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CurioBot
@curiobot.bsky.social
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A bot posting links from the Web Curios newsletter (www.webcurios.co.uk), because, weirdly, not everyone wants to read 10,000 words at a time. Unlikely to reply to you.
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curiobot.bsky.social
VIDEO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtWcfHR2LAc
On the one hand I’m pretty sure that if you like Pete & Bas their stuff finds its own way to you by now; on the other, as long as their tracks keep sounding this good I’ll keep posting them. This is called ‘Encore’, and as per some of the bars are SUPERB – the line about stents made me laugh out loud, but you will pick your own favourite I am sure and if you don’t then, well, I DON’T CARE IT IS DONE I AM OFF TAKE CARE SEE YOU SOON BYE!
November 26, 2025 at 1:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
VIDEO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr6KyiJaLpQ
That said, this is a horrible song with a weird video, so, er, back to normal. It’s by Skuzland, it’s called ‘Tell Me You Love Me’, and I don’t like the track AT ALL but was mesmerised by the video which is…stylish, in its own sort of unsettling way, and it’s sort of wormed its way into my consciousness this week and so I am leaving it here for you just in case.
November 26, 2025 at 11:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
God’s Plan

https://anmly.org/ap41/rachel-dorn/
God’s Plan: Our final longread this week is this short story by Rachel Dorn – this has haunted me all week since I read it, and I’ve gone back to it two or three times since to reread specific paragraphs, and it might be one of my favourite pieces of the year. Enjoy. “It’s been a long time since I’ve talked to you, even longer since I’ve seen you. I think back to the December night two years ago when you sent me an Uber to your apartment by the river and we sat together on your living room floor, our faces illuminated by the glowing red light of your snake’s cage. Your wall was one big window, and outside the downtown skyline lights gleamed across the water. My eyes followed you as you got up and walked to your kitchen, plucked a stiff, white mouse from where it was thawing on the counter, and dangled it by its tail over the glass edge while Ghost, your snake, pretended not to see it. You told me he hadn’t been eating much lately and you weren’t sure why. Time passed in silence while we waited to see if Ghost would make a move. When he finally did, it was in one fell swoop, shooting upward and unhinging his jaw, snatching and swallowing the dead thing whole. We watched the mouse’s body pass through his body.  Afterwards, we made out on your couch, your long hair smelling of tea tree oil, the TV droning on in the background. You led me to your bedroom, peeled off my shirt, my leggings, my underwear, our bodies pressing into each other. You tossed and turned all night and in the morning, you called me an Uber. A few months later, I got sick and didn’t get better.”
November 26, 2025 at 9:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
I Want To Stay In My Body During Sex

https://electricliterature.com/i-want-to-stay-in-my-body-during-sex/
I Want To Stay In My Body During Sex: Sam Herschel Wein writes about sex, assault, abuse, recovery and all the related issues besides – this contains a reasonable amount of fairly-explicitly-described man-on-man love, should you need the warning, but it’s also beautifully-written and it’s in the second person which you may recall I am a total sucker for. I think this is gorgeous: “Two years pass, slowly. You are on your computer, on Zoom, in your little bedroom. An interviewer calls you a sexy writer. You work up a nervous laugh. You are always charming. You are always charming even when you are so uncomfortable you want to die. Your poems are sexy, sure, but they are also deeply traumatic. You try to reason with yourself; the trauma doesn’t detract from the sexiness, but is it fair to mention the sexiness without the trauma?  You swirl in your head about this for days. Justin Torres says, “To comment is not necessarily to compliment,” which feels like it relates to this and every part of you, all this unturned skin, all those gums above teeth. You feel like an internet comment section. You feel like you’ve heard it all. Everyone puts their fingers in your mouth, placing comments down your throat.”
November 25, 2025 at 7:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Something’s Changed

https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/pulp-different-class-review/
Something’s Changed: Another link to the Quietus, this time to a piece from THE PAST (which I might have featured when it was originally published in 2015, but which I am happy to include again because it pleases me so) – Luke Turner looks back at the release of Different Class by Pulp, what the band meant to skinny, weirdo outsider kids at the time, and the strange feeling of seeing your heroes become famous enough to become popular with the very kids who would previously have beaten you up for listening to bands like Pulp. I felt pretty much all of this very strongly indeed.
November 25, 2025 at 5:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Blue Jam

