HABEMAS ELECTIO!
See, it sounds almost like a good thing if you imbue it with a bit of unnecessary papal glitz (or, depending on either your Catholicism or your vintage, make it read like a spell in Harry Potter)! Maybe it will all be FUN after all?
It won’t though, will it? A few short days into the campaign proper and already I am wishing for the sweet release of death (theirs, not mine, to be clear). Still, at least it’s only five weeks or so and then everything will be sorted out and made BETTER, and we definitely won’t end up with a hung parliament and several weeks of unpleasant horse-trading dominating the festive season and oh my god please no.
So, then, consider Web Curios to be your weekly escape from all this – not, let me be clear, an escape in any sort of ameliorative sense, but at least you’ll be swapping the political horror *out there* for the…different horror in here. Think of this as a bit like Spice – it’s not good for you, the effects are probably massively-debilitating in the long-term and it absolutely ruins your ability to get anything done, but it does have the pleasing ability to make you forget about the outside world for a while as you disappear into a confused and confusing landscape of the weird and half-imagined.
Web Curios – it’s like taking really, really horrible, cheap, synthetic drugs! I work in communications, you know – this is what masterful PR looks like.
FIRST UP, WHY NOT CHECK OUT THIS RATHER EXCELLENT KLF REMIX?
THE SECTION WHICH WOULD LIKE YOU ALL TO TAKE A MOMENT TO WRITE A WORKABLE DEFINITION OF THE TERM ‘POLITICAL’ SO THAT WE CAN COMPARE NOTES WITH JACK WHO DOUBTLESS HAS IT ALL WORKED OUT:
- Twitter Set To Ban ‘Political’ Advertising: I feel like a bit of a curmudgeon here – I don’t, to be clear, consider this a bad idea; it’s more that I am not totally convinced of its enforceability, or indeed of the possibility of arriving at a working definition of the term ‘political’ which is either practical or widely accepted. Still, no need to worry about these pesky details now – Jack done an announcement and got all the PR! Exactly what the terms of this are going to be is…unclear; Jack’s Twitter thread referenced the need to ban not only ads from political candidates, but also what he loosely referred to as ‘issue’ ad, but how one might categorise an ‘issue’ that is ‘political’ in nature is…unclear! No matter, though, as Twitter’s legal team have all of TWO WEEKS to come up with the framework for this – the framework will apparently be announced on 15 November, with the policy coming into force on 22/11. If you want to read a reasoned breakdown of all the reasons why this is harder than Jack’s rather blase statement made it sound, this Thread by Manuel Beltran is smart and covers most of the obvious points; the other thing that struck me is what a potentially GREAT opportunity this is for the creation of a whole new type of influencer – THE POLITICAL INFLUENCER! Pay me cashmoney and I will espouse whatever political position you’d like me to on the TL!
- Facebook’s Latest Earnings: More ads, more money, and, remarkably, more users, even in Europe and North America.There are a lot of staggering numbers in here – 2.45bn monthly users! 1.62bn daily active users! – but the one that really floored me was the revenue figure, which is not only mind-flayingly high at $17.6bn but also grew a quite astonishing 29% year-on-year, which whichever way you look at it is…good.
- Facebook Launches ‘News’: The latest attempt by Facebook to ‘help’ the floundering news media industry comes in the shape of its News initiative, launched last week to muted fanfare. It’s testing in the US at present, though will, it’s presumed, roll out internationally over time, and is basically another dedicated section within the app where a human-curated selection of news stories will be presented to readers, pulled from a range of approved partner media outlets who meet certain criteria around audience size, quality of reporting (which, obviously, explains Breitbart’s presence on the initial list of partners), etc. The ‘News’ section will exist alongside the Newsfeed, where content from publishers will still appear, so it’s not a question of taking news out of the rest of Facebook; it’s simply giving it a new home. It’s hard to tell whether this will take off or not, or whether this will be the move that FINALLY SAVES JOURNALISM (Facebook is paying publishers whose content populates the ‘News’ section, so this creates a potentially-lucrative revenue stream for those selected as partners), but, well, let’s see shall we?
- Facebook Moves Into Healthcare: Well, ish. “In the US, people can search for Preventive Health in the Facebook mobile app and find out which checkups, such as cholesterol tests or mammograms, are recommended by these health organizations based on the age and sex they provide. Reminders for flu shots will also appear at the appropriate time of year. The tool allows people to mark when tests are completed, set reminders to schedule future tests and tell loved ones about the tool to increase awareness of preventive care. People can also learn more about each checkup and find affordable places to receive care.” This…this doesn’t seem like a bad or creepy thing, and the announcement post talks up the privacy element and explicitly states that user activity associated with this feature won’t be used for advertising purposes…but, equally, I’d be amazed if this didn’t end up becoming some sort of pay-to-play marketplace, with different private providers being offered the opportunity to jostle to the front of the recommendation queue in exchange for a few quid.
- Instagram Tightens Rules on Self-Harm-Related Content: Said Adam Mosseri: “We will no longer allow fictional depictions of self-harm or suicide on Instagram, such as drawings or memes or content from films or comics that use graphic imagery. We will also remove other imagery that may not show self-harm or suicide, but does include associated materials or methods.” This, obviously, ought not to have any brand implications at all, unless you’ve gone down a very dark route with your community management.
- IGTV Adds ‘Series’ Option: Basically this means that it’s now easier for people making stuff on IGTV (ie, noone) to bundle their content together for easy discovery and to enable notifications, etc, when they drop new ish. Will this be the shot in the arm that finally makes episodic scripted vertical video a thing? What do you think?
- Snap Launches ‘Creative Kit’ For Web: Do YOU have a website? Would YOU like to add a ‘Share to Snapchat’ button on that website? Actually if your website’s aimed at children this isn’t a terrible idea and is probably worth doing.
- Snap Launches 3d Painting Feature: This doesn’t really feel like ‘news’, to be honest, but, well, here we are. You can now use Snap to create 3d AR doodles! I KNOW, RIGHT??? There’s probably a few quick-win novelty things you can do here as a brand – although you’ll probably need to rip the video and post it to Insta if you want anyone to actually see it, obvs.
