’d guess that it’s probably advisable not to show these to small children unless you’re of a particularly sadistic (or, if they’re your own, masochistic) bent. 
• Cars From Films: If you like cars and films, this selection of film posters illustrating the iconic vehicles featured in the named movies might appeal – they’re available to buy as posters too, should you so desire (on reflection, ‘iconic’ is DEFINITELY going on my list of banned words as of the now). 
• 3d Pictures From WWI: Amazing. The French army in the First World War apparently had a Richard Verascope stereo camera (no, me neither) – a device which allowed the taking of stereoscopic pictures. These have been collected here – a fascinating look back in time.
• Phototrails: A really interesting project, whose description I am going to shamelessly lift from their site – it looks at the ‘visual patterns, dynamics and structures of planetry-scale user-generated shared photos. Using a sample of 2.3 million Instagram photos from 13 cities around the world, we show how temporal changes in number of shared photos, their locations, and visual characteristics can uncover social, cultural and political insights about people’s activity around the world’. So there. There are some very cool visualisations here, and it’s an interesting example of how to cut visual data – and potentially inspirational if you’ve got a shedload of pictures at your disposal (there’s a Facebook app which totally rips this off in this for the right brand, for example).
• Google Flights: This is just getting silly now. Go on, just try it. Mental. Poor the Expedia. There’s all sorts of directions they could go with this – I’m imagining a future in which airlines offer (potentially) preferential deals to people who are flying to destinations where they hav more G+ connections, for example. Maybe. 
• Barbie As A Real Woman: Everyone’s favourite anatomically improbably blonde gets the 3d printed treatment, this time demonstrating what she’d look like if she had the proportions of your average American 19 year old. What’s oddest about this is how oddly chunky/stumpy ‘real-life’ Barbie looks vs her Mattel-designed counterpart – a far better reflection of the weird, messed up effect that this stuff has on our perceptions of what is aesthetically ‘right’ or ‘normal’ than you often see with this sort of stuff. 
• Choose Your Own Adventure Phone Sex: Hmmmmmmmmmm. So this service effectively allows you to create a series of branching, recorded…’erotic’ (and I really do use that word advisedly) stories to share with your loved one (or whoever you’re currently rubbing mucous mebranes with, frankly – love is optional). You can either create your own story or, if you’re a little prudish or lacking in imagination, you can use one of their pre-prepared scripts. Here’s one, for example. I will pay CASH MONEY to anyone who can provide proof that they have used any of these lines with a real person over the course of this weekend – seriously, you can’t understand the horror of this until you’ve read the script. “Press 1 if you want me to suck your nipples”? REALLY??? *boggles*
• Incredibly Evil Alarm Clock: A clever but diabolical idea. You can set up this alarm clock to automatically donate a set sum of money to a cause of your choosing every time you hit snooze – the idea being that you create, say, a direct debit of £10 to the EDL each time you grab another 10 minutes of lazytime in the morning. Depending on your levels of self-control, this could get quite expensive quite quickly. Also, you could end up funding something really dreadful, just by sleeping. AMAZING!
• Beautiful Browser Lightbox Rendering Thing: A very impressive piece of HTML coding (taken from this excellent rundown of impressive pieces of HTML coding) which plays with light and shadows in a very pretty fashion. You can make some gorgeous little patternpictures with this – have a play.
• PRISM (No, Not That One): This is an interactive visualisation of content removal requests to Google from governments worldwide. Not only a nice piece of visualisation, but also shows quite how mentally request-heavy the UK government is (look at the scale). 
• 3d Print Your Own Drone: Well, almost. As it points out, it’s not technically a drone, and you will need to pull together the wiring, motors, etc, yourself, but STILL, this is quite cool. What’s even more interesting is that the kit allows you to attach the rotors, etc, to basically ANYTHING – so perhaps a dronephone for easy high-quality moving camerawork. Or, er, a drone gun. That’s less fun-sounding, in all honesty. 
• Cheapest 3d Printer In The World: SEAMLESS! If you would like to make your own flying camerasurveillacegunboatthing then you might want to bookmark this page – thanks to Kickstarter, this should be going on sale in a few months. $350 is nothing, really. I reckon when we see the first sub-£200 domestic maker this stuff is properly going to take off – can’t be long now, surely?
• Draw Stuff Which Then Rotates In 3d: What it says there. I have literally no idea why, but it’s sort of fun in a pointless kind of way. 
• Rain Simulator: Another in the series of ‘pointless but fun’ (SEAMLESS!) webthings, this is a webpage which simulates the sound of rain, varying depending on where your cursor is on the page. In fact, it’s a gateway to all sorts of other frivolous webarty things – click the buttons on the top and see where they take you. 
• Book Titles With One Letter Missing: Pictorial representations of titles gleaned from the popular hashtag game (Jesus, I sound like Mashable).

Photgraph by Ajay Koli

AN AWE-INSPIRING COLLECTION OF SUMMER SONGS FROM THE PAST 51 YEARS, IN A MIX-TYPE PLAYLIST THING!

MISCELLANEOUS WEBSCRAPINGS TO AMUSE, BEMUSE, DELIGHT AND APPALL, PT.1:

• Analyse Your Emails: This is interesting, particularly if you’re a bit of a narcissist who’s used Gmail a LOT over the past 8 years or so (*waves at self in the mirror*). A project by MIT, this takes the metadata from your Gmail account and analyses it, churning out a whole load of stats about who you’ve emailed most, who’s connected you to whom, etc. Weirdly fascinating – I learnt that I’ve emailed my girlfriend nearly 5,000 times in the 10 years since we met. Which doesn’t say anything good about our relationship, frankly.
• Fake User Interfaces: A massive database of fake user interfaces from films. Searchable by director, designer, etc, and if you do UI / design stuff then potentially really interesting. Otherwise probably a bit niche for the rest of you, unless you have a hitherto undiscovered passion for the computer interfaces used in the cinema of James Cameron. 
• Vintage Airline Attendant Fashions: As may have been noted previously on Web Curios, I am not a fashion-conscious person (I know that this may come as a surprise). Still, though, some of these are MENTAL. 
• PayPal, In Space: I’ve checked repeatedly and this doesn’t seem to be a joke, so PayPal really is doing research into making payments work in space. There’s something deeply depressing about this – we’ve not even come up with commercially feasible mass-market space travel yet, and we’re already trying to work out how to let people buy sodding perfume from the intergalactic equivalent of SkyMall.
• Men Wearing Their Girlfriends’ Clothes: Not really much more to say about this, other than that there’s a certain poignant quality to these that II can’t really put my finger on. 
• Container Magazine: Probably the most-hipsterish thing in here this week, Container is a ‘magazine’ which isn’t really a magazine. Instead, for £200 per ‘issue’, you get sent a box full of limited edition arty-type stuff. Utterly self-indulgent, but I confess to really quite wanting one. If anyone fancies buying it for me, that would be LOVELY. 
• If Your iPod Was Vinyl: If the music on your iPod (or other generic MP3 player) was on vinyl, this is what it would look like (clue: TALL). 
• Cyberpunk Dystopia, In LEGO: Wonderful Gibson-esque model. Click left to see more pictures.
• Sex Toy Reviews In Comicbook Form: Erica Moen draws this wonderful blog which looks at sex, contraception, etc, in comicbook form. Technically NSFW, but really quite hard to imagine anyone getting upset by this. 
• This, On The Other Hand: Really is NSFW – the best / worst tattooed penis you will ever see. Technically very, very impressive, but let me just reiterate – this is a FULL-PENIS tattoo. Men – take a moment and think exactly how much this must have hurt.
• AI Decides Peace Is Best: What happens when you leave computer AIs from an FPS game running for a few years? They turn into pacifists, basically. Really interesting, particularly if you think in terms of game theory, and a little bit frightening if you think too hard. 
• Idiots Fighting Things: A whole Reddit thread dedicated to the joy of watching stupid (often drunk) humans attacking inanimate objects and coming off worst. Absolute timesink, but you will not fail to feel better about yourself as a result of watching a few of these. Unless you recognise yourself (SEGUE: When I was about 15, a mate of mine got so drunk he tried to fight a leisure centre and injured his hand quite badly – the Link Centre in Swindon, fact fans. I haven’t spoken to him in about 18 years, but Graeme Bailey – if you google yourself and find this, feel proud).
• Visualising the NBA Draft: So apparently this is about basketball and the college draft. It’s a very nice way of presenting quite a lot of information in intuitive fashion. Even I, who cares less than little about basketball, managed to understand what it was telling me and how to cut the data. 
• The Best Parties In Music Video History: An annoyingly laid-out list, but there are some great bits of nostalgia here (if, like me, you’re were a teen in the 90s. If not, you’ll probably just look at these and sigh and roll your eyes at how everyone’s OBSESSED with OLD STUFF and OH GOD IT’S SO BORING). ALSO, this list of the 100 best albums of the 80s is RETRO GOLD, and there are plenty of streaming links which is always nice. Check it out. Oh, and this is very clever indeed, particularly if you’re a musicologist or music historian or just interested, really – an illustrated history of music in 7 minutes. 
• A Duck Has An Adventure!: Almost certainly the best choose-your-own-adventure game about the life of an anonymous waterfowl you will play all week. More fun that it sounds, and a really nice example of design for this sort of thing – very simple, visual storytelling style which works very well. Have a play.
• Final Statements of Death Row Prisoners: This has been everywhere this week, but in case you missed it – a database of the final statements of prisoners on Death Row in Texas. You will cry a bit – don’t worry, it’s normal. Here’s a blog collecting them, should you not want to trawl through the full archive. Really, really sad (again, I’m not selling this but really do recommend having a flick through). 
• Racist History: An incredible example of racism from 60s Louisiana – a n impossible-to-complete literacy test given to black voters to determine their eligibility to vote.
• Harkive: My favourite project of the week. Effectively acting as a ‘Life In A Day’ for music, Harkive seeks to collect thoughts, feelings, experiences and reminiscences from one day (Tuesday 9th July, in fact) of music consumption. The project will take information about what people are listening to, when, how, where, etc, which will pull together a picture of how we relate to music and what it means to us RIGHT NOW. The intention is to make it a regular, tracking thing – can I suggest that a music-related brand jumps on this and sponsors it please? Thanks.
• Underwater Pinups From The 50s: Literally no idea why these exist, but I am glad that they do. Available for sale too, should you like to buy one. 