https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/blue-jam-review/
https://www.radioechoes.com/?page=series&genre=Comedy&series=Blue%20Jam
Blue Jam: I’ve spoken here before, I think, of my love for the radio work of Chris Morris – Blue Jam was the last thing (I think) he did on BBC radio, and I remember listening to it at the time and being amazed that it ever got aired and how he got away with it (perhaps to my detriment, I occasionally wonder if this informed by subsequent attitude to employment). This piece in the Quietus is a lovely look back at the show and how odd it was – you will need familiarity with the source material to really appreciate this (and if you’re interested in listening, you can find episodes online here), but it’s a lovely reminder of just how STRANGE it was to hear this coming from your radio like it was normal programming when it very clearly wasn’t at all. Also, you forget how beautiful some of the writing was; weird, yes, but beautiful. I mean, look, this is POETRY: “When dancing… lost in techno trance. Arms flailing, gawky Bez. Then find you smacked on frowns, and slowly dawns… you’re jazzing to the bleak tone of a life support machine, that marks the steady fading of your day-old baby daughter…”
November 25, 2025 at 3:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
How Dithering Works

https://visualrambling.space/dithering-part-1/
How Dithering Works: I featured a link in here last week which involved ‘dithering’ as a graphical style, and I realised then that I didn’t have the faintest idea what the fvuk the term actually meant. THANK GOD, then, for this really nicely-made little explainer which neatly details what it is and how it works; this is really interesting, I promise, particularly if you spent any time playing videogames back in the era before graphics got good.
November 25, 2025 at 1:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Is Having A Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?

https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/is-having-a-boyfriend-embarrassing-now
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/magazine/men-heterofatalism-dating-relationships.html
Is Having A Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?: Betteridge’s Law obviously applies here (or perhaps more accurately the answer should be characterised as ‘it depends on what he’s like’), but I did enjoy this pleasingly-odd bit of clickbait from Vogue which basically asks ‘is it not really cool to be coupled up as a young woman in modernity because men are basically trash and we all sort of agree?’. Per the author, “To me, it feels like the result of women wanting to straddle two worlds: one where they can receive the social benefits of having a partner, but also not appear so boyfriend-obsessed that they come across quite culturally loser-ish. “They want the prize and celebration of partnership, but understand the norminess of it,” says Zoé Samudzi, writer and activist. In other words, in an era of widespread heterofatalism, women don’t want to be seen as being all about their man, but they also want the clout that comes with being partnered up.” As I said, this doesn’t in any way feel ‘real’ – I will say, though, as someone who has gone through a period of reading a lot of ‘contemporary female authors writing about Being An Urban-Dwelling Modern Woman RIGHT NOW’ novels that there is something…quite sobering about coming to one of the semi-regular passages explaining some of the ways in which men are, fundamentally, quite sh1t, and seeing the dotted-underline and an accompanying ‘this passage has been highlighted 237 times’ text.
November 25, 2025 at 11:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
Why GenZ Can’t Stop Watching Bad Takes

https://archive.is/20251023132029/https://www.vox.com/culture/465492/tiktok-taylor-swift-culture-gen-z-celebrities-fashion-music
Why GenZ Can’t Stop Watching Bad Takes: This is a Vox piece, which means it obviously doesn’t in any way adequately answer the question it’s purporting to ask, but the general premise struck me as interesting – basically this is about format differences between YouTube (where explainer videos originated as an online content form) and TikTok (where they are increasingly ending up), and the incentives on the latter lead to material and information which sacrifices accuracy for appeal and virality (quelle surprise!). “It was only natural that internet users would carry this “I’m here to learn” attitude over to TikTok, according to Jamie Cohen, a media studies professor at Queens College CUNY in New York. One reason for this shift, he says, was the timing of the app’s rise “when everybody was switched to learning online during the pandemic.” However, several aspects of YouTube that make it such a successful platform for posting in-depth explainers don’t exactly translate to the bite-sized format of TikTok. YouTube’s more formal, “big-screen” presentation creates more of an incentive for video essayists to show their work, by reading out full citations or elaborating on supportive materials. On TikTok, however, facts and ideas are often hurried and collaged to make a fast, reductive point. “The format of analysis videos on YouTube is much more essay-like, whereas on TikTok it’s about designing and layering up,” Cohen said. “The green-screen tactic is good, but it always results in pointing at things rather than explaining things.””
November 24, 2025 at 7:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
AI Creators Making Bank

