Hello Web Surfer!

It's simply called “distorted face”, but I think the Unicode consortium have outdone themselves. This new emoji might be the most important invention in communication since the Sumerians first pressed styluses into wet clay. It will fill the gap currently left between 😳 and 🤪 and 🤯. Google has just rolled out their design, and I suspect Apple will follow suit, given the presumably rapturous demand.

Hyperpop

My self-imposed challenge of writing one essay a month is still unbroken, as I hit upload on my essay on Hyperpop at 11:20pm last night. This one manages to be even more ambitious than the first, hitting 4,200 words and requiring me to rewrite the code that displays my essays to accommodate the load of the multimedia. Future essays will be shorter I promise, either that or I am going to miss the next deadline. There is a secret third option, where the essays keep getting longer, and released on time, but I go completely crazy doing it. It’s an idea.

This essay is about Hyperpop, a topic near and dear to my heart, that I feel hasn’t gotten the retrospective it deserves. Last month I said the essay would be about websites or AI writing, but I think before I can write anything new, I need to get the backlog out of my head. Much like the coffee essay, this topic has been on my mind for ages. I kept trying to reconfigure it with different framing devices and openers, but I found that grounding it in my disappointment about 10,000 gecs made the most sense. It’s usually easier to pick a small topic and expand out, than try and start big and hone in.

I mention it in one of the margin notes, but I really think you should read A.G. Cook’s eulogy for SOPHIE. Her death was the first time a celebrity passing ever really got to me. I remember when Google made a corny Google Doodle to commemorate her it made me cry. Of course, what A.G. Cook wrote is very sad but it’s also very uplifting. It will hopefully inspire you to create in the same way it inspired me. He mentions how SOPHIE would say to “phoenix that shit”, when you just need to tear everything down and start again, rather than trying to tweak something to death. I’ve held that mantra dear ever since I read it.

All Purple

I’ve been working on my own version of the NYT’s Connections. Basically, when you solve it, the final purple category stays on the board and becomes the basis for a new Connections board. It’s kind of hard to explain in words, let me show you a diagram.

ACAI  STRAW     BLUE    BLACK,
DOWN  FISH      SUPER   LAUGH,
JET   LIQUORICE SOMBRE  MEAL,
RAVEN LOW       PUNCH   RITES

This gets solved into these categories:

Last ___

STRAW, MEAL, RITES, LAUGH

Sad

BLUE, DOWN, SOMBRE, LOW

___ bowl

ACAI, FISH, PUNCH, SUPER

Dark shades

BLACK, JET, RAVEN, LIQUORICE

Then the final category of BLACK, JET, RAVEN, LIQUORICE gets turned into a new board, where the four answers are distributed into new categories.

BLACK   JET       RAVEN   LIQUORICE
ROCKET  LASAGNA   EARTH   DRONE
CAKE    GREY      ONION   KIDNEY
MUNG    YOGHURT   SOY     CHILLI

Anyway, it’s really hard to make and quite challenging for the player. The first one I’ve made has 10 levels, and I’ve called it the All Purple challenge because it’s really hard, kind of like it’s all purple difficulty. Give it a go, it’s still in beta but I think it’s really fun.

Play now!