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Friday Flash Fun Forever
Still mourning the death of Flash, and with it an entire era of online gaming? Enter ooooooooo.ooo (9o3o), the new searchable (and playable!) web frontend for the incredible Flashpoint preservation project. Browse over 145,000 preserved Flash games powered by the Ruffle emulator, and share your favorites with a simple link. Highlights:
DICEWARS -
Fly Guy -
Alien Hominid -
Samorost -
Crimson Room -
Nanaca Crash! -
Line Rider -
Don't Shoot the Puppy -
Bloxorz -
Gimme Friction Baby -
The Impossible Quiz -
Portal: The Flash Version -
Feed the Head -
Sprout -
Achievement Unlocked -
QWOP -
Cursor*10 -
Dino Run -
Grid16 -
Meat Boy -
SHIFT -
You Have to Burn the Rope -
6 Differences -
Canabalt -
Don't Shit Your Pants! -
Nevermore 3 - Small Worlds -
Don't Look Back -
Redder -
VVVVVV (demo) -
Synopsis Quest -
The Room Tribute -
The Scale of the Universe -
Mitoza -
Wonderputt -
Bullet Bill 3 -
Frog Fractions -
Dys4ia -
Snakes on a Cartesian Plane -
Want (gulp) more? Download Flashpoint Infinity to stream over 156,000 games from 70+ platforms (including Shockwave, Java, and Unity) plus over 27,000 animations... or clear some space for the monster 1.76 terabyte Flashpoint Ultimate to store every single file locally. So much more inside!
Jake Blount: “a sonic postcard from a future world”
“I play fiddle and banjo music from black and Native American musicians, mostly in the Southeastern United States, which is not a genre, but a sentence.”
Jake Blount has been reinterpreting Black folk music through a modern lens, producing what he terms “Afrofuturist folklore”.
Can we please stop using the term "wheelchair bound" on MetaFilter?
Recently I have noticed several different commenters on MetaFilter using the phrase "wheelchair bound." This is a phrase that a lot of wheelchair users (including myself) find deeply objectionable, as wheelchairs actually give us freedom of movement compared to not having a wheelchair. (Also, a lot of wheelchair users are ambulatory wheelchair users, e.g. they can sometimes walk a very short distance.) The preferred term is "wheelchair user". If using it as an adjective, you can say "wheelchair using", e.g. "My wheelchair-using girlfriend."
We Guide You Home
Listen to live air traffic control radio mixed with lofi hip hop
Next Gen Nerds
Griffin McElroy, Travis McElroy, and Felicia Day host a hilarious panel at the recent AwesomeCon in DC, delving into the delight and challenges of parenting their own new generation of nerds and dorks, and how to foster that love the same weird things that their parents enjoy and create.
“To permanently become part of the beauty of the Zone”
“The Zone itself undulates between three possible descriptive modes - sublime, spooky and grotesque - and becomes controlled by players after they perish inside. Only one player will make it to The Center, and everyone else who has perished collaboratively decides their final fate, whether that’s evisceration by a plant werewolf or a slow dissolution by way of radiation.” (via) The Zone is a storytelling RPG inspired by horror works like Annihilation, Stalker, Uzumaki, and the SCP Foundation. It’s “play to lose” — players know from the start that their character will almost certainly die, which frees them up to take big risks that fuel exciting stories.
Now Immortal
Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being author dies aged 94
Czech writer Milan Kundera, who explored being and betrayal over half a century in poems, plays, essays and novels including The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has died aged 94 after a prolonged illness, Anna Mrazova, spokeswoman for the Milan Kundera Library, has confirmed.
How Did You Overcome Persistent, Obsessive Anxiety?
I recently went off anti-anxiety medication after nearly a decade. Benzos are notoriously difficult to taper, and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life — but I'm so proud of myself for doing it. Here's the problem: I now experience persistent, agonizing anxiety from morning to night. If you overcame severe anxiety, what practical steps did you take that worked for you? [more details under the fold]
Art Helps
My disability makes my body feel unpredictable
A brief and impactful comic about living with a dynamic disability and chronic pain. A lot of disabled people live in the liminal space between health and disability, trying to navigate fluctuating abilities. Making peace with that is hard.
