johnke.mehey are you cool »
A collection of the people one player meets in Day Z. This is exactly what I love about these sandbox online games - the stories that come out of them are fascinating.
Noel Gallagher reviews Oasis videos and hates them all »
I’ve never much liked their music, but I’ve always admired Noel Gallagher for his glorious, foul-mouthed candour. I love that he can even apply this to his own work.
Smithsonian - "You Can Get Placebo Sleep" »
Interesting. I’ve been getting really spotty sleep for the last couple of months, and I’ve noticed that any time I’m much worse any time I think got bad sleep, even if my sleepcycle tells me otherwise.
Sneaky Cards »
Real-world “quest” cards, where almost everything is designed to brighten someone’s day, or at least make it more interesting. The multiplayer aspect almost turns it into a card-based ARG.
Netflix's dumbed-down algorithms »
Felix Salmon has a great write-up on the recent changes to Netflix’s recommendation scheme. Basically, Netflix is a victim of its own success.
Jason Snell's "How to watch Doctor Who" »
The host of one of my favourite podcasts, The Incomparable, has put together a great guide for anyone who wants to watch Doctor Who but does’t know where to start.
NPR's interview with Allie Brosh »
Allie Brosh (of Hyperbole and a Half) gave an amazing interview to Terry Gross a while ago where they cover a lot of subjects, including her struggles with depression. It’s the most honest and raw interview I’ve ever heard and I don’t want to ruin it. But she also talks about why she draws in such a deliberately crude style, which I found fascinating.
The reason I draw myself this way is that I feel that this absurd squiggly thing is actually a much more accurate representation of myself than I am. It’s a better tool for communicating my sense of humor and actually getting across what I’m trying to say than, say, being there in the flesh. …
It’s me on the inside. That’s what I’m like when I view myself. I am this crude absurd little thing, this squiggly little thing on the inside. So it’s more of a raw representation of what it feels like to be me.
Cards Against Humanity’s "$5 More" Black Friday Sale »
We called our contact at Amazon and explained the idea for the sale to them. They thought it was funny but were also pretty annoyed - apparently monkeying with pricing on the biggest sales day of the year isn’t as funny to Amazon as it is to us.
I wish more companies were as playful or as honest as the Cards Against Humanity guys.
Agrippa - A Book of the Dead »
From Wikipedia:
Agrippa (a book of the dead) is a work of art created by speculative fiction novelist William Gibson, artist Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992. The work consists of a 300-line semi-autobiographical electronic poem by Gibson, embedded in an artist's book by Ashbaugh. Gibson's text focused on the ethereal nature of memories (the title is taken from a photo album). Its principal notoriety arose from the fact that the poem, stored on a 3.5" floppy disk, was programmed to encrypt itself after a single use; similarly, the pages of the artist's book were treated with photosensitive chemicals, effecting the gradual fading of the words and images from the book's first exposure to light.
There’s something really magical about this. I love Jason Rohrer’s Chain World, a game that is played once then passed to another player. But there’s something special about the physicality of Gibson and Ashbaugh’s book. Something beautifully ephemeral.
Second Homes for Leisure Living »
Between my love for 60s illustrations and my love for a well-designed A-Frame, this book is pretty much pornography for me.