https://archive.is/20251023205135/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-10-23/ai-creators-are-already-taking-over-social-platforms-and-getting-paid
AI Creators Making Bank: “Why is there so much AI crap everywhere?” comes the perennial complaint from people who hate the stuff. The answer, of course, is because people are being paid to make it – not directly, fine, but thanks to the MAGICAL INCENTIVE STRUCTURE created by platforms with creator payouts there is a direct line between ‘putting something on social and it getting attention’ and ‘making cash’, and it turns out that, whatever Bluesky might want to believe, lots of people quite like AI-generated stuff and so people are going to keep putting it out there. This piece in Bloomberg looks at a few of the people behind reasonably-popular AI characters, including a few I java featured in here before, talking about the process and their ‘vision’ for the project (clue: branded deals and sponcon oh ffs). As the piece concludes, “I left the AI mixer excited and shell-shocked, surprised by how quickly these AI creators have grown their followers and found success. The humans behind these AI performers emphasize that they don’t just push a button and publish a video or song. They hone their characters, sounds and look. To make successful content, the AI output has to be refined. But AI is removing barriers to entry, and the platforms are generally accepting the content, making all the navel-gazing about whether AI is good or bad seem somewhat irrelevant. When reminded in the comment sections that these are AI creations, their audiences don’t seem to care. All that matters to them is whether the content is good.”
November 24, 2025 at 5:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
A Month in the Manosphere

https://popular.info/p/a-month-in-the-manosphere
https://youtu.be/uB8BcRimf78?si=WnY62RX0Q6DI8llc&t=747
A Month in the Manosphere: No, wait, come back, this isn’t about Andrew fcuking Tate! Instead this is a really interesting – and, I think, useful, and under-explored – month-long look at what ACTUALLY gets said on all these fcuking male-focused podcasts, your Rogans and Vons and all those wide-necked chucklefcuks wanging on about…STUFF all the time. The thing is, there is so MUCH of this content, a seemingly-infinite stream, to the point that it seems entirely possible that one could spend literally the whole of one’s waking life listening to muscular idiots tell you that soybeans make your balls shrink (or something like that), and so, perhaps unsurprisingly, getting the shape of it is tricky. Which is why pieces like this that set down some of the stuff that’s actually being seif on these things are so useful – it’s good to be reminded of the fact that millions of (mostly) young men are having stuff like this poured into their ears every week. “In an episode with Dillon on September 4, Rogan complained that immigrants in the United Kingdom are “outbreed[ing]” English people. “But what they’re doing with allowing mass migration in the UK… It’s really weird because like where does this end up?” Rogan said. “Because it seems like it ends up with some places that have Sharia law…Especially when you consider like how many babies they’re having versus how many babies the English people [are having]. I mean they’re openly talking about it. ‘We’re going to outbreed you,’” Rogan said.” Is…is this good? It doesn’t feel good!
November 24, 2025 at 3:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Pager

https://bilgetbd.itch.io/pager
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/latest
Pager: Our final miscellaneous link this week is another super-impressive in-browser game – I don’t really want to spoil it for you as it rewards going in blind, but all you need to know is that a) you play in first person; b) there are 10 levels in this playable demo; c) DO WHAT YOU ARE TOLD. This is EXCELLENT, and made me want to pony up for the full title (via the excellent team at RPS, to whom hello if you are reading this!)
November 24, 2025 at 1:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Word Chainer

https://wordchainer.com/
Word Chainer: A DAILY WORD GAME HUZZAH! This one is a pain to describe so, well, I am not going to try because time is against me, but trust me when I say that it is a) simple; and b) fun, and I have played it every day since finding it which feels like something of a recommendation.
November 24, 2025 at 11:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
Brit Doll Review

https://britdollreview.com/
Brit Doll Review: One of those links where I feel compelled to say something like ‘THIS STUFF FINDS ME, HONEST GUV’ – I promise, I did not seek this out, and there is nothing in my general, day-to-day life, nothing in my ‘selection of personal interests’, that would cause me to actively research the information contained here. Now, with that caveat out of the way…Brit Doll Review is a website offering, er, reviews, of various masturbatory devices aimed at the male consumer, many of which are designed to look like the…oh god, there’s no nice way to say this, distressingly-disconnected torsos of women. So this is DEEPLY creepy and unpleasantly-dehumanising, I know, and I appreciate that lots of you will be quite rightly discomfited by the general concept here. BUT! If you can look past that and actually read the reviews then…actually, no, it doesn’t get better, but there is something so utterly WEIRD about everything that’s being described here, particular language and terminology being used to describe the devices (which reads a lot like sites reviewing, say, coffee machines, or other gadgets), and, well, it’s just strange and creepy and wrong-feeling, and, as such, felt like a perfect inclusion. Er. Sorry.
November 24, 2025 at 9:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
The Penthouse Guide to Cybersex

https://archive.org/details/penthouse-guide-to-cybersex-hires/Penthouse%20Guide%20to%20Cybersex/page/n5/mode/2up
The Penthouse Guide to Cybersex: OH WOW – this is from 1995! PRACTICALLY PREHISTORY! Would you like an insight into the ways in which famous bongo mag Penthouse was suggesting you get your rocks off in ‘cyberspace’? OH GOOD! This is an internet archive scan and so it’s not super-easy to read, but it’s worth fullscreening and zooming in and flicking through because WHAT an artefact this is! It’s important to note that anyone attempting to use this for, er, ‘erotic’ purposes is likely to remain unfulfilled – there’s not a lot of titillating imagery here, and that which there is is stubbornly low-res – but there is SO MUCH to love in here; I strongly recommend p140, which is a whole section about ‘sexy websites’ (OH YOU SWEET SUMMER CHILDREN YOU REALLY HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS ABOUT TO HAPPEN!) including, beautifully, ‘Condom Country’ whose webmaster was apparently a man who called himself ‘Prophylactic Pete’. Seriously, this is HERITAGE.
November 23, 2025 at 7:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Buy Actual Psychedelics Online

https://sunshinesurfers.com/
Buy Actual Psychedelics Online: Web Curios is, for the purposes of this link, assuming that you, the reader, live somewhere where it would be ENTIRELY LEGAL for you to by some acid, or some mushrooms, or some synthesised psilocybin (or, fcuk it, ALL OF THE ABOVE) and have it shipped to you…none of you are going to use this to break the law, are you? ARE YOU? Good, now that we have all those legal caveats out of the way then I can present you with this site, which offers a menu and a link to a Signal contact. I say this a lot in Curios but I mean this VERY SERIOUSLY here – caveat emptor! But, er, do let me know how you get on should you decide to take the plunge (but not until you have stopped tripping, please).
November 23, 2025 at 5:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Animagraffs

https://animagraffs.com/
Animagraffs: Infographics! Animated infographics! Basically these are 3d animations showing How Stuff Works via the medium of visual explainers, and they are all the work of one guy, seemingly, and FCUK ME is this a lot of work. If you’ve ever been in the market for a short video showing you EXACTLY how the blockchain works (you still won’t understand, trust me) then this is the place you will find it.
November 23, 2025 at 3:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
The Space Exploration Logo Archive

https://spaceexplorationlogoarchive.webflow.io/
https://spaceexplorationlogoarchive.webflow.io/loghi/project-mercury
The Space Exploration Logo Archive: Have you ever wanted a repository of every single logo of every single organisation or group associated with the exploration of space? OF COURSE YOU HAVEN’T! And yet, Curios provides! “This online platform offers free access to over 450 logos, each accompanied by an iconic image and a brief description. Whether you’re a designer seeking inspiration, a space enthusiast, or a history buff, the website serves as a comprehensive and easily navigable resource…The collection spans more than 80 years of works and includes the most iconic and noteworthy logos distributed in seven chapters, starting with the best known up to the raw & rare ones.” My personal favourite here is ‘Project Mercury’ which 100% looks like the sigil for some sort of mad, potentially-evil secret society that dabbles in animal (and quite possibly human) sacrifice, but, well, pick your own!
November 23, 2025 at 1:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Anna’s Garden

https://annasgarden.vercel.app/
Anna’s Garden: A small, virtual garden – draw a flower, plant it, and watch it bloom amongst the others, created and planted by anonymous visitors from all across the web and the world. Beautiful, simple, pointless, perfect.
November 23, 2025 at 11:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
Dutch Campaign Tracker

