Oh Christ, I’ve gone long again.
Look, there are too many words coming up, so I’ll keep the intro short. Everything’s still weird, we’re still mostly inside, neither the girfriend or the cat have so-far attempted to kill me (or if they have they’ve been spectacularly subtle about it)…it is what it is.
I hope you’re ok and not too bored – and if you are, THANK FCUK FOR WEB CURIOS! Literally like ‘Why Don’t You?’, except instead of unrealistically asking that you step away from the screens I am instead suggesting you sink even deeper into your codependent relationship with the glowing rectangles.
I am still Matt; this is still Web Curios; we are still in quarantine. Everything else is basically in flux, as far as I can tell.
***BRIEF MOMENT OF SINCERITY WHICH YOU ARE WELCOME TO SKIP*** Honestly, I’ve found writing this a huge comfort in the past few weeks (thereby confirming suspicions that I do it solely for myself and couldn’t really give a fcuk what anyone else thinks of it), and so thankyou SO MUCH to all of you who read even the tiniest bit, it really does mean a lot. Now, er, fcuk off.
By Mr Kism
LET’S KICK RIGHT OFF WITH AN HOUR OF CUT CHEMIST!
THE SECTION WHICH WONDERS WHEN ADVERMARKETINGPR DRONES WILL BEGIN TO BE CONSIDERED AS ‘KEY WORKERS’:
- You Can Now Officially ‘Care’ On Facebook: There’s a new ‘I give a fcuk about this through the prism of the pandemic!’ emoji on Facebook! You can now ‘care’ as well as be happy, sad, amused, enraged, etc! Isn’t that nice? One would, of course, have to be a cynic of the very worst sort to speculate about the possible benefit to Facebook of having a discrete ‘was a bit emo about the ‘rona’ datatag to apply to a subset of its users, wouldn’t one? Quite.
- Facebook Launches Gaming App: Not so much breathing down Twitch and YouTube’s necks as knocking firmly on their door with an axe hidden behind its back, Facebook continues to look covetously at all those sweet, sweet gamer numbers and the concomitant massive wedge of user engagement and hence ad money they grant access to; this week it launched Facebook Gaming, an app which effectively grants single-app access to a bunch of FB gaming features which more-or-less existed already but weren’t bundled quite so neatly. It also makes it (apparently) super-simple to stream gameplay live from one’s mobile, something which (equally apparently) it’s previously not been hugely simple to achieve. I don’t 100% know whether the featureset FB’s building out here – to whit, streaming and community and highlights reels and the rest – is necessarily a great fit with a demographic which is more likely to be playing Candy Crush (HOW are people still playing Candy Crush?) than something spectator-friendly, but time will tell.
- Slightly Better Transparency on Where FB Pages & Insta Accounts Are From: I mean, I’ve sort of told you evetrything there is to know here, but wevs; as of, er, soon (in the US, and then presumably internationally), accounts on FB and Insta with ‘high reach’ (no, me neither) will carry an accompanying label showing users where said accounts originate from, presumably to help people to have a vague idea whether that story about the muslamic 5g rayguns is being made up by a North American mouthbreather or one of our own. I think if the past few years have shown us anything it’s that giving social media users the tools with which to flex their critical thinking muscles solves almost everything, right kids?
- FB Messenger for Kids Expands to 70 More Countries: Except still not the UK, so not hugely relevant to most of you.
- Twitter Announces New 5G Disinfo Rules: STOP POSTING LIES ABOUT THE MUSLAMIC 5G RAYGUNS! That’s not me saying that, by the way, that’s Twitter – the platform announced this week that it was explicitly taking steps to limit what it terms “Unverified claims that incite people to action, could lead to the destruction or damage of critical infrastructure, or could lead to widespread panic, social unrest, or large-scale disorder”. So, stuff like “coronavirus is a coverup to hide the fact that 5G is turning us into a nation of government-controlled zombies in service to the intradimensional archon lizard people, SMASH THE MASTS!”, for example. Not, I am sure, that any of this applies to any of you (A small digression, if I may (you try stopping me): a lot of these mad theories all seem to coalesce around the idea that there’s a hugely powerful cabal of people at the top of the theoretical pyramid (the one with an eye in it, no doubt) who are all working to make stuff like COVID happen so as to drive the masses further into scared, terrified penury and so cement their hold over the world…I mean, look, does what’s happening now look like the sort of situation designed to result in a world worth ruling over? If you were Peter Thiel and the rest of the billionaire lizard overlords, would you really want to end up in charge of a planet in which you, even as a fcuking billionaire, had to live in a New Zealand bunker and were forced to watch dad videos on TikTok for entertainment? I’m not convinced, personally).
- Google To Require Full Advertiser Disclosure on All Ads: This is really big news, I think; Google announced yesterday that as of…some point in the near future it is going to require ALL advertisers, not just the ‘political’ ones, to register themselves with the advertiser, either with “personal identification, business incorporation documents or other information that proves who they are and the country in which they operate”; this information will be visible to users when they are served ads from said advertisers. This is a huge step, imho, and I’d imagine if this experiment works (and doesn’t, I presume, slow takeup of ads by small business or impact revenue) we’ll see it at least being considered by FB et al. Coming to the US later this year, and then one would presume being rolled out internationally in 2021.
- You Can Now Add V/O To TikToks: I would like someone to use this to invent a new genre – the elaborate meme dance which is accompanied by a coldly-descriptive voice over of the sort used on TV audio descriptions: “…the slightly-awkward teenager is now attempting a piece of popular choreography; they are marginally out-of-time…”, etc.
- The Snap Results: The latest quarterlies from Snap shows another good quarter, with user numbers up (as one might expect from lockdown). Smarter analysts than me have pointed out that it’s probably more sensible to wait for next quarter to get a proper handle on how COVID’s impacting the platform, as this set of results doesn’t yet reflect the adpocalypse currently cutting swathes through the industry.
- Spotify Launches Fundraising Feature for Artists: If you’re an artist on Spotify, you can now run fundraising efforts through the platform for charities of your choice, much as you can on Facebook. It’s available in the US and the UK, and seems like a nice way for people with a popular platform to promote charitable initiatives.
- Quibi In Fortnite: REALLY interesting idea, this (also, REALLY expensive – I can only imagine the figures Quibi paid for this) – Quibi, that new mobile short TV thingy that launched in the US the other week, made a play to attract younger audiences by partnering with Fortnite to run screenings of its reboot of the old MTV show Punk’d (now starring Chance the Rapper, because Ashton Kutcher is too busy imagining he’s a VC these days) in-game. It’s not the most imaginative thing in the world – it’s literally a buy-in – but it’s interesting to see how Fortnite can be used as a canvas, and how the odd, cartoony, largely-incoherent gameworld means that stuff like this sort of just fits into the general multimedia oddity of the experience.
- Mary Meeker’s Coronavirus Trends Report: Unlike her legendary report on the state of all things digital in the world, this isn’t 400-odd slides of eye-bleedingly ugly PPT; instead, it’s 29 points of slightly-dry but actually pretty useful commentary analysis on STUFF WHAT MEEKER DONE AN OBSERVE UP over the past month or so; if you’ve been paying attention there shouldn’t be anything in here that you’re not broadly aware of, and the ‘predictions’ and analysis are, whilst simple, not revelatory; still, it’s MARY FCUKING MEEKER EVERYONE, which means that you can now say all this stuff in confidence now that you can give it an authoritative footnote.
- Work From Home Live: I have always slightly resented AKQA as an agency, largely as they always seemed to do quite cool and interesting work, the sort of stuff that I could never really work out how I might have contributed to. This is another example – a great idea that I could have done literally nothing to bring to life. As part of their efforts to keep their offices worldwide connected, they have created this site – Work From Home Live, which lets AKQA offices around the world stream on this 24/7. At the time of writing, someone called Shaun in Australia is playing what sounds like some sort of uptempo Kylie remix – O STRAYA! – but who knows who or what will be online when you chance to click. Not only a really fun idea, it’s beautifully-executed too; bstards.
- Not Furlong: SUCH a lovely idea this – please do share it far and wide. Not Furlong is an initiative set up by agency people who’ve been furloughed and can’t work for their employer but feel like offering their services to businesses that need it, for free. You can either offer to help if you’re an agencymong with time on your hands, or if you’re a business which could need some hands-on advermarketingpr support then you can apply for it on the site. Honestly, compare this to the agency w4nkers I mentioned the other week who were self-pleasuring at the fact that they had made a ‘clap the carers’ sticker for TikTok – this is a really good initiative and I applaud everyone involved.
By Matt Crump
THE SECTION WHICH RECKONS YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO MAKE A FEW QUID OUT OF A NEW NEWS OUTLET CALLED ‘NORONA’ WHICH TRANSMITS ONLY INFORMATION UNRELATED TO THE PANDEMIC, PT.1:
- Get The Fcuk Away From Me (via Airdrop): That’s not technically the name of the project, fine, but mine is more descriptive. The other week when I went out for my sanctioned stroll I became so angry at people’s inability to do simple, considerate things like ‘walk on opposite sides of the pavement’ that I made my phone display a big, block-caps message which simply read “YOU ARE WALKING LIKE A CNUT” which I held up at people who were, well, doing just that; it’s a miracle noone hit me, on reflection. This is a bit like that, except less obviously confrontational and more technologically-savvy; it lets you use Apple’s Airdrop file transfer system to send people messages about the fact they are perhaps not being quite as considerate as they might be in their movements. All the message options are variations on “you’re close enough to infect me YOU FCUKER!”, but they’re delivered less confrontationally and might be a nice, gentle way of informing people to perhaps think a bit more carefully. Or they won’t see it til a few weeks later and get a bit scared and confused; either’s a decent outcome tbh.
- Coronatasks: Those of you who read this tend to work in white-collar advermarketingpr jobs and so I sort-of assume you’re mostly ok-ish financially at present, either still employed or furloughed; if you’re not, though, or you know others who need to find ways of earning cash during lockdown, this site collects a bunch of ways of making money online through various websites (no, not like that). This is a whole load of different places to do the odd bit of piecework, or to earn a few for watching ads, that sort of thing – none of them will make anyone rich, and Web Curios advises that you read the fine print of these quite carefully before you embark, but in extremis some of them could be a decent way of topping up the kitty over the coming weeks (months) (let’s not speculate beyond that, eh?).
- Tracking ‘R’ In The US: This is a project developed in part by Instagram, which is tracking the value of ‘R’ (you know, that OTHER thing that everyone has become an expert on in the past week or so – R, as I’m sure you are all experts on, is the rate of infectiousness of the condition: it “represents the effective reproduction rate of the virus calculated for each locale. It lets us estimate how many secondary infections are likely to occur from a single infection in a specific area. Values over 1.0 mean we should expect more cases in that area, values under 1.0 mean we should expect fewer.”) across the US, state-by-state. It’s interesting not only as an(other) example of how social media companies are using data in interesting and helpful ways (and, coincidentally, in ways which are likely to make us feel a little better about the fact that they track everything), but also as a slightly-sobering indication of quite how much of the US is still quite infectious. The fcuk are you up to, Kansas?!
- The Six Feet Office: This week has seen the first big wave of ‘so, when are we all going back to work properly, then?’ conversations, to which the only realistic response is ‘me? Never, if I can help it; also, if you think this is going back to the way it was 3 months ago anytime in 2020 you are probably wrong’. I don’t think I’m marking myself down as some sort of visionary here when I say that it’s unlikely we’ll see a full workforce return to daily office life this side of Christmas, if at all. This is a fascinating piece of speculative thinking and design theory by property people Cushman & Wakefield on what the ‘6ft Office’ might look like – that is, how firms might reshape their office space to accommodate the new demands of social distancing, and how you could reconfigure your existing facilities to allow for at least a partial reentry to the workplace for limited numbers of employees. Really, really interesting – although, if my experience in supermarkets over the past few weeks is anything to go by, doomed to failure; if we can’t follow the one-way guidance arrows on the floor of Tesco, like fcuk are we going to remember to walk anticlockwise around Sandra from Accounts.
- Appalling Novelty Facemasks: I wrote quite a bit last year about how I thought 2020 was when we’d finally see anti-surveillance clothing making a bow in the mainstream, with tshirts designed to fritz facial recognition software appearing on the racks at TopShop. Obviously that’s less of an issue now we’re never leaving the house again meaning there will never be any more CCTV footage to track; still, we can instead look forward to CORONACHIC! It’s already here in part, thanks to those enterprising dropshippers and their easily-customisable products – marvel, then, at this wonderful Twitter thread capturing some of the very worst facemask designs seen (I can’t confirm, but I’d be willing to bet that almost all of these were snapped from North American websites). So many to love, but my personal favourites include “…but her emails!” and the frankly astonishing “Cum Whore”.
- The Bluetooth Energy Atlas: This may or may not be working when you click on it; I think it’s turned off overnight in the US to save energy / bandwidth. Still, it’s a fascinating visualisation of the way in which most of the proposed COVID infection trackers are set to work, by identifying individual phones via bluetooth and using that information to subsequently monitor which devices have passed within a specific radius of each other so as to be able to issue alerts as to a potentially-elevated risk of infection. The site tracks the bluetooth signals picked by a single antenna located…somewhere, and when it’s live you can see in realtime all the signals passing around it and how they intersect with each other, and it’s dizzying to see how easy it is to map the movements of real people (admittedly anonymous) in real time in real space. Don’t get me wrong, I think this sort of tracking is broadly-speaking exactly the right thing to do, it’s just…sobering to watch.
- Surf City: Surf City is a wonderful project. A web-TV site, with 20 channels you can select from and which will, 24/7, provide you with streamed entertainments. From relaxing nature to cartoons to Kpop, there’s enough stuff here to keep you going for a good old while; if you’re the sort of person who likes having a screen on at all times streaming some sort of entertainment as a kind of ambient backing track, this will be near-perfect for you.
- Sidewalk Widths: As the name would suggest, this is a US project – the site shows you a map of NYC with a colour-coded overlay to show you which streets in the city are safe to walk along in terms of the pavement’s width, and those which aren’t (based on publicly-available data about road and pavement dimensions). This is a great idea and would be hugely welcome in London in terms of being able to find places to walk from my house that a) aren’t going to involve me playing too much street chicken; and b) don’t involve me accidentally ending up in cul-de-sacs, inadvertently trespassing (this has happened more often than I an wholly comfortable with). Also, while we’re here, can Google Maps start offering Waze-style pedestrian footfall info, even if only projected, so I can time my walk for a moment when not every other person in South London has also decided to leave the house? And the moon on a stick while you’re there, please.
- Joan Home: This is…I don’t know, maybe this sort of stuff is the secret to maintaining a BUSINESS attitude at home and not succumbing to wfh laziness. Joan Home will be familiar to you if you work in an office that’s big and fancy enough to have those meeting room booking screens, which show you who’s got the room next, for how long, etc, and which syncs with calendars and all that jazz – it’s that, but for your house. So you can put up a little screen outside the door of your home office which you can programme with your schedule so your loved ones can see how BUSY and IMPORTANT you are with your MEETINGS and your VIDEOCALLS. No, I’m calling it, if you want one of these things then you are a twat, and you have too much money – YOU COULD DO THE SAME WITH A SHEET OF A4 YOU IDIOTS! THIS COSTS £250! Still, this is probably why these people are all CRUSHING IT and I am not – but, then again, it doesn’t matter! Nothing matters! HAHAHA I WIN! Except we all lose.
- Zoomer Backgrounds: MORE ZOOM BACKGROUNDS! Are we bored of these yet? Yes, in short (although I do enjoy the ‘This Is Fine’ backdrop, if I’m honest). Prediction (destined to be wrong) – we’ll soon pivot away from all this frivolity and there will be a rise in the appeal of simple, sober backgrounds. I would be AMAZED if Pantone didn’t make a ‘Zoom Background Creator’ enabling you to make your own from your favourite Pantone shade – look, there you go, that’s a legitimate tactic there for you, Pantone people, be grateful.
- Lockdown Haircut: Remember a few weeks ago I featured that US site that let you book a slot with a proper hairdresser who would talk you through the process of cutting your own hair over Zoom? Well someone’s ripped that off wholesale and done it in the UK, with the additional gimmick that £5 from each haircut gets donated to the NHS. Well done to the people behind this, both for seeing an opportunity to duplicate a good initiative and for adding the charitable angle, and for their skill in ripping off the aesthetic of the original site so successfully, even down to the bearded barber used on the homepage.
- Pop To The Shop: An excellent charitable / volunteering initiative that I would encourage you all to sign up for if you can and to share widely (especially on Facebook, given the likely demographics of people who may find it helpful); Pop To The Shop does the simple job of pairing people who need help getting to the shops with people to willing to go for them; you can request assistance or volunteer yourself, and it’s such a simple, easy idea that we should all get involved if we can.
- Your Local, Delivered: Actually, this is another one I’d encourage you to share, especially with people living in rural or more remote areas; there’s understandably been a lot of talk about shops and restaurants offering lockdown delivery services in urban areas, but if you live in the country there’s less infrastructure on offer and less information available about what you can and can’t access via delivery; this site is designed to collect delivery offerings outside of London, and is exactly the sort of thing that people living in the countryside and small towns might find helpful, particularly if they can’t get a supermarket delivery for love nor money.
- Colour To Connect: A project soliciting and sharing black-and-white drawings to colour in. Hundreds to download, and they take submissions if you fancy making something to share on the site. Possibly a nice project to do with your kids, getting them to design something you can upload for other people to eventually colour (although, honestly, no judgment whatsoever if your current approach to parenting is ‘feral in the garden from 7-5’).
- Netflix Docmentaries For Free: Have you gotten to the end of Netflix yet? It does rather feel like, whilst this is going to be a GREAT year for the streaming platforms, 2021 might be something of a struggle as everyone either realises that there is nothing left to watch or we all decide that we’ve watched enough telly to last us a lifetime (should we ever be allowed out again). Still, til that point, REJOICE FOR THE STREAMERS! Also, thanks Netflix for putting a whole bunch of its nature documentaries and other factual content on YouTube for free, including all the Attenborough docs from last year and a bunch of other stuff besides. Really, really good, these.
- Seinfeld, The Game: Seinfeld, famously, was a TV show about nothing – which makes it the perfect subject for a videogame, not least because you can do pretty much anything you like with that as a starting point. This is a site presenting the vague concept for a point-and-click-style Seinfeld videogame, starring Jerry and George and the Soup Nazi and all those other characters that I know only by name because I don’t think I have ever watched an episode – the people behind it are basically trying to drum up enough noise to get the attention of the people who hold the rights to the show, without which the creation of a tie-in game would be forever ruined by lawyers. It’s a really good idea, and the creators obviously have a lot of love for the material; would be nice to see this get made one day.
- Quarantine Jokes: A website which will take any ‘A man walked into a bar…’ joke you care to feed it, and turn it into a COVID-friendly variant which conforms to social distancing norms. “A ghost joins a zoom call; the moderator says, Sorry, we don’t serve spirits” is the calibre of gag you can expect from this, which given how many of you I know to be dads is probably pretty-much perfect.
- 98 CSS: I imagine, as we’re a month intro quarantine, you’ll all have finished at least three self-improvement projects and will be champing at the bit for a new challenge. Now that you’ve doubtless taught yourselves to code to a competent standard, why not use this CSS library to build an entire website interface in the style of Windows 98? Why? WHAT THE FCUK ELSE ARE YOU GOING TO DO BETWEEN NOW AND YOUR INEVITABLE, ALMOST-CERTAINLY-DOMESTIC DEATH FFS???
- The Sony World Photography Awards 2020: I was vaguely, tangentially-involved in doing the PR for the inaugural one of these about 15 years ago; whodathunk it would have ended up lasting so long. This year’s category winners were announced this (last?) week, and as you’d expect there are some quite good photos in here; this is my personal favourite, not least for its Hopper-esque qualities in a very Hopper-esque year so far.
- Don’t Quote Me: A Twitter bot which automatically quotes any Twitter user specifically asking not to be quoted. Childish, but I like the idea that there are a lot of people getting slightly-but-significantly annoyed by it.
