CurioBot

A History of Now: Via my friend Rishi, this is an interesting, beautifully-designed and VERY CHEWY website which basically addresses the lightweight concept of, er, TIME and HUMANITY’S CONCEPTION THEREOF via the medium of a lot of text and a nicely-animated scrolly timeline; look, I appreciate that this isn’t exactly a fulsome explanation but, well, YOU click on the link and check it out and come back and tell me exactly how you’d attempt to explain this in a pithy 100 words or so. SEE? IT’S NOT FCUKING EASY, THIS CURIOS LARK. Oh, fine, ok, here’s a little overview that will hopefully communicate a bit about what’s going on here: “The central and vertical line represents human history, with earlier years above and later years below. As you scroll down and peruse the following essay, you are moving forward from more ancient to less ancient, all the way up to the present day. The large black numbers record passing decades. You are looking at a timeline. As you scroll, contemporaneous estimates of the size of the past and future will come into view and pass by. These are the red horizontal lines. Every time a prominent historical figure or scientist made a numerical prediction concerning the length of the past and/or future, it is recorded here, with the predictor’s name, the year their prediction was published, and the numbers they proposed all appearing in red.” This is really interesting, if a touch dizzying.

A History of Now

https://historyofnow.antikythera.org/
https://bsky.app/profile/betarish.bsky.social

A Lovely Bit of Satisfying Interactive Animation: This is a showcase website for a company called, annoyingly ‘h’, which does digital interaction design and which here has put together a GORGEOUS little visual demonstrating their chops; click the link and play with the little digital Rube Goldberg contraption and watch as it all moves and clunks and animates with such DELIGHTFUL style, and, if you’re me, find yourself thinking ‘I wish every website in the world had this sort of cute and charming approach to interaction design’. Obviously if that were the case then the entire web would run at the speed of basically treacle and it would be incredibly annoying, but it would also be SO pretty and, well, nothing works properly anyway anymore so why not make that ineffectual frustration PRETTY at the very least?

A Lovely Bit of Satisfying Interactive Animation

https://interaction.hnine.com/

Kenney: Would YOU like to make videogames? Would YOU like an entirely-free library of assets that you might use to do so? OH GREAT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS!!! Look, I am not a gamedev, aspirant or otherwise, and I haven’t explored this too deeply, but, as far as I can tell, it is just a NICE and GENEROUS-SPIRITED endeavour which is basically a godsend for anyone looking to spin up an indie game.

Kenney

https://kenney.nl/

Alto: Do YOU have a Mac? Do YOU use Apple Notes? Would YOU like something that will turn said Apple Notes into an ACTUAL WEBSITE with (basically) a single click? GREAT! “Alto turns your Apple Notes into a website.You can create a blog or a website. Or just share few notes with your friends or colleagues. Every Apple Note becomes a page on your site. You can use text, images, audio, video etc.” I don’t have a mac, I don’t use apple notes and as such this is literally meaningless to me, but, well, I do this for YOU and YOU might find this useful in some weird way.

Alto

https://alto.so/

Roofball: This is VERY North American and will require you to have quite a specific type of house/roof – equally, though, it feels that you could probably tweak the ruleset to apply to a whole host of dwelling types, so you can almost certainly adapt this for your bungalow in Tring (NB – I don’t, of course, know where any of you live, so in the unlikely event that it *is* in fact in a bungalow in Tring, rest assured that this is pure coincidence and I am not in fact stalking you with a view to one day wearing your epidermis like some sort of bloody, millimeter-thick dressing gown. Honest). Roofball is a WHOLESOME GAME FOR ALL THE FAMILY, played with an American football or rugby ball, and a roof; as far as I can tell this is just something that some guys in the US invented while bored, which they then decided to make a website for and which has developed a small but dedicated community of enthusiasts around it – there are TOURNAMENTS and LEAGUE TABLES and, well, it’s just sort of charming really. If nothing else I recommend watching the explanatory video, which has incredibly-pleasing ‘37 views on YouTube’ energy to it (also, WHY ARE ALL THE MEN IN IT SO FCUKING ENORMOUS? DO THEY EAT NOTHING BUT STEAK AND MILK???? Based on this, I very much do not have the physique for a roofball career).

Roofball

https://roofball.org/

Calligrapher: This site will create SIGNATURES! Give it a name, pick from one of a selection of different handwriting styles, and watch as it crafts something plausibly-human-looking on demand. What’s interesting about this is that it’s doing it on the fly somehow – each new signature is seemingly rendered from scratch rather than just being a fixed expression of some under-the-hoor parameters, and it’s quite interesting (ok, I am stretching this slightly but it is early and I am VERY tired) to see the different ways in which the ‘handwriting’ presents. This is unlikely to have any practical application whatsoever unless you need to create several hundred unique, fictitious signatures at pace (and, if you do need to do that, would you mind taking a moment to drop me a line and explain what the fcuk you’re doing with them?).

Calligrapher

https://www.calligrapher.ai/

Google Without AI: This might be worth bookmarking should you be getting sick of the increasingly-ubiquitous AI summaries infecting every corner of the Google experience; this is basically a layer atop Google search which adds a string to all your queries meaning that all the AI summary cruft is stripped out, along with sponsored links, and you in theory get the PURE SEARCH EXPERIENCE. This…just works, and while it’s not super-exciting it’s not a bad idea to pin it somewhere as the base version of Google becomes ever more useless; you can also pretend that you’re doing something to prevent the traffic apocalypse that’s going to see 75% of the web disappear as traffic, and therefore revenue, falls off a cliff (you’re not, though, you’re just sitting, Cnutlike, as the digital waters lap gently at your knees).

Google Without AI

https://www.no-ads.tech/

Tender: This, though, this I like – a single-note gag, but a REALLY NICE ONE. Tender is an app – iOS only – which works like a dating app except instead of being fed a series of pictures of potential new partners, it instead only serves you images of YOUR beloved, and only lets you swipe right; basically it’s nothing more than a photo carousel of someone you care for, but, well, it’s a cute idea, and it plays pleasingly with the very online concept of the WIFE GUY in a manner I find pleasing. WELL DONE, anonymous internet stranger who created this, for making something genuinely nice!

Tender

https://trytender.app/

Tea: This, though, is a fcuking TERRIBLE idea which feels like a lawsuit (or worse) waiting to happen – the premise behind tea is, seemingly, “there are a lot of really bad men out there on dating apps; why don’t we create a women-only whisper network that will allow for the sharing of details and stories about said BAD MEN to protect women everywhere from being messed-with on the apps by these appalling actors?”, and, honestly, if you can’t immediately understand why that is a genuinely-awful idea then, well, what the fcuk is wrong with you you moron. Would YOU like there to exist an app where anyone can go and tell the world you’re a heel, a d1ck, a bore, a dullard or significantly worse, seemingly with impunity, and have that information attached to you for evermore? I posit that you would in fact not, but, well, here we are! Obviously I am a man and I get that my experience of navigating the world and dealing with threats, etc, is significantly different to that experienced by women, but, equally, this sounds like an all-round Bad Idea: “Already swiping for dates on Tinder, Bumble, Match, or Hinge? Tea is a must-have app, helping women avoid red flags before the first date with dating advice, and showing them who’s really behind the profile of the person they’re dating. Users can access a nationwide forum of posts and can set alerts for a man’s name so you never miss any tea about your potential date, ex, or partner, and so you can make sure they are not a cheater. Users can anonymously ask for dating and relationship advice to find support and empowerment from our community of verified women.” US-only, as far as I can tell, and hopefully something that will be consigned to the dustbin of history very soon.

Tea

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tea-dating-advice/id6444453051

Lovejack: How’s your personal search for love and companionship going? Have you managed to find another meaty sack of neuroses and anxiety with whom to stare into the looming, apocalyptic future? LUCKY YOU! For anyone, though, still struggling to find another human being with whom to share experiences and mucus with, and who’s simply exhausted an enervated by the “ROAST!” enthusiasts on Hinge, the sexual incontinents on Tinder or the normies cosplaying as fetishists on Feeld, there is an EXCITING NEW DATING PROPOSITION to momentarily raise your hopes before doubtless crushing them again a few days later. Lovejack is a dating app with a simple, singular gimmick – your profile is just five words, and a photo, and NO MORE. You can change those five words as often as you like, and there are daily prompts for inspiration, and you previous selections are available as a profile’s ‘history’, letting anyone theoretically interested in you check back through your previous five words to see whether you’ve said anything potentially-worrying like, I don’t know, “I Like Bleeding Dogs Dry”. Conversation is centred around these prompts, the idea being that you will ask people about the stories behind their slogans – but, as far as I can tell, messaging is limited to five words and you’re encouraged to voicenote people instead. I…I don’t hate this as a concept, I have to say – the idea of being forced into some sort ot verbal creativity appeals to me, though I have a vague sense that this will only really work for people who have a true Poster’s Soul and won’t really fly for normies; that said, if you’re the sort of person who can read “W4nk or cry? EXISTENTIAL DILEMMA!” and think “yes this is my soulmate” then this could be for YOU (no idea if this is available in the UK or not or indeed if more than approximately three people are using it, fyi, but, well, why not give it a go?).

Lovejack

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/lovejack-wordplay-dating-game/id6737787497

Dad Water: So this isn’t actually a particularly interesting link – it’s a website promoting a drinks brand, the site does the square root of fcuk all and it’s not even particularly nicely-designed. BUT! THE PRODUCT IS CALLED ‘DAD WATER’ FFS! WHO SIGNED THIS OFF? WHO DECIDED THAT ‘YES, WE WANT OUR REPELLENT-SOUNDING DRINK PRODUCT TO HAVE A NAME THAT SOUNDS LITERALLY LIKE OLD MAN P1SS’???? Seriously, is this a ‘lost in translation, two nations divided by a single language’ transatlantic misunderstanding thing? Can any North Americans reading this explain to me how you can read the brandname ‘Dad Water’ and not immediately think, just to reiterate, of DAD URINE??? Is it…is it a ‘me’ problem? I really hope it isn’t. Also, just as an additional kick in the ribs to one of the worst pieces of branding I have seen in a long, long time, the drinks sound DISGUSTING – it’s basically watery, flavoured ‘tequila drinks’, which are also uncarbonated, suggesting they will taste almost but not exactly like a cocktail overfilled with ice which has been left til its so dilute any suggestion of flavour is homeopathic at best. Oh, and possibly my favourite bit of this is that the various different flavour options have ACTUAL HUMAN NAMES? “What are the names?”, I hear you ask; well, they are “Tom, Steve, Rodney, and Gary” (ngl, I do actually rather love this – “pass me another can of Gary” is something I am slightly-sad I’m unlikely to ever be able to meaningfully say.

Dad Water

https://drinkdadwater.com/

Mirage: Ooh, this is fun – Mirage is basically an in-browser AI filter which takes your camera feed and adds a layer of GenAI sparkle to what it ‘sees’, turning you, variously, into a cartoon version of yourself, a Minecraft version of yourself, some sort of horrible parody of one of the characters in Frozen…basically it’s a tech demo for software which, the implication is, revolutionise SFX and the like by simply rendering in realtime, and it’s undeniably VERY impressive, even if I was deeply hurt and depressed by how OLD all the cartoon versions of me look (I AM NOT THAT WRINKLY EVEN IN REAL LIFE FFS, WHY DOES FROZEN MATT LOOK LIKE FCUKING METHUSELAH???). There’s quite a big (and…quite unpleasant) uncanny valley vibe to all this, with quite a few of the different filters making you (or at least me) look like the waxen-fleshed horrorshow mocaps of The Polar Express, but, equally, there’s something undeniably compelling about how it just…works, in your browser, without sending your laptop into an existential crisis, and I think a music video filmed like this might be fun in a low-budget, slightly-shonky sort of way. Give it a go, I promise you will be impressed – oh, and if you want to see something horrible, make a lot of exaggerated mouth movements and stick your tongue out, it goes VERY weird when trying to cope with rendering teeth and the rest, and you will be pleasantly-horrified by how unholy the results are.

Mirage

https://mirage.decart.ai/

Emojitracker: A RESURRECTED WEBSITE! Emojitracker was a very web2.0 proposition developed WAAAAAY back in 2013 and scraping data from Twitter to populate its rankings of popular emoji use worldwide; obviously Twitter is now X and now useless, with its API access rendered prohibitively expensive and populated by nazis, scammers, pornographers and the genuinely mad, all presided over by that horrible racist apartheid toad, but, in a rare moment of positivity for 2025, Emojitracker is BACK! “Emojitracker is a tool tracking all the emojis copied from Emojipedia and GetEmoji in real time. The latest version of the Emojitracker shows the most popular 1,000 emojis both globally and across select countries”, explains the blurb – obviously the way they’re pulling data means it’s perhaps not *wholly* representative or accurate, but absent any sort of data from the big social platforms which would render this a little more statistically representative it’s not a terrible proxy, and there’s something undeniably-interesting about the ability to see which emoji are most popular and how that varies from country to country. At present the big red heart is leading the global rankings, with the green checkmark an inexplicable second, but I’m far more interested in the country-by-country variations in popularity; both the UK and US have the cry/laugh emoji in second place (the most basic of all the emoji, do not attempt to dispute this), while in India the heart/hands symbol has the country in a weird chokehold with the ‘bandaged heart’ symbol also showing up high in the rankings, a fact which has momentarily made me feel quite emo about everything. Special mention to the Brazilians, who, while also succumbing to the heart’s supremacy, have the oddly-sexy ‘biting lip’ emoji in second place which is exactly the sort of unbridled symbolic eroticism that you might hope for. Anyway, part of me thinks there’s something halfway-interesting you might be able to do with this from the point of view of FUN AND INTERESTING ANALYSIS or even some superficial brandw4nk, should any of you be interested in exploring this further (you won’t, though, will you? Lazy fcuks).

Emojitracker

https://emojitracker.com/
https://emojipedia.org/
https://getemoji.com/

Draw A Fish: There aren’t, I don’t think, enough web experiences that afford one the opportunity to BECOME A GOD; I’m firmly of the belief that our online lives would be improved significantly if only more websites existed to allow us to explore the power fantasies denied us by the tedious, futile mundanity of corporeal existence (HI! HAPPY FRIDAY! I’M HERE FOR A GOOD AND UPLIFTING TIME!!!!). I can’t pretend that Draw A Fish will have you feeling *quite* like some sort of deity, but if you’ve ever thought ‘you know what? The creeping sense of existential dread I feel every morning upon opening my eyes and remembering who I am and what I am about to experience might be somewhat lessened by the illusory feeling of control over a small, unaware being which owed its existence entirely to my whims’ then a) I would strongly consider some sort of therapeutic intervention, that is not a normal thing to think or feel; and b) you might well enjoy Draw A Fish, you sick weirdo fcuk. Ahem. So, basically, this is a very simple fish simulator in which you create a digital piscine pal and drop it into a shared aquarium with everyone else’s fish to see how it fares – the twist, though, is that you create your fish by drawing it – there’s some sort of rudimentary image recognition going on whereby your design will be cross-referenced against some sort of platonic ideal of ‘what a fish is meant to look like’, and its swimming ability and survival prospects will be affected by how much it looks like, say, a tench vs looking like a pair of slightly-sodden pants. I LOVE MY MISSHAPEN AQUATIC SONS! Ok, this is pretty simple and there’s not a whole load of sophistication happening here, but I think there’s something really rather interesting in the base level idea, and it got me thinking how fun it might be were this to be extended slightly to animals beyond fish – wouldn’t it be fun to make something which takes the base premise and then affords people the ability to create an entire digital menagerie and ecosystem based solely on their doodles? YES IT WOULD BE FUN. Still, until someone builds that to my exacting specifications, I suggest you click the link and try and draw something toothy, terrifying and streamlined – you will inevitably end up creating something vaguely-goldfishlike, but it’s good to have aspirations, even at 710am.

Draw A Fish

https://drawafish.com/

Finally this week, YOU MUST WATCH THIS VIDEO, I AM NOT JOKING. Seriously, the song’s not really my thing at all but the video is…amazing. Not joking, I think this might be the most impressive bit of editing I have ever seen, ever, in a music vid, and in a weird way also one of the best depictions of what it feels like to Be Online. See what you think, but I am personally of the opinion that this is absolute fcuking genius and maybe you’ll agree with me; it’s called Infohazard and it’s by Ninajirachi and THAT’S ALL I HAVE I AM SPENT AND EMPTY AND SO TIRED I MIGHT BE SICK I LOVE YOU SEE YOU NEXT WEEK BYE!

VIDEO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2ZdeIKJA8c

I’ve been putting Elro’s videos in Curios for TIME now, and I’m glad he’s still at it; mainly producing now, but he’s back on mic duties too for this track with Vibe Chemistry which sounds like Sans Beanstalk but without the irony; it is VERY Deano, but, also…quite fun? Anyway, I liked this LOADS more than I thought I was going to, and maybe you will too – it’s called ‘Burst My Bubble’.

VIDEO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZejkWQyJOU

Our last video this week is from electronica wizard Max Cooper, whose live shows are always notable for their killer visuals – his latest tour is set to be no exception, based on this cracking piece of animation to accompany new single ‘True Under Certain Conditions’ and THAT IS YOUR LOT I LOVE YOU SEE YOU NEXT WEEK UNLESS I HAVE SOME SORT OF FATIGUE-RELATED EPISODE BYE!

VIDEO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwqPXySwMS8

This is another reader submission, oddly enough – although I don’t think Hemant Mehta who recommended it to me is in the band this time (sincere apologies if I’m wrong about this, Hemant). Anyway, this is ALSO good – it’s called ‘The Butter’, it’s by Abby Walker, it’s a good song, vaguely-folky with a pleasingly-filthy edge to the lyrics and a video which I genuinely enjoyed. THANKYOU READERS FOR SUGGESTING GOOD THINGS!

VIDEO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoxbQgC0WTI

Ok, I need to be clear with you here – the song is, sadly, garbage, and really doesn’t fit the video at all; the video, though…the video is MAJESTIC and a WORK OF ART and a truly incredible labour of claymation love by long-term (15 years!) Curios favourite Lee Hardcastle, and it’s worth watching even if you have to mute the song because, honestly, it really is terrible. This is Tech Noir 2, and it is ASTONISHING.

VIDEO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlUJTtBphb0

Disneyland of the Dead: On London’s cemeteries, and Highgate in particular, and the peculiar challenges involved in maintaining and preserving places where dead people rest. I loved this, although I maintain that Brompton is London’s best cemetery by miles, even if it can’t boast Marx.

Disneyland of the Dead

https://longreads.com/2025/07/22/problem-of-burying-dead-bodies/
https://www.royalparks.org.uk/visit/parks/brompton-cemetery

GenZ and Location Sharing: I don’t have regular enough access to GenZ/A people be able to ask them about this, but maybe you can confirm or deny whether this is true – do kids these days like sharing their location with each other on apps all the time? Is this a thing? Or is it just a few kids in SF, written up by the Chronicle as though it’s representative of an entire generation? ENQUIRING MINDS NEED TO KNOW, basically because if it *is* true then my slightly-jokey ‘privacy is dead forever’ comment up there is probably not actually a joke at all.

GenZ and Location Sharing

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/gen-z-spying-on-each-other-20764888.php

How Spotify Distorts Genre History: It feels a BIT unfair to pin this solely on Spotify to be honest, but everyone seems to be lining up to give them a kicking at the moment and, well, Daniel Ek takes money from art and gives it to bombmakers, so fair enough really. Really, though, this is a story about the generally incomplete status of digital archiving and cataloguing, and the realisation that we seem to be slowly coming to that we might actually have lost an awful lot of our past cultural patrimony due to media decay and a failure to realise that nothing lasts forever. This is really interesting, and it feels like there is a decent campaign idea in this for the right brand if you ask me (it’s not hard to imagine some fashion labels that could work within this space, for example). “Regular listeners to streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon will recognise the sensation of songs served up on auto-play getting steadily more generic from one track to the next, offering crowdpleasers in the hope of keeping people on the app. While services like Spotify give the appearance of infinite choice, in operation they revert to the familiar. When this is applied to an underground movement such as drum ’n’ bass, important parts of its history go missing or get mixed up. Ragga jungle hits like Uncle 22’s “Six Million Ways To Die” or Trinity’s “Gangster” are elusive. Searching for Shy FX and UK Apachi’s landmark anthem “Original Nuttah” points you to an inferior 25th anniversary remake on a different label. The work of many innovators such as Danny Breaks, Krust, DJ Crystl and Peshay is often listed with a release date well after it first dropped, giving the impression that drum ’n’ bass rose to prominence years after it actually did. Some of this confusion is caused by the ad hoc business arrangements and magpie sampling practices of the early 1990s, where tracing (and proving) the ownership of particular tracks is difficult. Combined with the layers of data analysis and gatekeeping at a corporation such as Spotify, however, and independent music becomes marginalised in favour of the sanitised, commodified and establishment.”

How Spotify Distorts Genre History

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/collateral-damage/against-the-grain-derek-walmsley-on-how-spotify-distorts-music-s-histories

The Substack AI Report: Or, ‘the not-wholly-surprising data about the extent to which writers on Substack are using AI’ – basically if you read enough of the mid-ranking crap on the platform (and Dear God, do I read some crap) then you will quickly become familiar with Substack Voice, which betrays…certain common hallmarks of writing which has at least been given the once-over by The Machine. This post, from Substack itself, notes that nearly half of the writers they spoke to used AI in their posts – which is…a lot! THIS IS THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM YOU KNOW!!! If the Nazis aren’t enough to put you off, maybe this will be?

The Substack AI Report

https://on.substack.com/p/the-substack-ai-report

A Baker Contemplates Her Own Obsolescence: I really enjoyed this essay – a discursive piece about the author’s feelings about AI, the ethics of using it, and the reality of our environmental impact on a day-to-day basis. Bronwen Wyatt is a baker, and, along with many other professions, AI is making incursions on her profession – whether to create images of impossibly beautiful cakes to accompany blogposts, to tidy up recipe copy, to convert ingredient measurements. In this piece, Wyatt acknowledges the environmental issues currently causing so many people to push back against GenAI tech, and, without dismissing them, makes some excellent points about why maybe it’s not quite that simple and we are not quite that pure.  “I do not think it is possible to maintain an ethical boundary between the use of generative AI and other types of machine learning, as these models are increasingly interwoven in nearly every technological tool we use. I think many of us tend to think of AI as a monolith, rather than a dizzying array of instruments. My father-in-law used generative AI for voice banking, which would eventually reproduce the sound of his voice when he lost it to ALS.  If your primary concern is AI’s carbon footprint, then you can take steps to mitigate that, such as avoiding using generative AI to make videos, which does draw a great deal of energy. You might also consider other actions that would have a far greater impact, like eating a more plant-based diet.”

A Baker Contemplates Her Own Obsolescence

https://cakezine.substack.com/p/a-baker-contemplates-her-own-obsolescence

Texts as Toys: This is VERY LONG – perhaps too long (pottle!) – by Venkatesh Rao, but I rather like the general thrust of the argument; to whit, when considering LLMs and ‘working’ with them, at least on exploratory/thinky stuff, it’s helpful to think of them as ludic partners, and the relationship with any text that you give The Machine or receive from The Machine as a fundamentally-playful one. “Our expectations of AI end up mismatched with reality not because it is particularly poor as a modeling medium, but because the misregistrations arise from its toy-like nature. AI models are “wrong” about reality in the same ways toys are “wrong” about reality. A model of a real rocket, for example, might be highly realistic in some ways. With the right kind of trick photography, you might even be fooled into thinking it’s the real thing. But then if you examine other aspects, you’ll find weird “mistakes.” It is made of plastic, not metal! The human capsule is way too small to hold humans! To have the right expectations of AI outputs, we must approach it not just as a modeling medium, but as a toy-like modeling medium. The misregistrations are going to be the misregistrations of toys. Not those of serious adult modeling technologies like maps and mathematics.”

Texts as Toys

https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/texts-as-toys

Some Thoughts on Age Verification: It’s been one of those weird weeks when the Americans have briefly turned their attention to the UK to point and laugh at us thanks to the…less-than-stellar rollout of the age verification portion of the Online Safety Act; this piece by James Ball gives a decent overview of what some of the problems are with age verification, and while I don’t personally agree with all the things he says here (I am personally significantly more relaxed about the ‘slippery slope’ aspects of this stuff than he is, for example) I think there are a number of points in here that are worth thinking about – fwiw, though, I think until there’s a unified, pan-platform approach to this stuff it will all be practically unenforceable anyway (unless there’s a move towards digital ID, which feels quite a long way off and would be unlikely to get through Parliament in any case, I think). Oh, and for anyone reading this who bought the whole ‘AND NOW KEIR STARMER IS GOING TO BAN VPNS!!!!!’ hysteria, it is literally a bullsh1t story based on quotes from a backbencher in 2022, do some fcuking due diligence ffs.

Some Thoughts on Age Verification

https://www.jamesrball.com/p/okay-so-age-verification-is-pretty

The Long Shadow of Southport: While we’re on the topic, this is an interesting piece by journalist James Parris, who made a documentary about the year anniversary of both the tragic child murders and the subsequent violence for Channel 4 and who writes about his experiences of filming in the area (for Unherd, which, as ever, gives me a slight ick to link to) – this is well-written, balanced and fair, I think, and doesn’t attempt to gloss over either some of the local anger or the way in which that anger has been stoked and manipulated by (again!) certain vested interests; this section in particular felt true to me: “Does Keir Starmer understand that this is a problem of the emotions, just as much as a problem of policy? Boss writes that “the greater the ambiguity surrounding one’s loss, the more difficult it is to master it”. What has the Prime Minister delivered but greater and greater ambiguity? In May, Starmer gave a major speech on immigration, presumably designed as an exercise in listening with a capital L. “Fair rules,” he said, “…give shape to our values.” Without them, he claimed, “we risk becoming an island of strangers”. Two months later, however, he doubled back and said he deeply regretted saying “island of strangers” at all. The people I have met over the last nine months believe they are already living on that island of strangers: estranged from an older, better version of England. It does not matter that the country they mourn is half-remembered and half-imagined. What matters is that they feel the loss deeply.” Frightened, uncertain people being sold a vision of a glorious past that never was by racists with something to gain – it’s a tale as old as time!

The Long Shadow of Southport

https://archive.is/20250727231514/https://unherd.com/2025/07/the-long-shadow-of-southport/

The Side Effects of the Cocaine: This is a comic about David Bowie being VERY VERY VERY high on gak in Berlin – the period when he lived with Lou Reed and famously kept bottles of his p1ss in the fridge because he was worried that otherwise the FBI might somehow siphon it out of his toilet and use it for NEFARIOUS PURPOSES. It is…quite mad, but, then again, considering the subject matter that feels kind of appropriate I think.

The Side Effects of the Cocaine

https://www.tumblr.com/thesideeffectsofthecocaine/30013020597/the-side-effects-of-the-cocaine-david-bowie-01

Face Of Robin: In the absence of any decent browsergames this week – WHAT THE FCUK WHERE ARE MY GAMES FFS – I instead present to you what I think is one of the oddest sites ever submitted to Curios by a reader. This is the home of Robin – or, more specifically, Robin’s face – and a bunch of weird, creative, silly, pointless, moderately-unsettling webprojects that Robin has built. I am going to give you the opening ‘manifesto’ as I think it sets the tone quite nicely – “Everyone needs a symbol, a stamp, an identifying image which is undeniably theirs. This is me, this symbol is me, and it is The Face. This is The Face. In and of itself it means nothing, it is not an anti war icon, it is nor a pro life image, it simply is The Face. The ultimate goal of The Face is to be seen by everyone. The Face will someday be a universally recognizable icon which means nothing. Please try not to over analyze it. It’s just The Face. The Face is unmistakably mine, and The Face will be there looking at you long after I’m gone. The Face is how I present myself to the world. And to the world I will present myself. As you can see, The Face has been all over, here, and there. I encourage you to take a face from the site, and take it everywhere. May my face bring you as much comfort as you need as it has given me much more than I deserve.” Do you…do you get the vibe? As Robin said when he wrote to me, “I have a couple of projects that I’ve been tinkering with for a while and thought I’d send them along for your consideration. Number 1 – The Wordle Creations Archive – I’ve been taking the Wordle word every day this year and been making little web things every day using a variety of AI and web tools. Some are interesting and some are not. Number 2 – – Pure Moods Web player – Remember Pure Moods? I sure do. I decided there needed to be a website that lets you hear the infomercial and play the tracks on the web.” Basically this is MAD AND WEIRD AND DEEP AND CONFUSING AND SILLY AND QUITE POSSIBLY ART, and I love it. Also, I think the dress featuring The Face Of Robin might be one of the most unsettling articles of clothing I have ever seen in my life.

Face Of Robin

https://faceofrobin.com/
http://faceofrobin.com/2025
http://puremoods.faceofrobin.com

Dogecore: NOT THAT DOGE DO NOT WORRY! This is (sorry) an actual online clothes shop, but OH MY GOD do I love the tshirts. Sadly this is very much not my aesthetic, but I sort of wish it was – honestly, if I could get away with wearing this I would wear it SO HARD. Also, the blog is pleasingly-unhinged. I like this very much indeed and maybe you will too.

Dogecore

https://www.dogecore.com/
https://www.dogecore.com/products/go-piss-girl?variant=45431251009811
https://www.dogecore.com/blogs/news