https://www.campaigntracker.nl/en/
https://favstats.github.io/campaigntrackernl/explore
Dutch Campaign Tracker: With the Dutch elections having taken place this week and Gert ‘Hateful Cnut’ Wilders hopefully having been denied (unclear at the time of writing but, well, fingers crossed!), it’s timely to share this excellent-looking initiative (born of the University of Amsterdam) which, honestly, feels like it should exist for every single election in the world from hereon in. “In the CampAIgn Tracker, we analyze all posts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X from parties and candidates and selected influencers and commentators for the 2025 Dutch Parliamentary election. The tracking monitor allows you to see how many AI-generated messages are being spread by which parties. Additionally, we show if AI-Labels are used, what actors are depicted, which topics are discussed and whether the tone is positive or negative. On this page, you will find analyses of AI-generated campaigns for the 2025 Dutch Parliamentary election. A searchable overview of individual AI-generated images and videos is available in the AI Explorer.” Honestly, this is SUCH a useful tool and something which I really, really hope is in place in the UK ahead of the local elections next May
November 23, 2025 at 9:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
Board

https://board.fun/
Board: Ooh, this is an interesting idea – I’ve seen a whole bunch of different variants on ‘boardgames, but digital!’ over the years, but this feels like a really interesting addition to the genre; Board is basically a massive iPad with interactive physical gubbins which you can use to play a variety of different games, from traditional-type boardgames to variants on things like space invaders and the like, with the electronic ‘board’ changing depending on what you are playing, and different pieces and props corresponding to different games, with players switching out the pieces depending on what they’re playing at any given time. I’ve not dug into the tech here but I imagine there’s some NFC-type tech in the pieces so that the board ‘knows’ what is being played and where they are; as with all these things this will live or die based on the quality and range of games that are available for it, and while I have no idea what the post-launch release plan is, it comes with 12 already loaded in which feels like a reasonable selection. Then again this is EYEWATERINGLY expensive – $500! And that’s a discounted early-bird cost! – so you might want to wait a bit to see whether the company still exists in a year or so before you get lumbered with yet another soon-to-be-bricked piece of glass and plastic to take care of on its way to landfill.
November 22, 2025 at 7:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
The Fcuking Bible

https://bsky.app/profile/thefuckingbible.bsky.social
The Fcuking Bible: A Bluesky account that posts verses from the Bible with the small, significant addition of the words ‘fcuk’ or ‘fcuking’. This is, obviously, very silly, but as someone who had to spend more time than on reflection was probably healthy as a child reading or thinking about the Good Book (truly, the benefits of a Catholic education are myriad!) this made me laugh rather a lot.
November 22, 2025 at 5:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Man Cereal

https://eatmancereal.com/
Man Cereal: Are you a MAN? Are you increasingly ANGRY about the FEMINISED and CUCKED cereal market? Do you feel somehow emasculated or diminished in some manner by the fact that said cereals often feature cartoon characters or similarly-designed mascots on the packaging? Are you insecure about the fact that despite being an adult your preferred way to start the day is to consume a bowl of grain-derivatives just like you did when you were small? THANK FCUK, THEN, FOR MAN CEREAL! Man Cereal is cereal…FOR MEN! IT CONTAINS PROTEIN AND CREATINE! GAINS FOR BREAKFAST! Apparently this isn’t just any cereal, it is HIGH PERFORMANCE cereal! Honestly, what the actual fcuk is WRONG with people? Just eat Cocoa Pops and enjoy them! In fairness to the people behind this they acknowledge the ridiculousness of the name and are leaning into the nutrition and fitness aspect here…but, well, it also feels a bit cake-and-eat it because you also know that this is going to appeal to some of the worst people in the world, the perineum-tanning, testicle-eating raw milk devotees, and can we just fcuking stop with this stuff, basically?
November 22, 2025 at 3:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
The Monolith Project

https://themonolithproject.net/
The Monolith Project: Click the link and SCROLL (but, er, you may want to turn the volume down here as, well, the audio is fcuking horrible, what were you thinking?!) and enjoy the beautifully-animated journey – I don’t REALLY know what this is about (there’s a monolith! There is talk of THE COSMOS!) but I don’t personally think that that matters; just appreciate the beautifully-drawn illustrations that have a vaguely-Moebius-ish feel to them, and the animation on scroll which is really rather gorgeous.
November 22, 2025 at 1:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Work In Progress

https://wip.llc/
Work In Progress: This is the website of a design and technology studio and, honestly, it is SO MUCH FUN (and in many respects functionally-useless when it comes to telling you the first thing about what these people actually do, but, well WHO CARES THIS IS ACE) – click the link and just enjoy how little these people give a fcuk about you understanding what is going on here.
November 22, 2025 at 11:30 AM