Link tags: weird

The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again

Anil says the glass is half full:

Across today’s internet, the stores that deliver all the apps on our phones are cracking open, the walls between social media platforms are coming down as the old networks fail, the headlong rush towards AI is making our search engines and work apps weirder (and often worse!). But amidst it all, the human web, the one made by regular people, is resurgent. We are about to see the biggest reshuffling of power on the internet in 25 years, in a way that most of the internet’s current users have never seen before.

The Unreal Writer - by Joanne McNeil - All My Stars

Joanne McNeil on the retroactive pigeonholing of downright weird sci-fi writers like Philip K. Dick, JG Ballard and Octavia Butler:

The snobbery against science fiction in the past and today’s cartoon icons of some of its weirdest authors comes from the same root: an establishment that doesn’t know how to read or appreciate it.

And she absolutely nails the straitjacketed feeling I get from a lot of new sci-fi that’s laudable in its politics but lacking in other ways:

I suspect those authors are drawn to the genre for the thing that increasingly frustrates me about it: the way science fiction is mined for road maps and potential solutions in real situations of uncertainty and disaster. The way it’s “smart person” literature about systems with hyper-competent protagonists. I’m here for the losers. The losers are my people.

Weird Wide Webring

More of the whimsical web!

Why Americans Are the Weirdest People in the World

A truly fascinating and well-written article on how changes are afoot in the worlds of psychology, economics, and just about any other field that has performed tests on American participants and extrapolated the results into universal traits.

Given the data, they concluded that social scientists could not possibly have picked a worse population from which to draw broad generalizations. Researchers had been doing the equivalent of studying penguins while believing that they were learning insights applicable to all birds.

CONSUME CONSUME

I’m sure there’s a theme connecting all of these pictures. I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.

Partial Face Transplants Pictures Gallery - Photoshop Partial Face Transplants Pics

Kind of disturbing, kind of funny.

25 Worlds Weirdest Animals

Sad, sad blobfish. Freaky, freaky aye-aye.

Total Makeover Retouching

Now your child can look like a denizen of the uncanny valley with just a little Photoshop magic.

strange maps

This blog devoted entirely to maps is far more interesting than it sounds. It's a treasure trove of weird and wacky stuff. Fascinating... and a complete time sink.

Album covers of questionable taste - a photoset on Flickr

John put together this disturbing collection of bygone album covers.