A New Generation of Horror Writers
"We’re living in scary times. The world hasn’t felt this unsafe and uncertain for at least a generation. Common sense would dictate that in such circumstances, horror stories should fall out of favor. After all, who wants to read about monstrous things when the real world is showing its teeth?" But for those who do, here's Neil McRobert in Esquire: These Are the Writers Shaping Horror's Next Golden Age. May your TBR pile grow ever more Cyclopean.
Meet the New (Transphobic) Boss. Same as the Old (Homophobic) Boss
Shaun, YouTube lefty and agitator, presents his 2 hour treatise on Kellie-Jay Keen (AKA Posie Parker) a noted anti-feminist and transphobe. CW: transphobia (obviously), misogyny, homophobia, Nazis (both neo and classic), hate speech, etc.
I’m Deaf and have “perfect” speech. And I want to stop speaking.
Everywhere I go, people compliment me and say they wouldn’t have known I was Deaf if I hadn’t told them.
“They say it kindly, but it’s like they’re giving me a cupcake without realizing there’s a razor blade inside it. […]
Once my friends and I have ordered, we sign up a storm, talking about everything and shy about nothing. What would be the point? People are staring anyway. Our language is lavish, our faces alive. My friends discuss the food, but for me, the food is unimportant. I’m feasting on the smorgasbord of communication ― the luxury of chatting in a language that I not only understand 100% but that is a pleasure in and of itself. Taking nothing for granted, I bask in it all, and everything goes swimmingly.”
Straight men do not deserve nice hair.
It's been a long difficult week. Do you need to laugh? Matteo Lane: Hair Plugs & Heartache [47m] is a stand-up set released last month. It's queer comedy with adult ideas and language. It's also, I think, very very funny.
YUJI NAKA CRIMES UPDATE
Last year, Yuji Naka, the co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, was arrested for insider trading which occurred during his stint at Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest publisher Square Enix. After his resignation from Square Enix, he had sued the company for removing him as director on the ill-fated Balan Wonderworld. Today, Naka received a suspended prison sentence and was fined and penalized a total of 173 million yen (approx. 1.2 million USD).
Advanced Lawn Mower Simulator, and other deliberately crap games
Guardian: 'The annual CGC (Crap Games Competition) has been bringing Spectrum fans together for more than 25 years' ... “What makes the CGC entertaining is the self-deprecating, sardonic British humour,” explains 43-year-old Paul Collins from Reading, who first entered the CGC in 2000 with Pear-Shaped (“a simple maze game where you try to collect as many pears as possible”) and Crap Football, featuring a digitised Des Lynam. “There are ideas that can’t possibly work, eg Sim City: The Text Adventure or Blind Flight Simulator. Or names that are just funny, like Whack a Nun II and European Sandwich Hunt.”
‘A ribbon around a bomb’
All this, and still Kahlo led much of her life in her bedroom, alone. “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”
Frida Kahlo was born today in 1907. A brief biographical animation.
"I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and… More flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.”
"my own personal comment: lmao, it's fucking dogshit"
On July 1st, G/O Media (previously, previously, previously, previously, previously) announced they would be publishing articles created by AI. Today, under the byline Gizmodo Bot, the first AI article, an error riddled chronological listing of Star Wars stories was published. The James Whitbrook, deputy editor of Gizmodo and io9 responded, releasing a statement. (sorry, Twitter link)
Note, the article in question has not been linked. There's no need for it to get any more clicks.
They're just chippin', chippin' away, all day, every day, their own way.
Mike's Videos of Beavers
is a Youtube channel from Mike Digout in Saskatoon, who posts videos of beavers.
Beyond the rainbow.
Finding a visual way to represent an inner identity can be complicated. (WaPo Gift)
For much of American Sign Language's history, those who have had the most power to disseminate signs have been straight, White, cisgender people. The rise of video-based social media is allowing ASL to spread more rapidly and is empowering the Deaf queer community to exert more influence over American Sign Language.
“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right.”
75 years ago, the New Yorker published a new story by Shirley Jackson. Stephen King, David Sedaris, Carmen Maria Machado and others on how “The Lottery” first got under their skin. [NYT gift link]. Haven’t read it yet? Here you go.