Photograph by Silja Magg

GAMES!:

• Geometry Games: More fun than they sound. Honest. Although it will probably help if you’re a bit maths-y.
• Responsive Design Game: If you’re a web designer, you may find this fun. 
• MegaBreakout: EVERYONE should play this. Brilliant, slightly headfcuky idea – a standard game of Breakout (you know, that ‘smash the bricks with the bouncing ball’ game), with the one difference that each block is its own miniature game of Breakout. Pretty much impossible to visualise unless you play it. So play it. 

THE CIRCUS OF TUMBLRS:

• Illustrated Aliens: A new alien each day, culminating in the monthly creation of a planet for a whole month’s worth of extraterrestrials to live on. Lovely illustration style.
• Dogs I Have Seen: Random photos of dogs with excellent sweary captions.
• Other People’s Shopping Lists: If the eyes are the windows to the soul, the shopping list must certainly be the storm drain to the ID. Or something like that.
• Filter Fakes: I don’t use Instagram as a) I have a deliberately terrible not-very-smart-phone; and b) I take photographs like Helen Keller. Nonetheless, apparently tagging your pictorial output with #nofilter is a ‘thing’ – this blog outs people who have committed the heinous crime of LYING about the #nofilter thing. Jesus, everyone’s an arsehole, aren’t they?
• Fraszier: Plot synopses for unfilmed episodes of what is still one of the best sitcoms ever. Whoever’s writing these has seen a LOT of episodes. BONUS – LASER FRASIER!

LONG THINGS WHICH ARE LONG:

• Nostalgia Songs: A New York Time piece asking readers to share the songs that make them nostalgic. Oh man, some of the comments. All of the feels, right there. 
• I Recognised My Ex In Pr0n: Despite the rather salacious title, this is a more sensitive and interesting read than you might think. Interesting on modern relationships and sexual mores and that weird, indefinable line between the arousing abstract and the emotionally painful specific. Worth reading. 
• You’re One In 8million: It’s an oft-quoted truism that cities can be lonely places. This is a beautiful sad-then-happy piece about that feeling of moving to a new place and not really knowing anyone and having to start again and not really knowing how or where or when you might start to feel a little bit less like a lonely, unloved speck in a cold, impersonal and fundamentally Godless universe (you may never, fyi). 
• The Future of Online Surveillance: This is paranoiainducing but worth a read if you’re interested in Snowden, PRISM, Google, Facebook and the like. Take a look at the comments, too, as there’s a lot of informed commentary and reaction in there which broadens out the scope of the article somewhat. TL;DR version: we’re all going to be watched, everywhere, forever.
• We Need New Swearwords: As someone who by nature of their use of language has pretty much exhausted all existing profanities, I am 100% behind this. 
• When The War On Terror Met Burning Man: The weirdest story of the week, by a massive, massive length. This is the tale of how a bunch of hippies hacked the war on terror, and brought Burner principles to Afghanistan. Really, properly into ‘Men Who Stare At Goats’ territory, this. You really couldn’t make it up. 
• Trinity Mirror and Us vs Th3m: I sort of don’t think I should link to Us vs Th3m, as basically they do a daily version of Curios and if you subscribe to their stuff you will have seen a lot of the preceding already. The GITS. Nonetheless this is a REALLY interesting piece by Martin Belam, one of the founders, on why they are doing it, why Trinity Mirror are backing them, how it works, how noone knows what makes something go ‘viral’ (AGAIN), and all sorts of other stuff. Required reading if you’re interested in content making, publishing, new media (can we still call it that?) and the like. 

By Alexandre Borderau

1) I’m going to put this at the top, as then maybe at least one of you will bother watching it. Look, I know it’s 17mins long but it is BRILLIANT – a short film called ‘Jonah’, about fame and tourism and how the two things affect the developing world. Also, just mesmerisingly good CGI, and some really strong central performances. Watch over lunch, or tea, or on Sunday evening or something. It really is VERY good indeed: 

Oh Terry! From a Tumblr – no idea who by, sorry.

THE BITS FOR PEOPLE WHO LAUGHABLY CLAIM TO WORK IN ‘THE INDUSTRY’ 

Facebook:

• Facebook knows so much more about you than you think it does: So this was a bit awkward for them last week. The whole ‘someone may have seen your phone number on Facebook – SORRY!’ thing is actually less of an issue, here; the big story is about the data which Facebook has about you and the connections in your life which you really have no idea about whatsoever. It raises all sorts of questions about the amount of data about users’ personal information which the site is harvesting from the aforementioned users’ interactions with third parties – basically, is Facebook snooping on who you message most, chat with most, etc? The answer, for any of you still struggling with the horrifically surveilled dystopian future we’re currently rushing headlong into with nary a care, is a resounding ‘yes’. THANKS, FACEBOOK!
• ‘Like’ Replies for Mobile: This is hugely interesting from a linguistic point of view; if you think about the lasting and very real communications changes which Facebook and the rest have engendered, not only behaviorally but in terms of language, etc, this can be seen as another significant step in the modification of the manner in which we communicate by the services we use. To quote the piece, because I’m lazy and strapped for time, ‘Facebook’s iOS and Android apps have rolled out the option in messages to reply with a one-tap thumbs-up Like button sticker’. Let’s all look forward to a future in which we ask people questions in REAL LIFE and they respond in the affirmative by saying ‘LIKE!’ and we stab them to death and are left rotting away in a jail cell knowing, deep down, that we did the right thing. 
• Facebook Developing ‘Reader’ (apparently): Just worth noting. Apparently they’re working on a Flipboard-esque product for mobiles/tablets. Should this be the case (it will be the case), it will give extra weight to the platform when it comes to CONTENT SHARING and REACH and all those other horrible words which you people continue to use despite them being total bunkum. 
• Related Hashtags: They launched hashtags the other week; this has now been extended to mobile, and they’ve also rolled out the ‘related hashtags’ feature, which will suggest additional often-used hashtags when you search another hashtag (it’s rapidly coming to the point where the word ‘hashtag’ has lost all meaning for me, in the way that words are wont to do when repeated too much). Another Twitter-esque feature, but one which potentially has a bit of a negative implication for brands (or at least it will if I can persuade everyone using Facebook to start posting things about brands in the same sentence as, say #kiddiebongo. Not sure it will work, but I live in hope). 
• Better Advertising Performance Reporting: Yawn. Still, some of you may care. Basically you now get to know exactly how many people, where, when, and how, failed to give anything resembling a *ahem* fig about your promoted post. 
• The Bits About Instagram Video: So this is still a thing, a week after launch. It’s actually been quite interesting to watch the reaction; I still personally think that the lack of current Twitter compatibility, and the problems with embedding, are things they need to fix, but what do I know? Rhetorical, by the way. Anyhow, this is a decent piece about why the service is going to work (DUH!), and this is actually a really smart, in-depth comparison of the two services which is worth reading if you’re interested in the whole thing, and this is a direct head-to-head opinion from a professional Vine-maker (I know! That’s actually a job!!!!), and this is a silly-but-fun webthingy which gives you a rolling head-to-head between Instagram videos and Vine videos, and which will steal the rest of your day if you’re not careful so BE CAREFUL. 

