nick

List of active Forums on the web: Forum Revial Movement - Fight for forums on the internet and maintain knowledge, in-depth discussions & the freedom of speech - Active Forum Directory

Forums have played a big role in making the World Wide Web great in the first place. They acted as a melting pot for knowledge and communication between users around the whole world. A whole culture evolved around forums. Not one, but many. Forums served a purpose. They still do. Forums are meaningful. Still. Since the breakthrough of social media and platforms like Discord, forum usage has been in decline for years now. A lot of forums have died already or are abandoned but there still are very active forums and great niche forums with low activity that need us to repopulate 'em. We really should make a turn as the internet society and start using forums again more often. We as well should download and dump forums to be able to archive what once has been written.

I've been so hyperfixated on blogs the last few years, I totally forgot forums used to be so big. They're just as important to the small web / indie web / open social web movement as blogs, if you ask me. I've been hanging out (mostly lurking) on 32-bit Cafe lately and it's unlocking a lot of old memories of browsing stuff like the ESP Guitar forum, XDA Developers, and other sites I used to frequent back before Discord and Reddit stole all the thunder from forums.

What sucks about Discord or Facebook communities is that they're a walled garden for anyone who doesn't want to go through their KYC process and register an account. And before Reddit became the main content of Google search results, forums were king. I dont know that we could possibly get back to how it was in the good old days, but the Forum Revival Movement is a great place to start.

Another cyclospora outbreak grows, source still unknown: FDA

Oh good. This just keeps getting better. Luckily, my autistic ass has been on a steady diet of McDonald's and other highly processed food products since I was in pampers. I knew ordering my McDoubles with only ketchup wasn't for nothing. I'll pass on the blueberries too, for now.

AT Protocol helps attack a lot of these problems. Not by replacing RSS, but by providing better foundation for the data that RSS currently holds.

I love RSS, but it's a pretty old technology that hasn't changed a whole heck of a lot in a long time. I still use it daily, through Miniflux. And even for my paid podcast subscriptions I always opt for the RSS feed to plug into Overcast instead of paying through Apple Podcasts with an in-app purchase.

I think the Atmosphere could provide a pretty nice upgrade; adding a layer of functionality on top of an already great technology, just like it's doing with the web itself.

Introducing the Forkchop:

View post on Bluesky

Winamp is back, with Deezer-powered streaming

Winamp and Deezer announced a partnership on Wednesday that will let Deezer power a new Winamp premium subscription. Deezer supplies the white-label streaming technology and its global licensed catalogue. Winamp keeps its own brand, its own look, and its own idea of how a music player should feel.

God damn it. I already pay for the Apple Music family plan, now I'm gonna have to try this on top of it. There's no way I could talk the rest of the family into switching to Winamp.

View post on Bluesky

I'm kinda bummed out I'm just now finding out about Fark. It's one of the OG link-sharing sites, pre-dating both Digg and Reddit. Digg tried to re-launch recently but apparently it had a big AI slop problem, so Kevin Rose promptly shut it down and went all in on AI with the re-launch, unfortunately.

Fark still has that old school web charm and a solid little community. I like Fediverse stuff like Lemmy and Piefed, but Fark just has so much more character... it feels like one of the last places online you can find truly interesting links instead of the standard viral news and cirklejerks you find somewhere like Reddit.

It's definitely worth checking out if you miss the wonder and exploration of places like Stumbleupon, Reddit when it was still good, and Digg in the 2000s. And definitely consider subscribing to Total Fark or dropping a donation if you end up as obsessed as I am. I've been glued to this website since I saw Drew's post last night.

Comcast store punished low sales by smashing pies in workers' faces, lawsuit claims

A Comcast store in Plainville, Connecticut, “had a policy that the highest-ranked Retail Sales Consultant for the prior month was instructed by his or her supervisor—Ms. Peterson, the Comcast Store manager—to tie the lowest-ranked sales consultant for the prior month to a chair in the back office and thereafter assault that person by violently smashing a cream pie in their face,” the complaint alleged.

That's the confidence boost you need when you aren't making ends meet this month at your commission-based job... sounds about right for Comcast.

New Pinterest alternative just dropped on the Atmosphere. It looks really, really good. I played around with it for a minute but I've never been big into Pinterest so I don't fully understand what I'm doing. I feel like I missed the boat on that whole thing. I was already on Tumblr back in the day when Pinterest first launched, so I didn't really have a need for another photo blogging app. Then when Tumblr enshittified I was kinda burned out by then, so I never gave it a chance. Seriously looks like a viable alternative if you're into that kinda thing though, and it's designed to be "enshittification proof."

Terry Godier is rolling out a mysterious new app next week 👀

No idea what it is, but I've been loving his cozy RSS reader Current — not to be confused with the ATProto Pinterest alternative I mentioned above, Currents. It's one of the few that sync natively with Miniflux and it has a peaceful UI that just gets out of the way so you can read. Looking forward to finding out about this new thing next week.

Also worth mentioning, Current just had a pretty big update that fixed a lot of bugs and added Feedly support.

Nowadays, everyone uses the same 3 sites for "content" (mind you, I detest this word) and personally, I feel this leads to homogenization. Everyone is playing under the same "rules", the same algorithm and the same potential user base.

There is much value to being outside the curve. Sometimes, it is good to ignore viral trends and do your own thing in your own pace, even if the former feels more enticing and immediately rewarding.

Authenticity is gold in the age of AI-everything.

iOS 27 public beta 2 feels less like a beta than iOS 26

I installed iOS 27 Public Beta 2 last night. I'm not shy about admitting I'm just an end user, so I never do in-depth analysis or technical reviews on stuff like this. But I've gotta say, as some guy just using my iPhone Air for writing, web browsing and every other typical thing you'd expect from your average user, this is the most stable public beta I've ever tested out since switching from Android to an iPhone 13 about five years ago.

After using it all day, (so far) it feels less like a beta than the latest stable version of iOS 26. Even with all the AI shit indexing and optimizing in the background for the last 20+ hours, it's more responsive and snappy than 26. Noticeably. You can adjust the "liquid glassiness" of the UI from a slider in the settings app. While it doesn't completely shut off Liquid Glass, it looks much less glossy and even the icons feel more flat and less cartoony with it cranked up to the highest opacity setting.

Safari got some minor changes too, like the tab for your favorites, bookmarks, reading list and history at the top of the start page. They tweaked the look of the address bar too; mostly to add a tab button to the right and completely hide the menu. You now have to long-press on the address bar to bring up a hidden menu with all the things you'd expect; add to bookmarks, share, close tab, ask Siri, etc. Tbh it looks like they're trying to mimic the functionality of Quiche Browser a bit, if you're familiar with that.

And the biggest part you'll either love or absolutely despise: the new Siri chatbot. I'm not the biggest fan of AI in general, but I'd be lying if I said it's not something I use sometimes. I have the same gripes as everyone else, but it's so good for researching things you can't find on the handful of good search engines that are still left out there.

Disabling Siri is always the first thing I do when I get a new iPhone. A built in voice assistant sounds good on paper, but Siri has always been notoriously terrible. At least as long as I've had an iPhone. That's no longer the case.

Even in this preview version it's so fucking good. It does use a blend of "private cloud" and local models, so I don't know how private it truly is. But holy shit it's good. I still don't know how I feel about a chatbot indexing everything on my phone; having access to all the personal stuff and whatnot. But if these phones are already shipping with special chips made specifically for AI, I might as well at least try it. I'm just stoked that Siri actually does something now. Aside from being a mostly functionless quirk of the os that usually responds with "sorry, I can't help with that."

I probably won't use it for much other than more involved search queries when I'm researching something. But it's surprisingly good at digging through your photo roll with prompts like "find every picture of me with a black and white cat" or searching text threads like "find the text where Tom mentioned the name of that really good Korean restaurant in Dublin six months ago."

I wouldn't recommend being a dipshit like me and installing it on your daily driver, but so far it feels like an immediate upgrade from iOS 26.

Update: 24 hours later. I fear that Siri and Search may never be finished optimizing.

I am obsessed with Chainsmoker Cat 🚬😸

Yani is a catgirl with a seriously bad smoking habit. Every time she tries to quit, she becomes weak to the cravings and gives in almost instantly. Behind on her rent and unable to hold down a job, her friends and sister rally around to help her out. But when she’s using her pee to put out cigarette fires, they may just have their work cut out for them.

Reminds me of when I was in my 20s, inhaling more Marlboro red smoke than oxygen. It's so trashy and cute and gross.

We discovered a new variant of Super Mario Bros.

Long read about stumbling across a mostly unknown, late variant of SMB and Duck Hunt. I love obscure gaming history like this.

A thought that I've been having lately, albeit in a larval stage, is that "Art is basically pretty much any human activity that AI managed to ruin." ... This is why I will respect any art from any human artist of any skill level. I will cherish anything my friends and fellow artists make, and encourage them to pursue their ideas even if they are not to my taste. Because art is only as engaging if it tells the story they really want to tell.

AI has oddly helped me with succumbing to perfectionism for this reason. Whether it's writing blog posts, music, a little drawing, or even my shitty handwriting, I'd rather be a little quirky and off than run everything through a chatbot and get something dull and sanitized.

That being said, I don't think you should have to go to extreme lengths just to prove you didn't use AI:

More Typos, Fewer Em Dashes: Writers Are Creating an Anti-AI ‘Literary Counterculture’

“I find myself writing less mechanically,” she says. “I have this urge to make little mistakes, like winks to the reader, to show that there’s a human behind the words. Like: What if I just invented a phrase? What if I did something unexpected with my punctuation?”

Sounds like things are getting too spicy for the pepper.

I mean unless you're a professional journalist, I don't think you need to take it so serious. It just needs to be human. Personally, I don't have an urge to make mistakes, I'm just kind of an idiot. And that's okay 🤪

Woman helps husband recover from brain surgery in bizarre fashion

... After a few years of doing this, Song somehow managed to accidentlly bite one of Zhao’s toes. For the first time in years, her husband’s foot twitched.

There's gotta be more to this story lol

Disney Has Met With Macaulay Culkin About New Home Alone Movie: Report

“I’m either a widower or a divorcee. I’m raising a kid and all that stuff. I’m working really hard and I’m not really paying enough attention, and the kid is kind of getting miffed at me, and then I get locked out,” Culkin explained. “My son won’t let me in,” he continued. “And he’s the one setting traps for me. The house is some sort of metaphor for our relationship.”

Killer whales sink another boat off the coast of Spain — why are they still doing this after 6 years?

The whales are alright 🤙

Stop Talking To Me, Google Search

One thing that bugs me about this is the assumptions these offers make about why I’m searching for something. This is by design–Google wrote in the blog post about its May update that the new search is “[d]esigned to anticipate your intent.”

They're giving computers anxiety as a feature. I don't want a search engine to try and anticipate what I might want to search. I'm not in that big of a hurry. Take your time and relax, little robot.

Jeffrey Inscho

I love the idea of smashing the machines that consolidate power and marginalize swaths of people, but the internet is not the enemy here. If anything, the (responsibly used) internet could be a key enabler and vehicle for growing the movement to smash the machines.

I like this take. There's a balance between high tech AI everything and living in the stone age, you know? I've always been a tech nerd, but I think at some point we need to forget about progress for the sake of progress and just slow down. My favorite video games were all made in the 90s. I like stuff recorded on analog equipment and listening to vinyl. I wear a wrist watch that does nothing but tell the time. I don't even hate AI entirely, I just think we need to slow the fuck down and live in the present sometimes.

Miyamoto was pleased the Switch lasted 8 or 9 years, believes customers ‘aren’t always looking for the best specs’

What draws people to Nintendo consoles, then? Obviously, the unique games it creates. “At Nintendo we always offer ‘styles of play that only we can create,’ and this includes the [hardware] interface,” Miyamoto states. Comparing the Switch to smartphones, he elaborates, “Our console has the benefit of being faster and more flexible [to develop for] compared to smartphones. When creating for general-use platforms, the workload is higher as you have to ensure it is compatible with all versions [of smart device].”

I can't even tell you how hard PlayStation and Xbox people try to convince me not to buy Nintendo products. Before I bought the OLED switch, all of my friends told me it's a waste of money because the specs are shit and none of the good games are available for it. Meanwhile I'm having a blast playing the retro console catalogues you get with Switch Online, all of the Mario games, Borderlands 1-3, and every metroidvania I can get my hands on.

I don't like realistic war simulators, or racing simulators... I don't like any super realistic games tbh. I want to get baked and jump inside of a cartoon. Nintendo has had that locked down since the 80s. I'm going to hang on to my OLED Switch until they launch a Switch 2 with the OLED screen; I literally couldn't care less about specs.

...although I am a little bummed out I haven't been able to play Borderlands 4 yet.

'Glad the Children Were Not Hurt': A Viral Video Claiming to Show Kids Chasing ICE Agents With Water Guns Has X Divided Over What Really Happened

Wild how sensitive a bunch of nazis are to a little water lol fuck those guys. The kids are alright.

AI-generated fake historic images are destroying our past, present, and future

I could find at least one solid reason every day on why gen AI images are a plague. As a side note, I also think it's a little sus that extraordinary things like "UFO disclosure" didn't start to happen in a meaningful way until AI got good at shitting out pictures that are almost impossible to distinguish from reality. What do we really have left when we can't trust anything we hear or see?

AI-generated ‘doctors’ peddling fake cures on TikTok are a ‘huge danger’, experts warn

I miss when the only medical advice people trusted from online was when WebMD told you it was probably cancer.

How The Watchmen Inspired Comic Sans - Doc Pop's Weblog

Comic Sans is pretty popular lately for whatever reason. Here's a post from Doc Pop on its origins:

Did you know that Comic Sans is heavily based on the lettering of dark, gritty comics like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns

He renders a few panels from classic comics in the font, next to the original font for comparison. Neat!

Four bytes could freeze any Pentium in 1997

I get all pissy when the supercomputer in my pocket takes five seconds to load a web page sometimes. Reading stuff like this is always a welcomed reality check. Tech has come a long way in the last 30 years.

Cassette simulator rewinds digital audio to a more analog time in hiss-tory

The project, available on GitHub, is called "Audio Cassette Simulation" and uses FFmpeg to transcode audio files to get that "wish I'd bought some decent tapes instead of the superstore's own-brand" sound.

This sounds kind of dumb at first, but I get it. I play old video game ROMs with CRT filters and shaders to make my LCD monitor look like a 40 year old TV set. I listen to music on vinyl for the old school experience, even if I'm pretending it sounds so much better. Never forget where you came from 📼

note: yes I know that's a VHS tape emoji. They didn't have any for cassette tapes 😤

Comic Sans is Great and I'm Tired of Pretending It's Not

I thought either A) I was going to hate this post or B) it was satire and wouldn't be that funny. But I was wrong, because now I think Comic Sans is fucking punk. I've always despised this font in the same way most millennials despise Nickelback. It's cheesy and cringe. But now that I think about it, I'm cheesy and cringe. And no generation BUT millennials really have strong opinions on Nickelback. Honestly, why should they? There are far greater and lesser bands than them. I'm not going to be rocking out to Rockstar or How You Remind Me any time soon. But I'm definitely a tool for shitting on things I think are beneath me.

Fun Fact: Comic sans is generally dyslexia friendly. Who would have thought?

You might have heard the productivity hack when it comes to writing papers. That if you want to lower that stress of trying to write a paper of some kind, write it in comic sans to make that mental barrier easier.

More than that, just have fun. It's a silly font, and this is the small web. Rock what you like with confidence. I actually quite enjoy reading Absurd Pirate's blog with this outfit on.

Making gay jokes about Republicans is homophobic & counterproductive

So it seems that we need to reaffirm some basic tenets: being queer is not a bad thing to be mocked, and outing someone against their wishes (no matter who or why) is always wrong. Justifying it behind the possibility that their policies are not only horrific but also hypocritical and self-hating is no better than misgendering and deadnaming a trans person because you don’t like them.

There are plenty of reasons to dunk on terrible people. Sexuality is not one of them.

In the Age of AI, the Analog Restaurant Feels Radical

Stole this link from waxy.org:

The backlash to AI imagery is growing across a certain part of the culture. Sentiment along the lines of “I’d rather see a poster made with Sharpie on a scrap of paper than an AI event flyer,” or “I’m not going to your restaurant if the ad is the AI” is proliferating.

I'm not going to pretend AI can't do cool shit, but one thing it absolutely cannot do is make real art. I know if you're some marketing director sitting around strung out on cocaine in the upper levels of a Marriott hotel somewhere in the Midwest, it looks super professional and polished. But, and I know I'm kinda contradicting myself here, it's the marketing equivalent of using Comic Sans for your promotional material. But even Comic Sans is intentionally silly. AI art is silly (derogatory).

The Exhaustion of Talking to a Tool

I've never thought about AI from this angle before. Social burnout is a real thing, and I don't see why this would be any different. Weird time to be alive.

Facebook Verified, distinguishing human users from AI accounts, cats, dogs, etc

To qualify, applicants need to satisfy a number of requirements, including having a Facebook (FB) account that is in “good standing”. They will need to record a short video, which will be compared to selfies previously posted on their page.

What a fun, cool new way to enjoy social media 🤪

Is It Time to Wash the Dishes? A Flow Chart

Very informative flow chart on whether or not it's time to wash the dishes.

Reading Practices, Habits, and Phones

Reading is a skill. Or maybe a set of sub-skills really. But like most skills, the more you do it the better you get at it. So it makes sense that if you don’t read much long-form writing you may struggle at first. A lot of people say they can’t concentrate. They say they are too busy. They’d like to read but there are obstacles like these. Well, the only way to solve that problem is to start small and read.

I'm one of those people. I read blogs and articles all day long, but I really need to pick up a fucking book every once in a while. And I really have no excuse; my girlfriend has already turned half our house into a library since we moved in a few years ago, and she got me a Kindle for Christmas last year but it mostly just sits in my work bag.

I do complain that "I never have the time" but then I'll sit around playing Nintendo games and getting stoned until 2am. I think my biggest thing is that I feel like I always have to read non-fiction. Stuff about psychology, sales, biographies...

Thinking about this reminds me of another post, from Joan Westenberg:

Look at the big picture of human progress. The most revolutionary ideas, the ones that have truly changed the course of history, often started as “fiction.” Science fiction has predicted and inspired countless technological advancements. Philosophical thought experiments have shaped ethical frameworks. Even religious parables, regardless of your beliefs, have profoundly influenced human behavior and our social order.

via Joan Westenberg - Why we need fiction

She writes about how your neural circuits light up as if you're actually experiencing what you're reading; how fiction teaches you things you'll remember because it's as if you're living the story. And even in non-fiction books, most of the real knowledge lies in metaphors and other little stories that make it make more sense.

I need to read more fiction.

A few links from today 🔗

'We're at a Crazy Moment in History': Midjourney Buys Astrology App Co-Star

The bullshit generator of AI paired with the bullshit generator of an astrology app truly feels like a match made in the heavens.

You can't leave politics out of anything

There’s no such thing as leaving politics out of anything. Because existence is political.

Michael Stipe Previews Solo Album with New Song “Hum Desiderata”

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars...

Annnd that's all I've got for now. I woke up at 5:40am for a meeting that could've been an email, so I'm definitely not firing on all cylinders today. I'm ready to get home and rot on the couch until I fall asleep with my contacts in 😪

The pitch to a mainstream user currently sounds something like: "Join the Bluesky app, this is the "example" app for the protocol. Want a dedicated short video like Tiktok?, download Skylight (don't worry, it's the same protocol, your followers come with you). Livestreaming? That's Streamplace. Photos like instagram? Try Flashes."...Nobody thinks that way. Nobody is going to think that way. Users will learn, recognize, and go to BLUESKY. That word is the network. If the thing they want to do isn't in the app with that name on it, as far as they're concerned, the network can't do it.

I'd take it a step further and say with Bluesky as the main point of entry to the Atmosphere, most people who use Facebook or Instagram still don't really get it. I remember when I started getting into Twitter a decade and a half ago. Sometimes I'd share memes or cross post other stuff over to Facebook, and occasionally a few people would get curious and try Twitter for a couple days. They always ended up leaving because they just didn't see any value in microblogging. The biggest hurdle for most of my friends who didn't get Twitter was that none of our other friends from IRL were there, so what's the point?

Honestly, that's what I always loved about it though. It's more of a global community where Facebook is the place everyone you've ever met has an account and you can get ahold of them 24/7 whether you have their phone number or not.

I think if Bluesky would've launched as a Facebook clone rather than a Twitter clone, that would've pulled in a lot more users right off the rip. The cozy (local) town hall vibe is a big part, but also the "everything app" feel of it is big too.

The ecosystem story and the everything-app story aren't even in conflict. Let Bluesky-the-app be the flagship that does everything, and let the ecosystem be the escape hatch and the innovation lab. The escape hatch is the insurance policy that makes the flagship trustworthy. But insurance policies don't sell subscriptions. Products do.

I do like that idea. The Atmosphere has always felt like the place you go if you like to tinker and test out the more experimental, bleeding edge stuff. But you could have both this way.

Of course Bluesky wants to gain some market share and give Big Social a run for its money. But those of us who fell in love with this place did so because it's so different from the Zuckerverse and X.

Shortform videos are the next evolution of social media, so it makes sense to go in that direction too... if we're talking about growth for the sake of growth. I mean even Reddit and YouTube have endless vertical videos now; if you build it, people will doomscroll it.

Personally, I like that Bluesky is smaller and more cozy, but I'm always wondering about the longevity of it in the back of my mind. I think most users want a balance between the #1 social app in the world and a neat little place you can hang out and make friends. It has to be successful enough to stick around, but not so much that it turns into another thing we hate but still use because we have to.

A few links from today 🔗

Barstool Sports Suffers Worst Loss in Celebrity Family Feud History

In the end, Barstool made Family Feud history for all the wrong reasons, suffering the worst defeat in the show’s 13-season history by a score of 543-0.

That tracks. It doesn't take a prediction market to guess that Dave Portnoy would absolutely bomb when faced with deep intellectual questions such as “What makes pizza so good is ___.”

Atari Signs Deal With Universal Pictures To Turn 10 Games Into Movies

So what could we be looking at here? Missile Command starring The Rock? Galaxian starring Batista? I bet there are a lot of actors who grew up with Atari games who would jump at the chance to star in a film adaptation of their favourite titles, but I just don't know how turning games with very little storyline into films is going to go.

Capitalism gonna capitalize, even if it's a few decades late to the game. Look at how The Backrooms blew up and suddenly every movie studio is combing through Reddit threads trying to find the next meme to turn into a money printer. Sometimes adaptations are really, really good. Other times they're just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.

ANBERNIC Shows Gameplay & A Few Specs Of Upcoming RG SP Retro Handheld

New clamshell GBA SP style emulator console from Anbernic! I'm still rocking the older RG35XXSP running MuOS and it's more than sufficient for anything up through PS1. But let's be honest, if you're buying one of these it's mostly to play GBA games, and for that it's absolutely perfect. The new version is a bit slimmer and more sturdy, so it's not a huge upgrade. But definitely worth the sub $100 price tag if you're looking for a solid portable retro gaming machine.

Video: Scientists watch orcas ram a sunfish so hard it explodes

Killer whale just loves killin' 🫍

Why Are These Whales Floating Upside-Down? They Might Just Be Moms Who Need a Break From Feeding Their Babies

In other aquatic mammal news: parenting is hard no matter who you are.

This year I gave my older failing gaming laptop to my tech illiterate boyfriend and built a home PC and got an ipad which I use for drawing and mobile work. While in SF, I was locked out of several accounts who were suspicious of my shiny new California IP addresses, so I just, used Steam to remote into my computer. I promptly received a panicked call from my boyfriend asking why the computer was possessed. I assured him it was just me and replied to some important work emails, and did a few other things, accidentally refreshing bluesky because my 42in extra wide monitor was hard to navigate fitting onto my 13in ipad...Unfortunately, pinging in on bluesky's servers from two different sides on the continent does look like hacking, even if I can assure them that I was the one that did it. Hence, the ban.

That's a pretty easy mistake to make, tbh. I never would've thought twice about it. And it gets worse:

Apparently you lose access to everything. Every single service on ATprotocol. Yeah. No more leaflet, no offprint, no witchsky, no pinkleap, no aniisota.

Instant panic mode 😬

Goes to show that just because something's decentralized, it doesn't mean that you can't lose everything in an instant with the way you log into every ATProto service with one single account. It's convenient as hell but everything has its pros and cons.

Found this cool blog on a Bluesky post (author has since deleted it):

Worse on Purpose

California Governor Signs Octopus Farming Ban into Law via aldf.org

These animals have significant cognitive abilities and can learn new skills, navigate complex mazes, are known escape artists, and even use tools. Due to their complex mental ability, octopuses have high enrichment needs that simply cannot be met in farming environments.  Intensively confining these highly intelligent, solitary animals in unnatural farming conditions is inhumane, as there is a high likelihood of stress, aggressive activity, and high mortality among octopuses in these settings. Methods of slaughtering octopuses have historically been highly inhumane, including clubbing, slicing, asphyxiation, and chilling. 

Octopuses are people too 👊

For real though, they're such a unique and intelligent species. Their DNA is more complex than ours and they share almost nothing in common with any other living thing:

“The octopus appears to be utterly different from all other animals, even other mollusks, with its eight prehensile arms, its large brain and its clever problem-solving abilities,” said US researcher Dr Clifton Ragsdale, from the University of Chicago.

via Antartica Journal

View post on Bluesky

Just some nice pixel art wallpapers. They're free but you can donate to the artist too.

Conor Oberst Says He’s Finding It “Almost Impossible” To Write About Trump Era

“You can’t satirize, or whatever, what’s already like a parody” or a “disgusting, gross cartoon,” Oberst explained.

We are living in a fucking wacky cartoon world.

DNS.pizza — Check, fix, and monitor your domain and website

DNS.pizza showcases the oldest domains still online:

The DNS opened for business in 1985 — nordu.net was created on January 1, and symbolics.com became the first registered .com on March 15. Below: the earliest-registered domains among the 85,936 domains dns.pizza has analyzed with verified registration dates, and how registration grew from a handful of research labs to the modern web.

Microsoft Has Just Announced Xbox Backward Compatibility for PC

The four games that are currently available are BLiNX: The Time Sweeper, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, and Fuzion Frenzy.

YES! I never played the other games listed here, but with all the classic N64 titles available on Nintendo Switch Online, I've been pretty bummed out that Conker's Bad Fur Day is still this inaccessible relic of the past. In my experience it's one of those games that runs like shit on emulators, so you need an actual N64 and a physical copy of the game to play it. Super stoked to see Microsoft finally re-issue this classic Rare title. Most of the retro games I play are less about nostalgia and more about playing rad pixelated masterpieces I never knew about when I was younger, but this is 100% nostalgia for me.

Bonus: also found this when I was scrolling the RSS feed today. Some footage of an earlier version of CBFD called Conkers Quest.

Hasbro Reveals First Wave Of Legend of Zelda Action Figures

The Legend of Zelda is in the spotlight at the moment, all thanks to the upcoming movie, set to be released in April 2027, and ofcourse in Nintendo fashion, they want to milk it as much as they can, and I don't blame them, it's an incredible piece of IP. Well, it seems they have now partnered with Hasbro to release an array of The Legend of Zelda action figures, with their first 3 being teased via their official website.

In other nostalgic Nintendo news: I'm not big on collectibles these days, but reading about this brings me back to when I got the Ocarina of Time figures for Christmas one year when I was a kid. They were advertised in a little foldout pamphlet that came with the game cartridge.

Baby name 'Donald' hit record low popularity in US

"Donald" is the new "Adolf"

My online personality isn't an act, it's not necessarily my 100% real self, but it's parts of me that I want to show to the internet. That's also marketing. I'm marketing myself as a kinda goofy, fun developer who likes to try out different ideas and see what works. I'm not about shipping the most polished software, I'm about shipping things that solve problems and serve as explorations on what we can do with the protocol.

Love this take. Any time you're on a public stage you're marketing something. Whether it's for free or for profit, an idea or even just yourself, you're kinda selling something. Attention is a form of currency and we're selling things we like in exchange for a little bit of that.

I feel this so much 😅 I catch myself getting a little smug when I see a Gen Z kid wearing baggy pants and rocking Nirvana shirts. Or when I hear slang like "out of pocket" or "slay." But then I remember my silly ass walking around in skin tight Levi's, rocking Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin shirts in the 2000's, and listening to shit like Korn's cover of Another Brick in the Wall.

Cool shit always makes it back around and there's always a new wave of kids to embrace it. I know millennials get a lot of guff for never feeling like we grew up, but I don't think anyone ever truly feels like an adult. Until they start reflecting on this kind of stuff anyway.