- LinkedIn Posts Record Engagement Rates: If you want an indication of the less-than-stellar state of the world, surely this is it – everything is so terrifyingly, bafflingly dreadful that even spending time on LinkedIn is preferable to engaging with the real world. Upsetting as it is to countenance, the platform’s undergoing something of a resurgence at present and you can probably sell your clients some overpriced strategy work looking at how best to ‘leverage the visibility of LinkedIn with KOLs and thought leaders in key verticals’ in 2020 (for those of you who occasionally wonder what it is that I do for a living, read that last sentence back to yourselves and understand why it is that I teeter weekly on the edge of a professional breakdown).
- Spotify Launching Dedicated Kids’ App: This went live in Ireland this week, and will presumably be a global thing…soon; parents whose algorithmically-curated Spotify playlists have been brutalised by their kids’ insistence on playing the Hey Duggy ‘Stick’ song on repeat will be able to keep their children’s content in a separate app, ensuring a safe listening experience for weans and a nursery rhyme-unclattered algo for the grownups. “The content within Kids is hand-picked by a team of editors, who have nearly 100 years of combined experience curating content for kids. They come from some of the most well-respected brands in this space, including Nickelodeon, Disney, Discovery Kids, and Universal Pictures”; this would suggest that there’s an opportunity here for publishers or brands to get their content inside this walled garden, so maybe worth thinking about.
- Google Adds ‘BERT’ To Search: So last week I included a longread in the section down there which was all about machines’ (in)ability to understand language, which focused on BERT, Google software which is currently the ne plus ultra of the linguistic processing code out there; this week, Google announced that BERT is being added to Google search, meaning the platform will in theory get better at interpreting natural language queries and users will be able to move away from the current keyword-based search protocols towards something more organic and natural-feeling. No immediate action here, I don’t think, but it’s worth being aware of this as there will doubtless be some sort of (boring, complicated, technical) SEO implications down the line (which I will not understand AT ALL).
- Google Brings .new Domains To The Web: This is interesting. I think I mentioned MONTHS ago that Google had added the ability to open its Office-type products (Docs, Sheets, Slides) simply by typing ‘new.slides’ or ‘new’sheets’ into your browser; now it’s extending that to any web app, meaning that anyone can register a ‘.new’ domain which will launch their product immediately. Spotify, Microsoft and others have jumped on this at launch, and it’s the sort of thing you can probably get some light PR from if you follow suit reasonably sharpish. pizza.new to launch your Papa John’s order, shopping.new to start a new Ocado order, that sort of thing. No, it’s not a particularly good idea, fine, but it’s an idea, and it’s 739 and frankly what have YOU come up with so far today? Well quite.
- Wikilytics: This might be common knowledge, but I had no idea this existed (so thanks Shardcore for finding it for me) – this is basically Google Trends but for Wikipedia Pageviews, and as a strategy/planning tool it is GREAT; you can make SO MANY ASSERTIONS using it, and basically make any argument you like for anything at all based on the relevant change in interest in stuff on Wikipedia (because that’s what ‘strategy’ is about, right? Right?). Bookmark this one, it’s really quite useful.
NEXT, WHY NOT TRY THIS RATHER LOVELY ALBUM OF JAPANESE AMBIENT ELECTRONICA?
THE SECTION WHICH THINKS THE WORST THING ABOUT THE COMING ELECTION IS THE FIVE WEEKS OF MIDDLE-AGED, MIDDLE-CLASS PEOPLE SHOUTING AT OTHER MIDDLE-AGED, MIDDLE-CLASS PEOPLE ON TWITTER ABOUT REGISTERING TO VOTE AS THOUGH ANY OF THEIR FOLLOWERS ARE ANYTHING OTHER THAN MIDDLE-AGED MIDDLE-CLASS PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY REGISTERED TO VOTE, PT.1:
- The Election Tech Handbook: I featured this a few months ago when it launched, but it’s worth re-upping; if you’re interested in getting involved in the upcoming bunfight in any practical fashion, this site collects all sorts of useful things, like policy summary sites, activism projects and, yes, a bunch of tools and resources designed to help ensure young people are registered. Aside from anything else, this is a really good overview of the current state of digital political hackery, whether or not you can be bothered to participate in the horrorshow beyond despoiling your ballot on the 12th.
- Ganimal: NVidia’s latest Gan-based webtoy, this time focused on THE LOVELY CRITTERS! Feed it a photo of your cat, dog, parakeet or bunny (or indeed any animal, though I get an odd feeling that it might struggle a bit with an axolotl), identify where it’s face is, press a button and WATCH it churns out a bunch of other animals based on the source image. Want to know what your cat would look like as a doberman? GREAT!
- The Poo Project: In a year in which the term ‘AI’ has been used with such abandon as to have been rendered largely meaningless, it’s good to know that there are some projects taking the technology seriously and using it to solve some big problems. Witness this website, part of a project which is asking everyone to ‘give a sh1t for science’ and create the world’s largest-ever database of photos of human scat, which will in turn be used to train an AI to recognise and classify human faecal matter against the Bristol stool chart to help speed up the process of classification and diagnosis of conditions from crap samples. As the site points out, this is not a hugely pleasant task for medical professionals, and so the ability to outsource it to the machines to be welcomed – this is a generally good idea, and a smart, practical use of AI, but there is a very small part of me that wonders whether this is an elaborate scheme set up by a tech-savvy coprophile to secure photos of strangers’ crap. Regardless, if you’ve ever wanted a legitimate reason to take a photograph of your own bowel movements, here it is!
- Triller: TIKTOK IS DEAD LONG LIVE TRILLER! TikTok is not, of course, dead, but it’s reached a stage of maturity that means it’s inevitably going to spawn MILLIONS of copycats seeking to steal its crown; Triller is onesuch app, offering a pretty much exact ripoff of TikTok’s signature lipsyncvideoremixculturesharing experience – except Triller’s not made in China, and therefore is not (yet) tarred with accusations of spying or datathievery or any such badness. No idea whatsoever whether this will ever become a thing, but it’s interesting that the current/coming wave of popular apps are so focused on presenting the individual in a performative context; in the future, EVERY kid is going to be a Sylvia Young kid! Now I type it, that’s a genuinely terrifying thought.