Twitter:

• The Amazing Price of TV-linked Ads on Twitter: A few weeks ago I mentioned the new Twitter service which will allow advertisers to show promoted tweets to people who’ve been tweeting about a show in which their TV ad has also appeared. Now details emerge about the minimum spend associated with it. $100k!!!! I know that this obviously isn’t a fixed rate card, and there will be bulk-buy ad bundles available to the big boys (HELLO SIR MARTIN!!!), but still – that’s a LOT of money. Although, I suppose, when you compare it to the sort of costs of a TV campaign, etc, it’s still small beer. Nonetheless, the nice men and women at Twitter HQ are unlikely to be going hungry any time soon. 
• Twitter To Launch Live Events Platform: This is interesting. The basic premise is that Twitter is considering creating a new service within the platform which will allow people to track reaction to live events in better fashion. At the moment you’re limited to using search within Tweetdeck, or similar; this sounds a little more like a Radian6-type overview for people watching things later, which show peaks and troughs in conversations, hot topics at varying points, etc. So, for example, you’ll be able to see that the bit that got everyone excited in your favourite TV show occurred 47:32 minutes in, and skip straight to it, and see what everyone was saying about it on the internet STRAIGHT AWAY without having to go through the tedious rigmarole of actually watching the whole thing, and without that whole pesky ‘element of surprise and unpredictability’ thing. Oh, hang on, THAT SOUNDS GHASTLY. Welcome to a future in which we all only consume the best bits of anything (‘best bits’ as defined by the idiotic lumpenproletariat of the internetzzzz) – basically reducing all media and experience to a YouTube highlights reel. THANKS, INTERNET!
• Geotargeted Ads: Would you like the opportunity to see promotional messages from brands, retailers, etc, whenever you fire up Twitter near one of their shops / billboards / sponsored Tube stations / etc? No? Tough, ‘cos that’s what’s going to happen whether you like it or not. STOP SNIVELLING.

Other Stuff About Advermarketingpr:

• Noone Cares About You, Food Brand On ‘Social Media’: I’m only including this because it made me LAUGH. To quote, “A study of 85 of the UK’s leading food brands reveals that just 10 brands account for 96% of all social media food conversations”. Which is AMAZING. Even for those 10 brands who make up that 96%, the conversations are largely ones that NOONE WANTS TO HAVE WITH THEM. Can this please be a wake-up call, please, to the fact that REAL PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO TALK TO BISCUITS ON THE INTERNET? Thanks x
• Grindr Was The Most-Used App at Cannes: But only because Apple’s stringent policies mean that there’s currently no ‘FindADealer’ app for iPhone.
• Mint Sells Stickygram: I’m including this partly because I like the people at Mint who’ve always been unfailingly lovely, but also because it’s an interesting example of agencies making things JUST FOR THEMSELVES and doing well out of it. Well done, people at Mint.
• Coke Do Another SuperClever Thingzzzz: Look, I’m getting bored of Coke being so good too. I know, it’s tedious. This, though, is just LOVELY. Taking the clever webvideo trend of using photography for stop-motion animation, this is a beautiful idea, executed perfectly, and SO SIMPLE. Aside from the tshirt printing and mailing, it’s also pretty damn cheap. Watch this be done by someone else significantly less impressively in about a month.
• Diesel Outsource Their Tumblr: Under the ostensible guise of ‘tell us what inspires you, cool people of the internet!’, Diesel have effectively outsourced the content curation for their Tumblr to their fanbase. Which is really smart on several levels – other people, who don’t want to pay agencies shedloads to make ‘content calendars’ and other such rubbish, LEARN (NB – will only work if you’re a brand which people for some reason care about. Biscuits probably need not apply. Except maybe digestives, or Rich Tea. Mmmmm, Rich Tea. Web Curios is open to gift parcels from adverprmarketeers).
• Nike Skatepark ON A BARGE: Last Saturday was, apparently, world skateboarding day or somesuch. To celebrate, Nike made a skatepark. On a barge, floating off Manhattan. This is really quite impressive – as is the manner in which they allowed people access to it.
• The Musical Magazine, by Billboard: The now-obligatory ‘thing done by an agency in Brazil’, this is for Billboard magazine which uses NFC chips embedded in the magazine covers to allow readers (or just randoms in a newsagent’s, if the video’s to be believed) the opportunity to hear the music written about in the mag on their smartphone. Really slick (and, I imagine, pretty expensive). 
• Geordie Shore Uses Snapchat: I’ve never seen Geordie Shore, but I imagine it to be the televisual equivalent of Chlamydia. Anyway, they’re promoting ‘saucy’ behind-the-scenes content using Snapchat. Clever them. Am I the only person who’s expecting a full ‘reality TV show with proper hardcore bongo internet sideline’-type thing in the next year? Eh? Oh.
• Watch Dogs Promo Website: Watch Dogs is a videogame coming out later this year, all about data and surveillance and STUFF. This is a super-clever promo website for it, which tracks publicly available information in real-time across 3 European cities (London, Paris and Berlin), pointing out very cleverly both one of the game’s central conceits (ie that information is everywhere and accessing it is easy) and also the proliferation of available data which exists in the real world. It’s got a nice glitchy aesthetic about it and the webwork is pretty slick too: overall this ticks a LOT of internet-friendly boxes and will doubtless go everywhere – kudos to the developers.
• Adecco’s Marketing / Advertising / PR People Are Thieves And Scum: I mean REALLY. That’s so, so shoddy on many levels. The follow-up post from earlier this week about how they’ve not even acknowledged this is also worth reading. Ugh, some people.
• JG Ballard Predicts the Future: It saddened me that Ballard never really got to grips with the web in his later works; anyway, this is an incredible piece of predictive futurology from 1977 in which he basically nails the concept of our reflective, narcissistic digital existences. Yay, us!
• Korean Anti-Suicide Bridge Thingy: To close out this section on something resembling a high, have this Lion-winning effort. Really good work, for a good cause.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSORS: Silicon Beach is a fantastic conference taking place in September in Bournemouth. With speakers from organisations including Havas, Rewired State, Code Club and Dare, there’s a world-class line-up of marketing, tech, and creative folks. Imperica readers benefit from a significant discount on the ticket prices for Silicon Beach. The sooner you book, the more you save. We’ll be interviewing and profiling some of the event’s speakers in coming weeks, but for now, click here for your cheapo tickets.