A Labour of Love
A digital archive of graphic design related items that are available on the Internet Archives This collection is compiled and curated by Valery Marier. It is a labour of love ran in her free time.
Disturbing finds in old newspapers...
How a Grad Student Uncovered the Largest Known Slave Auction in the U.S.
Lauren Davila made a stunning discovery as a graduate student at the College of Charleston: an ad for a slave auction larger than any historian had yet identified. The find yields a new understanding of the enormous harm of such a transaction.
It's dangerous to go alone! Take this.
At the bottom of an ancient crater, in a city with buildings made of diamond, German archæologists have discovered a 3000 year old sword so perfectly preserved it 'almost shines.'
Watch a blue jay with an acorn. See that they take the caps off.
The Slow Birding project, on the pleasures of and lessons learned from carefully observing common birds, was launched 13 years ago by animal behavior biologist Joan E. Strassmann. Now it's a book. An author interview: "the reason I wrote a whole book is that I wanted to tell the stories of the commonest birds, because the commonest birds are also the most-studied, and ornithologists have figured out some pretty amazing stories about them. So I also wanted to tell the stories of both the scientists and the common birds." On blue jays: "It may well be that these brilliant colored birds are the only ones I recognize in my early morning daze."
And Also Some Women
Hosts Junia Joplin and Anne Thériault recently finished their 5 episode podcast And Also Some Women, which examines the stories of biblical women with a lively assortment of guests and scholars of feminist theology.
How a dose of MDMA transformed a white supremacist
Brendan was once a leader in the US white nationalist movement. But when he took the drug MDMA in a scientific study, it would radically change his extremist beliefs – to the surprise of everyone involved.
Wanting more than "a bit of rainbow window dressing"
There’s an idealized version of a Pride Night in my head: one night a year where a ballpark truly becomes a place where straightness is the exception and not the norm. - No Straights at Pride Night Lauren Theisen, writing about Pride Night at baseball games, the nice things that we're painfully aware we can't have, for Defector.
A Temporal Experience of Indefinite Detention
For those under electronic surveillance, the walls of a detention center reproduce themselves through technology that is heavily intertwined with migrants’ physical bodies. Immigration authorities are ever-present in the form of a bulky monitoring device strapped to one’s ankle or a smartphone app that demands you take a selfie and upload it at a certain time of day. People enrolled in Alternatives to Detention must keep these technologies charged and fully functioning in order to check in with their supervisors. For some, this dynamic transfers the role of an immigration officer onto migrants themselves. Migrants become a subject of state-sanctioned surveillance — as well as their own enforcers of it. from When your body becomes the border by Erica Hellerstein
Those ET cartridges must be rolling in their grave
Atari announces the first official cartridge, since 1990, for the venerable Atari Video Computer System2600.
Redditors, in defense of Reddit, destroy Reddit
Anger over an astronomical increase in Reddit's API prices [prev.] boiled over this week as multiple third-party app developers were forced to close down, with one -- Apollo dev Christian Selig -- posting a scathing exposé detailing the company's shady dealings... including a recorded phone call disproving CEO Steve "spez" Huffman's claim that Selig blackmailed them. Huffman took to the site's vaunted AMA format to do damage control, only to double down, ignore tough questions, and reap thousands of downvotes. In response, the community has organized a massive subreddit "blackout" to protest the rate hike that will bankrupt popular apps, hamper critical moderation tools, and exclude blind users. While such protests are not new, this one is unprecedented in scope: 20,000+ mods from over 7,000 subreddits with more than 2 billion collective readers, from familiar mainstays like /r/aww, /r/videos, and /r/todayilearned to niche subs like /r/Eragon and /r/Panda. Facing layoffs, a major pre-IPO valuation cut, and a runaway user revolt reminiscent of Digg [prev.], could this be the end of the "front page of the internet"? Watch the site wink out in real time [livestream], join the fight on /r/Save3rdPartyApps and /r/ModCoord, backup your data, or check out some up-and-coming /r/RedditAlternatives.
