stuff tagged with "reasons i love the internet"
An Ode to the Old-School Internet Forum
🔗 a linked post to
theringer.com »
—
originally shared here on
Do you know what I mean when I say “old-school internet forums”? I’m not talking about, like, 8chan. If your forum has been linked to even one mass shooting, it is not the kind of forum I’m talking about. I’m also not talking about subreddits, though Reddit appropriated and modernized the same basic structure, and I’m not talking about Discords, though Discord appropriated and modernized the same basic approach to community. I’m talking about a message board with its own unique domain name and a specific topical focus. Maybe that domain name is peppermintchat.org. Maybe that topical focus is peppermints. Peppermint Chat will have been founded by a single peppermint enthusiast, possibly called Stuart, in about 1998. It will have undergone precisely one redesign in the intervening 26 years, probably around 2007.
The users of peppermintchat.org will be the biggest group of hardcore freaks you can possibly imagine. They will be passionate. They will be scholarly. They will be deeply opinionated and wildly adventurous. And they will be each of these things exclusively about peppermints—nothing else. Their lives will revolve around the peppermint. (And also possibly their grandchildren, at least one of whom is named Peppermint.) They will use language like, “When I began my peppermint journey.” They will import rare and exotic peppermint cultivars from China. They will have contacts inside Brach’s and report breathlessly on minor tweaks to the candy cane formula ahead of what they call “the high season.” They will say things like, “I’ve probably spent upwards of $70,000 chasing that red-and-white-striped dragon.” Will their site load on mobile? It will not.
Within the larger body of Peppermint Chatters, there will be a smaller subset of elite posters, micro-celebrities of the peppermint kingdom. Their personalities, proclivities, states of residence, and even real names will be known to all who frequent the site. They will sometimes meet up in real life for peppermint-related activities, and in the world of the forum, these meetings will have the gravity and significance of the Yalta Conference. MintMan1 flew to Belarus to see PepperMinsk! The forum will be divided into many subforums, with the biggest fish spending most of their time in General Peppermint Talk and the most deranged individuals in human history congregating in Off-Topic Musings. Many threads, of course, will devolve into arguments, for such is human nature. Depending on how strictly the forum is moderated, these arguments will either end peacefully, with a broad acknowledgement that no type of peppermint is better than any other, because we are all on different peppermint journeys, which is why it’s so wonderful to have variety in the world; or they will end violently, with seven pages of posts in which Peppermint Chatters accuse one another of not “understanding basic logic.”
My childhood was spent on forums like this. I’m now itching to find myself a new one.
i ran Claude in a loop for three months, and it created a genz programming language called cursed
🔗 a linked post to
ghuntley.com »
—
originally shared here on
The programming language is called "cursed". It's cursed in its lexical structure, it's cursed in how it was built, it's cursed that this is possible, it's cursed in how cheap this was, and it's cursed through how many times I've sworn at Claude.
Absolutely dying at this.
WeatherStar 4000+
🔗 a linked post to
weatherstar.netbymatt.com »
—
originally shared here on
Someone took the retro Weather Channel interface and turned it into a functioning website. Absolutely brilliant.
It was "Come and visit me again soon!" rather than "like and subscribe."
Why we are still using 88x31 buttons
🔗 a linked post to
ultrasciencelabs.com »
—
originally shared here on
I suspect Netscape used 88x31 "sample" sized buttons to promote their "Now" rewards program and browser. But then they released "official" 88x32 buttons to registered rewards program participants. It would be a quick and easy way to verify if your site was using an "authorized" image.
But if all you wanted was a "Now" button or if you wanted to modify or remix it, well you'd just grab the unofficial 88x31 "sample" size buttons off the Netscape site and riff. And riff people did. I also suspect this usage guideline "No Alteration Allowed - The Netscape Now button must not be altered in ANY way. Do not shrink it; take it apart; change its proportions, color, or font; or otherwise alter it from the Netscape-supplied version." did little to discourage people and probably outright encouraged them just for spite - y'know because the Internet. By the end of the decade and well into the 2000's everyone used 88x31 buttons - from software giants like Microsoft, advertisers, media outlets, technology sites, to Geocities homesteaders - everybody.
This origin story (theory?) for the 88x31 button is wild.
I've been going through the hard drive which contains all my documents since... well, basically the beginning of my computing life, and I recently came across a bunch of old 88x31s that I used for various websites of mine.
Here they are for your amusement:
I don't care what you say: that "Tim's World" one still rules.
noclip
🔗 a linked post to
noclip.website »
—
originally shared here on
A virtual museum of video game levels. I spent a few minutes reliving the good ol’ GTA San Andreas days, as well as perused the Mario Kart 8 levels, and this is extremely impressive and fun.
(Thanks for the tip, Matt!)
Horse kicks tree, farts on dogs then runs away.
🔗 a linked post to
m.youtube.com »
—
originally shared here on
Listen.
This blog doesn’t always have to share deep, thoughtful posts.
Sometimes, it pays to take a minute1 and appreciate that we live on the timeline where this moment was captured, uploaded to the internet, and then viewed 54,000,000 times. Humanity isn’t always bleak.
Also, I wish more people were this honest about what they were delivering. Because this video is 100% what you see on the tin.
-
Or more accurately, a mere 24 seconds! ↩
Can you complete the Oregon Trail if you wait at a river for 14272 years: A study
🔗 a linked post to
moral.net.au »
—
originally shared here on
Two years ago, Twitch streamer albrot discovered a bug in the code for crossing rivers. One of the options is to "wait to see if conditions improve"; waiting a day will consume food but not recalculate any health conditions, granting your party immortality.
From this conceit the Oregon Trail Time Machine was born; a multiday livestream of the game as the party waits for conditions to improve at the final Snake River crossing until the year 10000, to see if the withered travellers can make it to the ruins of ancient Oregon. The first attempt ended in tragedy; no matter what albrot tried, the party would succumb to disease and die almost immediately.
Filed under “reasons I love the Internet.”
DOOM® CAPTCHA
🔗 a linked post to
doom-captcha.vercel.app »
—
originally shared here on
I will insist on using this for my CAPTCHA purposes from here on out.
My favourite colour is Chuck Norris red
🔗 a linked post to
htmhell.dev »
—
originally shared here on
Fun exploration of why <font color=“chucknorris”> gets converted into <font color=“#c00000”>.
Apparently timbornholdt gets converted into #0b00d0, a lovely shade of blue.
3 shell scripts to improve your writing, or "My Ph.D. advisor rewrote himself in bash."
🔗 a linked post to
simonwillison.net »
—
originally shared here on
Matt Might wrote some shell scripts back in 2010 to identify and correct a few bad writing habits.
Simon Willison took these scripts and used Claude to build a tool that does the same, but within a web browser.
I could see taking this concept and baking it into my publish system for this blog. I am very interested in becoming a stronger writer, and having something like my own Rubocop would be annoyingly useful.
kirby vs. this blog post
🔗 a linked post to
mgx.me »
—
originally shared here on
This was dope.
I hope they expand this idea so Kirby inhales the entire DOM.
Tiny Awards
🔗 a linked post to
tinyawards.net »
—
originally shared here on
Last year, we decided to launch Tiny Awards, a small prize to celebrate interesting, small, craft-y internet projects and spaces which basically make the web a more fun place to be.
We hoped it would be a small contribution to celebrating ‘people making stuff on the internet for the fun of it and the love of it and the hell of it’. We were thrilled to see that people seemed to like the idea, so we’re doing it again in 2024 - still tiny, still celebratory, and still (hopefully) helping spread the word about some of the small, personal, whimsical, weird and poetic things people are making on what is left of the web.
Woohoo! Can’t wait to see the shortlist published on July 19th.
THE 88×31 ARCHIVE
🔗 a linked post to
hellnet.work »
—
originally shared here on
This site contains 29257 unique* 88x31 buttons that I scraped from the GeoCities archives compiled by the incredible ARCHIVE TEAM before GeoCities' demise in late 2009.
I shouldn’t go through all ~30,000 images to find the ones I made for Tim’s World or That’s Unpossible, right?
…right?
Why "Random Access Memories" is a Masterpiece
🔗 a linked post to
youtube.com »
—
originally shared here on
This album essentially served as the soundtrack of the early days of the Jed Mahonis Group.
Whenever we needed a day to be heads down, this album would be turned on repeat.
Whenever there was a late night push and we needed the extra motivation to get through it, this album was on repeat.
I came across this video describing the inner turmoil that Daft Punk was feeling while making this album, and I couldn’t help but feel the similarities to my present day situation.
I have long considered this album to be in my top 5 favorites of all time, but this YouTube video made me understand and appreciate it a whole lot more. I should see if there are similar videos for my other favorite albums.
File this video under “reasons I love the internet.”
I lost it : r/Parenting
🔗 a linked post to
reddit.com »
—
originally shared here on
Lately, I’ve been trying to find more examples of the internet being a force for good for humanity.
Here’s an example my wife sent me from the r/Parenting subreddit. The OP told a story where she blew up and cussed out her 8-year-old.
Here’s the highest-rated reply:
When you are both in a calm state - take your kid aside and discuss the incident. Apologize sincerely. Then tell this story:
Imagine you are on a high ledge, and you can take a slide or the stairs. The slide is more satisfying and gets you to the bottom faster. BUT - there's always poop at the bottom of the slide that you land in. And then there's the stairs. It's boring, it takes longer, it takes more effort - but you get to the bottom with no poop at the bottom.
Losing your temper is like taking the slide. It feels great during the ride (ooh yelling is cathartic and it's releasing the pressure valve, and it's FAST which is what your brain wants when it's upset) but, you're cleaning off poop at the end.
Use yourself as an example - I lost my temper, I took the slide, and I spent all day feeling bad about myself and now apologizing.
And sometimes the poop doesn't come off - the smell stays no matter how hard you try to clean.
That's the memory your kid has of the incident. Sometimes the stink is permanent. It's always more work and bigger consequences to take the slide/lose your temper.
It’s easy to find examples where the internet shows us the worst in ourselves.
I’m being intentional about engaging with content on the internet that attempts to show us at our best.
Parenting is harder than ever because we’re fighting generations of poor parenting habits based on tough love that’s necessary for survival when you’re living on the plains, foraging for food, one snowstorm or famine away from certain death.
We now live in a world where we’re safer, healthier, and wealthier than we’ve ever been... which renders those poor habits obsolete.
It's gonna require a ton of stair walking, across several more generations, in order to break them.
As awful as Reddit can be, it's moments like these which make me truly appreciate what we can do when we are able to pool our collective wisdom and try to do better.
Long-Term News
🔗 a linked post to
collabfund.com »
—
originally shared here on
Reports of Baby Boomers worried that younger generations lack the motivation and morals of their parents were met with pictures of a 1974 hippie commune and a plea from 28-year-old Travis Garner who said, “Look, every generation eventually figures it out and finds their own way. We’ll be fine.”
In California, 18-year-old Sarah Thompson began her freshman biology class at UC Davis where she’ll learn stuff we didn’t know when her parents went to college, while she won’t be taught stuff that’s since been proven false. “That’s how progress works,” her professor said. “A slow grind higher over the generations.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 48 points on Tuesday. Greg Jones, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, expected that no one would care about that useless, vapid, fact by tomorrow.
See, this is the kind of article that makes my five-day-long anxiety attack start to subside.
Slow and steady progress wins the race. Relax. Take your time. Be just a tiny bit better every day.
How would a peasant laborer in… say France, 100 years war period deal with a repetitive trauma/orthopedic injury like a rotator cuff tear, slipped disk, carpal tunnel or torn meniscus? Were they screwed?
🔗 a linked post to
reddit.com »
—
originally shared here on
I tried to pick a single pull quote, but this response is worth reading in its entirety.
As someone dealing with a rotator cuff issue at the moment, i appreciate knowing it is absolutely something I can rehab back to health.
Also, this response embodies the reason I enjoy r/AskHistorians so much. A thorough reply to a question that I’ve pointed myself at least once in my life.
Why the world isn't as bad as you think
🔗 a linked post to
forkingpaths.co »
—
originally shared here on
The world isn’t as bad as you think, because news reporting aggregates the worst events in the world, giving you a skewed perspective.
To truly understand the world, we don’t need more happy-go-lucky stories to make us feel good, but we do need more reporting of bigger trends and what’s driving them. Many of those big picture trends are invisible, but positive.
I found myself smack dab in the middle of a Reddit doomscrolling session this morning when I decided I was sick of the feeling of impending doom. I launched Instapaper instead and found this article.
It serves as a good reminder that we get dopamine hits from reading terrible news, and maybe we should all take some time to break that addiction.
(I’m saying “we” here, but honestly, who reads this stuff? It’s all reminders for me haha)
The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge
🔗 a linked post to
tylervigen.com »
—
originally shared here on
Why is this bridge here?
This pedestrian bridge crosses I-494 just west of the Minneapolis Airport. It connects Bloomington to Richfield. I drive under it often and I wondered: why is it there? It's not in an area that is particularly walkable, and it doesn't connect any establishments that obviously need to be connected. So why was it built?
I often have curious thoughts like this, but I dismiss most of them because if I answered all of them I would get nothing else done. But one day I was walking out of a Taco Bell and found myself at the base of the bridge.
That only raised MORE questions! Why did the bridge just lead to some grass? Why isn't there a sidewalk? What is the point? It makes no sense!
Those who grew up in the Richfield/Bloomington area in the same era as me must have driven under this bridge thousands of times, and I, myself, have certainly had this thought.
The answer to the question is straight forward, but I will not spoil it for you.
Instead, I urge you to read this entire post, top to bottom, because this post is a journey, not a destination. The author spends months trying to get to the bottom of why this mysterious bridge was erected, and the whole article is masterfully written.
What were the first instances of the villainous "mwahahaha" in entertainment?
🔗 a linked post to
reddit.com »
—
originally shared here on
The idea of an "evil laugh" for a villainous character is much older, and the idea that laughter can be a sign of moral failings is even older still!
In "Social Signals and Antisocial Essences: The Function of Evil Laughter in Popular Culture", Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen traces negative attitudes about laughter all the way back to Plato. In The Republic, Plato says that laughter is a malignant, violent paroxysm that seizes its subject by force, signalling the unfortunate triumph of passion over rationality.
The AskHistorians subreddit is my go-to example of the internet done right.
Every day, normal people ask bizarre, inane questions that are then answered by serious academics.
This is a prime example of the kind of topic you never imagined could be interesting, yet once you read the answer, you walk away amused, educated, and grateful that someone took the time to give an extremely detailed answer to such a question.
The internet is often filled with garbage, but this subreddit serves as a golden example of the cool stuff people can build when they give a damn.
Disney Channel’s Theme: A History Mystery
🔗 a linked post to
youtu.be »
—
originally shared here on
What a whirlwind of a video! I knew I would be captivated by this, but the ending really moved me.
To those of you who bring your all to the random, seemingly minor tasks you accomplish for clients in your day jobs: thank you for everything you do.
Rewilding your attention
🔗 a linked post to
uxdesign.cc »
—
originally shared here on
Instead of crowding your attention with what’s already going viral on the intertubes, focus on the weird stuff. Hunt down the idiosyncratic posts and videos that people are publishing, oftentimes to tiny and niche audiences. It’s decidedly unviral culture — but it’s more likely to plant in your mind the seed of a rare, new idea.
Examples of idiosyncratic communities in which I’ve been trying to increase my participation:
- an offshoot of a online community I was very into back in the early 2000s
- a YouTube series where a guy rewatches old episodes of Monday Night Raw and Monday Nitro and compares them head-to-head, deciding who won each week of the Monday night wars
- a Reddit community who cares deeply about dates being expressed in the ISO-8601 date format
- another Reddit community that posts highlights from a mobile app football game that I am really into
Medieval Wood Riving - An Attempt to Recreate Craftsmanship
🔗 a linked post to
youtu.be »
—
originally shared here on
In a lot of ways, this video is boring, useless, and a colossal waste of time.
In many other ways, however, this is compelling to the point of fascination.
A Swedish carpenter discovers giant 13 meter rafter supports inside an 800 year old church. He thinks to himself, “I wonder how they were able to use such beautiful wood in order to create this.”
What does he do? He enlists the help of 3 fellow master carpenters, who in turn locate a suitably similar tree, discuss their hypothesis around the tools and techniques used, and then execute those ideas.
This video is emblematic of a style of YouTube video I’ve been obsessed with lately: how do things work? Not just old tech, but extremely old tech.
I’ve never thought to myself, “how did people used to build big buildings?”, but I’m sure glad somebody else not only had that thought, but decided to document it for others to learn from.