Photo by Thongdee Varunyoo

OTHER THINGS I HAVE FOUND OF MODERATE-TO-GREAT INTEREST, PT. 1:

• Kickstarter Apologises: This is a bit comms-y, so perhaps should go up there but WHAT-EVER. Kickstarter last week got a lot of flack for hosting a funding bid from a self-confessed PUA for an advice book which was basically quite rapey. This is their apology for that, which is a case study in how companies REALLY CAN admit they were wrong. It’s possible – maybe everyone should try it every now and again. 
• Using Adverts for Whistleblowing: This is superclever, if a little technical (don’t worry, you don’t actually need to understand how it works). A service which allows people to anonymously submit information through a central source using banner ads as the input / exchange mechanism. REALLY sneaky…
• The Fcuk You Tapestry: Childish-but-lovely, this is Modern Toss doing a long, continuous comic around one central theme (you may be able to guess what the theme is from the title). Sweary and childish and depressingly true and funny.
• Weird, Tiny Japanese Sweets: This is all in Japanese, so obviously I understanding NOTHING of it, but it seems to be a blog dedicated to those weird Japanese sweets that are designed to look like something else (ie hamburgers). THERE IS ONE WHICH LOOKS LIKE A TOILET. Madness.
• The Art of Vagina: Speaking of odd Japanese things (SEAMLESS!), this is Japanese artist Rokudenashiko’s work which focuses on recontextualising and demystifying the female genitalia. The link is totally SFW, I promise. I can’t deny that it’s a little strange, though.
• Marbles: Continuing the genital theme (SEAMLESS!), this is a blog which collects pictures of the testicles of classical sculptures. That’s it. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?
• (Another) Lifelogging Camera: I’ve been watching this stuff for a while now, since I first stumbled across the Viconrevue about 4 years ago. This is the latest in the line of ‘cameras which you can wear round your neck and will take pictures of your entire life’-things, and it’s called Memoto, and it takes 2 photos a minute and automatically uploads them to the cloud and makes them searchable, and I don’t know WHAT to think about this sort of thing any more. Effectively it’s all going to be obsolete-d by Google Glass or its successors, but perhaps this is ARTIER and therefore better. Or it’s actually sneakier and more covert. Not sure really. Confused. Fingers hurt. TYPING.
• Track Your Child’s Phone: This is an app which effectively acts as a Trojan on a kid’s phone so that a parent can know where they are (and what they’re texting) ALL THE TIME. It’s unclear how exactly you install it, and whether it requires an consent from the surveillee, but it’s an horrific idea in any case. Just a thought, but if you think that you need to keep tabs on your children like this then perhaps, just perhaps, there are some other steps you might want to think about taking instead of passive snooping. Also, thanks to BBM, Whatsapp, etc, it’s functionally sort of useless. IN YOUR FACE, SPYPARENTS!
• Pr0nography From The 8-bit Era: A great site collecting 8-bit bongo from the C64 era. This really is pr0n, so usual NSFW labels apply, but really, I don’t think anyone could possibly get off on this (or indeed really be offended by it – then again, as has been proven time and time again to my inevitable detriment, I possibly have different offence thresholds to other people). 
• Charge Your Phone With FIRE: This is just incredible (or at least it is to a man with a very rudimentary grasp of physics like me). These products combine wood-burning stoves with power for mobiles and LED lights – so you can cook you dinner whilst using the excess heat to, say light your campsite or power your laptop or something. Ingenious, and HUGELY potentially valuable for the developing world. 
• Fund The Poetry Drone: A project to pay for a military drone to be used to drop poetry rather than shoot people. Silly, whimsical and absolutely necessary (well, ok, perhaps not in the grans scheme of things, but, you know, RIGHT ON, KIDS!).
• Appalling ‘Anti-Jihadist’ Ammunition: I’ve had a bit of a dig around this, and I don’t think it’s a spoof or a joke. So what this means is that there really are people (with, as you’d expect, a poor grasp of grammar and punctuation) who think that pork-infused ammunition to use against the GROWING JIHADIST THREAT is A Good Thing. Thanks, America!

By Keita Morimoto

OTHER THINGS I HAVE FOUND OF MODERATE-TO-GREAT INTEREST, PT. 2:

• Posters From Your FB Pics: Or Instagram, or Flickr. Anyway, this is a cool looking service which will make beautiful-looking posters from your pictures on social media. There’s a brand thing here, somewhere, for the right people. Think about it. 
• Catflakes: Snowflake modelling + cats = HOURS (well, ok, minutes) of fun. Really a lot more hypnotic than it has any right to be.
• Thug Notes: Just brilliant. Literary criticism from the ghetto. Like Cliff Notes, but funny and (really) actually really, really smart. If you have a kid or nephew or something who’s doing English, you might want to bookmark this.
• The Art of the World Cup: Who cares about the protests? BUY A PRINT! There are some quite cool pieces on here, but the prices are another thing for Brazil’s poor to get angry about (along with, you know, all the other stuff)
• Pikinis: Are you the sort of creepy pervert who spends hours sweaty-palmed on Facebook looking through the photos of all your friends and acquaintances for a flash of bare flesh? Well you’re in luck, as this disquieting app will basically automate the process for you, thereby leaving you with more time to take a long, hard look at yourself. The best thing about this is the level of unintentional trauma that will be inflicted upon people who are Facebook friends with their family members.
• The Anti-NSA Font: A font which is, supposedly, incapable of being read by spiders and bots. There’s been quite a lot of skepticism about whether or not this would actually work, but I applaud the theory behind its creation.
• The Internet Movie Firearms Database: Have you ever seen a film and thought ‘Hm, I wish there was a place online where I could find out more about exactly which type of gun the one-man zen army Steven Seagal used to inflict high-velocity justice on the bad people’? OH GOOD – here is that very website. You’re welcome. 
• Cross-sections of Ammunition: Beautiful photos of ammo, cut in half (also, SEAMLESS!).
• Pictures of the Solstice & Supermoon: Just beautiful. The Atlantic as ever giving good photo.
• The Flatpack Rowing Boat: In the whimsical world which exists in my head, where fathers and sons play together happily and make treehouses and learn stuff and share interests and OH GOD I’M GOING TO START CRYING, this is the most popular present in the world. Just how much fun would it be to make this and then go boating? 
• Buy Invisible Ink: Another from the Boys’ Own school of things (SEAMLESS!), this is an online shop which sells all sorts of high-end inks, the best being the invisible stuff. Can we go back to sending each other secret messages and things, IN REAL LIFE? Without wishing to tarnish this with the toilet brish of commerce, there’s a lovely campaign-based thing for a brand here. Maybe something for INFLUENCERS (ugh) or SUPERFANS (double-ugh) or OH GOD I’VE RUINED IT HAVEN’T I?
• Paparazzi Proposals: I think that this is really, really weird – but then again I’m not 100% sold on the idea of matrimony in the first place, so I’m not target audience I guess. This is a service from the US that will help you plan an elabroate wedding proposal, and then provide photographers to hide in the bushes and take CANDID SNAPSHOTS of the whole event. Which means you have to be pretty certain that the answer’s going to be yes if you want to avoid a whole load of pictures of weeping and embarrassment and passers-by trying to hide their schadenfreude. BONUS FACT – I know someone who was once proposed to in a crowded restaurant in Washington DC. She said ‘no’. It was, I am led to believe, not a little awkward (they are now very happily married though, happy-ending fans, so don’t feel too bad about the whole thing). 
• Lorem Gibson: Filler text based on the works of William Gibson. 
• Introversion: A beautiful, short comic extolling the virtues of quiet. 
• Ultimate 0s and Xs: Find someone in your office / house / field / train carriage to play this with NOW. 
• Gorgeous Photographs of India: One of the best Flickr sets I’ve seen in ages, these are truly beautiful and worth taking a 10 minute eyestroll through.
• The Box-art of Psygnosis: There are about 6 of you for whom this is going to give huge, warm, fuzzy flashbacks. ENJOY! (if you need an explanation as to what the link is about you are not one of those people and you can probably skip this one). 
• The Internet K-hole: This is an incredible (and quite NSFW-ish) collection of vintage WTF-ish pictures. WARNING: There is a dead, gutted bear in one of the pictures which a couple of people got upset about when I tweeted this. Sorry, sensitive animal lovers. 
• Hollow: Finally, the best webthing of the week. This is a gorgeous online project which is part website, part documentary, part art project, and all wonderful. It tells the story of a dying town in the US, and it is so beautifully made and told. Set aside 15 minutes and really do pay attention – I promise it will reward you. Made by the very talented Elaine McMillion.