- The World Cups Of The Past: I might have mentioned here before that I am mostly incapable of enjoying major international football tournaments, for the twin reasons of fearing Italian defeat and fearing even more the potential for an English victory. Which makes that the fact that FIFA has started putting classic World Cup matches from The Past on its YouTube channel a wonderful opportunity for me to enjoy some games that I simply couldn’t appreciate previously due to tension and dread and horror and all those lovely emotions we all love to experience during a major sporting event. This weekend, for example, I get to enjoy Italy beating Germany in 2006’s semi-final and then Argentina doing for the plucky little Brits way back in 98. Honestly, STRAIGHT INTO MY VEINS.
- Name of the Year 2020: Even in these dark times it’sgood to know that some important traditions maintain – so it is with the Name of the Year contest, featured regularly in here for about 10 years now, and once again shining a light on some of the most astonishing examples of verified names appearing in news reports over the past 12 months. Honestly, I don’t know who to root for this year – from the sheer badassery of ‘Decoldest Crawford’, to the ‘surely this was on the Simpsons?’-wtfery of ‘Gimadiah Scrogum’, to the potentially-unbeatable ‘Nazareth Pantaloni III’. I am in actual tears at some of these; I promise you, they cannot fail to cheer you up (and possibly, should you be pregnant, to give inspiration).
By Molly Bounds
THE SECTION WHICH RECKONS YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO MAKE A FEW QUID OUT OF A NEW NEWS OUTLET CALLED ‘NORONA’ WHICH TRANSMITS ONLY INFORMATION UNRELATED TO THE PANDEMIC, PT.2:
- Drive and Listen: I think this might be my favourite website of the week, but it also made me feel a lot sadder than I expected it to, so, well, you take care now. Drive & Listen is a simple site that lets you select from a range of cities worldwide (London isn’ included, sadly, but don’t let that put you off) and then offers you the experience of being driven around said city in a taxi, with a local radio station streaming in the background (you can select from a range in each city). It may not sound like much, but I spent 20m being ‘driven’ around Rome on Monday listening to the radio and I did a bit of a cry at certain points, I’m not ashamed to say. I think it’s possibly the very visible life on display – the traffic and passers-by all cheek-by-jowl and uncaring of maintaining a medically-advised 6ft distance from each other – and the very air of normality that feels so distant right now. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
- Getty Images in Animal Crossing: It’s sort-of a clever piece of marketing, this, so technically it should be in the top section, but I decided about 10 days ago that I really don’t give a sh1t about brands or what they do any more (ha! Like I ever did!), and probably never will again, so, well, fcuk it (actually, another aside; I was having a chat with friends the other day and the subject of work came up, and we had a disagreement about whether it’s possible to do a job well and simultaneously not care about it AT ALL; I very much think it is, they very much think it isn’t. What do YOU think, webmongs? Genuinely curious). Getty has used the inbuilt feature that lets you import pictures of stuff into your Animal Crossing game to make it simple and easy for players to choose images owned by Getty to adorn the walls of their virtual hovels in-game – which is SUCH a clever way of bringing the brand to a (probably) totally new audience and doing so in a fun, playful and organic way. Kudos to whoever made this happen, it’s really smart.
- Twisters: Tongue twisters for you to practice. Which, fine, might not sound like loads of fun, but try changing the language and realise that you can practice tongue twisters in Kazakh and see what sort of wild and crazy world of fun opens up to you.
- Chess In Schools: As far as I can tell, Chess in Schools is some sort of subscription service for kids who really like chess to practice with other kids who really like chess, aged between 5-11. For the next few months, the site is waiving its subs fee and so if your child is spending lockdown training themselves up to wipe the floor with Magnus Carlsen this could be the perfect gladiatorial arena for them (although I imagine the standard is probably pretty good, so maybe don’t offer them up as a sacrificial pawn if they’re a bit, well, fragile).
- Regional TV Zoom Backgrounds: I am probably not going to bother with Zoom backgrounds in here any more unless they’re hugely inventive or interesting, but these are a good selection to finish on – you can now get backgrounds which make you look like you’re reading the news for whichever regional ITN-variant you grew up with, so you can pretend you’re HEAD NEWS MONKEY at HTV or something. Obviously this will mean nothing to you if you’re much under 40, but for the rest of you it should provide a nice hit of televisual nostalgia.
- This Website Will Self-Destruct: Nice bit of webart (ish), this – the site exists only for as long as at least one user per 24h posts a message to it. Messages are all anonymous and aren’t displayed, but anyone visiting the site can cycle through a random selection of previously-submitted messages from visitors past (I presume there’s some light moderation, as I’m yet to see anything foul or racist – perhaps this has all made us better people???) – so far this morning I’ve seen one from someone claiming that they are a furloughed FBI agent, another…oh, no, hang on, I was clicking through to get material and landed on something basically denying the holocaust, so, no, everything is still terrible, sorry everyone.
- The 2020 Skyscraper Competition: Given we’re all wildly speculating about how we might all adapt our lifestyles to a post-viral future, it’s timely that eVolo Magazine has announced the winners of the latest edition of its annual theoretical skyscraper design competition – “The annual award established in 2006 recognizes visionary ideas that through the novel use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.” The overall winning entry is designed in response to the COVID outbreak, and is designed to be a modular structure which could be erected in as few as five days to provide secure, easy, cheap additional infrastructure for medical or support services to make use of. All of this is fascinating, but perhaps less sci-fi than I might like.
- Size Link: This is almost magic – a web-based AR tool that lets you create an AR model of any cuboid of any dimensions you choose, so that you can get a real idea of the physical dimensions of an object within the context of whatever space you choose to place it. This is all done using ARKit and ARCore in-browser, and is hugely impressive – you’ll need a reasonably-recent phone to make it work, but it’s very smart and potentially helpful for planning phase 2 of ‘the great domestic renovation project which will eventually break us’.
- Fact Trek: Are any of you Trekkies? Or Trekkers? I know there’s a difference but I can never remember which is which – basically, though, I think the distinction is between ‘the sort of people who quite like a bit of Star Trek’ and ‘the sort of people who think learning Klingon is a viable hobby’. Anyway, this is basically some sort of Trek Truthers site, seeking to debunk all the myths that apparently surround the show. “Our mission: to cut through the gossip, half-truths, and outright lies, and get to the bottom of what really happened behind-the-scenes. Join us, as we uncover rarely seen primary sources, critically examine secondary ones, and present brand-new interviews.” I can’t, honestly, pretend I’ve delved too deeply into this, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s maybe one person reading this who will have their week made by its inclusion.
- The Digital Museum of Plugs and Sockets: PEAK CURIOS (and thanks to Editor Paul who found this – I didn’t ask how, it felt rude somehow). This is an eleven year old site celebrating the wonder and beauty of international plug and socket standards, maintained in beautifully-serious fashion by a Dutch person (no information is given, but as ever with these sorts of projects I am confident surmising that it’s probably a bloke). “Over the last 10 years the website has grown from 27 to 134 pages, showing six times more plugs and sockets. Moreover, much background information on technical details, history of standards, manufacturers etc. has been added. The growth of collection and information would not have been possible without the input of museum visitors from all over the world. A lot of material has been donated.” SO MUCH MATERIAL! You will quickly come to learn that ‘a standardised global system of electrical wiring’ is on a par with ‘world peace’ on a list of ‘hoped-for things that will never materialise’ – maybe THE CURRENT EXTRAORDINARY TIMES will see someone solve this once and for all. We can but hope.
