This is the first I’ve come across the Tiny Awards recognizing “the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web”. Voting for 2025 will be over by the time I post this so we can check in who the winner is. The 2024 winner One Minute Park is a collection of 60 second videos of parks from around the world (they’re still accepting submissions for more parks). It’s much more appealing and relaxing to get sucked into than the similar-in-words-only experience of getting stuck in an endless stream of videos on social media.
Daily web game of the month: Clues by Sam. Just a little daily logic puzzle where you have to deduce which people in a grid are criminals or innocent based on statements like “The only criminal in row 4 is Logan’s neighbor.” or “There is only one innocent between Eric and Susan.” I like that the game knows what facts you can and can’t logically conclude yet from the available statements and won’t let you make guesses. (Or, you can try to guess, but rather than telling you if you’re right or wrong, it calls you out on guessing without giving you any info.)
Michael Chabon’s substack article about his attempt to get hired to write a Fantastic Four movie was interesting in its own right AND made me realize Michael Chabon has a substack I should be reading AND made me go look what Michael Chabon novels are out there I haven’t read yet.
I’ll still be scanning pages that interest me out of my old physical copies of Byte magazine, but if you’re actually interested in their content you can scroll through this searchable visualization of every page of the publication. The interface includes the ability to directly link to a specific page or to generate PDFs or PNGs of pages of interest. For example, the image below is viewable in context here.
My favorite book (well, novella, but I’m counting it) that I read this past month was Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz. It’s described as a “cozy, near-future” story about robots opening a noodle shop, and it really is surprisingly cozy, given the semi-dystopian hurdles the robots are up against.
Best new recipe I tried this month, for a friend’s potluck housewarming, was smitten kitchen’s french onion baked lentils and farro. Definitely take the time to carmelize your onions all the way down, and I’d recommend a light hand with the liquid to start until you have a sense of how absorbent your lentils and grains are.
I really enjoy this ad for computer-printable forms. Why are Einstein and Gutenberg both so grumpy? Wouldn’t a company offering faster ways to print many documents want to be associated with Gutenberg? What’s the weird rug under the computer? Can you really just call up your “local banker” and ask them for these forms?