By Nir Arieli

The Circus of Tumblrs:

• Fcuk No Internet Dating: A tumbr highlighting all the bad things about internet dating. Starts off sort of funny and then you get the crushing realisation that this is someone’s reality and internal monologue, and you get a little bit sad inside (EDIT it is by Amelia, fyi, and is in no way a reflection of the inside of her head).
• Exploding Actresses: This has been everywhere in the past few days, but in case it’s passed you by this is a selection of gifs featuring actresses from iconic films whose heads, at certain points, explode for no apparent reason. Just…just look, ok?
• Bad Hairdressers’ Names: The crap names of hair salons. You thought ‘A Cut Above’ was a nadir? OHNONONONO!
• My Startup Has 30 Days To Live: A somewhat sobering antidote to the FCUK YEAH STARTUPS! attitude which prevails at the moment. It sounds HARD and SAD.
• Tiny Pantone Matching: Small things which match Pantone colour swatches. Oddly lovely, though I don’t quite know why.
• Thumbs & Ammo: Stills from movies in which the guns have been replaced with cheery thumbs-ups. 
• Rap Posters: One of the best things I’ve seen all week. A new poster each day, depicting classic hiphop albums in minimalist fashion, by the super-talented Zaven Najjar, a Paris-based designed. Amazed he’s not selling them.

LONG THINGS WHICH ARE LONG AND WHICH YOU SHOULD ADD TO YOUR ‘READ LATER LISTS AND FOR WHICH YOUR BRAIN WILL THANK YOU:

• Signing At Rap Gigs: Holly Maniatti achieved minor internet fame last week when a video of her signing along at a Wu Tang gig went everywhere. This is a lovely piece looking at her craft, and how it works – it makes me really, really want to learn how to swear in sign language, which I am aware is childish. Sorry.
• Me And My Monkey: This really IS long, but it’s an incredible read. If you’ve ever read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_Ham, this may ring some bells – confessions of a white-collar junkie, from a 1995 Washington Post. Awesome writing and really worth the effort. 
• What Words Are Worth: This is an excellent piece of writing about journalism and freelancing in the internet age, and what words are worth. If you do any sort of writing for a living, and particularly if you work on a ‘payment per article’ basis rather than being a staffer, this will resonate. Also, there’s a lot of stuff I didn’t previously know about the differential payment rates offered by different publications (there’s a LOT of difference).
• The Kanye Collage: I read this and my jaw dropped. I don’t think that this is getting the recognition it deserves. A collage of excerpts from Kanye West interviews, edited into a coherent whole, which absolutely nails his whole narcissistic messiah complex schtick and how unpleasant it often seems. I am so impressed at the craft behind this. Maybe that makes me an idiot. BONUS KANYE: here’s a piece in defence of his hubris, from Buzzfeed (but it’s the decent bit of Buzzfeed, so I don’t feel so bad about linking it). 
• What Winning Looks Like: Seemingly-obligatory VICE link of the week, this one looking at the mess which everyone has made of Afghanistan. Sobering, but excellent journalism. 
• Samuel Pepys Favourite Bongo Mag: A fascinating look at a sex manual from the 17th Century. I believe the term to use here is ‘bawdy’. A little NSFW, but in a really Olde Worlde fashion which probably makes it ok. Not sure how HR would look at it, but worth a gamble I reckon.
• What It Might Be Like To Be An Octopus: Taking Nagel’s famous ‘bat’ question as its starting point, this is a decent and accessible look at an interesting philosophical problem which is pleasingly accessible even to people like me who remember about 3 things from the two philosophy degrees we did 15 years ago.
• Big Narstie vs Game Of Thrones: Following from the Eastenders critique which I linked to a few months back, this is London grime PERSONALITY Big Narstie waxing lyrical about popular sex’n’death series Game of Thrones. I don’t even watch the show, but this had me crying in parts. 
• London Apps: Not really a long read as such, but a good list of apps which are useful to Londoners, put together by app developer and professional Beard Michael Hobson. 
• Detritus: A beautiful experiment in interactive fiction which I’ve put here because it’s probably a 10 minute playthrough and requires quite a bit of reading. It’s worth it, though – it’s quite the lovely thing, and rewards your time.

By Jen Mann

 

NOW, FINALLY, MOVING PICTURES AND SOUNDS! (Not including the Dawkins meme thing by Saatchi at Cannes last week (oh, ok, it’s here) because you’ve all seen it already and also it basically screws itself by not working properly as a meme which sort of undermines the whole point of it):

1) I’m a big fan of actor, rapper, general agitator and all-round clever man Riz MC. This is him doing some properly good spoken word at a recent bookslam event. The audio’s not great, but do listen – it’s not only technically excellent but it’s smart and funny too: 

10) Finally, a proper labour of love from my good friend and  renaissance man Akira The Don. This is his epic tribute to Game of Thrones, featuring the aforementioned Big Narstie and a whole load of superhighqualitygreenscreen action. This is Games For The Thrones and it is EPIC:

Yes, that’s right – from popular protest at the intersection of Europe and Asia to men doing tricks with bits of string and plastic. WHICH OTHER OVERLONG WEEKLY MISCELLANY GIVES YOU THAT, EH???? Whether you want it or not is immaterial. 

Anyway, kids. Strap in, sit back, pour yourselves a stiff drink and prepare for the imminent trepanning that is a trip through Web Curios. ENJOY!

By Andrew Lyman

THE BIT WHERE YOU GET TO PRETEND THAT YOU’RE READING THIS FOR WORK, UNLESS YOU’RE READING THIS ON THE WEEKEND IN WHICH CASE JUST SKIP IT:

FACEBOOK:

• Facebook Simplifies Ad Offering: It’s about time, frankly, given that (as I learned from this news) there are currently 27(!) separate Facebook ad products. There won’t be, by the end of the year – they’re killing more than half of them in favour of a simplified, streamlined system which combines the functionality of multiple ad products to eliminate overlap, etc. Obliquely it’s an interesting insight into the big blue Satan’s iterative design processes when it comes to the stuff that really matters (ie making all of the money).
• This Is What Verified Pages Look Like: Look, here’s McDonald’s! They have a TICK. AMAZING! I for one am far happier interacting with the vapid, anodyne voice of a brand dedicated to selling me crap food with all the nutritional value of an iPad when I know that it REALLY IS that brand and not a stealthy scammer.
• It Doesn’t Matter If We Hate It, We’re Stuck With It: Interesting – and clever – piece by Reuters as to why Facebook is not going anywhere, whether or not we like it. Which sort of makes you wonder WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE? There’s a lot of interesting thought-food in there about its service offering and how it may develop in light of recent misstep.
• But That Doesn’t Mean It’s Not A Bit Crap: A great, long, look at how Facebook is effectively edging towards being little more than a spam graveyard, based on the evolution of Open Graph and the gradual prioritisation of algorithmically-preferred content. Actually want to know what it is that your friends have been doing? TOUGH, LOOK AT THIS BRAND’S PICTURE OF A PUG IN A PARTY HAT INSTEAD. Actually this is less of an issue if you just take the simple step of not using Facebook for communicating with commercial entities, although you would obviously be a FOOL and a COMMUNIST to suggest that.
  
  TWITTER:

• Lists Get Bigger & More Useful: This was meant to go in last week, but I forgot about it (which says more about my priorities than it does about the significance of the announcement). Twitter has expanded the functionality of its ‘Lists’ service, to the point where they are now really, really useful (particularly for anyone who’s doing Twitter PROFESSIONALLY). You can now make up to 1,000 lists from a single account, each containing up to 5,000 Twitter profiles. Which really is useful if you need to do stuff with media or INFLUENCERS, although I still hate you for believing that INFLUENCERS is actually a proper word you are allowed to use. 
• Twitter Gets Into Bed With The Man: Such a big story, this (I think). WPP, the advertising/communications behemoth and, ultimately, the people whose fault it is that this screed exists, announced yesterday that they have entered into a global strategic partnership with Twitter. Details are, at present, sketchy, but this can’t be anything other than a massive databuy, allowing all of Sir Martin’s multifarious corporate tentacles access to a violently large amount of information about what we’re all saying and thinking, which will then be used to try and sell us stuff more effectively. I’m presuming a degree of exclusivity on this, which surely is huge for the advertising / media buying industry as a whole. Or maybe it’s not, and I’m simply still in thrall to the strange charms of a stumpy plutocrat. WHO KNOWS?
• The Best Vine Person EVER: This is sort of frivolous so probably should go down there (*gestures*), but it’s all about Vine, so sod it. This man works for Twitter, and therefore has almost certainly had more time to play with the product than anyone else, but his use of the platform is BRILLIANT. Brands, LEARN.  
• Although This Is Also A Clever Use Of Vine: Really simple and clever, this site uses Vine to collect brilliant examples of UX design from around the web. An excellent example of what it is really useful for, and something that you should think about ripping off. IKEA – timelapse vines showing key points in the assembly of flatpack furniture? Foodie people – vines showing how certain things should look during the cooking process? You get the idea(s).
• The Most Engaged Twitter Account IN THE WORLD: Someone ran the numbers – more RTs, favourites, @replies than ANY OTHER ACCOUNT. And all it does is tweet intellectually subnormal platitudes. Yep, this is what you need to do to ‘engage’ people. Talk like an idiot who’s read a lot of self-help manuals. This is both funny and immensely saddening. Community managers – go on, tweet like this for a week and watch your (largely meaningless) numbers SOAR.
• Visualisations of Twitter Use Across The World: No London, sadly, but very beautiful nonetheless. 

