august 2025

links & internet exploring

we saw a river trap while out walking and didn’t know what it was for - a little research later, we learned it was a mink trap as they’re carnivorous and ruining river habitats.

this tweet thread from presumably a child about how proshipping is wrong because fiction affects reality, which was discussed with great derision in mine & kat’s messages. the sources they cite literally disagree with their own points! when will the children learn how to engage criticially with media, when the children learn that fiction is not in fact an endorsement of reality.

this whole thing ChatGPT being your friend or boyfriend thing which is sad and infuriating and stupid. i am vehemently anti-ai and even in my more open-minded hours i at the very least thing ai needs reining in to avoid this exact issue.

The etymology of the phrase ‘Second Guess’, fun!

i had a conversation with my parents about many things including my grampi’s post war PTSD involving nightmares about snakes (he was stationed in burma), and my grandad’s national service, where he was placed behind a desk to do accounting.

i really enjoyed the two zines here, long live neocities.

this article about the web being endangered by commerce was written in 1997 yikes.

“Yet the existence of an independent and goodwill-based web is endangered: threatened by the never-ending technology race which makes the websites more difficult and expensive to set up, by the overwhelming commercial advertising pressure, and soon by dissymetric networks, Network Computers, proprietary networks, broadcasting, all aiming at the transformation of the citizen into a basic consumer. The computer press, so greedy for advertising coming from companies who make their profit out of the great wealth of the free indie web, is only fascinated by the technical and economical challenges of the Internet and has deliberatly decided to pass over its cultural dimension in the silence: magazines announce shortly the death of pioneer websites and basically never write more than a couple of lines about independent initiatives in comparison with the full-feature articles about any soap vendors new sites. According to them, creating one’s own site is a pathetic and secondary initiative compared to all the opportunities offered by online commerce.”

collections of things. i particularly enjoyed internet comments, 11:11 and wifi names

idk how to describe this site really, internet poetry? its very cool

and i spent an hour this month doing ranking my "favourite pokemon of each type - eevee was my winner, but i was surprised by how much i liked alolan marowak.

games

lorelei & the laser eyes **** - super fun, great style, puzzles that are hard without feeling impossible. i found the video game controls impossibble but i think that's a me problem.

hypnospace outlaws ***** - i loved this, crawling through the old web to find infractions and solve puzzles. the design was impeccable, the game play was fun, and the ending was fantastic. i wish it were hours and hours longer.

a hand with many fingers ** - i enjoyed the mechanic, but hated the ending and not actually solving anything though i know that’s the point.

blue prince - ongoing, I’m giving the initial gameplay ***** up to getting into room 46, i really, really loved it. it becomes insanely complex for me after that, with the puzzles being way too spread out and esoteric.

stardew - finishing up a modded archipelago randomised playthrough, which i really enjoy but got bored of having to marry all the bachelor(ettes) and flaked out near the end.

jigsaws - many as per usual. particular stand outs were another of the sweet shop series (1970s) and a very difficult norman rockwell puzzle.

youtube

i watched a few of these cruel world happy mind videos about child influencers whilst puzzling and while i agree with her central points about it being gross and exploitative, i also maybe landed on feeling like these videos are also invasive and exploitative? idk, i’m not sure how much awareness of the issue outweighs rehashing the things that these 16 year olds have been through. otoh i watched them so i’m part of the problem. piper rockelle, danielle cohn, and ashely barnes.

i love all ashley norton pop culture deepdives so this one on the glee project was great.

I haven’t watched the live action netflix ATLA because it looked … bad… and this big joel video justifies that for me.

i’m really enjoying tor’s cabinet of curiosities and liked both this wikipedia editor deep dive and his NYC mole people deep dive.

and i rewatched this hbomb video on RWBY whilst doing jigsaw puzzles, and really enjoyed it considering i have never seen a second of the show.

i also enjoyed this series about video game companies - bethesda, bioware, and ubisoft.

i enjoy bright sun travel's reviews (and find his love of boats charming), and know fingals well so this was fun.

this dan and phil date everything series was great background noise, i still enjoy them a lot.

and izzzyzzz, another beloved youtuber, did a deepdive on ai spotify artists, also great and extremely infuriating.

irl

these teva sandals, which are great for my wide wide feet and SO comfy. thank you HerOneBag subreddit for this rec.