The only small downside to the downgrading of the role of Andrew Mountbatten is that it’s sadly no longer accurate to refer to him as ‘the paedo prince’ – still, I guess we’ll cope.
In other news, the UK has this week regressed again, to the point where ‘is it racist to complain about there being too many people who aren’t white on telly?’ is apparently a legitimate item for debate rather than a question to which everyone knows the answer is ‘yes’, so that’s good. Thanks, everyone in the media for ‘advancing’ the ‘discourse’. Add in That Fcuking Man (no, the other one) choosing to once again weigh in with his belief that the UK is heading towards civil war (confusingly, if you read the man’s tweets – I have to do so for professional reasons, I honestly suggest you save yourselves the bother – it seems that civil war is both imminent and inevitable, and, er, has already been happening for some time, suggesting that, perhaps, that idiot cnut Musk doesn’t know the first fcuking thing about anything) and it’s once again been an absolute doozy of a week for Healthy Discussion of Sensible Opinions.
So, with all that behind us I can imagine that ALL you want to do is to dive head-first into a welcoming pile of links, like Scrooge McDuck swimming happily through the moneywaves in his vault – so thank FCUK for me and thank FCUK for Curios, basically.
I am still Matt, this is still Web Curios, and you are going to catch your death if you go out dressed like *that* tonight.
By Dustin Myers
THE SECTION WHICH VISITED ONE OF THE WORST EXHIBITIONS IN THE HISTORY OF ART, HANDS-DOWN, YESTERDAY, PT.1:
- Doublespeed: You will, if you’ve spent any time at all on the web over the past 5 years or so (or, specifically, if you’ve spent anywhere near as much time on the web as I have over the past 5 years, which, well, I hope not tbh), seen videos floating around social media of basement setups in which dozens or even hundreds of phones are set up to automatically spam posts to various social networks at scale; the sort of large-scale botnets that everyone now assumes are behind so much coordinated online activity (should any of you ever want a pointed, cautionary tale about the importance of the difference between ‘bots’ and ‘coordinated inauthentic activity’ then you can buy me a pint and I will tell you about The Time I Caused A Small Journalistic Sh1storm) but which in the main aren’t talked about or alluded to in politice, salubrious circles…well, in a not-particularly-great sign for the future health of online existence, this stuff is now OUT OF THE SHADOWS and peddling itself quite openly, all with the official backing of everyone’s favourite venture capital techno chucklefcuks Andreessen Horowitz! Doublespeed recently got funding from A16Z to expand on its vision to, per the website, “orchestrate actions on thousands of social accounts through both bulk content creation and deployment”, via tech which “mimics natural user interaction on physical devices to get our content to appear human to the algorithims” and with feedback loops which “analyze what works to make the content smarter over time…the best performing content becomes the training data for what comes next.” As the homepage proudly proclaims, “AI does the heavy lifting, humans add the final 5% that makes platforms trust it’s real. We’ve automated the arbitrage between perfect and believable.” Is it…is it positive that one of the world’s largest and most-famous VC firms is openly funding companies that peddle synthetic online activity and the ability to spin up digital ‘movements’ for cash? NO IT IS NOT AND YET HERE WE ARE! The general Curios viewpoint – to whit, “BELIEVE NOTHING ON THE INTERNET UNLESS YOU ARE READING IT HERE, I AM THE ONLY SOURCE OF TRUTH, TRUST ME AND MY WORDS FOR I AM YOUR SOLE TRUE ORACLE” (or, well, something like that) – continues to have much to recommend it.
- Beyond Resolution: It’s been a while since I’ve come across a genuinely…odd personal website, but WOW does this example, via Shardcore, tick ALL of the boxes of strange! Beyond Resolution is the online home of Rosa Menkman, who, per her bio, is “a Dutch artist and researcher of resolutions.The journey of her protagonist, the Angel of History—inspired by Paul Klee’s 1920 monoprint, Angelus Novus, and conceptualized by Walter Benjamin in 1940—functions as a foundational framework for her explorations of image technology. In her narrative, the journey of the Angel cuts through a landscape covered in piles of obsolete technology, stifled by trade-offs, and obscured by standard settings. As the Angel navigates this endless spiral of digital ‘advancements’, her story probes an ecology of resolutions, examining the trade-offs between functionality and compromise in the fields of image processing.” I…er, look, I can’t pretend for a second to have the first idea about what that means, but I can tell you that this is a VERY CONFUSING portal into Rosa’s work – it is DENSE and there is a LOT in here, links to work and essays and images, and collections of past art, all presented in a, er, somewhat-cluttered style…honestly, I think this is SUCH an interesting piece of design, even if it’s not one that I find anything other than entirely-confusing, and I rather love it despite my total and utter confusion about Menkman’s work and what the fcuk is going on here.
- A Genuinely Good Little AI Film: “NO MATT EVERYTHING MADE WITH AI IS BAD AND YOU ARE SCUM FOR LINKING TO IT!” Oh, look, go and shout at someone else, you are BORING and your lack of curiosity is beginning to grate. Ahem. Sorry, I really ought to stop arguing with imagined hecklers. Anyway, this is a link to a post on Bluesky sharing a really nicely-made bit of AI film; yes, it’s obviously AI; yes, it has THAT general sort of look and feel about it, but, look, it’s a nice example of how to use the tech for effective communications; the whole vibe of this clip is a little too ‘RESIST DRUMPF!!!1111’ for me in general, but the general message and delivery is, I think, strong. I’ve shared previous examples of honkingly-bad AI satire before, but this is, I think better – not just because, fine, yes, it’s peddling a message I agree with, but because, as with the best examples of this stuff, you can see that whoever’s storyboarded this has at least a rudimentary understanding of ‘visual storytelling’ and so there’s some decent directorial nous underpinning the selection of AI video clips; see what you think. Personally I think we’re going to see an absolute boom in stuff like this as everyone and their dog starts to get access to high-quality text to video. BONUS GOOD AI VIDEO THING!: this is a good advert and it made me laugh and, again, it demonstrates that you can actually now make pretty good stuff with The Machine as long as you accept that it can’t write a decent script and you shouldn’t let it anywhere near the copy (via Paddy).
- Odyssey: An interesting proof-of-concept, this – although, on reflection, I can’t off the top of my head conceive of any circumstances in which I would need or want to be able to do what this platform lets me, so, well, no idea what concept is in fact being proven – which basically does text-to-video with the ability to prompt the outputs in realtime, so that you can, in theory, edit the action that’s happening on screen with the addition of new text prompts. So, for example, you can tell it to imagine, I don’t know, ‘a whimsical country idyll’ and then, as you’re watching a clip of a vaguely-misshapen hamlet in the countryside, see what happens if you then add ‘rampaging godzilla’ to the scene. The model isn’t the most sophisticated in the world and (obviously) is heavily-guardrailed so there’s not THAT much scope, but there’s something undeniably-impressive about the sandbox that you’re granted and how The Machine interprets and attempts to integrate your commands and ideas; have a play.
- Grokipedia: I honestly don’t particularly want to dwell on this, but it feels…sadly, undeniably, sort-of important; even if this, Elon Musk’s ANTI-WOKE Wikipedia knockoff, doesn’t ever get any traction (and it won’t, to be clear; leaving aside the hideous, ignorant political leanings of its owner, a) it isn’t very good; and b) there isn’t, thank fcuk, a large enough body of people convinced of Wikipedia’s LIBERAL MADNESS to ever make Grokipedia more than a fringe concern) it is, I think, worth noting its existence simply as another waypoint in the culture wars and general trend towards ‘you don’t like this version of objective reality? No problem, look over here at this one which I have sculpted to fit your hideous opinions!’. Anyway, Grokipedia is the answer to the hitherto-unasked question ‘What if Wikipedia but with all the images and links removed, and rewritten by an LLM to read as though it was written exclusively by forum-dwelling neckbeards with STRONG OPINIONS?’ – it seems from initial cursory explorations that a lot of the content is lifted wholesale from Wikipedia,with some of it rewritten to cast it in a manner more aligned with Elon’s general belief systems (specifically the racist and increasingly-fascistic ones). There’s something just really…bleak about this, honestly, which I think stems from the contrast between the ethos and mechanics of the original Wikipedia – a passion project for thousands of actual people who volunteer their time, knowledge and expertise to create a shared corpus of human knowledge for the benefit of everyone! – and the mechanics of this horrid simulacrum.
- The Jim Henson Company Auction: OH MY GOD. This is one of the most incredible sets of lots I have ever seen at an online auction, seriously. Would you like to own one of the weird bird things from The Dark Crystal? Do you fancy the idea of owning Stadtler and Waldorf’s grandfather clock? Would you like the chance to bid on ACTUAL FRAGGLES?!?!?!?! This takes place at the end of November, and as you might imagine there are some VERY PRICEY marionettes and props in here, but even if, like me, you can neither afford nor house any of this stuff you will very much enjoy scrolling and clicking and imagining what you might do with a pair of Miss Piggy’s shoes (but, er, please don’t tell me).
- An Auction of Incredibly Gay Art: Seeing as we’re doing auctions (SEAMLESS!), those of you less interested in felted puppets and more interested in, er, c0ck, might appreciate this collection of lots for sale at Vallots – this comprises sketches, paintings and photos and there is…well, there is a LOT of intensely-homoerotic artfilth here, basically, and if you are the type of person who would like a beautifully-shot chiaroscuro of some very taut buttocks then, well, get your wallet ready.
- The State of GenAI Images: This is an interesting site which compares the image-generation capabilities of a bunch of currently-available AI models, from Nano Banana to Midjourney to Imagen and a bunch of others besides; the main angle here is testing ‘prompt adherence’ (ie the model’s ability to do what you tell it to and follow your instructions closely), but there are a lot of different experiments here and it’s fascinating to see the different ways in which different models interpret different requests and the variance in stylistic outputs; I was surprised by how good Imagen was here and, conversely, how poorly Midjourney seemed to perform, and in general this is an interesting look at current capabilities and persistent flaws. Oh, and if you’re curious there’s a parallel series of tests here looking at the models’ image-editing capabilities, which, again, is helpful if you’re looking to see which of these is the best Photoshop-killer at present.
- Moflin: Longstanding readers will know that I have long been fascinated by the idea of AI companions as physical objects – toys or dolls or whatever with The Machine inside, creating things that you can talk to and which will respond to you and react to stimuli…not necessarily because I think they will be ‘good’ or indeed that it’s a wholly-positive development and more because, well, it’s weird and interesting and sort-of scifi! Except, well, every time I see something of this ilk in real life I am gripped by a feeling of very, very intense soul-sadness and want to have a small cry! So it is with the Moflin, a Casio-produced device which is described on the site thusly “Moflin is a calming presence and offers quiet reassurance. As an AI friend, they ease stress and bring comfort when it matters most. Enjoy the warmth and lifelike bond of a smart companion that uses emotional AI to respond to you, understand you, and grow with you.” Moflin is, basically, a sort of featureless fluffy blob (but with eyes! So emotive!) which looks a bit like a cross between a guinea pig and a floor duster and which “loves gentle pats and warm cuddles wherever you carry them, and they also love sleeping in their bed to recharge” and which “provides emotional connection without social pressure, offering comfort and balance in daily life…a gentle, understanding AI friend that makes each day feel a little calmer and more fulfilling.” Obviously there are people who would like pets and who for various reasons can’t have them, and I can totally see the principal behind this, but, well, am I the only person who on reading statements like that pictures a future of lonely pod-people all living in high-rise apartments, venturing downstairs only to procure more protein units, spending their days stroking and murmuring to their fluffy AI companion who they love and who provides them with all the emotional support they could possibly need? Er, anyone? Anyway, this is making me well up, so I am going to move on swiftly before I get all lachrymose.
- Theft Bisect: SUCH a good idea, this – a simple tool which lets you upload a video of a bike theft and uses AI to work out when that theft happened based on assessing whether the bike is there or not there at various timestamps. This exists because, seemingly, the Met Police are too dumb to make this themselves – you can read an explanation as to the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ behind its existence here, but generally this is just a smart idea, simply-executed.
- Hidden Door: This is another AI thing – SORRY SORRY I PROMISE THIS IS THE LAST ONE THIS WEEK – which I have been vaguely-following for a while now but which is now open to play with and which I can therefore share with YOU despite your almost-certain indifference; Hidden Door is basically an ‘interactive story game’-type toy, where you select from various scenarios and get to ‘play’ through a variety of different narrative settings, with the idea being that your choices and actions shape the direction of the story; this uses an LLM to develop the story based on your prompts and choices, effectively making this a souped-up choose your own adventure-style system. There are all sorts of bells and whistles on top of it; story cards you can collect and play, persistence of inventory, characters accruing memories and motivations as you play, theoretically allowing for interesting narrative developments…except, obviously it doesn’t QUITE work as its creators probably intend, and there’s a general sense of ‘well, this would be interesting if there was a human here guiding the narrative a bit because without one there’s no real sense of any real jeopardy or interest’ which you always get with this sort of thing because of The Machine’s natural reticence to introduce failstates or to let the player fcuk up…still, I found this curious enough to spend half an hour with earlier in the week, and I think that there’s something interesting here for any of you who spend time thinking about games, fiction and interactivity.
- NoSurf: A movement to help people get off the internet and spend more time doing meaningful things In Real Life. WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THIS DO NOT LEAVE ME IT IS WARM AND COMFORTABLE HERE SURROUNDED BY THE LINKS AND THE WORDS.
- ISS In Realtime: WOW this is a treat for space-lovers – per the blurb, “ISS in Real Time is an interactive experience that lets you explore the past 25 years onboard the International Space Station. All data on this website is original, public mission material sourced from across the internet. We have placed the data into mission context so you can experience each day as it happened.” This is quite an incredible effort – you can go back to literally ANY day in the history of the Space Station and see videos, photos and data collected by it, see where it was over the Earth, see who was onboard at the time…why do you need to be able to do this? I DO NOT KNOW AND I DO NOT CARE, REVEL IN THE AIRLESS VACUUM OF INFINITE INKY BLACKNESS AND DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS!
- Work In Progress: This is the website of a design and technology studio and, honestly, it is SO MUCH FUN (and in many respects functionally-useless when it comes to telling you the first thing about what these people actually do, but, well WHO CARES THIS IS ACE) – click the link and just enjoy how little these people give a fcuk about you understanding what is going on here.
- The Most Beautiful Swiss Books: Perhaps unsurprisingly I wasn’t previously aware that there was an annual celebration of the best-designed books to be published in Switzerland each year but, well, there is! The awards have already happened this year, but this is a really pleasing site celebrating the nominees and winners – I really like the fact that the homepage is just full-bleed video showing pages flipping, and, honestly, there’s part of me that quite wants to just zone out and look at that right now because it turns out that FCUK ME I am flagging (0824am, in case you were interested, and I am really regretting not going to bed earlier last night).
- The Monolith Project: Click the link and SCROLL (but, er, you may want to turn the volume down here as, well, the audio is fcuking horrible, what were you thinking?!) and enjoy the beautifully-animated journey – I don’t REALLY know what this is about (there’s a monolith! There is talk of THE COSMOS!) but I don’t personally think that that matters; just appreciate the beautifully-drawn illustrations that have a vaguely-Moebius-ish feel to them, and the animation on scroll which is really rather gorgeous.
- 6-7: The World’s Greatest Middle-Aged Streamer (™), Scotland’s Brian ‘Limmy’ Limond, has made this, which if you have children who are doing your head in with the 6-7 thing (I pity you, honestly) might prove a useful antidote and which you might want to bookmark on your phone for the next time some little scrote starts shouting it at you.
THE SECTION WHICH VISITED ONE OF THE WORST EXHIBITIONS IN THE HISTORY OF ART, HANDS-DOWN, YESTERDAY, PT.2:
- Man Cereal: Are you a MAN? Are you increasingly ANGRY about the FEMINISED and CUCKED cereal market? Do you feel somehow emasculated or diminished in some manner by the fact that said cereals often feature cartoon characters or similarly-designed mascots on the packaging? Are you insecure about the fact that despite being an adult your preferred way to start the day is to consume a bowl of grain-derivatives just like you did when you were small? THANK FCUK, THEN, FOR MAN CEREAL! Man Cereal is cereal…FOR MEN! IT CONTAINS PROTEIN AND CREATINE! GAINS FOR BREAKFAST! Apparently this isn’t just any cereal, it is HIGH PERFORMANCE cereal! Honestly, what the actual fcuk is WRONG with people? Just eat Cocoa Pops and enjoy them! In fairness to the people behind this they acknowledge the ridiculousness of the name and are leaning into the nutrition and fitness aspect here…but, well, it also feels a bit cake-and-eat it because you also know that this is going to appeal to some of the worst people in the world, the perineum-tanning, testicle-eating raw milk devotees, and can we just fcuking stop with this stuff, basically?
- The UK Deprivation Map: A newly-released dataset from the UK government mapping relative deprivation across the country; this is hugely-interesting, not only for the obvious ‘so where does where I live rank relative to the rest of the country and the surrounding area?’ but also as an insight into the intensely-complex and variegated demographic picture of the country; spend a bit of time with this, particularly looking at urban areas of the UK, and you quickly get an understanding of how thinking of ‘rich areas’ and ‘poor areas’ is desperately-reductive, and even parts of your city or town that you think of as ‘posh’ aren’t quite that monolithic. Curious for most of you, potentially very useful for a small minority.
- The Fcuking Bible: A Bluesky account that posts verses from the Bible with the small, significant addition of the words ‘fcuk’ or ‘fcuking’. This is, obviously, very silly, but as someone who had to spend more time than on reflection was probably healthy as a child reading or thinking about the Good Book (truly, the benefits of a Catholic education are myriad!) this made me laugh rather a lot.
- The Morl Society: Sean Morley is a (very good) standup comedian who I *think* reads Web Curios every now and again – HELLO SEAN IF YOU ARE READING THIS I AM A FAN! – and who, at the end of November, is running the fourth instalment of The Morl Society, which is basically a virtual version of Interesting Conference and which, basically, is an evening of short, interesting presentations about whatever people want to do presentations about. Per the blurb, “The Morl Society is a livestream showcase of presentations on niche and underappreciated subjects. No topic too specific, no interest too unusual. The Morl Society showcase will be broadcast live on twitch.tv/seanmorl on Friday 28th November at 7.30pm GMT. Presentations can be between 3 -5 minutes long (if we are undersubscribed the length may inflate slightly). Presentations may be presented live or be pre-recorded. For live presenters you may appear on webcam or just on audio if that’s easier for you. Presenters are invited to participate in a short live Q&A after their talk.” Honestly, this sounds FUN and the sort of thing I have the vague impression some of you might be rather interested in.