If You Have Raw Feelings Related to Recent Fires, This Could Be Rough
Fire escapes are a hacky bit of afterthought tacked on to the outside of a building after the building is finished. If you're using fire escapes, it's worth making them as good as possible, but you’ll prevent more fires if you build better buildings. Similarly, incident response is often a hacky bit of afterthought tacked on long after software is released. Again, great incident response can help you recover faster than if you don’t have it but… you’ll prevent more outages if you build better software. Finally, buildings have an extremely detailed fire code, but we don't really have an extremely detailed systems engineering code for software, and I think we should have. from The History of Fire Escapes
"I am not your Fleshlight."
The Vindication of Ariana Madix
It’s familiar territory for any woman who has been cheated on: You weren’t giving your man enough time, you always talked down to him, you never wanted to have sex, you weren’t supportive enough.
sometimes, it *is* lupus
After a traumatic experience in college, April Burrell was catatonic for twenty years. She was diagnosed with a severe form of schizophrenia which did not respond to treatment.
“She was the first person I ever saw as a patient,” said Sander Markx, director of precision psychiatry at Columbia University, who was still a medical student in 2000 when he first encountered April. “She is, to this day, the sickest patient I’ve ever seen.”
Fun Guy Genius
“If you had no head, no heart, no center of operations,” he began. “If you could taste with your whole body. If you could take a fragment of your toe or your hair and it would grow into a new you — and hundreds of these new yous could fuse together into some impossibly large togetherness. And when you wanted to get around, you would produce spores, this little condensed part of you that could travel in the air.”Merlin Sheldrake, The Man Who Turned the World on to the Genius of Fungi. (NYT Guest Link, Archive Link)
100+ Years of Yuri
Okazu is the internet's longest-running blog devoted to the study and review of yuri, a genre of manga and anime featuring romances between women and girls. Run by noted yuri expert and historian Erica Friedman, Okazu features loads of reviews ranging from recent series to untranslated classics. There are also essays galore. And if you're new to yuri, you can also find recommendations on where to start.
Overlooked! A detail in The Shining that you’ve never seen...
Stanley Kubrick scholar Filippo Ulivieri shares a hidden, almost subliminal aspect of Jack Nicholson's performance in The Shining: quick, unsettling glances that break the fourth wall. (SLYT)
Eventually even the worst stuff crosses the US-Canada border
Inside the fundamentalist Christian movement that wants to remake Canadian politics.
TW: anti-trans comments, suicide
RIP 3rd party Reddit clients
Reddit has announced its pricing for 3rd party app developers to access its API... and it's a lot higher than expected. The creator of the popular iOS Apollo client estimates it'll cost him $20 million/year to pay for all his users' API access, far beyond what he can afford. The change will affect all Reddit clients, with the developer of Android app Reddit is Fun assuming they want all third party apps gone.
The future is being made now
"Citizen Sleeper asks you to decide if escape is possible. It took several minutes of impasse and tears and not touching my controller, for fear of making a decision before I was ready, for me to know what I thought about that question. Citizen Sleeper gives you several potential answers and in the ones that resonated with me was the kind of deep personal freedom you only find, sure enough, through community.
Citizen Sleeper is about disability and body dysmorphia and the inevitability of corruption, and it is about the things that grow among and around those things. The antidotes and the byproducts. "
Citizen Sleeper is about disability and body dysmorphia and the inevitability of corruption, and it is about the things that grow among and around those things. The antidotes and the byproducts. "
This is my idea of fun / Playin' video games
Gender biases in fictional dialogue are well documented in many media. In film, television and books, female characters tend to talk less than male characters, talk to each other less than male characters talk to each other, and have a more limited range of things to say. Identifying these biases is an important step towards addressing them. However, there is a lack of solid data for video games, now one of the major mass media which has the ability to shape conceptions of gender and gender roles. We present the Video Game Dialogue Corpus, the first large-scale, consistently coded corpus of video game dialogue, which makes it possible for the first time to measure and monitor gender representation in video game dialogue. It demonstrates that there is half as much dialogue from female characters as from male characters. Some of this is due to a lack of female characters, but there are also biases in who female characters speak to, and what they say. [Gender bias in video game dialogue]