- The News Reporters Club: This looks like a really fun project for your kids to do next week, if you’re stuck for ways to arrest the slow descent towards Lord of the Flies. “The News News News Reporters Club is a five-day project for children to complete in their own homes. It involves them making their own radio news show about the world they can see around them using only a pen and paper and a mobile phone. It is designed as a fun way to empower children to be creative and tell their own stories about the strange moment in time we are all living through.” The project is from the US, so there may be a few linguistic or cultural idiosyncracies, but it’s a fascinating idea and is being offered on a ‘pay what you can’ basis, meaning you can get a whole week’s worth of improving kidproject for a few quid if you’re skint. Lovely.
- Fix My Quarantine: This is a webpage updated each day with a new selection of links to stuff to do, watch, read and listen to online – the idea is that you bookmark it or make it your homepage, and each 24h you’ll be presented with another load of entertainments to handhold you through the next slice of lockdown ennui. It’s all a bit TV pop culture for my (intensely pretentious, pseudy) tastes, but I’m a d1ck when it comes to stuff like this and you should probably just click and make up your own minds.
- All The TikTok Dads: Dads and their apparent cuteness is very much a thing on TikTok these days, driven (I suppose) by the fact that so much of the userbase is young teen girls who (I am told) think their dads are ace. This is a LOOOOONG thread of wholesome Dad TikToks, in which the fathers are all lovely and dumb and dad-like and where they are basically the butt of the joke but in a really nice way; ‘adorkable dad’ is 100% going to be a tedious, hard-to-avoid advertising meme for the next 6m if this is anything to go by.
- The Infinite Monkey Experiment: Pudding, again, being excellent – this is low-key such an interesting project. Taking as its starting point the classic ‘a roomful of monkeys and typewriters will eventually produce Shakespeare’ probability classic, the site is using brute force to see how long it will take a random note generator to accurately-reproduce the opening bars of a series of popular compositions; it’s been running for 11 days at the time of writing, and, according to their calculations, should spit out the Nokia ringtone in approximately 30,000 centuries’ time. SO interesting, and a really clear explanation of the maths of probability to boot.
- Aglet: Or, ‘Pokemon Go but trainers’. Aglet is a slightly-bizarre (to me at least) idea that I think is the brainchild of an ex-Adidas person who obviously knows significantly more about trainer culture than I do; the gimmick is that it’s an AR walking game, which challenges you to wander around in the real world to collect virtual trainers to add to your virtual trainer collection (no, me neither, but); there are LOADS to collect, all of them digital versions of real kicks, along with some SUPER limited-edition drops where there will only ever be one version in existence; I suppose that the long game here is the idea of a sort of exchange for virtual sneakerheads where they’ll be able to trade in virtual goods for real-world cash with the site taking a cut, but, honestly, it’s all a bit baffling to me. It’s interesting though – I remember having conversations with people 15 years ago about how the digital property rights arena was going to be such an interesting and lucrative place to be (I was thrilling even then, you WISH you had known me), and we’re still only just scratching the surface of how it all works.
- All The Questlove Prince Tribute Shows: Roots drummer, Kimmel bandleader and seemingly one of the most-loved people in music, Questlove this week has been doing a series of Prince tribute gigs on livestream; this link compiles all four (I think) shows to date, and will give you an excellent few hours listening this weekend.
- Safari, LIVE!: I would imagine that safaris are one of the few touristy things that might come back relatively quickly – they have the combination of ‘done in massive areas where social distancing is relatively simple’, ‘take place in countries that really need the cash’ and ‘largely the preserve of the very, very rich’, qualities which I reckon will largely determine the quickest things to come back online. Anyway, while you’re waiting for the veldt to open up to tourists again, why not enjoy this YouTube channel – every day at morning and evening they lifestream a safari tour, archiving them for later viewing, and, honestly, this stuff is quite amazing. Worth chucking up on a second screen so you can look up and gaze at the buffalo every now and again for psychic relief.
- Interfaces in Games: Primarily designed for people in the industry, this site…oh, here: “Explore a collection of video games interfaces, screenshots, and clips. Take a look at all the fragments that make up a video game, and find inspiration for your designs.” If you’re interested in the mechanics of videogame design, this is fascinating.
- Rooster: Given that we’re all sort of ignoring the amount of time we’re spending online at the moment, this isn’t perhaps the best time for me to feature this plugin; still, if you want another reason to maybe feel a bit crap and inadequate, why not install Rooster? It’s a Chrome plugin which every time you open a new tab presents you with a breakdown of your browser usage that day, showing a chart of which sites have been the grateful recipients of most of your attention; beautifully, it will also start to scold you when you navigate to sites on which it knows you already spend too much time. The sort of thing it would be momentarily-funny to install on your w4nk-obsessed teen’s laptop so they get a vaguely-admonishing squawk every time they log onto a tubesite.
- Zero Replies: A great idea – this account finds old tweets (like really old – it’s currently looking at 2008 as far as I can tell) that noone has replied to and replies to them, bafflingly, at a distance of over a decade. The only point to this is, I presume, to give the recipient of the reply a slight ‘why the fcuk is this stranger replying to this Tweet from 2008?’ reaction – there is, though, a side-effect with the way it’s being used at the moment which hints at a darker motive. It seems that whoever’s running the account is searching for content from 2008 from verified accounts that mention dogs to source the Tweets to reply to; what that also means, though, is that it’s replying to people Tweeting about their dogs 12 years ago, which equally means that it’s pretty certain to just be reminding a lot of people that their dogs are dead. WAY TO GO, ANONYMOUS TWITTER ACCOUNT!
- Particles: A webcam toy which turns you into a beautiful, ghostly, particulate version of yourself. Spookily gorgeous – combine with screen recording software to create some genuinely terrifying footage of your weirdly smokelike features appearing and disappearing from the ether, or alternatively set up a screen in your kids’ room that does nothing but show your odd, beyond-the-veil features, watching them at all times (don’t do that).
- Octolab TV: Regular readers will know that I am big fan of the octopus – sadly I am also a big fan of the taste of octopus, which causes me no little conflict when dining out – and subsequently I am a big fan of this YouTube channel; should you also enjoy cephalopod fun, you will be too! Loads of clips of octopi doing cool things – changing colour, being clever, dressing as Santa, delivering a message of hope to humanity…ENJOY!
- The Kontrapunkt Type Exhibition: Kontrapunkt is a typography design studio in Japan – it opened an exhibition of its work and the history of typographic design in Ginza, Tokyo last year, but has now made the whole thing digital as a response to the pandemic. This is SUCH a lovely bit of webwork, down to the genuinely-soothing backing music, and if you have any interest at all in design and type then you will lose yourself in this for hours. ‘
- Eat Some Pasta: One of the major challenges for any Italian in lockdown with non-Italians is how to explain exactly how much pasta we feel compelled to eat at times like this; it’s like some sort of primal callback to the mothercountry where every meal simply has to feature 300g of carbs in soss. If you feel much the same but are struggling with how to make the process of pasta-ingestion compelling at length, you might enjoy this website which offers a VAST selection of recipes for pasta – it’s American, which means there are some UNGODLY combinations of ingredients and the sort of calorific load which would cause someone of my build to have a literal coronary within three days of this sort of diet, but there’s equally some quite interesting stuff here. On which note, should any of you want a bona-fide EXCELLENT pasta recipe, get in touch and it’s yours.
THE SECTION WHICH RECKONS YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO MAKE A FEW QUID OUT OF A NEW NEWS OUTLET CALLED ‘NORONA’ WHICH TRANSMITS ONLY INFORMATION UNRELATED TO THE PANDEMIC, PT.3:
- The Online Museum of Modern Art: I featured an earlier iteration of this a few weeks ago, but it’s been updated – previously this was a virtual gallery space that you could wonder round to see and play small webgames; now, each room is its own little work of art that you can explore, experience and play with. Honestly, this is SO smart and small and clever and cute and moderately-twee and slightly-hipster, and every single room is a surprising, delightful little piece of webart, and the way you can enjoy light interactions with other visitors in realtime is far more affecting than I would have expected.
- Hackasat: I don’t mean to be rude about my readership – it’s not like there’s enough of you for me to start slagging you off, let’s be honest – but I don’t think that there will be that many of you rushing to join in with this. Still, if you reckon your a L337 H4XX0R (oh god, SO OLD) then you might enjoy this – “The United States Air Force, in conjunction with the Defense Digital Service, presents this year’s Space Security Challenge, Hack-A-Sat. This challenge asks hackers from around the world to focus their skills and creativity on solving cybersecurity challenges on space systems. Pull together a team for our Hack-A-Sat Capture The Flag. Participants who successfully complete a set of qualification challenges on cybersecurity and space this spring will be invited to the ultimate challenge: to (ethically) hack a satellite.” I mean, that sounds quite cool, doesn’t it? Even if you know that the reality will be 48h coding sprints conducted in overly-hot rooms that smell of pizza and feet.
- Movebank: Would you like a map to help you track animal migrations happening RIGHT NOW all around the globe? OF COURSE YOU WOULD! “Movebank’s database is designed for locations of individual animals over time, commonly referred to as tracking data, and of measurements collected by other bio-logging sensors attached to animals, as well as information about animals, tags and deployments” – want to track the caribou? Want to check the progress of the swallows’ return from Africa? Enjoy.
- The A to Z of AI: A really useful reseource from Google, presenting a simple, easy-to-understand guide to 26 of the most important or significant terms used when discussing AI and what they in fact mean. Tell you what, here’s an idea – while you’re all wfh and everyone’s basically trying to invent things to do as most white-collar jobs have been rendered pointless by the slowdown of the global capitalist machine, why not compile a list of things which you expect all your staff to have learned by the time *all this* is over and which they will absolutely get the sack for if they don’t. Like, for example, what is and isn’t ‘AI’, and what ‘machine learning’ actually means. Oh, and when and when not to use the term ‘insight’ (honestly, I will fcuking kill someone I swear). Thanks!
- Geekprank: There has never been a less-appropriate time for you to use this site on your IT-unsavvy coinhabitant during lockdown, but if you’re feeling sadistic or brave you might want to log onto their laptop next time they’re in the bathroom and put this on and wait.
- Less Shot: Or, to give this Twitter account its full name, ‘One Less Than Perfect Shot’ – presenting poorly-framed or cursed-looking shots from famous films, one at a time.
- Nemonet: A new use for your iPad!! “NeMO-Net is a single player iPad game where players help NASA classify coral reefs by painting 3D and 2D images of coral. Players can rate the classifications of other players and level up in the food chain as they explore and classify coral reefs and other shallow marine environments and creatures from locations all over the world!” It’s by NASA and looks like it might be quite fun, in a gently-educative sort of way.
- Quarantine Maps: Gareth Fuller is an artist, whose works “investigate the identity of places with the artist depicting topographies and cultures through urban and rural exploration, extensive research, local knowledge, and lived experience.” He was trapped in quarantine in Beijing for a while, and has been drawing maps as a way of keeping busy and documenting the experience; they’re available as free downloads on the site if you want to download and print them for your own home, or there are prints available for sale if you’d like a proper print. I rather like these – they’re reasonably densely-annotated, slightly wordy expressions of his feelings and thoughts on each day of his lockdown, and have that slightly obsessional Keith Tyson-esque quality that I enjoy.
- World Press Photo of the Year 2020: Another remarkable collection of pictures, made even more remarkable when you imagine what next year’s will look like. Lots of these are recognisably famous, but there are equally some incredible shots that were new to me; the cheery ‘Nazis on a seaboat jaunt’ is a particularly brilliant/horrifying example.
- Channel 101: Oh WHAT a good idea this is! Channel 101 is an US film industry thing, where each month they run a screening of pilot episodes for potential shows which get eviscerated live in front of an audience, with the best ones being invited back to present actual show episodes in the future. Now, under lockdown, they are inviting anyone in the world to submit a pilot video for a TV show of their own imagining – the pilots have to be between 5s and 5m long, and there are a few other rules and conditions, but otherwise ANYTHING GOES. If I had one ounce of visual creativity in my body (and the sort of kit that would let me film half-decently) I would be all over this – I bet LOADS of you could make something great, though (or at least amusingly-awful), so give it a go.
- Kidalist: Ideas of stuff to do with your kids, crowdsourced from the world. You may want to submit your own or you may find some helpful suggestions – there’s not loads of stuff on there at present, but hopefully it will grow over time as it’s a nice concept.
- Weird 3d Browsermaze Thing: I have no idea at all what this is or why it exists, but you can use it to pretend you’re flying a spaceship through some sort of weird network of alien tunnels and frankly I’m bored enough with life at the moment to find that momentarily-diverting.
- NSFW: Not that that designation means anything anymore, but still, NSFW is a sex club in New York which ordinarily runs presumably high-end and exclusive fcuking parties and which has now pivoted to doing much the same but on Zoom. So if you fancy the idea of attending a sex party where noone touches you and you feel just a bit disconnected and awkward and alone – JUST LIKE NORMAL, EH??? – then this is probably PERFECT! It’s membership-by-application, there’s almost certainly a wait-list, and the criteria on which selection is determined is…opaque (and, honestly, surely there must be easier ways of w4nking at strangers, no?), but if you’re willing to put the effort in (and, doubtless, pony up the cash), then this might be the virtual kinkpalace you’ve always dreamed of.