- Board: Ooh, this is an interesting idea – I’ve seen a whole bunch of different variants on ‘boardgames, but digital!’ over the years, but this feels like a really interesting addition to the genre; Board is basically a massive iPad with interactive physical gubbins which you can use to play a variety of different games, from traditional-type boardgames to variants on things like space invaders and the like, with the electronic ‘board’ changing depending on what you are playing, and different pieces and props corresponding to different games, with players switching out the pieces depending on what they’re playing at any given time. I’ve not dug into the tech here but I imagine there’s some NFC-type tech in the pieces so that the board ‘knows’ what is being played and where they are; as with all these things this will live or die based on the quality and range of games that are available for it, and while I have no idea what the post-launch release plan is, it comes with 12 already loaded in which feels like a reasonable selection. Then again this is EYEWATERINGLY expensive – $500! And that’s a discounted early-bird cost! – so you might want to wait a bit to see whether the company still exists in a year or so before you get lumbered with yet another soon-to-be-bricked piece of glass and plastic to take care of on its way to landfill.
- Slop Evader: I genuinely can’t express quite how fcuking bored I am of the term ‘slop’ and its seeming ubiquity (see also the perennial expansion in meaning of ‘ensh1ttification’) – still, I imagine there will be some of you for whom this Chrome extension is hugely-appealing and as such I will suspend my distaste for long enough to share it with you, because THAT’S HOW NICE I AM. Slop Evader is a Chrome extension which, basically, limits Google searches to the period before November 2022 and so before the generative AI boom, and which, as a result, promises to guarantee you only HIGH-QUALITY, AI-FREE RESULTS! Except, well, it won’t eliminate all the human-made rubbish, of which there is loads because, remember, we’ve been fcuking up the web thanks to misaligned, VC-induced incentives for an age!
- Dutch Campaign Tracker: With the Dutch elections having taken place this week and Gert ‘Hateful Cnut’ Wilders hopefully having been denied (unclear at the time of writing but, well, fingers crossed!), it’s timely to share this excellent-looking initiative (born of the University of Amsterdam) which, honestly, feels like it should exist for every single election in the world from hereon in. “In the CampAIgn Tracker, we analyze all posts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X from parties and candidates and selected influencers and commentators for the 2025 Dutch Parliamentary election. The tracking monitor allows you to see how many AI-generated messages are being spread by which parties. Additionally, we show if AI-Labels are used, what actors are depicted, which topics are discussed and whether the tone is positive or negative. On this page, you will find analyses of AI-generated campaigns for the 2025 Dutch Parliamentary election. A searchable overview of individual AI-generated images and videos is available in the AI Explorer.” Honestly, this is SUCH a useful tool and something which I really, really hope is in place in the UK ahead of the local elections next May
- Eyeball: Another link tracking/management system! This one’s an iOS app and it basically does that whole ‘save your links! Search them! MANAGE THE KNOWLEDGE TSUNAMI!’ thing; per the blurb, “Eyeball effortlessly saves your links, automatically adds summaries, and sends an update every Sunday morning specific to you about what’s useful and interesting.” Sound useful? GOOD.
- Anna’s Garden: A small, virtual garden – draw a flower, plant it, and watch it bloom amongst the others, created and planted by anonymous visitors from all across the web and the world. Beautiful, simple, pointless, perfect.
- Conversation Starters: There was a wonderful bit of clickbait feature writing in the Guardian the other day about how someone had ‘given up smalltalk’ and it had ‘transformed their life’ – what this practically meant was that they hadn’t in fact given it up at all, but had just replaced ‘what have you been up to then?’ with ‘tell me about your relationship with your mother?’ (I am paraphrasing, but you get the idea) as an opening conversational gambit and how this had TRANSFORMED THEIR SOCIAL LIFE (the article was…less vocal about whether the other people in said reporter’s life were as enamoured with this HARD PIVOT into BIG CHAT, but, well, who cares?!); anyway, if you too have problems with finding ways into conversations but don’t quite feel ready to go full-existential on first meeting someone, you might find this website of potential interest. Per the blurb, “Hi, my name is C.B. Daniels and I started Conversation Starters World. I’m from the USA. Florida to be specific. But I taught English in South Korea for many years. I used conversation questions a lot to help my students practice and learn English. But I noticed something interesting. I looked around for conversation questions for people who speak English as a native language and noticed there weren’t many sites around. And the sites that do exist didn’t have many questions to choose from. So I decided to remedy that by creating Conversation Starters World.” I personally think that some of these options are maybe a BIT high-risk – I worry, for example, that ‘have you ever saved an animal’s life?’ is potentially an immediate trauma-gateway – but on the other hand I am 100% going to try out “what’s the strangest place you’ve defecated?” on a stranger before the year is out.
- The Space Exploration Logo Archive: Have you ever wanted a repository of every single logo of every single organisation or group associated with the exploration of space? OF COURSE YOU HAVEN’T! And yet, Curios provides! “This online platform offers free access to over 450 logos, each accompanied by an iconic image and a brief description. Whether you’re a designer seeking inspiration, a space enthusiast, or a history buff, the website serves as a comprehensive and easily navigable resource…The collection spans more than 80 years of works and includes the most iconic and noteworthy logos distributed in seven chapters, starting with the best known up to the raw & rare ones.” My personal favourite here is ‘Project Mercury’ which 100% looks like the sigil for some sort of mad, potentially-evil secret society that dabbles in animal (and quite possibly human) sacrifice, but, well, pick your own!
- Fondfolio: This is a lovely idea but MAN is the name unpleasant – it reads like ‘fondle’ which, well, isn’t a word anyone likes I don’t think, and if you try saying it out loud it feels quite a lot like attempting to speak with a mouth full of sand and tissue paper (it does, try it!), but leaving those frankly minor and unimportant quibbles aside I also think it’s a potentially cool idea which some of you might rather like; basically it’s a print-on-demand service for books of tributes and testimonials, which, when you sign up, gives you a questionnaire link that you can share with anyone who you’d like to contribute. The platform gathers all the responses, formats and compiles them, and then prints them into a one-off personal “YOU ARE FCUKING AMAZING!” texts (unless of course everyone filling out the form decides instead to share the reasons you will likely die alone and unloved! No reason it couldn’t be a hate book!). Rather beautifully this is seemingly a one-person business and the resulting books are handmade by someone called Fiona and, honestly, I think this is a rather lovely idea and could be a perfect gift for someone (or a really, really elaborate way of telling someone how much you and a whole bunch of other people despise them, and all the reasons why!).