GOOGLE:

• No Bongo For Glass: Google have clarified their developer policies for building stuff on the scary, face-wearable computing device of dreams / nightmares; sadly for the onanists out there (ok, ok, all of us), they have imposed a ban on pr0n-y apps. Which is a real shame for the people behind the brilliantly-named ‘Tits and Glass‘ app, which was announced about 24 hours before Google made this announcement. 
• Google+ Is The Matrix: Clever piece of writing by Charles Arthur in the Guardian, which takes a look at what Google+ is actually for; nothing that wasn’t alluded to when it launched a few years back, but benefits enormously from the benefit of hindsight and the more zoomed-out view of the online ecosystem we are afforded in 2013. Basically what it says is that G+ is a gigantic datagathering tool which sits across all Google’s other gigantic datagathering tools. I still reckon there’s a possible future in which everyone is given a Google ID at birth and they ‘own’ the universal login thing. Maybe. Perhaps. 
• It Can Tell The Future Too: I was talking with someone about data analysis, predictions and government this week (because I’m SO ALONE); this ties into that, a bit. Just a bit of info from a Google research project mapping its data against the box office takings of films. We’ve all heard stuff about how social media is remarkably accurate when it comes to predicting 1st weekend box office receipts, but this is quite remarkable – to quote the study: “trailer search volume on Google coupled with both the franchise status of the movie and seasonality can predict opening weekend box office revenue with 94% accuracy”. That’s incredible. No wonder Goldman Sachs are working on scrapers to play the stockmarket based on Twitter, Facebook and Google data. Everything we write on the internet helps make rich companies richer, and this is only going to become more true. 

OTHER THINGS WHICH YOU CAN PASS OFF AS PROFESSIONALLY USEFUL IF YOU HAVE A SILLY, MADE-UP INTERNETTY JOB LIKE ME:

• Niche Networks ‘On The Rise’: This story’s been bubbling around recently, in parallel to the much-exaggerated DECLINE OF FACEBOOK. Anyway, an interesting look at smaller, more specialist social networks, all of which are set to be ruined by brands attempting to co-opt them for their own ends and effectively crushing all the things that made them special in the first place.
• Internet Usage Trends – Some graphs: A whole load of graphs and data looking at how the manner in which we use the web will change over the next few years. Basically it says that video usage online will continue to grow exponentially, particularly on mobile. Unsurprising, but useful if you need to justify a position to a client with 3rd party data and important-looking lines, which you probably will do at some point. 
• How Digital Is Modifying Marketing: This is a really good presentation. Tells the truth, largely, and you could do worse than have a read and appropriate some of the thinking. It’s by a man called Gregory Pouy, so all credit to him. 
• Coub – Like Vine But For YouTube Vids: That’s sort of all you need to know. Lets you create 10-second looping videos from any YouTube clips you like (or indeed your own footage). Hugely useful if you need to make a high volume of ‘funny’, ‘original’ content and don’t want to do it all off a mobile device. 
• Simon’s Dating Challenge: A better-than-expected effort from BT, who’ve created this game to promote…er…some stuff that they do (again proving the questionable utility of this stuff as a campaign marketing tool, but let’s disregard that). It’s retro, it’s fun enough to waste 5 minutes on…hang on, I’m reading this back to myself and realising quite how low my standards are when it comes to this stuff. Basically, IT’S NOT DREADFUL. Huzzah!
• Etihad x LinkedIn: This, though, really is clever. A LinkedIn mashup which lets you see your primary and secondary contacts on a map, look at where you might be travelling to and work out who’s in the area who it might be useful to meet, message them, etc. Actually a potentially useful service, which is pretty rare.
• Storytime Hangout: I really like this. Google+ thingy by Penguin / Ladybird, which does an AR-style overlay on your Google+ hangout allowing you to roleplay the story you’re telling your kids. Although the fact that you’re telling your kids a story over the internet makes me a little sad, now I think about it. 
• How GE Uses Data Visualisation: A good, and comprehensive, look at what GE are doing with their data and how they are making it work in a communications sense. Required reading for any of you who’ve wanged on about BIG DATA in a client meeting without really knowing what you mean. 
• If This Is Real It’s TERRIFYING: This road safety stunt (part of the DfT’s THINK! campaign) is PROPERLY unsettling. Or, rather, it must have been for the people in the video, although they all look a little bit too goodlooking for me to 100% believe that they’re not actors. Real people don’t look that good in public lavatories, surely. 
• The Domino’s Pizza Drone: Domino’s gets a PR first (I think) using drone technology to deliver pizzas in this short video. Anyone familiar with the Bill Hicks skit about shooting bananas at hungry people should be getting weird little ‘living in the future’ tracers right about now.
• The Dollar Shave Club People Do Video Well, Again: I almost don’t mind being advertised at when it’s this well written. It takes a lot of effort to put together something which looks this slapdash.

The hyperrealistic painting of Omar Ortiz

 WHY NOT LISTEN TO SOME LOVELY JAZZY DOWNTEMPO BEATS FROM GERMANY WHILE YOU READ THE NEXT BITS? GO ON YOU WILL LIKE THEM

STUFF OF POTENTIAL INTEREST FROM THE PAST WEEK’S INSANE WHIRLIGIG OF INTERNETTING, PT. 1:

• What Is Going Viral RIGHT NOW: Fre.sh is built by Buzzfeed and links to the 50 stories / pages which are being most-shared on the web RIGHT NOW. The font size denotes traffic to that page, the ranking denotes how quickly that traffic is accruing. It’s obviously not ALL of the web, just a selection of curated sites, but it’s an interesting snapshot-generator nonetheless. Man, we like frivolous list-based articles. 
• Making Sense of Large Numbers With Chrome: Have you ever been confronted by a large figure in an article and thought ‘Yes, fine, but what I really want to know is how that compares to, say, the size of Wales?’ (it is a little-remarked fact that all spatial size comparisons in the UK are based on the idea that ‘a Wales’ is the most comprehensible large unit of space which exists, hence everything being described as being ‘an area X times the size of Wales’). Lucky you – this Google Chrome plugin will automatically do exactly that sort of thing, translating large numbers into theoretically easier-to-understand analogues. 
• My Current Favourite 404 Page: You can play Space Invaders on it, which I think should be made standard practice for all these markers of failure and disappointment across the web. 
• LOLCAT Loans: Just an amazingly awful thing. A loanshark using the cuddly LOLCAT meme to peddle sub-prime lending solutions with a terrifying level of vig which will in all likelihood leave poor people penniless, homeless, and generally banjaxed. BUT IT’S OK BECAUSE CATS! A cursory bit of online research suggests that the company’s registered in Panama, along with a whole load of parallel businesses registered to the same parent company which also sells an awful lot of knock-off pharmaceuticals. Who better to borrow money from? Thanks to Chris Owen for finding this one. 
• Great Photography From This Week in Turkey: A collection of awesome photos from The Atlantic.
• A Love Letter To The Early Web: I think that this is just a search engine which mines the Wayback Machine for old internet results. It’s a lovely nostalgic timesink, though, if you’re a webmong of long-standing. 
• Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Marijuana Strains: There’s a lot of really interesting stuff happening in the moment, particularly in the US, as a result of changes in legislation around the legality of marijuana (foreshadowing) – this is the internet side-effect. Leafly is a US startup which effectively acts as a cross between Wikipedia and Erowid and tells you all you could ever want to know about the difference between Black Domina and Bubblegum, and everything in between. I give it less then a year before the weed world has its own Jilly Goolden-style superstar, poncily reviewing different strains on YouTube. 
• People Laughing Between Takes On Film Sets: A lovely collection of candid snaps of film stars enjoying themselves on-set. Makes working on a film look FUN, when I am reliably informed that the reality is in fact a hellish carousel of tedium. 
• Spoiler Silencer: Unhappy at how you don’t have the self-control to ignore people talking about plot details from your favourite overblown US TV production? Oh good, then this is for you. Silencer is a plugin which purports to block mentions of…well, whatever you want, on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere. Not a new idea, but they have pre-set bundles that will remove EVERYTHING pertaining to certain shows (so ‘Game Of Thrones’, #got, #gameofthrones, #redwedding, #jesusfuckingchristwhatiswrongwithyougetasenseofperspective, etc).
• Amazing Pictures Of The Sky: Just incredible photographs by a Japanese person by the name of Yu Yamauichi. My lack of Japanese means that this is literally ALL I know about these, but they are lovely and very much worth perusing. 
• Music Label Logos Explained: This is from Red Bull, but I don’t care as it’s actually quite interesting. A look at the logos of a load of classic record labels (mostly US) and how / why they came to be. Music geeks will like this, I think, as may other people (literally the vaguest endorsement EVER). 
• GIANT DUCKS FOR SALE: You remember that giant yellow duck which did the world tour recently to promote something or other that noone really paid any attention to because LOOK IT’S A GIANT YELLOW DUCK? Well you can now buy your very own, in whichever colour you like. Amazing service by the ever-industrious Chinese manufacturing sector, who will make one which is 20m tall for a mere £16k, which is cheap by anyone’s standards. Seriously compared to the agency and media-buy costs of billboard ads, this almost makes sense. Almost. 
• US Population Counter: Nice work by the US Census Bureau, which produced this population clock to track world and US population growth in (projected) realtime based on census data. Nice, user-friendly and interesting (and, obviously, pointless and linkbaity, but still).
• Photographs of Crisis-hit Greece: Brilliant, and really sad, photography of Greek citizens living through the slow collapse of their economy. Taken by Iakovos Hatzistavrou, who is evidently a very talented man. 
• Map Your 4sq Checkins: There will come a point where I stop referencing Foursquare because NOONE CARES, but while I still see people’s checkins appearing in my timeline on Twitter then I’ll keep dropping the odd thing in. This one’s actually nice arty idea, printing you a map of whichever city you’re in with data overlaid about where you checkin; effectively a visualisation of your LIFE (or at least the bit of it which you choose to vaildate through the medium of checking in to Foursquare). Also potentially INCREDIBLY sad for some people (Home-Office-Gym-Home-Office-Gym-Home-Office-Gym-Home-Morgue).
• Jacques Green Interactive Music Video: Another one of those ‘drag the boxes, make your own EXPERIENCE’ things, but nicely done (and bonus points for the garage-y music). 

Isabelle Wenzel, Objectification, With Céline Shoes And Vase, 2013 © Isabelle Wenzel

MAYBE NOW YOU WOULD LIKE SOME OTHER MUSIC BY HODGY BEATS OF ODD FUTURE FAME? YOU WOULD? OH GOOD. 

STUFF OF POTENTIAL INTEREST FROM THE PAST WEEK’S INSANE WHIRLIGIG OF INTERNETTING, PT. 2:

• The Insane Tetris Art Algorithm: As someone who’s a bit math-blind, my only reaction to the insane mathematics behind this is actual naked fear. I don’t really know how to explain it – someone basically made a programme which works out how to draw using Tetris. Just take a look.
• Nathan Fielder Messes With People’s Heads Again: Moderate hilarity once again ensues. Is this currently being ripped off by a breakfast radio show? It really feels like it should be. BONUS – human STI Hunter Moore rips it off in naked teenager-style.
• London’s Abandoned Tube Stations, Mapped: Taking the many lost underground stations of London and placing them on the existing map. Really interesting, and the result of an initial project by the terrifyingly impressive Dylan Maryk, who I have met and confidently predict will be running at least a small part of the world in the next 10 years. Also brought to you by the new Rob Manuel-and-others project Us vs Th3m, which is a really good timewaster-y website, a bit like Buzzfeed but with more lots more brains. 
• The Starbucks of Marijuana: Or at least that’s the idea. As mentioned above, there is a whole industry waiting to explode internationally – smart people are going to get VERY RICH. These people want to be the world’s largest legal weed brand – read more here. 
• Starbucks Vs Dunkin Donuts: SEAMLESS! Well, sort of. This is included less for the content than for the beuatiful page design which I was really impressed by in an odd, geeky fashion. 
• The Cleverest Sign In The World: This is BRILLIANT. A signpost which connects to the internet, meaning it’s dynamic and can be made to display and point to different things depending on user commands. Also, the prototype displayed on the website will show your tweets and point in the direction of where you’re tweeting from if you use a certain hashtag, which is a nice proof-of-concept. 
• How To Pronounce IKEA Product Names: Another website which is disappointingly not by IKEA but should be. Pronunciation guides to the more esoterically-named products from the Swedish meatball suppliers with the furniture sideline. Upsettingly doesn’t include any hints as to pronounce ‘Billy’ properly. 
• Paris Is Getting A New Forest Next Year: I WANT A FOREST ON A SKY WALKWAY. Can someone send this to Boris, please? Thanks.
• Winners of the 2013 Underwater Photography Contest: This is an annual thing by the University of Miami, apparently. Great pictures of cool / weird undersea stuff. 
• The Recording of Under Pressure: A great post looking back at the Bowie/Mercury collaboration. You may not be surprised to learn that a LOT of cocaine was involved. As a bonus, there’s also a recording of their isolated vocals embedded in the piece, which is brilliant. From Dangerous Minds, which is a great blog you should all read. 
• Tennis, Visualised: Very cool, if a bit headache-inducing in terms of the volume of stuff, this is technically a piece of BRANDED CONTENT, but given the fact that I can’t understand why a beer brand has made it I am going ignore the branding. It’s a load of data from a series of ATP matches last year, visualised. The sort of stuff that I imagine tennis coaches use, and, if you play, probably actually really interesting. For the less physically ept (ie me), it’s just a clever example of how to make large datasets accessible. Wimbledon, do this NOW (or, more realistically, next year).
• Someone’s Designing An ‘Improved’ Version Of Chess: It’s called Chess 2. It’s quite mind-melty.
• Star Trek Wine: After last week’s Hannibal Lecter vintage comes Star Trek wine. We’ve basically reached the point where we’re all infantilised to the point where chucking some pop-culture references onto literally ANY product will have us clapping and gawping like idiots and reaching for our wallets. Go society!
• Runed By Fans: Speaking of popular culture (SEAMLESS!), this is a website which looks over a (very) wide range of stuff and tries to quantify exactly how much each has been ruined by the rabid endorsement of its fan base. We’re all part of the problem.
• A 3d Virtual Universe: Sadly this only seems to work on Macs, but if you worship at the Church of Steve then it may work for you. A very cool tool that lets you zoom through space however you want – science geeks should love this. 
• When 3d Printing Goes Wrong: Obviously 3d printing is THE FUTURE and all that, but it’s not always perfect. This is a collection of pictures of what happens when the machines get a bit confused. Don’t know why, but I found it quite pleasing and oddly poignant. Perhaps its reassuring that our creations are still capable of mechanical imperfection (although perhaps we should be more worried than heartened). 
• Will Love Tear Us Apart?: I love this. A ‘game’, which isn’t really a game, based on the Joy Division song ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. Such gorgeous design and animation, and the whole thing really does give you sad, despairing chills. Which sounds horrid, I admit, but it’s very much worth playing with. Just don’t think of it as a game, per se.
   

THE CIRCUS OF TUMBLRS:

• The Unintentional Poetry Of Zazzle: Zazzle is an online retailer that sells an unconscionalble number of items of clothing, with image / slogan combinations which are algorithmically generated and therefore almost totally random. This can lead to some odd and occasionally lyrical slogans, some of the best of which are collected here. I basically want a lot of what is pictured on here, but I feel quite guilty about it. Weirdly, I also found this this week, which is another Tumblr doing much the same thing but slightly differently. 
• This is Popular Privilege: Check your priviliege! YES YOU! Or, er, don’t. I must confess to thinking that this rubbish (because, really) was confined to the insanely twisty world of CIS/non-CIS tumblr arguments, but it seems not. Anyway, the latest iteration of this appears to be the concept of POPULAR PRIVILEGE – that is, the unfair advantages enjoyed by the COOL KIDS. The author of this Tumblr insists that this is not a parody, and its a concept which they believe applicable in the real world, not just school. As a society we really do have too much time and not enough real problems, seriously. 
• Awkward Pints: Stock photos of people holding pints of beer in less-than-comfortable fashion.
• Phones Replaced With Sandwiches: Whoever’s maintaining this will surely get bored and stop soon. I sort of hope they do, anyway, as if not it suggests something of a lack of other stimuli and interest in their life. 
• Film Gifs: I’m pretty sure I’ve featured something very like this before, but here’s a Tumblr collecting a series of nice, hi-res gif-ed film stills. Good work, ready to be spoiled with captions and inclusions in ‘…and then I was all like:’ industry-specific joke tumblrs.
• Gezi, Minus The Violence: Interesting. Takes pictures of protestors clashing with police (and each other) from this week’s Turkish protests ad airbrushes out the violence. Decide for yourselves exactly which high concept you want to apply to this. 
• Gays Of South London: No idea why I’ve not put this in before, it’s AWESOME. Also, South London.

Literally no idea who to attribute this to, sorry.

THIS ALBUM IS CALLED ACID RAP AND IT IS BY CHANCE THE RAPPER AND IT IS GREAT  

LONG THINGS WHICH ARE LONG (THERE ARE SOME TRULY GREAT READS THIS WEEK, I PROMISE):

• Profile of a Porn Star: Marcus London is, apparently, a big star in the world of bongo. He is also, it would seem, a really odd man and not a particularly pleasant one. This profile of him on NSFW Corp is further proof that they are producing some of the best longform writing anywhere on the web at the moment – I know I keep on saying it, but it’s true. 
• Italy, Football, Race and Culture: So obviously being half Italian with a mum who lives in Rome makes me naturally inclined to be interested in anything to do with the place, but regardless of your connection (or lack thereof) to the country, this is a stellar piece of writing, and explores some of the oddities of Italian political culture, the country’s uneasy relationship with extreme politics and racial integration, and its football culture. Really, really good. 
• The Suicide Epidemic: This is very long and not a very cheering piece, but it’s also interesting and important. A look at the people who are investigating the reasons behind why suicide is now a greater killer of people than war, and why suicide figures have risen unchecked year-on-year since 1999. Read it and then go and donate some money to MIND.  
• What It’s Like Being A Minor Actor in a Cult Film: Bit of light relief – this isn’t HUGELY long, but it’s a cute piece by a man who played an irritating TGI Friday-type employee in Office Space (SUCH A GOOD FILM) and how the one role continues to define him. Interesting to read about what it’s like to be someone who is by no means a superstar in a world dominated by them. 
• The History of the UK Garage Scene: I have a slight author-crush on the writer of this piece, who for my money is head and shoulders above everyone else writing for VICE at the minute (go and read through his other stuff, it’s uniformly excellent). This is an illustrated memory-lane-trip back the days when garage was bubbling under – great photos, too.
• The Legend of Buster Smith: Ok, so this one really is epic, but it’s a great example of the sort of journalism that US outlets do really well and which, for reasons I don’t quite get, we don’t seem to produce here. A look at a Chicago icon and ‘the greatest checkers player ever’, it’s a wonderful story about a city and the communities within it, and not really about checkers at all (except it sort of is). Like reading a really good documentary film, if that makes any sense to you. 
• Reviewing Tao Lin’s ‘Taipei’: Tao Lin is an internet phenomenon and possibly the most weird authorial ‘construct’ ever seen. His strange, utterly blank prose is divisive, and the ultra-meta nature of his persona coupled with his other artistic activities / pretensions (delete as applicable) make him a hipster cult figure and an object of derision in equal measure. Whatever your opinion, this review of his latest novel is a brilliant piece of writing, and an interesting exploration as to what a book review can and should be. I think. 
• Making Sushi for Kim Jong Il: Absolutely the best thing I read all week. The crazy, yet apparently true, story of the Korean dictator’s personal sushi chef. JUST MENTAL.
• GamesMaster – The Inside Story: If you’re in your late 20s/early 30s and grew up in the UK (and, probably, a man), this will be like a soothing nostalgiabath for you. A great long-form look at everyone’s favourite shonky games show featuring curmudgeonly racist Sir Patrick Moore. Worth reading if only for having your memory nudged about exactly how innuendo-filled it was.
• The Annual Kid Rock Cruise: Every year, a bunch of middle-aged white people, largely from middle-America, pay to get on a big boat for a few days and hang out with redneck superstar Kid Rock whilst getting unconscionably drunk. This is the story of that cruise. Quite incredible. 
• The Silicon Valley of Marijuana: Continuing this week’s theme of a hemp-based future, this is a great two-parter looking at the emergent legal marijuana industry in the States. The money involved is, potentially, astonishing.  
• The Evolution of the Star Wars Logo: Honestly, this is more interesting than you would expect, particularly if you’re into design, typography, marketing / branding or (obviously) Star Wars.

A SHORT SELECTION OF VIDEOS WHICH ARE NOT EMBEDDED BUT INSTEAD LINKED TO:

• An Angry Song About Science: A genuinely good punky song, expressing anger at some of science’s recent announcements – particularly feathered dinosaurs.
• Putting Games In MOMA: A great talk by a curator at MOMA NYC, talking about their decision last year to include certain games in their exhibition about design. Really interesting, particularly on / around the whole ‘are games art?’ debate.
• Small Child Realises His Dinner Was Once Alive: A kid captured on camera at the moment he realises that he’s eating something that used to be alive, and deciding he doesn’t want to do it any more. 
• This Girl Is Better Than You At Breakdancing: She is 8 years old. 8. 
• Yet Another Music Video Which Is Basically Softcore: It’s almost sort of impressive. Features male models vs female models dodgeball match, and a LOT of taut, beautiful flesh. 
• A Mashup of ‘Summertime’ Songs: In case it’s still sunny where you are.
• Thom Yorke Sings ‘Rabbit In The Headlights’: Taken from the UNKLE album ‘Psyence Fiction’, this is LOVELY. 

Calvin & Hobbes – SECRET AGENTS! By Coran Kizer Stone

NOW, FINALLY, MOVING PICTURES AND SOUNDS!:

1) After all the attention being lavished on the stupid EDL racists in the past few weeks, this is a lovely counterpoint. A few months old, and it’s got over 1million views so apologies if you’ve already seen it, but this is a great piece of spoken work by Hollie Mcnish, called ‘Mathematics’, all about the mistaken assumptions behind the ‘coming over here, taking our jobs’ rhetoric often spouted by the aforementioned stupid racists:

2) I reckon some of you will love this (and some of you will be bored to tears by it; sorry about that). This is effectively an animation / art piece to accompany Midnight Juggernauts’ latest single ‘Memoriam’, which tracks the history and evolution of CGI technology. If you’ve been a computer geek for a while, this will hit a lot of buttons:

3) This is such a good animation. Stop motion work for Professor Kliq’s song ‘Plastic and Flashing Lights’. The use of wire to make the figure is inspired, and allows all sorts of cool flourishes. Really slick:

4) People imitating animals off the internet! Better than it has any right to be, though the song leaves me COLD – the attention to detail on some of these is brilliant, though. ‘Humanity’ by I Am Un Chien:

5) Don’t really understand why this doesn’t have more views. Another one of those videos made from animated collections of stills (LIKE ALL VIDEOS BASICALLY ARE) – the craft that’s gone into this one, though, is crazily impressive – it was all shot over 1 24h period, which logistically is pretty punch. Also features Kelis, which is a pleasant bonus. Dan Black, with ‘Hearts’:

6) UK Hiphop corner! This week, have the fantastically named Stig Of The Dump, with ‘One’. Great sample – you’ll be humming this one, guaranteed (BONUS UK HIPHOP – I discovered this this week, it is brilliant. Skittles – Poor With £100 Trainers):