All The Other Interesting Links of October 2022

This was supposed to be a newsletter, but I thought I would write links that didn’t warrant me writing an entire blog post. I have many more links, but I’ll save those for next time. For now, enjoy these.

• Tom Scott looks into why YouTubers clap at the start of videos? [VIDEO 3:53]—Note that question is not why YouTubers clap, that’s done to synchronize video with audio. The question is why they do so at the start of a video.

• The other day, I came across a producer tag which said legalize nuclear bombs[AUDIO 5:14] by DJ Smokey. Rather unusual, even for hip hop and moreso in these times, but the beats go hard.

• So there’s more demand for floppy disks (stiffy disks in Australia 🍆) than you’d expect. It’s not a lot, but the reason the guy’s around makes sense. When I worked at a library, there was a guy who wanted to rent a floppy disk reader. He broke it but it’s not like anyone else would use it.

  There’s this joke in which a three-year-old little girl comes to her father holding a floppy disk in her hand. She says: “Daddy, Daddy, somebody 3D-printed the save icon.” The floppy disks will be an icon forever.

  Unrelated but the Eye on Design blog looks pretty cool.

• I gained access to a 12 year old Xbox 360 account… This is what I found…(Xbox 360 Nostalgia) [VIDEO 16:45]. Pretty emotional stuff. Around the time this account was last active,mi was in class, what about you?

• Welcome to hell, Elon. Elon did le epic 420 narwhal weed 69 reddit bacon and actually bought it. Honestly, I’m neither devastated nor overjoyed at this development and I’m just watching with cautious intrigue. You should make your own site anyway¹. The article lets Elon know what he’s getting himself into with his 44 billion dollar purchase, particularly the (often contradictory) expectations placed on Twitter from the terminally online through to state governments.

  the problems with Twitter are not engineering problems. They are political problems. Twitter, the company, makes very little interesting technology; the tech stack is not the valuable asset. The asset is the user base: hopelessly addicted politicians, reporters, celebrities, and other people who should know better but keep posting anyway. You! You, Elon Musk, are addicted to Twitter. You’re the asset. You just bought yourself for $44 billion dollars.

• authenticity is overrated [VIDEO 0:57]. I always find it annoying when people complain about authenticity in food. Like I’m sorry that I can’t find that esoteric ingredient. As the lady here says, food adapts and evolves based on context.

• Here’s an interesting method for finding out how many troops Putin mobilized [VIDEO 9:50] and it’s more than the claimed 300,000. In short, if a guy was dating and was deployed, it would be best to get married so the woman (this is Russia) gets benefits if the man becomes a casualty. Based on Mediazona, it’s happened a lot since the mobilization was announced. It isn’t perfect, but it’s an interesting estimate.

• I saw a link to the Museum of Failure on Hacker News and it reminded me of my time in LA three years ago where I visited the exhibit. I’ll write about it at some point, but I heard about it from Tom Scott [VIDEO 2:17] though he was at the Swedish exhibit.

• Turns out there’s, two emu ladies. Basically the one emu girl (the lesbian Christian), is a milkshake duck with a cute emu before we found out she was a racist with most of her birds dying from bird flu.

• a useful thread by Simon on writing more by expanding your definition of writing.

• In light of Google officially killing stadia, here’s a comic by Goomics on how Google Reader ruined faith in Google. Thanks to tegiminis

• QR Menus do suck😉

• Thisa explains why cursive is important for kids to learn.

• Matt Daemon explains why they don’t make movies like they used to. This can be fixed by focusing on independent creators. I’ve linked a lot of domains here and they’re mostly from YouTube since it has great stuff from people who would otherwise be overlooked by traditional media.

• Open source is more than code, you know.

• Somehow Zimbabwe beat Pakistan in T20 cricket. This guy saw the win as revenge for Pakistan sending us a Mr. Bean impersonator known as “Pak Bean“. Even out respective heads of states got involved.

• Did you know that Mussolini’s granddaughter Alessandra was a J-Pop star? [AUDIO 3:42]. She’s also quite fond of her grand papa who literally invented fascism.

• The Verge’s new website. Was offensive at first but it’s grown on me, unlike the new MDN. They’re trying a blogging vibe as a call back to their roots. It reminds me of The Outline and Input Mag which are also offensive looking. At least they’re trying something different. Modern CSS is a thing, we should use it (in a progressively enhanced, accessible and performant way).

• Conservative pundits angry at Lizzo for playing a flute should use this template. It’s hard to be a terminally online pundit. You need to hold polarized positions and be constantly outraged otherwise you’d lose your audience. Did anyone know James Madison had a flute before this, let alone one he never played? Don’t get how this is disrespectful, especially for a trained classical musician. Then again, people really hate fat people, my god.

• The US government will give you a guaranteed 9.6% semi-annual return. You just need to risk giving them all your money by accident because of their horrible website.

• A video on how terrible autopilot is [53:44]. Not sure why regulators took so long to clamp down on this. Build a fucking train, oh my god!

• Bloomberg QuickTakes interviews Jane Rosenberg [VIDEO 23:38], the lady who sketched Ghislaine Maxwell sketching her. When asked how cool it was to sketch celebrities in court, she replied “they were sexual predators”! Interesting stuff. Not the sexual predators, her job—you know what I mean. Her website is something, but she gets lots of work so who cares.

• Google Japan make some interesting keyboards… Not sure why they don’t release them on April Fools.

• LTT goes over how they made their screwdriver [VIDEO 29:11].

• Coffee pro James Hoffmann reviews the Civet Poop Coffee [VIDEO 9:15] from Indonesia. Similar to my experience having this in Indonesia, he didn’t like it. He has better reason for not liking it however. Involves the blockchain.

• NEOM Is The Parody Of The Future [VIDEO 10:35]. I appreciate the boldness that’s rather rare at a time we need it the most, but this is a stupid fucking idea.

• How To Dominate a Game Show [VIDEO 22:55]. The most chad nerd ever.

• He Huang does comedy [VIDEO 3:54]. Love the deadpan delivery. I’m watching her career with great interest.

Wow, that’s way more links than I planned to include. Expect the next one of these at the end of November.