November 2024 Web Links

udm14.com

Turn Off google’s annoying AI summary by forcing web mode search. How long will it work for? Who knows. But it works this month.

The Corruption of Open Source (techwontsave.us)

More on the WordPress affair and the Open Source AI definition affair. Excellent coverage and a lively guest. I’m waiting for the dust to settle before I upgrade!

iron mountain atomic storage (computer.rip)

In interesting write up on the history of ubiquitous data storage company Iron Mountain.

Jazz Cups (99percentinvisible.org)

Somehow I’m missed this the first time around. Designer of the ubiquitous Jazz print got some recognition. Interesting to know it’s originally a charcoal sketch that was then colored on a computer.

MG Ultra (bandcamp.com)

Machine Girl’s most coherent (but still very punk) offering to date. The crazy breakdowns (like the end of track 12) are much appreciated.

The End Of EDH (commandersherald.com)

When I got back into MTG in college in 2013, one of the exciting new features was the EDH format. It was much more casual, closer to the kitchen table tomfoolery that kept me entertained back in the my first run (~2002-~2005.) We didn’t all run Sol ring.

It’s interesting to see what the format has become since then. The bans seem good, but I suppose the writing was on the wall when Wizards decided to print those cards in the first place.

Designing a few cards for EDH was neat; people were using commander precons. But the coolest thing was how it made you reconsider the types of cards that never saw play in constructed before. Overcosted things that fit into weird archetypes. Jank old legends like from actual _Legends_, amd trying to make them work. I get the sense that commander has become more like other constructed formats, with people making tuned decks using good cards.

I don’t know if I should care, I do not play a whole lot anymore and new cards aren’t really printed with me in mind. But it’s interesting to see the last gasp of a truly community driven hack of Magic as it’s absorbed into Wizards.

Pollyanna’s Corpse (interruptkey.com)

Delicious page design, but a chilling investigation. The idea that we’re all building our own digital tombs only for them to be refurbished as spam instruments is a sobering one. I suppose it’s a consequence of two factors: nothing can resist entropy forever, and on the internet the form entropy takes, the heat death, is turning into spam. Spam and bots are the gray nothing of the dead web.

A gem: Multiverse In Review

Multiverse In Review is the type of treatment that makes reading a bunch of background story for a tabletop game worth it. Source by source, the author is examining every available piece of Fluff in (and out of) the Magic: The Gathering cannon, with (so far) an emphasis on the type of sources that most fans never would have seen, especially in the pre-internet “before time”.

The most fascinating bits are the insights into how the story evolved, and what hidden information those changes reveal. I find these big shared universes very fascinating, and would love to see a similar treatment of, say, the Warhammer 40k setting. A good example, if you want a horizontal slice, would be these three articles on the conception of the Antiquities story the Antiquities comics and the Jeff Grub novel that slots the story into the modern (ish) cannon. Every article is a good read if you’re into that sort of thing.