- Social Spacing – The Game: Whoever made this has basically ripped off the Google Jumping Dinosaur game, but I don’t care because it’s strangely compelling.
- Spooky Mountain: This is a really nicely-made digital recreation of a choose your own adventure-type game, complete with a bit of light roleplaying (stats, inventory, etc) and a rather fun storyline about your attempts to scale the titular sinister peak. A great way of passing twenty minutes while you wait for everyone else to do stuff so your part of the great, pointless work machine can start moving again (literally ALL my time at the moment is spent waiting for things to happen elsewhere so I can do something and then wait some more; god I love my professional life).
- If We Were Allowed To Visit: This is beautiful artgamewank of the highest order – a sort-of ASCII FPS which presents you with a topography made up of words which denote what it is that the view is displaying…oh, look, this is impossible, I literally cannot describe this at all – just click and play.
- Ludum Dare: Finally this week in the miscellania, the entrants to the latest Ludum Dare game jam – for those of you who forget, “Ludum Dare is an event where you create a game from scratch in a weekend based on a theme” – this Jam’s theme was ‘Keep It Alive’, and clicking on the link will let you download and play ALL the entries, which range from action games to puzzlers to text adventures to everything else inbetween, and which as ever showcase some quite astonishing creativity. I promise you, if you like games at all you will easily find a few things in here to keep you occupied over the weekend.
LAST IN THE MIXES THIS WEEK, SOME EXCELLENT WEEKEND-ISH HOUSE IN A BRAND NEW MIX BY SAM RANKIN!
THE CIRCUS OF TUMBLRS!:
- Zeghere Van Male: Animated illustrations from Belgian antiquity! “The Songbook of Zeghere van Male – This outstanding manuscript from Bruges contains local and international 500 years old songs and motets. The 1200-page long book in four volumes is rich in illuminations depicting ornamental and historiated initials and interlinear drawings not necessarily related to its content. It is truly an infinite source of joy and inspiration. Here animated initials are rather an artistic collaboration between 21th century animator and 16th century illuminator than a faithful re-animation of the original decorations.” Really rather excellent and pleasingly-grotesque in parts.
- Due to Covid: Not technically a Tumblr, but very much one in spirit: “During the coronavirus pandemic, daily life has come to a sudden standstill and businesses have had to respond. Signs on storefronts announce operational changes but these messages are also brimming over with solidarity, shared responsibility, and cautious optimism. This project attempts to document the temporary signs that have gone up across our communities.” They’re actively collecting new entries, and the UK’s relatively sparsely-covered, so something for you to photograph this weekend while you’re skulking from safe-space to safe-space.
THE TROUGH OF (INSTA) FEEDS!:
- The Artist Support Pledge: Thanks to Dan for sending this to me; the Artist Support Pledge is a project being coordinated by various artists across Insta, the idea being to support each other through promoting each others’ work and committing to spend upto £200 of every £1000 they earn through art sales on the work of other artists. A really nice initiative, and the Insta feed gives details of how it works and how to keep track of the art being discussed and shared and displayed and sold.
- Uglybites: Really, really ugly photos of food, deliberately-taken. This only has 4 followers so literally no idea how I found it, but I am glad I did.
- Shrtctting: This is a nice idea; Shrtcttng is about sharing short talks from experts via Insta, aimed at people working in advermarketingpr. I haven’t listened to any, mainly as the idea of listening to anyone (sorry), however brilliant, talk to me about advermarketingpr while I am not getting paid for it is literally anathema to me, but your mileage may vary.
- The South London Review: Thanks to Anna for sending this to me; this is the South London Review of Hand Sanitiser, presenting reviews and musings and art about, well, hand sanitiser (and other things). This is basically the most artschool/student thing I have seen all year – that’s a compliment, in case you weren’t sure.
LONG THINGS WHICH ARE LONG!:
- The Black Plague: This is a New Yorker article but that doesn’t mean that everything it says about the US isn’t broadly-applicable here. The piece examines the fact that black Americans are significantly more at risk of infection and death from COVID than non-black Americans, and looks at some of the reasons as to why. You know the reasons already – poverty, long-standing inequality, inbuilt racism, the disproproportionate number of ‘essential services’ that are provided at minimum wage by black workers – and by extension you should also know why it is that the story is similar (if at smaller scale) in the UK and elsewhere. I know I keep hammering this point like the tedious, one-note liberal fcuk I am, but if you don’t come to the end of this with a better understanding and appreciation of how structurally unfair society is, and the very specific fault lines along which that unfairness is concentrated, you are at best stupid and at worst a cnut.
- Disposable People: Consider this a companion piece to the above; this looks at the different experiences of quarantine currently being ‘enjoyed’ by the professional managerial classes (aka me, and, probably, you) and that being experienced by the workers whose roles exist in ensuring the continued levels of comfort of the aforementioned professional managerial class. I have been saying for ages that if we’re going to sort climate change at all we need to start addressing modern capitalism and the ‘want’ impulse; this applies to social issues as much as environmental ones. Every time you ‘want’ something now, fast, hot, cheap, physically here, an army of other people you never see or consider or think about is paid a relative pittance to ensure that that happens for you – and you (ok, we, I) never give it a thought. It feels very much like this set of circumstances ought to force us to think about this; it also feels very much like it won’t, because like fcuk are we giving up Amazon deliveries and effortless access to whatever we like, screw the human cost (because we will never have to see it).
- It’s Time To Build: This did the rounds of Tech Twitter last weekend; I didn’t see the commentary it attracted, but I worry that it will widely have been laudatory, which…troubles me. This is a piece by Marc Andreessen, head of famed VC fcukers Andreessen Horowitz, in which he sets out his vision for a post-COVID recovery, which is all going to be led by BUILDING STUFF. Andreessen, pace Keynes, goes full supply-side here, suggesting that large-scale infrastructure projects to reflect ‘the new normal’ are economically advantageous for both the world as a whole and (more importantly) for the markets and the moneymen. Except whereas Keynes believed that it was the public sector which should undertake these projects as part of a managed, command-style economy, Andreessen instead advocates for…wait for it…you’ll NEVER guess…that’s right, he advocates for the Venture Capitalists! Who’d have thought that one of the world’s foremost VCs – let’s remember, a coterie of people not necessarily renowned for their humility – would advocate for people JUST LIKE HIM to be the architects of the new world to come (and reap the massive, multi-zero rewards that will doubtless accrue). I hope I don’t need to explain too much about ‘why it is a bad idea to allow people whose literal sole motive is profit to undertake the recalibration of society after an event of species-level significance’ – but why not pause for a moment and think about all the really, really great things that VC has done for the world over the past decade. Yes, all of them. Please, please, please, can we not let this happen, please?
- How You Could Have Made A Killing This Week: On Wednesday (or was it Tuesday – SO HARD TO KNOW) the world briefly stopped cosplaying as epidemiology experts and instead decided to master the markets instead; as oil prices plummeted, so we all started feverishly Googling ‘how to buy oil futures’ and ‘what is an oil future, anyway?’ and ‘what’s the big deal with pork bellies as a tradeable commodity, I’ve never understood that?’. This article in VICE does a really good job of not only explaining exactly what happened to the price and why, but also of how you could have made an absolute KILLING if you were very quick off the mark.
- Hiring A Private Chef During Covid: I am including this purely for the ‘look at how the other half lockdown; don’t you hate them?’ schadenfreude; this is from the NY Post and looks at how high-rollers in the city are basically just booking high-end chefs whose restaurants are temporarily closed to act as their personal domestic deliverycooks. On the one hand, I hate these people; on the other, I guess the chefs need to earn too. Maybe I’m just jealous.
- Tinder Dates in Animal Crossing: Because everything in human life will have its AC equivalent by June (I am half expecting the UK Parliament to consider adopting it as a means of conducting virtual democracy), here’s a piece about people doing Tinder dates on the platform; honestly, I can’t think of anything that would make my penis retract into my body faster than a message reading “hi, would you like to come on a date to my videogame island and we can harvest imaginary fruit together?”, but then again I’m an old, ugly misanthrope so I should probably wind my neck in.
- Models In A Time Of COVID: Vogue Business really is a surprisingly good read; this is a great piece on how various brands (fashion and tech) are working together to enable the fashion industry to keep shooting clotheshorses and flogging garms despite quarantine, and is really interesting as a general ‘how to find creative solutions to shooting dilemmas when you can’t travel anywhere’ primer as much as it is an insight into the specific world of high-end couture).
- The UK TikTok Hype House: This is the inevitable UK equivalent of the LA thing I mentioned in here at the top of the year – which means it’s exactly like the US one but smaller, the weather’s worse, and all the kids are significantly less good-looking (what? It’s true!). It’s interesting that this lot have already been coopted by the Government to make ‘stay at home, make memes!’-type content to persuade the kids that perhaps they don’t want to catch the ‘rona; it’s also interesting that it’s been set up by a guy (whose name I forget) who set up the first UK Snapchat-focused agency about 5-6 years ago when he was 19. Smart kid.
- Astral Projection: I feel like I ought to reproduce the headline in full here to give you the gist: “Meet The Redditors Using Astral Projection to Escape Quarantine – Paranormal enthusiasts say they’re using out-of-body experiences to infiltrate forbidden spaces—including the Pentagon.” If you don’t want to read this as a result of that tease, there’s something wrong with you. Also, imagine how fcuking amazing it would be to, I don’t know, astrally project yourself into Dominic Raab’s house to see his collection of highly-polished mail order replica Samurai swords, say, or to wander round the Tate. Read the piece – you may need to suspend a little disbelief here – and then try escaping THE PRISON OF YOUR SKULL for a bit.
- Betting In The Time Of The ‘Rona: With live sports off the menu for the foreseeable, gamblers are having to turn to alternative things to place a wager on – esports matchups, who celebrities are going to be livestreaming with next, that sort of thing. This is an interesting look at how those more esoteric markets work, although I’m disappointed that there’s no exploration of darker books – I mean, if someone’s not running a simple over/under game on the daily death-toll numbers I’ll be AMAZED (and, er, can someone play me in?).
- Design and Health: This is a fascinating history of some of the ways in which design of buildings and spaces has changed to reflect prevailing wisdom of the era in terms of health and wellness – and how, conversely, the history of health and wellness has in some ways been shaped by the design decisions made by individuals at certain points in history. SO much good trivia in here, quite a lot of which is vaguely-troubling if you think about it too hard (SO much 20th century racism in urban planning, turns out).
- Holovista: Holovista is a game coming out ‘at some point’ and which has received a decent amount of hype to date – this is the first proper ‘in development’ writeup of it that I’ve seen, and whilst it’s a touch hagiographic as these things tend to be, it also paints a picture of something which could turn out to be revolutionary. The game’s gimmick is that it takes place entirely through a ‘window’ into another world afforded by your phone’s screen; you pan round your real-world environment to pan round the virtual one in-game, and the game’s narrative reinforces this ‘phone as central component of life’ idea with plot in which social media and interpersonal digital interactions play a key role. Really interesting read, and the game sounds like it’s one to look forward to.
- Competitive Oyster Shucking: Did you know this was a thing? I did not know. Anyway, this is a great, entertaining read, all about the professional oyster shucking world, its visit to Shanghai, the personalities that make the scene, and, most of all, about the very, very weird world of expat, rich life in China (and the odd sort of notoriety that people can get in small, closed communities like the shuckers’).
- Three Colours: Red: Nothing to do with the film (and White was better anyway); this, instead, is an essay exploring the history of red pigment in art and history. Honestly, I know you don’t think this will be interesting but you are WRONG – it contains at least three legitimately-brilliant historical-etymological facts, and you will be at least 3% smarter after reading it (this is approximate). I promise, the fact about ‘miniatures’ alone is worth the time.
- There Are Only Three Memes: Richard Cook has written literally THE best breakdown of the semiotics of memes I have read in ages. No sh1t, I promise, this is funny but also DEADLY serious – the conclusion – that there is basically only one memetic format which underpins all others – may well shake you to your very core, but once you know this truth you can never unknow it.
- Everyone You Meet Is God In Drag: On being in drag, and what drag is, and why – this is a wonderful piece of writing which intercuts personal reminiscence and history with an account of two friends putting on drag in preparation for a night out. A wonderful piece of writing (and I don’t even watch Drag Race fwiw).
- Closing A Restaurant: This is written by a New York chef about her restaurant, Prune, which even I know is famous and very much a chef’s-type place. Its founder and owner Gabrielle Hamilton had to shut the place just before lockdown was announced, sacking her staff, and this piece is her meditation on how it felt and why she had to do it and how, if, whether, maybe, the industry will ever be the same. Hamilton is an exceptional writer – it’s not fair that someone can cook well and write like this, dammit – and whilst it’s a story about an NYC place, the themes are applicable anywhere (especially London, especially the sections about the economics of the industry). I loved reading this, even though it made me sad in parts.
- Shirley Valentine Changed My Life: Finally in this week’s selecition of longreads, this piece about falling in love with someone when you’re a kid, and how that can change your life. This is SO LOVELY – I promise, you will feel wonderful after reading it and it will cheer you like few other things this week, so treat yourself and spend 10 minutes savouring it; YOU ARE WORTH IT!!
AND NOW, (THE STILL CURTAILED AS UNDERSTANDABLY THE WHOLE MUSIC VIDEO THING IS A BIT TRICKY ATM) MOVING PICTURES AND SOUNDS!: