[blogs] 15 Years of Feeling Listless … Stuart Ian Burns on blogging for 15 years … ‘As we discussed last time, the newer social media has all but killed new old-form blogs. On the odd occasion I do visit Facebook, I do see writing which even ten years ago would have naturally fitted on blogs and tweetstorms are the same. I’m often seeing people posting screen grabs of text on twitter so they can get all their thoughts down and always think it would be easier if they had a blogspot.’

[life] Man Hates Being Put In Position Where He Has To Think, Feel, Or Act … ‘I swear, everywhere I go, people expect me to take some matter or another into consideration, display some sort of emotion in response, and perhaps even do something about it…’

[comics] Cartoonist Garry Trudeau on the GOP’s “Natural Born Toon” … Garry Trudeau on Donald Trump … ‘I just put him in the strip. And it was an early transfer-easy transfer. He wasn’t a parody exactly; he was really more like a natural born toon. I just took him out of the box, removed the tags and put him right into the strip. And I think he’s-you know, he’s like a version of Daffy Duck, I mean, in terms of his appearance, the silly way in which he talks, the over-the-top self-regard. All these things just made him a perfect cartoon character. And so, I just had him interact with the other characters as a peer, and they interact with him as just a, you know, comic strip colleague. And I didn’t have to make any adjustments. I would take the things he said and reframe them in a way, you know, to maximize the satiric purpose of it, but I didn’t have to do much in terms of exaggerating, the way you normally do in a parody.’

[comics] Gallery of Art from Akira … collection of title pages from Young Magazine …

[history] Interview with Joseph Goebbels’ 105-year-old secretary … ‘But really, I didn’t do anything other than type in Goebbels’ office.’

[tubes] Diamond Geezer takes the World Record for the fastest time visting every station on the Night Tube on Opening Night … ‘Guinness’s pernickety rules don’t allow a single challenger with incomplete evidence to claim the world record, so my time of 3 hours, 24 minutes and 7 seconds won’t be officially ratified. It’s also true that the Night Tube network is as yet incomplete, so all I’ve done is visit every station on the first two lines, which isn’t anywhere near the final tally. But when all five lines are running it’ll be totally impossible to cover the entire Night Tube in one night, so I’ve grabbed the record while someone can, and now it’s mine.’

[tech] Top 10 least-loved emojis … There are a lot of Emoji – and some are used more than others … ‘From the “what-were-they-thinking” department comes Lock with Ink Pen 🔏. Locks are good. Ink pens are good. So why are they together? Emojipedia speculates that it was meant to relate to cryptographic key signing in some way. This emoji feels like it escaped from the toolbar of Adobe Acrobat circa 1996.’

[games] These Mysterious Symbols Have Been in 19 Video Games and No One Knows Why … interesting video games mystery from Vice Gaming … ‘Either way, the sigils and glyphs have all the makings of an alternate-reality game (ARG), where players collaborate on solving a mystery spread across the digital and physical world. Some of the most famous ARGs, like Halo 2’s “I Love Bees,” had participants standing at pay phones waiting for secret messages to push them one step closer to answers. Other clues have been known to be spectrographically hidden in audio files. To wit: One sigil was found by decoding the morse code hidden in another sigil found in the otherwise innocuous mobile game Slide the Shakes. The morse code spelled out a set of coordinates in Los Angeles, California, which led someone to find a hidden USB drive. On that drive was-of course-another sigil.’

[tv] Twin Peaks Captions … Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace in Twin Peaks …

[comics] Peter Bagge’s Neat Stuff paved the way for Hate-and the ’90s alt-comics boom … looking back at Peter Bagge’s Neat Stuff … ‘What was always great about Neat Stuff-and what makes those comics so exciting to read even today-is that they had the look of something disposable, but with a sneaky level of ambition and depth. One panel at a time, Bagge pulls readers into the lives of the Leeways or the Bradley family, taking what seems like tossed-off humor pieces and gradually revealing an uncanny understanding of human nature and the realities of modern American life. It’s no coincidence that Simpsons creator Matt Groening provided a quote for the cover of the first Bradleys book collection back in 1989. He recognized in Neat Stuff a kindred spirit…’

[gaming] Everything I Knew about Graphic Design I Learned from Ultimate Play the Game … Remembering Ultimate Play the Game – and the imapact they had on UK Gaming in the 1980s … ‘Everything about Ultimate Play The Game was kind of mysterious and seductive. The company’s name itself didn’t really make a lot of sense in and of itself, but that merely added to the mystique. An Ultimate game felt like a coherent package. The company had an identity. Even before you got to play an Ultimate game the artwork was selling you on the promise; they had a distinct visual style that was unlike anything else. The chrome airbrushing of the company logo, the box artwork – later, the games came packaged in special custom boxes, which made them feel even more special – which was usually reflected in the loading screens… Potentially, I loved all of that more than I did playing the games.’

[wikipedia] Wikipedia Is Not Therapy! … behind-the-scenes look at how Wikipedia deals with mental health issues within it’s online community of volunteers … ‘A ‘recent changes’ feed tracks every edit made across Wikimedia projects; this is constantly monitored by volunteer community members. Experienced editors know that when an alarming change hits the feed, they should reach out to emergency@wikimedia.org. This address is connected to a 24-hour pager system that notifies Earley’s geographically dispersed team. Human eyes will usually read this message within a couple minutes. If at least two team members agree that the situation seems serious enough, they will report it to a law enforcement agency. Earley says that the Foundation has established police contacts across the English-speaking world who are familiar with this type of online threat of harm; it’s never a matter of hurriedly trying to explain Wikipedia to a confused or suspicious local cop.’

[billboards] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: August 2006 … ‘Shepherd’s Bush Nuclear Waste Row’ …