- Litterati: This is an interesting idea. Litterati is an app which effectively seeks to gamify the process of picking up rubbish, letting people map where they find litter in their community, set and participate in rubbish collection challenges, and name-and-shame the brands whose waste is most commonly found in their local area. Fine, it might not quite have the ludic appeal of a Pokemon Go! or any of the other identikit Niantic AR offerings, but you’ll be able to feel smug in the knowledge that you’re saving the planet while you do it.There are several rather neat features in here, including a light element of global competition with leaderboards for the best litterpickers worldwide, though whether that’s actually going to be enough to motivate people to wonder round picking up other people’s discarded McDonald’s wrappers is unclear.
- Overview: A website which collects aerial imagery – “Seeing the Earth from a great distance has been proven to stimulate awe, increase desire to collaborate, and foster long-term thinking. We aim to inspire these feelings — commonly referred to as the Overview Effect — through our imagery, products, and collaborations. By embracing the perspective that comes from this vantage point, we believe we can stimulate a new awareness that will lead to a better future for our one and only home.” You can sign up for daily emails containing a single, beautiful image – everything they post can also be bought as a print, which is a nice touch.
- The Argos Book of Dreams: To be honest this really ought to be up there in the worky section, what with this being a piece of marketing for Argos, but, well, I know that loads of you don’t read that bit because it’s (more) boring and crap(per) and not all of you have the sort of jobs that mean you need to pay attention to news about Facebook (what’s that like? How does it feel? Can you help me be more like you?). Argos have put ALL their old catalogues online, meaning that anyone born in the UK between the 70s and now can get an instant hit of pure nostalgia by finding the ones that they spent hours belly-down on a slightly brown carpet poring over; reactions to this on Twitter have ranged from the genuinely heartwarming to the tooth-grindingly smug (honestly, there’s nothing guaranteed to make me hate you more than you saying things like “Ooh, I had everything on that page!” YOU SPOILT LITTLE SH1TBAG (can you tell I never, ever got the Mr Frosty I craved? Can you?)), but absolutely everyone has been charmed by this and you, I promise, will be too. Basically an object lesson in how brands can tap into their history and heritage (although as Rich pointed out they could have made the site a bit shinier).
- The Polaroid Lab: This isn’t so much a Web Curio as it is an actual product that made me boggle a bit. The Polaroid Lab is a new bit of kit from (CAN YOU GUESS??) Polaroid which, seemingly by magic, takes photos from your phone and prints them – not only that, there’s an accompanying app which turns said photos into magical Harry Potter-ish AR-enabled moving images. Honestly, click the link and watch the video and try not to get a bit childishly excited at how cool it all seems; fine, if you’re brutal then perhaps you might question the long-term utility of this, but it’s just SO FUTURE.
- Fango: Disappointingly this is just a proof-of-concept rather than an actual thing, but it’s such a good idea; artist/coder Martin Nadal has come up with the idea for Fango, or, to give it its full name, “the Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google Obfuscator”, a phone charger which, when a phone’s plugged in and charging, will take control of it and perform a series of randomised searches across Google, Facebook and YouTube to add random noise to the signals they’re collecting about your browsing habits and interests. I would really like someone to make these for real, please.
- This X Does Not Exist: You remember at the start of the year when there was that spate of sites churned out which demonstrated how incredibly good computers now are at generating entirely-imagined faces/houses/cars/examples of human genitalia? Of course you do! This site collects all of the different variants on this theme currently out there, from cats to, most remarkably, ceramics; there’s DEFINITELY an art project in actually making the pottery imagined by the machine and then flogging it, should you be a potter in need of inspiration (Web Curios, the premier resource for inspiration-deprived potters worldwide!).
- TooYoo: A sensible-sounding service, this, whose purpose is to offer users the ability to plan their entire digital legacy before they die; the site will let you create a death checklist which you can then keep stored in a ‘digital safe’ based in Switzerland. Upon your death – confirmed via a ‘trusted person’ who you nominate, and validated by a death certificate – the ‘checklist’ is released to those who you’ve specified to receive it; the idea is that this will give them all your clear instructions about how you’d like your death handled, your assets disposed of and your vengeance finally secured (fine, maybe not that last one). This seems like a genuinely good and useful service, though obviously the quality of these services rests on the quality of your executors; if the person you choose as your post-mortem buddy turns out to be a bit of a prick and ignore your wishes, no amount of checklists will help.
- Glitch: Add ‘fashion designer’ to the list of professions apparently set to be rendered otiose by the rise of the AIs. “GLITCH explores whether AI can inspire us to create things that wouldn’t have existed otherwise: an asymmetric dress with a normal sleeve accompanied by a bell sleeve, a shiny sequin dress accompanied by hotpink feathers, a black & white minimalistic dress? GLITCH is founded by computer scientists turned fashion designers Pinar Yanardag and Emily Salvador at MIT. This creative duo shares the passion of using artificial intelligence for creativity as well as increasing representation and participation of women in computer science.” There’s currently only one garment for sale on the site, but there’s 10 or so pieces in total which are ‘coming soon’; anyone who’s ever met me knows that I have all the natural sartorial acumen of Helen Keller, so I can’t really comment on the quality of the designs, but I’ll be fascinated to see what this comes up with over the coming year or so.
- Homestuck 2: For some of you, this will be VERY EXCITING; for others this will mean literally nothing – and if you need the explanation, you’ll almost certainly fall into the latter camp, which makes me wonder slightly why I’m bothering posting this in the first place. Hey ho. Homestuck was a VERY long-running and quite cultish webcomic which began in 2009 and which I honestly can’t begin to explain other than to say that it was VERY EXTREMELY ONLINE and had a definite whiff of Cheeto and Gatorade about it if you know what I mean (of course you know what I mean!); this is the direct sequel to it. Even if you have no idea about the original, or interest in getting into a kilometric, potentially-years-long new narrative, it’s worth a quick look purely for the aesthetic and feel of the whole thing, which is oddly like getting into a time machine back to the Old Web.