- Animagraffs: Infographics! Animated infographics! Basically these are 3d animations showing How Stuff Works via the medium of visual explainers, and they are all the work of one guy, seemingly, and FCUK ME is this a lot of work. If you’ve ever been in the market for a short video showing you EXACTLY how the blockchain works (you still won’t understand, trust me) then this is the place you will find it.
- All Of The Old Film Posters: An astonishing digital collection maintained by the University of Texas, this has seemingly THOUSANDS of old film posters spanning years and genres, running up to the late-70s as far as I can tell…seriously, if you’re interested in poster design or the history of cinema or (look, I know my audience) if you just want to look at 100-odd ‘erotic’ film posters from the golden era of cheesecake bongo then WOW are you in luck (and if anyone has any idea where I might be able to buy an original of this then PLEASE LET ME KNOW).
- Buy Actual Psychedelics Online: Web Curios is, for the purposes of this link, assuming that you, the reader, live somewhere where it would be ENTIRELY LEGAL for you to by some acid, or some mushrooms, or some synthesised psilocybin (or, fcuk it, ALL OF THE ABOVE) and have it shipped to you…none of you are going to use this to break the law, are you? ARE YOU? Good, now that we have all those legal caveats out of the way then I can present you with this site, which offers a menu and a link to a Signal contact. I say this a lot in Curios but I mean this VERY SERIOUSLY here – caveat emptor! But, er, do let me know how you get on should you decide to take the plunge (but not until you have stopped tripping, please).
- The Golden Demon Miniatures Painting Contest 2025: When I was a kid, expressing an interest in anything like Warhammer or Blood Bowl would have gotten you ripped limb from limb by the more…aggressively-normal children, which is one of the reasons why I never got into the whole ‘miniatures’ scene (that and my total lack of artistic skill and limited patience, fine); still, now that Games Workshop is one of the few legitimate British business success stories of the modern era (that and OnlyFans – WHAT A NATION WE ARE!) it’s safe to presume that there are actually an awful lot of people who REALLY like wearing a loupe and meticulously rendering the rust on a Space Marine’s boltgun (I am not judging, honest). If that is your idea of fun then prepare to feel MASSIVELY inadequate as you gaze upon the winners of this annual contest to reward the most talented miniatures artists in the world.
- The Penthouse Guide to Cybersex: OH WOW – this is from 1995! PRACTICALLY PREHISTORY! Would you like an insight into the ways in which famous bongo mag Penthouse was suggesting you get your rocks off in ‘cyberspace’? OH GOOD! This is an internet archive scan and so it’s not super-easy to read, but it’s worth fullscreening and zooming in and flicking through because WHAT an artefact this is! It’s important to note that anyone attempting to use this for, er, ‘erotic’ purposes is likely to remain unfulfilled – there’s not a lot of titillating imagery here, and that which there is is stubbornly low-res – but there is SO MUCH to love in here; I strongly recommend p140, which is a whole section about ‘sexy websites’ (OH YOU SWEET SUMMER CHILDREN YOU REALLY HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS ABOUT TO HAPPEN!) including, beautifully, ‘Condom Country’ whose webmaster was apparently a man who called himself ‘Prophylactic Pete’. Seriously, this is HERITAGE.
- NoFrilldos: On the one hand, I am including this because I think it’s a generally good idea – a range of no-frills sex toys aimed at people who maybe can’t afford something fancy but who still want a functional, high-quality way of getting off; on the other, I am also including it because ‘nofrilldos’ is a legitimately-hilarious name, and I am now slightly obsessed with the concept of a Tesco Value range of masturbatory aids.
- Brit Doll Review: One of those links where I feel compelled to say something like ‘THIS STUFF FINDS ME, HONEST GUV’ – I promise, I did not seek this out, and there is nothing in my general, day-to-day life, nothing in my ‘selection of personal interests’, that would cause me to actively research the information contained here. Now, with that caveat out of the way…Brit Doll Review is a website offering, er, reviews, of various masturbatory devices aimed at the male consumer, many of which are designed to look like the…oh god, there’s no nice way to say this, distressingly-disconnected torsos of women. So this is DEEPLY creepy and unpleasantly-dehumanising, I know, and I appreciate that lots of you will be quite rightly discomfited by the general concept here. BUT! If you can look past that and actually read the reviews then…actually, no, it doesn’t get better, but there is something so utterly WEIRD about everything that’s being described here, particular language and terminology being used to describe the devices (which reads a lot like sites reviewing, say, coffee machines, or other gadgets), and, well, it’s just strange and creepy and wrong-feeling, and, as such, felt like a perfect inclusion. Er. Sorry.
- FeetGen: You know how AI is going to take all the jobs? Yeah, well that includes ‘people making a few quid off feet pics on OnlyFans’. Sorry, I don’t make the rules here.
- Word Chainer: A DAILY WORD GAME HUZZAH! This one is a pain to describe so, well, I am not going to try because time is against me, but trust me when I say that it is a) simple; and b) fun, and I have played it every day since finding it which feels like something of a recommendation.
- Egg: THIS IS FUN! Would you like to play a surreal, nonsensical, oddly-funny 3d platform game in which you play, er, an egg? YES OF COURSE YOU WOULD! This is tricky to get the hang of, but it’s also very forgiving – there are no limited lives, just the continued attempt to jump your oeuf to the end of the trail. This is an EXCELLENT way to waste the last 30 minutes of your working day.
- Pager: Our final miscellaneous link this week is another super-impressive in-browser game – I don’t really want to spoil it for you as it rewards going in blind, but all you need to know is that a) you play in first person; b) there are 10 levels in this playable demo; c) DO WHAT YOU ARE TOLD. This is EXCELLENT, and made me want to pony up for the full title (via the excellent team at RPS, to whom hello if you are reading this!)
By Ivan Slay
THE CIRCUS OF TUMBLRS IS EMPTY!
THE TROUGH OF (INSTA) FEEDS!
- Cecilia Poupon: Not only in possession of a FANTASTIC name, Cecilia Poupon is also a very talented photographer; there is something VERY hyperintense about her fashion/luxe detail shots which I really like.
LONG THINGS THAT ARE LONG!
- Acid Patriotism: Perennial Web Curios favourite Clive Martin has launched a newsletter (ffs Clive, must you?!) and his inaugural dispatch is a typically-Martin-esque piece on the current weirdness of the flags’n’fury brigade and the way intersects with the remaining vestiges of rave culture; this is effectively an evolution of the ‘cosmic scallie’ stuff that got a bit of attention during lockdown as Liverpool became something of an epicentre for conspiratorial thinking and ‘5g Bill Gates’ memes, but now writ national, and I think that Martin nails a lot of smart things here, not least ‘protest against the government’ fulfilling the need for communal hedonism that is no longer necessarily met now. A useful lens for Britiain Right Now, I think: “Some days later, I was sent a video from a colleague who is part of an England away supporters ticket group. It shows a group of young men (and one very old man), gathered outside a community centre in Portsmouth, all decked out in body warmers, caps and calf tats, with Union Jacks and St George’s flags draped over their shoulders like Crusaders’ tabards. From a PA system pumps the immortal meme-trance anthem ‘Sandstorm’ by Darude, while red, white and blue flares burst into the drizzly sky. As the track builds to a crescendo, a man with a microphone starts ranting about a “show of dominance against Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.” He seems angry but ecstatic, wired for havoc. The overall effect falls somewhere between an Identitarian flash protest and a Gatecrasher party from 1997. “We need to take it to the politicians, local and national,” read the message underneath. Although they were slightly more ‘with it’ than the man at Waterloo, he and they were clearly getting stuck into the same Kool-Aid, a new version of that age-old union of euphoria and rage, the missing link between mobile disco and the kettling pen – a rave culture-infused take on right-wing bile. Acid Patriotism, if you will.”
- A Month in the Manosphere: No, wait, come back, this isn’t about Andrew fcuking Tate! Instead this is a really interesting – and, I think, useful, and under-explored – month-long look at what ACTUALLY gets said on all these fcuking male-focused podcasts, your Rogans and Vons and all those wide-necked chucklefcuks wanging on about…STUFF all the time. The thing is, there is so MUCH of this content, a seemingly-infinite stream, to the point that it seems entirely possible that one could spend literally the whole of one’s waking life listening to muscular idiots tell you that soybeans make your balls shrink (or something like that), and so, perhaps unsurprisingly, getting the shape of it is tricky. Which is why pieces like this that set down some of the stuff that’s actually being seif on these things are so useful – it’s good to be reminded of the fact that millions of (mostly) young men are having stuff like this poured into their ears every week. “In an episode with Dillon on September 4, Rogan complained that immigrants in the United Kingdom are “outbreed[ing]” English people. “But what they’re doing with allowing mass migration in the UK… It’s really weird because like where does this end up?” Rogan said. “Because it seems like it ends up with some places that have Sharia law…Especially when you consider like how many babies they’re having versus how many babies the English people [are having]. I mean they’re openly talking about it. ‘We’re going to outbreed you,’” Rogan said.” Is…is this good? It doesn’t feel good!
- AI Post-Bubble: WIRED put out a whole bunch of pieces on AI this week (just in case you hadn’t read enough about it over the past few years), but this was the pick of the bunch imho; it’s a sensible, clear-headed look at what might practically happen should the financial bubble surrounding the tech finally pop, and what the next evolution of the technology, post-froth, might look like, and how and where it might be applied. The basic premise here is ‘it will be better, because all of the hypemerchants will stop shouting and instead people will quietly get on with making this stuff better and implementing it more effectively, and we will get the benefits without the annoyance’, and I for one am happy to believe this take.
- AI Creators Making Bank: “Why is there so much AI crap everywhere?” comes the perennial complaint from people who hate the stuff. The answer, of course, is because people are being paid to make it – not directly, fine, but thanks to the MAGICAL INCENTIVE STRUCTURE created by platforms with creator payouts there is a direct line between ‘putting something on social and it getting attention’ and ‘making cash’, and it turns out that, whatever Bluesky might want to believe, lots of people quite like AI-generated stuff and so people are going to keep putting it out there. This piece in Bloomberg looks at a few of the people behind reasonably-popular AI characters, including a few I java featured in here before, talking about the process and their ‘vision’ for the project (clue: branded deals and sponcon oh ffs). As the piece concludes, “I left the AI mixer excited and shell-shocked, surprised by how quickly these AI creators have grown their followers and found success. The humans behind these AI performers emphasize that they don’t just push a button and publish a video or song. They hone their characters, sounds and look. To make successful content, the AI output has to be refined. But AI is removing barriers to entry, and the platforms are generally accepting the content, making all the navel-gazing about whether AI is good or bad seem somewhat irrelevant. When reminded in the comment sections that these are AI creations, their audiences don’t seem to care. All that matters to them is whether the content is good.”
- The Job Search as Humiliation Ritual: I’ve been lucky enough that I haven’t had to apply for a job since…Jesus, since about 2009, but I am aware that the recruitment process in modernity is a fcuking sh1tshow, between rampant demand and the inevitable introduction of AI into the process; this piece is from New York Magazine and as such is US-centric, but the stories it tells feel like they are probably pretty universal, and the summation line at the end (“I feel like I am just getting my machine to talk to their machine”) is a bleak precis of Where We Are Now.
- Why GenZ Can’t Stop Watching Bad Takes: This is a Vox piece, which means it obviously doesn’t in any way adequately answer the question it’s purporting to ask, but the general premise struck me as interesting – basically this is about format differences between YouTube (where explainer videos originated as an online content form) and TikTok (where they are increasingly ending up), and the incentives on the latter lead to material and information which sacrifices accuracy for appeal and virality (quelle surprise!). “It was only natural that internet users would carry this “I’m here to learn” attitude over to TikTok, according to Jamie Cohen, a media studies professor at Queens College CUNY in New York. One reason for this shift, he says, was the timing of the app’s rise “when everybody was switched to learning online during the pandemic.” However, several aspects of YouTube that make it such a successful platform for posting in-depth explainers don’t exactly translate to the bite-sized format of TikTok. YouTube’s more formal, “big-screen” presentation creates more of an incentive for video essayists to show their work, by reading out full citations or elaborating on supportive materials. On TikTok, however, facts and ideas are often hurried and collaged to make a fast, reductive point. “The format of analysis videos on YouTube is much more essay-like, whereas on TikTok it’s about designing and layering up,” Cohen said. “The green-screen tactic is good, but it always results in pointing at things rather than explaining things.””
- Nobody Knows What’s Cool: ANOTHER new newsletter (ffs everyone can you just fcuking STOP, Curios is the only newsletter you will ever need), this one by an actual, IRL friend of mine. Alex Wilson does ‘strategy’ (but he’s not a cnut, I promise) and here writes about the vexatious question of what the word ‘cool’ even means in 2025, and how that pertains to stuff like ‘brands’ and ‘flogging people things’; even if you’re not interested in the branding and selling side of things, though, this is an interesting read which makes some good points about some ways in which ‘cool’ could usefully be thought of in 2025: “No one agrees on what “cool” means anymore Instead I think the term has gradually drifted (mutated?) into two distinct concepts: The old concept: cool as outsider charisma (e.g. Steve McQueen and Samuel L. Jackson); The new concept: cool as possessing large amounts of cultural capital aka hipster cool (e.g. whoever the 2025 equivalent of 2015 Zane Lowe is). You could fairly say that cool-as-outsider-charisma is dead, or at least outmoded. But cool-as-possessing-cultural-capital is very much alive.”
- Russia In Africa: Ok, this is VERY LONG and quite heavy in places, but it’s also a super-interesting account of a particular facet of geopolitics which I confess to having paid no attention to whatsoever (to whit, Russia’s pursuit of interests in Africa, and Europe’s apparent failure to build strong relationships across the continent); this is both fascinating and important, and is also an excellent reminder of the fact that the world is FCUKING MASSIVE and stuff is ALWAYS HAPPENING and that, fundamentally, I know nothing about anything. This was ALL news to me, and it made me feel quite ignorant if I’m honest: “Even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin and Wagner-linked entities had already built extensive information manipulation and electioneering operations in Africa, such as Project Lakhta, a covert Russian disinformation programme, and were using opaque NGOs like the Association for Free Research and International Cooperation (AFRIC) to promote Russian-African relations. These early efforts amplified resentment towards French and Western operations in the Francophone Sahel, exploiting narratives such as Russia’s lack of a colonial empire in Africa, or the Soviet Union’s support for African liberation movements. Many of these early influence and manipulation attempts—such as those in Mozambique, Madagascar and Sudan—largely failed as operatives misread local political dynamics and, in Mozambique’s case, massively underestimated the jihadist security threat in the north. However, Russian operatives have learned from their mistakes. Since 2022, Russia’s propaganda and media networks have expanded dramatically, building on these foundations and extending into the Anglophone and Lusophone spheres, as well as into major African languages such as Swahili, Hausa and Amharic.[21] Today, these operations are immense, spanning dozens of African countries and thousands of online channels, TV deals and bot accounts.”
- Trying Out The Domestic Robot: The Neo by robotics company 1X got a reasonable amount of hype this week, almost none of it justified based on the fact that for the thing to actually DO anything it basically needs to be remote-piloted by a human being in an office somewhere wearing a headset and guiding its movements – which is, er, obviously not going to scale! Still, it’s interesting to read about the scifi future being peddled by its manufacturers, which is neatly sold to the reader in this WSJ article which manages to still read like a PR puff piece for the company despite neatly demonstrating over the course of a few thousand words why this tech is in no way anywhere near consumer readiness yet. Also, I did laugh a little at the fact that not only do you have to pay thousands for the robot (that doesn’t work without remote control operation) and for the subscription programme that goes with it (robotic servants as a service!), but you are ALSO effectively providing the training data for a future version of this that presumably actually does what they say it does, and doing so unpaid! What a deal! The endline here is priceless: “for Neo to autonomously tidy up your kitchen in the future, it needs a smarter brain. Its AI neural network learns from real-world experience. That’s part of why 1X is sending early versions into homes: to capture videos of every dishwasher load and laundry fold—and feed them into its world model. While large language models are trained on the text of the internet, the model that underpins Neo is trained on the real world. I didn’t see Neo do anything autonomously, although the company did share a video of Neo opening a door on its own.”
- Is Having A Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?: Betteridge’s Law obviously applies here (or perhaps more accurately the answer should be characterised as ‘it depends on what he’s like’), but I did enjoy this pleasingly-odd bit of clickbait from Vogue which basically asks ‘is it not really cool to be coupled up as a young woman in modernity because men are basically trash and we all sort of agree?’. Per the author, “To me, it feels like the result of women wanting to straddle two worlds: one where they can receive the social benefits of having a partner, but also not appear so boyfriend-obsessed that they come across quite culturally loser-ish. “They want the prize and celebration of partnership, but understand the norminess of it,” says Zoé Samudzi, writer and activist. In other words, in an era of widespread heterofatalism, women don’t want to be seen as being all about their man, but they also want the clout that comes with being partnered up.” As I said, this doesn’t in any way feel ‘real’ – I will say, though, as someone who has gone through a period of reading a lot of ‘contemporary female authors writing about Being An Urban-Dwelling Modern Woman RIGHT NOW’ novels that there is something…quite sobering about coming to one of the semi-regular passages explaining some of the ways in which men are, fundamentally, quite sh1t, and seeing the dotted-underline and an accompanying ‘this passage has been highlighted 237 times’ text.
- The Apes Are Back!: I had to spend an hour or so last Sunday writing a ‘whatever happened to NFTs?’ piece and, honestly, it’s worth going back through old Curios c.2022 to remind yourself of how fcuking STRANGE it all was, those times when everyone and their dad was releasing their own poorly-designed PFP project riffing off cryptopunks; anyway, as you will no doubt FONDLY RECALL, Bored Apes were for a period the very apogee of NFTs, trading for preposterous sums and being touted as some sort of badge of ‘cool’ by people who had never, ever been ‘cool’ in their lives (whichever definition you care to choose) – Paris Hilton even went on Jimmy Kimmel to chat about how exciting it was that they both ‘had apes’, which feels hallucinatory to type at a distance of three years. Anyway, the project managed to siphon off enough idiot money to persist after the initial NFT buzz died down, and is now BACK, launching its ‘long-awaited’ metaversal experience called ‘Otherside’ and, well, per this writeup it sounds exactly as sh1t as every single other metarversal project that isn’t ‘Roblox’ – but, you know, YOUR NFT CAN BE YOUR AVATAR, JUST LIKE YOU WERE PROMISED IN 2021!!!!!!
- How Dithering Works: I featured a link in here last week which involved ‘dithering’ as a graphical style, and I realised then that I didn’t have the faintest idea what the fvuk the term actually meant. THANK GOD, then, for this really nicely-made little explainer which neatly details what it is and how it works; this is really interesting, I promise, particularly if you spent any time playing videogames back in the era before graphics got good.
- What It Feels Like To Be A Deep Sea Diver: Specifically, one of those people who goes to the bottom of the ocean to weld and cut the pipes and structures that the oil industry uses to procure the black stuff; this is EXCELLENT, and I would honestly have read something twice as long because I have SO MANY QUESTIONS (not least HOW DOES THE OIL GET INTO YOUR SWIMSUIT (it will make sense once you’ve read the piece, promise). In the main, though, the whole thing sounds utterly terrifying and like the sort of profession that only the certifiably-insane would ever contemplate.
- Blue Jam: I’ve spoken here before, I think, of my love for the radio work of Chris Morris – Blue Jam was the last thing (I think) he did on BBC radio, and I remember listening to it at the time and being amazed that it ever got aired and how he got away with it (perhaps to my detriment, I occasionally wonder if this informed by subsequent attitude to employment). This piece in the Quietus is a lovely look back at the show and how odd it was – you will need familiarity with the source material to really appreciate this (and if you’re interested in listening, you can find episodes online here), but it’s a lovely reminder of just how STRANGE it was to hear this coming from your radio like it was normal programming when it very clearly wasn’t at all. Also, you forget how beautiful some of the writing was; weird, yes, but beautiful. I mean, look, this is POETRY: “When dancing… lost in techno trance. Arms flailing, gawky Bez. Then find you smacked on frowns, and slowly dawns… you’re jazzing to the bleak tone of a life support machine, that marks the steady fading of your day-old baby daughter…”
- London’s Early Birds: A brilliant piece in the Londoner speaking to some of the people who are up and about in the capital before the tube start, using the night bus network to get to and from work and whose labour in many cases underpins the fabric of the city. Beautiful, human vignettes, and as a bonus it also contains a photo of the bus stop at the top of my road.
- Something’s Changed: Another link to the Quietus, this time to a piece from THE PAST (which I might have featured when it was originally published in 2015, but which I am happy to include again because it pleases me so) – Luke Turner looks back at the release of Different Class by Pulp, what the band meant to skinny, weirdo outsider kids at the time, and the strange feeling of seeing your heroes become famous enough to become popular with the very kids who would previously have beaten you up for listening to bands like Pulp. I felt pretty much all of this very strongly indeed.
- A Prostate Cancer Story: A man writes about having treatment for prostate cancer, and his subsequent recovery, and, specifically, what that did to his penis. This isn’t anything I am personally familiar with, and I am not usually a fan of this tone of writing (American, a bit fratty, and far too eager, for this reader at least, to wax lyrical about his previously-stupendous penile performance), but it’s genuinely interesting to read what I presume to be a reasonably-honest account of what it’s like to go through the experience, and the humiliations required to get your penis back into working order again afterwards. You may want to skip this one if you don’t want to read about injecting things into your junk, though.
- I Want To Stay In My Body During Sex: Sam Herschel Wein writes about sex, assault, abuse, recovery and all the related issues besides – this contains a reasonable amount of fairly-explicitly-described man-on-man love, should you need the warning, but it’s also beautifully-written and it’s in the second person which you may recall I am a total sucker for. I think this is gorgeous: “Two years pass, slowly. You are on your computer, on Zoom, in your little bedroom. An interviewer calls you a sexy writer. You work up a nervous laugh. You are always charming. You are always charming even when you are so uncomfortable you want to die. Your poems are sexy, sure, but they are also deeply traumatic. You try to reason with yourself; the trauma doesn’t detract from the sexiness, but is it fair to mention the sexiness without the trauma? You swirl in your head about this for days. Justin Torres says, “To comment is not necessarily to compliment,” which feels like it relates to this and every part of you, all this unturned skin, all those gums above teeth. You feel like an internet comment section. You feel like you’ve heard it all. Everyone puts their fingers in your mouth, placing comments down your throat.”
- All Girls But One: Katherine Dykstra writes about being young and stupid and having friends who at the time mean everything and who become nothing, and the reasons why that happens. This is very, very good: “That summer, I moved out of the sorority house and rented a room off campus. A meth lab had burned to the ground in the unattached garage next door and the blinds on its side of the house all sagged like Dali’s melting clocks. I slept on a mattress on the floor of an otherwise empty dining room with windowed pocket doors that opened to the living area on one side, the kitchen on the other. In order not to be seen by any of my five roommates, I’d crouch in the corner to dress. For these accommodations I paid $73 a month, which I earned serving pub fare to fraternity alumni while wearing a forest green polo shirt and khakis. This sounds bleak, I realize, but I’d never been so happy. During that brief time in my life—when suddenly I found myself able to hold my head up as I entered a room and when those things that interested me, music, photography, words, began to crystallize into possibility—everything felt like ease and open arms.”
- God’s Plan: Our final longread this week is this short story by Rachel Dorn – this has haunted me all week since I read it, and I’ve gone back to it two or three times since to reread specific paragraphs, and it might be one of my favourite pieces of the year. Enjoy. “It’s been a long time since I’ve talked to you, even longer since I’ve seen you. I think back to the December night two years ago when you sent me an Uber to your apartment by the river and we sat together on your living room floor, our faces illuminated by the glowing red light of your snake’s cage. Your wall was one big window, and outside the downtown skyline lights gleamed across the water. My eyes followed you as you got up and walked to your kitchen, plucked a stiff, white mouse from where it was thawing on the counter, and dangled it by its tail over the glass edge while Ghost, your snake, pretended not to see it. You told me he hadn’t been eating much lately and you weren’t sure why. Time passed in silence while we waited to see if Ghost would make a move. When he finally did, it was in one fell swoop, shooting upward and unhinging his jaw, snatching and swallowing the dead thing whole. We watched the mouse’s body pass through his body. Afterwards, we made out on your couch, your long hair smelling of tea tree oil, the TV droning on in the background. You led me to your bedroom, peeled off my shirt, my leggings, my underwear, our bodies pressing into each other. You tossed and turned all night and in the morning, you called me an Uber. A few months later, I got sick and didn’t get better.”
By Sara Suppan
AND NOW, MOVING PICTURES AND SOUNDS !: