turns out there are a lot of things on the internet and in the absence of a proper "universal reblog" function, I feel like just doing a post or two every couple days with like "look at this cool stuff" will have to suffice.
i think it's one of the main things i'll miss from cohost.org. I feel like the reblog function is underappreciated on the internet. we need more of it. i know Natalie is also concerned with this, and i follow her blog, so if she figures it out i'll just try and copy it, lol.
anyway want to see some cool things i found online??
Nerd Stuff (Games and Toys)
Kata/Ellen (Kataspace): desk guy of the day 9-17-24
Okay I am mostly linking this so that more people know about Kata's blog, which is a great follow in my opinion. But also I love learning about more bizarre transformers ephemera, in this case Mirage from Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.
the headsculpt looks pretty great, and is flexible enough to hit the weird cocky expressions like the one i tried to put him in here--though without some kind of smirk it falls flat. but there's some stuff here that bugs me, especially the transparent plastic arms. so what gives? why is this guy so compromised?
three words: licensed. vehicle. mode.
I love stupid transformers stuff. I'm not even that much of a Transformers Guy, but I think the Michael Bay movies are DEEPLY fascinating artifacts of culture and there's a lot you can learn from them (and yes, Lindsay Ellis' videos on them are great but I was saying this before those even came out. I was ranting about them underneath a child's playset at a bar at a GDC party in March 2017 there is PROOF of it. I HAVE PROOF!!)
Talen Lee (Press.exe): 3E: Winners and Losers in Lawful Space
There’s a really interesting distinction between Inevitables and Modrons, to me. Modrons are weird and interesting but also, there’s nothing they can do that answers a question. Inevitables are a fun challenge that’s supposed to be present to oppose players or potentially be recruited into an adventure, but not for too long. But Inevitables, the 3e attempt to populate Lawful Planes with A Kind of Guy, sort of fell apart and are now more of a trivia question while Modrons have endured into 4th and 5th edition.
I am an inveterate D&D hater for the most part, but it's simply wrong to ignore it as a part of tabletop history. It's fuckin, it's fuckin D&D! It's the Game Of Games. It's the grandaddy. And also I kind of hate it and it's hard to get away from it but when it's cool, it's pretty cool!
Take Modrons, basically taking the idea of "what are the ultimate forms of 'lawfulness'" and saying "well i guess they would be a bunch of shape guys. like little shape guys" is fun D&D bullshit. it's unique and weird and kind of impossible to pin down as a "generic fantasy concept" in a very fun way.
Anyway, this post from Talen is about their grimdark demon cousins from 3e, the "Inevitables", who I think I probably read about at some point but completely forgot about. lol
Nerd Stuff (Computers, etc)
Low Cost Mini PCs
Incredibly useful little website about finding little computers. I actually have a fanless one of these (basically this minisforum pc but a little older and a little weaker, otherwise they're all about the same) and it runs pihole and homeassistant flawlessly. I recommend snagging one if you want to mess around with A Little Computer for cheapsies. And this site is great to find them!
Lyra: Using YouTube to steal your files
Fascinating breakdown of a method to use youtube and google slides to create a reasonable trojan horse method to steal files from another user. Already submitted as a bounty to Google, of course, for safety, but a really fun read nonetheless.
Seirdy: A look at search engines with their own indexes
An extensive review/analysis/collection of search engines from off the beaten path. I feel like in a post-google world I generally stopped thinking about search engines as a tool, and more just as a background element of the internet, but in the new, modern world where google doesn't fucking work anymore, I have a renewed interest in these alternative methods of finding things on the internet. Maybe you do too?
Nerd Stuff (History)
Daniel Lavery (The Chatner): Everyone Knows You've Been To The Crusades If You Bring Back An Orange With You
As long as you bring back an orange to your hometown, no one will question your Crusading bona fides. Have you noticed how any story set roughly in the twelfth century always includes a Crusader bringing back an orange to England? Oranges were to the twelfth century what oral sex was to the Tudor era.
You would not believe how funny this shit is to me now that I have become A History Guy. I love Daniel Lavery's writing.
Andrew Plotkin (Zarf): She Wants the Hog-Eye Man
Really fun bit of folk musical journalism, trying to find the origins of the sailor song "Hog-Eye Man", that you might have heard. Great read, but forewarning for racial slurs and a lot -- a lot -- of bawdy language.
Nerd Stuff (For Jocks)
Bruno Dias (Azhdarchid): One of the oddest sports stories of the year is quietly brewing in the world of chess
Here's the core of this story: Ding Liren is the current world champion of chess. He has not won a rated game of classical chess since January. His rating has dropped precipitously as a result. As I write this, his live rating2is 2727, which would make him #21 in the world. So, very soon, there may be 20 people on the planet with higher FIDE ratings than the world champion of chess.
But oh man, there's so much more strangeness to this story. Great writeup from Bruno.
Laura Michet: The return of the Running Machine
I remember seeing this post on cohost and I loved it. I'm glad it made to jump over to Laura's blog. If you have any interest in weird bikes, or weird biking history, you should check this out.
The first type of velocipede, the first known proper ancestor of the bicycle, was the laufmaschine, or "running machine" in German. In English, it was called a "dandy horse."
It was basically two wheels connected by a hunk of wood with a padded saddle that you sat on; you'd achieve speed by pushing your feet against the ground, rather than pedals, and just go about with this big object between your legs.
Here's a few that I've seen so far.
This is a mirror of a post on my blog. Feel free to read it there too!