- Anyword: There’s apparently a reasonable degree of evidence to suggest that the best approach to getting over an artistic blockage is to just write, regularly, regardless of content or audience (feel free to insert your own cruel, unfeeling joke about Web Curios being the result of my decade-long blockage here, should you feel like being mean); this site is designed to facilitate just that, offering a blank canvas on which to type whatever you like upto 750 words, and it incorporates the Seinfeldian trick of creating ‘streaks’ to motivate you to continue: “The concept is simple: beside your journals, there is a digital calendar, it will put a red circle around the date once you’ve done your writing for the day. After you keep doing the writings everyday for a while, the calendar will create a chain of circles. If you don’t get a circle on a date, then the chain will be broken. So psychologically you will want to keep doing it everyday, to avoid breaking your beautiful chain.” Or at least that’s what they say; regardless, though, this could be a useful way of forcing yourself into daily output.
- Niche Museums: A website celebrating small, odd museums. Annoyingly there’s only one London listing – it’s for the WONDERFUL Novelty Automation Museum, which if you’ve not visited I recommend unreservedly – but if you’re in (or visiting) North America then there is a whole hatful of stuff to plan your road trip around. Who, for example, wouldn’t want to make a pilgrimage to “a working hydraulic model of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento to San Joaquin River Delta System, approximately the size of two football fields. Built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s to study the impact of proposed changes to the delta”? NO FCUKER, THAT’S WHO!
- Threads of Our Game: A truly obsessional website, collecting illustrations of seemingly every baseball uniform ever worn by any team ever in history. Honestly, this goes back to the early 19thC and includes designs sported by obscure third-rung collegiate teams and I confess that the degree of detail and comprehensiveness scared me rather when I stopped to contemplate its vastness. Still, if you’re into the history of baseball (and WHO ISN’T???) this might prove a diverting little weboubliette.
- Recompose: What would you like to happen to you when you die? I’ve personally always been a big fan of the Parsi custom whereby the deceased is placed on ‘The Tower of Silence’ to be eaten by vultures, but I’m informed that it’s unlikely I’ll be allowed to do that and so perhaps I’ll consider this instead. Recompose is a service designed to offer a different post-mortem solution; instead of burial or cremation (or something I featured in here a few years back, where your body was basically used as a growbag for a tree), in this system you basically get put in a drawer and composted, with the output being a few kilos of soil for your loved ones to then grow tomatoes in or something. It’s not launched yet, but the first site at which they’ll be doing the composting is set to open in Seattle; they seem to think it could become a global thing, and frankly I’m all for it – given the opportunity I am ABSOLUTELY doing this and then giving all my godchildren a tomato planted in ME in my will.
- Speechless: An artwork in the making, Speechless is a project by Yuri Suzuki which is sourcing sounds from around the world to create a collage/installation “integrating audio clips sourced from across the world into a 6-foot spherical sculpture for a fresh take on the traditional globe. Each spot will represent a different part of the world where visitors can place their ears on its surface to hear a corresponding sound from that region.” Anyone can upload a sound to take part, so head on over to the website and upload a clip of whatever audio you fancy (part of me thinks it would be very funny if 4chan got hold of this and simply flooded it with Spongebob audio or the Kylie Jenner ‘Good Morning’ memetic audio, but I imagine Suzuki would be…less pleased.
- Hellvetica: It’s Helvetica, but with unpleasantly and inconsistently-fcuked kerning. You can see an example of it in action in this piece on the Imperica website; I find it genuinely upsetting to look at.
- The Insight Project: I have to say, the word ‘insight’ has lost all meaning for me after a while working in agencyland. I’ve taken to calling everything an ‘insight’, just to fit in. This, thankfully, has nothing to do with the utterly spurious definition applied to the word in adland; instead, it’s a project by game development studio Ninja Theory (responsible for the BAFTA-winning exploration of mental health Hellblade) which is going to explore the role that games and play can have in coping with and treating mental conditions such as anxiety and the like. To quote the project, “We plan a programme of gaming, technological and scientific development that will lead to self-contained, individualised and absorbing game experiences, within which people can become expert at recognising, responding to and ultimately controlling their own unique patterns of physical and physiological signalling that are the driving force behind fear, anxiety and other negative subjective experience. The work will be underpinned by scientific principles to ensure its validity and it will adhere to strict standards of ethics and data management.” – this sounds like a fascinating project, and one worth tracking if you’re interested in games, therapy, mental health and associated issues.
- Phonocut: In many ways, this is a throwback to the early-00s when hipsters were still a thing, the Instagram aesthetic was all Russell Norman and faded coffeeshops and sailor tattoos, and absolutely every tedious prick in the world had an obsession with vinyl; it’s also SUCH an archetypal Kickstarter campaign. MAKE YOUR OWN VINYL ON DEMAND AT HOME!!! Yep, that’s basically it – this is a (2x funded with a fortnight to go) piece of kit that will literally etch a vinyl as you watch, from whatever audio you choose. SO much potential for this – if nothing else, so many wonderful presents you could make for people. There’s something genuinely beautiful (to my mind, at least) about the idea of presenting someone with a one-of-a-kind record which plays the sound of a loved one’s voice reading a letter or a poem or somethimg (Jesus, that was unusually sentimental, sorry about that).
- Reconstructions: Debra Broz is an artist who makes ceramic mashups, taking bits of old, slightly kitch statuary from charity shops and frankensteining them together to occasionally-unpleasant chimerical effect. These are, as you’d expect, unsettling and creepy and GREAT.
- The Open Book Project: This is on Github, and is VERY TECHNICAL, but basically it’s a project to create an open source e-reader – “The Open Book aims to be a simple device that anyone with a soldering iron can build for themselves. The Open Book should be comprehensible: the reader should be able to look at it and understand, at least in broad strokes, how it works. It should be extensible, so that a reader with different needs can write code and add accessories that make the book work for them. It should be global, supporting readers of books in all the languages of the world. Most of all, it should be open, so that anyone can take this design as a starting point and use it to build a better book.” It’s a work-in-progress, so I wouldn’t expect to be able to build a Kindle-standard device just yet, but if you’re the sort of person who enjoys a bit of domestic tinkering and fancies a new project through which to hide from the world then this could be just the thing.
- Toast Me: Occasionally Reddit throws up some truly lovely things – such as this subReddit, existing as the antonym to the now-infamous ‘Roast’ sub (in which people post photos of themselves and invite other users to verbally brutalise them in the comments) and which is full of photos of people wanting a bit of a boost; the idea is that rather than the negativity of a roast, this is a place where people share all the positive things they can think to say about the individual in question. Honestly, this is SO CUTE (I don’t know what’s wrong with me this week, sorry, I appear to have developed feelings).
By Beau White
THE SECTION WHICH THINKS THE WORST THING ABOUT THE COMING ELECTION IS THE FIVE WEEKS OF MIDDLE-AGED, MIDDLE-CLASS PEOPLE SHOUTING AT OTHER MIDDLE-AGED, MIDDLE-CLASS PEOPLE ON TWITTER ABOUT REGISTERING TO VOTE AS THOUGH ANY OF THEIR FOLLOWERS ARE ANYTHING OTHER THAN MIDDLE-AGED MIDDLE-CLASS PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY REGISTERED TO VOTE, PT.2:
- Nomad Rest: Digital nomadism is very much an established THING now, and seems unlikely to peter out anytime soon given the increasingly laptop-based nature of most (generic media w4nker) jobs; my friend Alex is currently doing a bit of it himself, working from what I imagine to be a hammock in Taiwan at present (HI ALEX!), and of course everyone in adland is familiar with Faris and Rosie, who seemingly pioneered this sort of lifestyle (at least for our coterie of people) several years ago. Nomad Rest is a resource for people who want to find accomodation across the world that’s suitable for working travellers; places with decent wifi, space to work in, etc etc. Potentially useful if you’re either currently nomad-ing or if you’re contemplating jacking it all in so you can do community management from a Goan beach while subsisting solely on a diet of banana pancakes and having increasingly tedious, empty conversations in pidgin English with a succession of largely-homogenous but very pretty Northern European teenagers with nascent dreadlocks who want to have sincere chatswith you about the ‘vibes’.
- Art or Not: Like the excellent (and very much Art) Twitter account Art Decider, this app will offer you a quick, simple assessment of whether or not something is in fact art. Anything at all – just take a photo, let the app analyse it, and get your verdict. This is very, very silly, but also quite excellent (and also includes a library of actual artworks to peruse as well).
- Manime: Nails…as a service! Actually i don’t think this is a subscription service, but it feels like it could be one; Manime offers bespoke, home delivery stick-on nails, the gimmick being that they will create them to fit EXACTLY based on a photo you submit of your fingers; to be honest I had never thought that nails were so unique in size and positioning to require this degree of personalisation, but, well, I’ve never worn stick-on nails. There are loads of designs to choose from, and I can imagine this becoming a genuinely big business over time (which means it will inevitably fold within a year – sorry lads); US only, though, sorry anglonailfans.
- Caulculus Made ‘Easy’: Fine, those are my inverted commas around ‘Easy’ in the title; they might say it’s easy, but calculus was the point when I realised that there was very much a hard limit to my ability to understand maths and that I had very much reached it. Still, if you or someone you know needs to learn what it is and how it works, this site – which is basically just an HTML version of an old textbook, fine – might be useful. I still don’t buy the ‘easy’ bit though.
- Goodnessbot: Thank GOD – I thought I was losing my cycnism, but then I saw this and scoffed so hard I nearly choked, so I think I’m going to be OK. Goodnessbot is a project (for some reason associated with Monica Lewsinsky) which seeks to redress some of the BAD STUFF on Twitter; here’s the spiel: “Whenever you see a rude or abusive tweet, simply reply to it with “@GoodnessBot” and I’ll magically turn it into a positive tweet. Ta-da! Just like that you’ve made Twitter a kinder place.” Leaving aside the question of whether a procession of positive bromides delivered automatically by an unthinking, unfeeling machine can be considered to be ameliorating the world in any way, this is more fun than I’d expected, not least because the way it works makes it look a bit like anyone invoking it has a really, really weedy mate fighting their battles for them.
- Mundane Hallowe’en: For a few years now in Japan there’s been a trend of people doing ‘mundane’ Hallowe’en costumes – dressing up as things like ‘commuter who forgot to put sugar in their coffee’, or ‘person nodding off on the subway’, you get the idea. This is a Twitter thread collecting some of the best examples from this year; lots of these don’t have English explainer text, so half the fun is trying to guess the exact look that’s being recreated. Special shout out to the person who did ‘person who faceswapped themselves with the mermaid on a Starbucks cup”; near-perfect.
- The Bedbug Registry: A place where people who’ve been bitten by bedbugs in the US can report it, letting anyone else check whether the hotel they’re about to book is likely to leave them with unpleasant welts. You may not think this is useful, but if you don’t then you’ve probably never had bedbugs.
- Nannyfinder: There’s a frankly ridiculous number of people in my social circle who either have three kids or who appear to be punting towards that number – JESUS CHRIST ALIVE, DO YOU WANT YOUR LIFE TO BECOME NOTHING THAN AN EXERCISE IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND GANTT-CHART MAINTENANCE??? – and who as a result are increasingly in the market for childcare assistance. This looks like a useful service (obviously untested with me not having progeny) which is designed to let people find others in their area who might have similar needs and who might be able or willing to share the cost of a nanny with – according to the blurb, “In a nanny share, instead of having their own nanny, the children of two local families are looked after by one nanny at the same time. This means parents save around 30% on the normal cost of a nanny, the nanny gets paid around 25% more, and the children get to spend time together.” Which, in theory, sounds like everyone wins – unless, of course, the other children are feral little sh1tbags (not your kids though).
- Sound Control Software: This is potentially LOADS of fun, and certainly worth a look if you dabble in coding and playing around building digital stuff: “Sound Control is free software that can be used by anyone to create new musical instruments using their choice of movements, sensed with a variety of off-the-shelf devices (including webcam, Leap Motion, micro:bit, mouse, microphone, etc.). Sound Control uses machine learning to enable users to create new musical instruments by demonstrating examples of motions and sounds, so no programming or musical expertise is necessary! These new instruments can be used to play and manipulate musical material, which can be either new material recorded by users or taken from third-party sample libraries.” Go and play with this, it sounds ace.
- Slow Watches: Horophiles really do puzzle me – those men (inevitably men) who spend tens of thousands on massive, rare, planet-sized timepieces which they inevitably then don’t wear but instead keep in presentation boxes, occasionally taking them out to reverentially buff their bezels (Gary Shteyngart’s latest novel features just such a man as its protagonist, should you care). Still, if someone in your life is in the market for a new STATEMENT TIMEPIECE then perhaps you might want to consider one of these; slow watches are special by dint of their only having one hand, which moves in a 24h rather than a 12h rotation; these aren’t cheap, but I can imagine that a certain type of person (*cough*plannersandstrategistsand’creatives’*cough*) might be quite into them.
- The Bilbcast: A podcast which features the sound of a cat purring. Nothing else. If you work for Pedigree Petfoods then a) why have you ignore all of the ideas I’ve flagged to you in here over the past decade you BASTARDS; and b) you really ought to get on this with some sponsorship.
- Resistory: On the one hand, this is a really interesting-looking game (currently in development) which is designed to facilitate thoughts and discussions amongst its players about issues of power and representation in (North American) society, through roleplaying mechanics. On the other hand, this also reads like literally every single over-the-top parody of left-wing identity politics ever written; I mean, really, listen: “Resistory is history as it happens: those with a lived story to tell attempt to inspire the nation to provide equity to marginalized populations, only to find their efforts thwarted by the privileged majority, aiming to squash their stories and hold onto the imbalance of power…Build your in-game character from 24 identity categories: Nationality, Assigned Sex, Race, Legal Name, Ability, Height, Weight, Age, Health, Class, Parent/Guardian, Language, Religion, Trauma, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Gender Expression, Politics, Education, Employment, Relationship Status, Dependents, Service, and Recreation…The competitive scenarios on each Resistory card include writing a headline, handling hacked emails, designing a logo, coming up with a hot take, pulling off a publicity stunt, managing a scandal, hosting a talk show, and even producing a campaign video.” Still, regardless, if you’re interested in how games can be used as educative tools or means of intellectual exploration, this is very much worth a look.
- One-Page Dungeon Generator: A tool to generate smol dungeons for use in D&D. Hit ‘enter’ to churn out a new one; this is very cool (in a very, very geeky sort of way), especially the cute little ‘instances’ it peppers the maps with for additional storytelling prompts.
- Editorial.New: A font – not a hugely remarkable one, although it is nice, but one which is presented on a genuinely GREAT website; lovely design, this.
- Photos in Super Mario Galaxy: Dan Cordero is a wedding photographer, according to his website; I have literally no idea whatsoever why said website contains a whole section dedicated to photos that Dan has taken while playing Super Mario Galaxy, but, well, he has! Having checked his bio, he’s based in Tulum, Mexico, so I imagine he wanted a break from snapping identikit beach ceremonies populated by doughy Americans.
- Hebei Pangzai: The internet has gifted us many things, but is there anything better than the realisation that there are some people out there with some very, very bizarre talents? NO THERE IS NOT! Hebei Pangzai (the name translates as ‘Little Fatty’ apparently) got famous on TikTok but has now started crossposting to Twitter; you might not think that videos of a portly Chinese guy chugging unconscionable quantities of booze and looking strangely cool whilst doing so would be the most compelling content you’d see all week but, well, here we are. BONUS FATTY CONTENT – an interview with the man, who seems pleasingly bemused by his relative fame.
- Pwnagotchi: I like this very much indeed. Basically this is a hackertoy, designed to help anyone crack wifi passwords, wherever they are; the cute face really makes this, imho.
- The Orgasm Sound Library: This is a project by a company which makes fancy sextoys, but which has decided as part of its wider commitment to exploring sex and sexuality to create a repository of audio recordings of the female orgasm, ostensibly to showcase the range of ways in which people express pleasure and to educate (probably men) on what a female orgasm actually sounds like. What this means in website terms is a slightly clunky but rather wonderful archive of orgasm sounds which you can browse and listen to at your leisure. Each orgasm has an accompanying visualisation, which you can download and keep should you find it pleasing (the sounds are also available to download). The BEST thing about this is the file descriptions and the hashtags, imho; I just listened to “RECEVOIR LE PLAISIR ANAL #Male stranger #Deep #Anal #Anus #Hot #Convenient #Erotic #Sensual #Carnal #Relief #Bedroom #Shivering #Out of control #Ecstasy #Scheduled #Enjoyment #Spicy #Erotic”, which is ABSOLUTELY the set of hashtags I am usingh when I post this on LinkedIn in a couple of hours.
- Werewolf Stories: Or, to give it its full title, “A Series of Choose Your Own Adventure Stories Where No Matter What You Choose You Are Immediately Killed by a Werewolf”. These are not only seasonally-appropriate, but also very, very funny – enjoy!
THE CIRCUS OF TUMBLRS!:
- The IKEA Tarot: You may have seen this mentioned in the advermarketingPRsphere over the past few weeks, but this is the actual site and the full set. LOVELY, and contains proper explanations to the thinking behind each card.
THE TROUGH OF (INSTA) FEEDS!:
- 90s Anxiety: “An acute appreciation of elegance, sophistication and a distinctive appearance.” SO MANY GREAT HAIRCUTS AND OUTFITS! Also, is it justr me or do all these photos give off a faintly sleazy vibe? Have the entire 90s now basically been tarnished in light of our newly-acquired sensibilities around what is and isn’t ok (and all the sexual predation and pedoing)?
- Zizi Drag: I don’t really understand this, but it freaks me out quite a lot and so OBVIOUSLY it merits inclusion. The strapline to this reads “London’s first AI drag kid” but this doesn’t quite capture the odd, GAN-ish horror of the images it’s churning out. Lovely/horrid.
LONG THINGS WHICH ARE LONG!
- The Fight in Catalunya: Subtitled ‘an account from the frontlines’, this is an interesting from-the-ground piece of reportage on the recent protests in Spain, focusing less on the whys and wherefores and more on the practical experience of what it’s been like in the heart of the protests. Regardless of your position on this particular protest, it’s really interesting to read something from someone who feels so passionately about the cause they’re fighting for and who are practically involved on the frontline; it’s also does a good job of communicating the anger felt by so many Catalans at their (as they see it) political persecution.
- Chile: The second piece about popular protest in this week’s longreads, this is a really decent explainer of what’s currently happening in Chile, why it’s happening, and why it wasn’t really about the cost of a tube ride at all. I’m sure it’s true that at any given moment there are popular protests and uprisings happening in a fairly constant percentage of the world’s countries, but it does rather feel like we’re living something of a moment in terms of people being, well, a bit fed up with stuff. This is a good article, though I personally could have done without the use of that bloody Joker film as a framing device (though in fairness it’s one Chileans have seemingly embraced).
- The Trouble With Chocolate: Look, I don’t mean to be a downer, but it turns out that chocolate is…problematic. This is a fascinating article that taught me lots that I didn’t know, namely the extent to which the confectionary industry (specifically chocolate production) contributes to deforestation, which in turn drives major environmental and social issues across (mainly) Africa. I think this stuff is HUGELY important to share and speak about; it’s stories like this that start to help develop an holistic (sorry) picture of exactly how literally EVERYTHING WE DO is fcuking the planet and the cups and straws are very much the tip of the unpleasantly large iceberg. THE ONLY WAY TO PRACTICALLY HELP THE PLANET IS TO CONSUME LESS. It’s quite a simple message, really, but unfortunately the entire capitalist superstructure is designed to make us consume more, so, well, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- The WSJ on Influencers: If you do the sort of job where you have to vaguely know or care what influencers are and how to make use of them, then this article will tell you very little you don’ty already know; I thought it notable, though, for the fact that it might be a shark jumping moment for the influencer grift. If even the Wall Street Journal is reporting on the fact that the whole racket is a bit shady and possibly all built on lies, then perhaps the end is nigh; certainly, expect those of your clients who read the big papers to start asking awkward questions about exactly what the point of all this stuff is at some point in 2020.
- The Loneliness of Instagram: By contrast to the last one, this piece made me think about Insta in a way I hadn’t before. The piece focuses on the particular, peculiar aesthetic of the modern female Instasleb, which is increasingly characterised by a life lived alone; photos tend to be of themselves in their apartments, perhaps creatively-arranged but basically speaking to the ISOLATION AND DISCONNECT OF MODERN LIVING and all that jazz. I particularly liked the characterisation of the domestic bubble as part safe space, part studio space, and the idea that a degree of domestic isolation was almost a necessary part of the content creation and aesthetic compact that Insta (and the marketplace of attention) demands.
- How The Hypebeast Replaced The Hipster: I very much enjoyed this, not least because it seems to almost-perfectly describe about 70% of the people who make up Young Trendy Journalist Twitter (you know who you are, lads). This describes the evolution of the hipster into the hypebeast, along with a decent primer as to what the signifiers of this latter evolution are (Aesop soap, expensive-but-normcoreish clothes, and tasteful domestic accessories); take a moment to think of the planning and creative department in YOUR agency and see how many of these boxes they tick!
- Ok, Boomer!: This has been EVERYWHERE this week, but in case you either missed it or didn’t read the source material, here’s the original article highlighting the growing antagonistic rift between Gen-Z and ‘boomers’ (which, I get the impression, simply means ‘anyone over about 35 as seen by anyone under-23’, but which technically ought to refer to people in their…mid-50s to mid-60s, I think?) and how ‘Ok Boomer!’ as a clapback/kiss-off response has achieved memetic lightspeed. I give it less than a week before this gets used in ‘brandter’ by Wendy’s and the whole thing is killed stone dead.
- Iceland and Overtourism: A genuinely great piece of travel writing, exploring the idea of overtourism as a function of the Instagrammification of everything, specifically through the prism of Iceland. It’s a really smart essay, encompassing travel culture in general, Iceland in particular, and the broad questions that arise about ‘real’ experiences and authenticity when being a tourist (and the extent to which these are things that should even be aspirations when we travel).
- Pivot To Burnout: This very much made me feel old, I have to say. The piece profiles a company called ‘Pattern’, which grew out of uber-trendy brand and marketing consultancy Gin Lane, which for a while did the launch of basically every single millennial-friendly ‘X as a service’ brand out there (the mattresses are THEIR FAULT) and as such basically defined the aesthetic for about a three year period of marketing at young people. Then they decided that they weren’t happy doing that, and flipped the company to become Pattern, whose goal is to…well, it’s a bit muddled actually, but seemingly to provide products and services which exist not only as physical objects or useful things, but also to help people manage their feelings of stress and burnout and anxiety and…and I honestly don’t understand what the everliving fcuk this has to do with them selling expensive cookware. Can someone explain what these people are trying to do and why?
- Hippie Living: An article that neatly reinforces every single stereotype and prejudice you will already have about people who live in LA and are into ‘wellness’, this is a fascinating picture of a communal living setup for the EXTREMELY YOGIC, where people pay $1000 a month to live in a dormitory with 100-odd other wellnessmongs; you’re not allowed to have sex onsite, quiet hours from 10pm, a blanket ban on snoozing your alarm (I’m not joking), and a rolling programme of activities including ninety-four types of Bikram yoga (probably) and gong baths (actually). It’s a pretty straight piece, doesn’t really mock the people or the place, and, my inevitable snark and scepticism aside, makes it sound like a not-totally-awful idea; that said, though, just read this: “This summer it hosted a “star energy healing” event described as suitable for both beginners and experts of safe interdimensional travel. “Bring your crystals and water,” read the flier.”
- Lana Del Rey and Authenticity: The reappraisal of Lana Del Rey, as documented in this piece, is fascinating to me; from being derided as a manufactured industry creation, brute-forced into the collective consciousness by a lot of money and some savvy marketing, to her current status as tortured chronicler of modern trash Americana. This article does a good job of explaining why this might be – it’s very much worth reading, in part as a decent primer on BIG CULTURAL QUESTIONS AND TRENDS, but also for this observation which I am totally stealing: “Lana Del Rey is made up, and it is precisely what makes her great. A real person could never contain all the ideas that a fictional persona can.”
- Hot Ones: The YouTube chatshow Hot Ones (in which famouses eat very hot wings and answer questions about themselves) is one of those things I know a reasonable amount about despite never having actually experienced the show in question (see also: Joe Rogan, Fleabag and, to my distress, My Little Pony). This piece seeks to explain its remarkable popularity, but more than that is a really interesting look at how to make a violently successful content format; there’s a lot of detail in here about the considerations they made when establishing the format, which is useful to anyone thinking about embarking on their own CONTENT CREATION JOURNEY (I just had a small mental flash of a child, about 8 years old, earnestly telling a careers advisor that they just want to be the best content creator they can be, and, reader, the last remaining motes of my soul just evaporated).
- Conde Naste: You wait ten years for Web Curios to feature Conde Naste and then you get it twice in two weeks – WHAT ARE THE ODDS? Whilst last week was a profile of the founder, this is a (superb, in-depth) portrait of the modern business, focused inevitably on Anna Wintour, whose gravity tends to warp the fabric of any article she’s mentioned in tbh, but who is always a fascinating subject to profile. If you’re interested in fashion (specifically, the business thereof), publishing or modern media, this is a great read.
- The War of Tim Vs Tom: One of two great, silly essays this week about great, silly web culture. Did you know that there is a subReddit celebrating the name ‘Tom’ and all ‘Toms’ worldwide? Did you know that there was a parallel sub dedicated to lauding the glory of the name ‘Tim’ and all ‘Tims’ worldwide? Did you know that they had been AT WAR with each other? You probably did not, so click the link and educate yourself on one of the greatest conflicts of modern times. This is obviously very, very dumb, but it’s worth reading for the creeping sense that this is a very elaborate collaborative art project that you’re simply not quite getting. Do you think that Sir Tim Berners Lee could ever have envisaged that his creation would be used for stuff like this?
- Meet The Milk: One year at secondary school, some people I knew decided it would be interesting to see what happened if they hid a sealed container of p1ss in the back of one of the cupboards of the history classroom over the Summer holidays (turns out, if the weather’s hot – as indeed it was that year – the p1ss sort of just reduces down to a quite remarkable black sludge that smells, honestly, like nothing else on earth – I’m telling you this so you never have to undertake this line of scientific enquiry yourselves; you can thank me later). This is basically that story, but replace “a bunch of adolescent boys at a sh1tty comprehensivein Swindon” with “some of the world’s leading minds at MIT” and “p1ss” with “milk”. This is, honestly, great, I promise, and not gross at all (unlike that anecodote, which I’m now starting to think perhaps I shouldn’t have shared).
- Minecraft Shrek Larping: I have never played Minecraft, ever, and I am not hugely interested in the mechanics of it overall BUT this story about a group of friends messing around in the game is literally the most perfect evocation of how great games can be, and how the sort of virtual playground exemplified by Minecraft affords the most incredible opportunities for storytelling and worldbuilding. Honestly, this is genuinely funny and quite brilliantly surreal – Nate Crowley, the author, is a very, very funny writer indeed who you should all be following on Twitter if you’re not already. Even if you’re not into games this is, I promise, worth your time.
- Fermenting Culture: A brilliant piece of writing, going into remarkable depth about how Noma discovered and developed the fermenting obsession which came to characterise its cuisine and which, as a result, has been one of the most formative influences on restaurant and food culture in the West of the past decade. This is SO interesting, both on the technical side of fermentation as a practice, but also the philosophy (I know, I know, but I promise it’s better than that) that it embodies. If you like food and cooking, you must read this.
- I’m 72; So What?: One of the best pieces of writing about what it is like to age, from a female perspective, that I’ve read in a while; in it, Catherine Texier explains why her experience of being 72 doesn’t feel like that traditionally expected by society, and how she deals with the constant and pernicious ageism which infects pretty much every aspect of society. There’s some interesting stuff in here, too, about the odd way in which, pace the ‘Ok Boomer’ piece up there, there’s a sense that, for all the tolerance and embracing of diversity espoused by the young, that the old are the one demographic to whom they don’t always seem to want to extend the courtesy of respect.
- Autopsy: Before you click, know that this is a very dispassionate account of what it’s like to perform a forensic autopsy on the victim of a stabbing, and that it includes quite a lot of large, hi-res photos of the stabbed corpse in question. You see wounds, basically, and fat, and just quite a lot of corpse in general. As long as you’re ok with that, this is a brilliant piece of writing (translated from the original Danish) – whether it’s a function of the translation or a deliberate stylistic choice by the author, there’s a cold precision to the writing which perfectly mirrors the subject matter.
- The Great American Press Release: An essay on blackness in America, and the steps that black people – in this essay, particularly men – are required to take to make a mostly white world a place they can live. “Over the years, I had adapted my look—adapted my whole life really—to reduce the number and variety of my police encounters. I stopped tinting my windows. I removed my killer sound system. Red cars were out, as were aftermarket sweeteners like spoilers or flashy rims. I kept my hair high and tight or shaved. No dreads, no braids, no cornrows. Nothing to draw an officer like a kitten to catnip. I got a college degree. First in my family. Became a lawyer. First in my family. I wished to be invisible to the hungry gazes of police officers—first in my family there, too. But my parents always said I was prone to fancy.” Beautifully-written.
- The 2010s Broke Our Sense of Time: Finally this week in the longreads, Katherine Miller of Buzzfeed looks back at the decade that was, and how it’s been characterised by a sort of temporal-flattening which has conditioned our reaction to media, news, culture and each other like little else. Do we call this post-post-postmodernism? Is this the real gift of the web, this decoupling from temporality and a shift towards an always-on existence? Is this…ok? Christ knows, but it’s interesting asking the questions. I have thought about this a LOT since I read it last weekend, which at the very least suggests it might be worth a look.
AND NOW…ACTUALLY THIS WEEK THERE ARE NO MOVING PICTURES AND SOUNDS I’M AFRAID AS I HAD SOMETHING OF A SOURCING ISSUE BUT NEVER FEAR NORMAL SERVICE INSOFAR AS THAT IS EVEN A THING WILL RESUME NEXT WEEK AND SO I’LL SIGN OFF HERE WITH MY NOW-TRADITIONAL BYE BYE I LOVE YOU BYE TAKE CARE HAPPY NOVEMBER ENJOY THE FIREWORKS AND BE SAFE AND WRAP UP WARM AND MAYBE CONSIDER SPENDING SUNDAY MAKING WARMING STEWS OR SOMETHING BYE BYE I LOVE YOU SEE YOU NEXT WEEK TAKE CARE BYE I LOVE YOU BYE!!!