It’s Friday!

Janelle Shane’s AI site had two more great updates – one in which the neural net names effects pedals, and another in which it just makes lists. I’m going to be using this anniversary list going forward, I think.

Who’s famous in your part of the USA? My area is known for such highminded personages as Charles Manson and Jerry Springer. Ouch.

Embarrassing confession: I had no idea Dr. Demento was still on the air. Here he is! You can even listen to shows as far back as the 1970s. 

Have a safe and spiffy weekend, everyone. We’re still updating our Instagram with pics from our trip, so check them out if you like! See you next week.

Today is for the news junkies. It’s a difficult time for us, isn’t it?

“News in a Digital Age” is part of the “Truth Decay” research series by RAND, analyzing how news has changed since 2000 or so. If you’re interested in this sort of thing, I took the (free!) online course on Navigating Misinformation, which was fantastic, and recommend First Draft and Bellingcat for more on how to evaluate what you see and hear these days. (I sort of want to work for Bellingcat when I grow up.)

If you have an iPhone and you’re worried about privacy, Jumbo is a new app which promises to help clean up your social media.

And for those of us who like history, the Library of Congress now has the AP wire dispatches from 1915 to 1930 online!

An update: A few pics from the first few days are now up on Instagram! More will follow each day. Some places of note from these days:

House on the Rock

Steampunk Manor, Spring Green, Wisconsin

We’re back! Sort of, anyway. We traveled all over the place and saw a great many things; I will post some links to our Instagram as I recap our adventures!

In the meantime, the list of most popular baby names for 2018 came out, and you can see them by state, by popularity over the decades, and so forth. Get ready for a lot of Williams and Emmas, apparently.

Game of Thrones is over, but NIOSH warns that Summer Is Coming, and is no less dangerous! 

Janelle Shane’s neural nets put together some petitions, which are hilarious and also a warning of what AI will do when it takes over.

Happy Friday! And now, a quick announcement.

We’re disappearing for two whole weeks! We haven’t had this much time off in ages. We’re not actually disappearing (tempting as it may be), but we’ll be away from the internet until Memorial Day. Folderol will return sometime that week, once we’ve caught up on everything.

Will we be visiting the parallel sites of Kcymaerxthaere? Well…probably not, but this site will keep you occupied for hours, if not days. There’s probably a marker near you, wherever you are!

Via Cassandra: You may have already heard of the Liberal Redneck, but did you know he’s now doing Game of Thrones recaps? They’re hilarious, too!

MC Marmot would like to remind everyone not to eat marmots. Especially raw. Because guess what, you might get THE PLAGUE. (Thanks to everyone who sent this – there were a bunch of you!)

Explore the weird crimes of the Victorians, like committing family members to insane asylums and stripping off people’s clothes. Humans are just weird.

Have a very spiffy rest of May, everyone! We’ll see you back here at the end of the month. Thanks for reading!

Have you heard of the Prittlewell Princely Burial Site? I hadn’t until today, when I found out about all the archaeological findings and the question of who exactly is buried there. 

Proof that there is a museum for everything: The Doorbell Museum! 

News archiving is in a terrible state. I know, you’ve heard me go on about this before. But now CJR delves into the gory details.

How did people make maps in the past? Archaeology Magazine shows some very different ways of visualizing spaces. 

If you’re into making maps for games (or just for fun), check out the Medieval City generator! (I think I linked to something similar before, but this is a new site, at any rate.)

What really happened at Tunguska? Well, Miskatonic University was leading an expedition, see… 

From Cassandra: Behold, the spookiest Air B&Bs you can visit!

The Met Gala did not disappoint, happily, due to amazing forces of nature like Billy Porter. 

My love for steampunk will never die, but it has transmogrified over the years into interest in hauntology and now into psychogeography…all of which are related, in some strange way. I think. Anyway, Hookland is a meeting place for many of these interests as well.

Happy Monday!

Tonight is the annual Met Gala, which promises to be extra wacky because this year’s theme is Camp: Notes on Fashion. I may even watch the livestream if the outfits are especially out there!

Short stories via vending machines are now available to London commuters.

In 1624, Giovanni Battista Bracelli published a collection of drawings which were ahead of their time. Look at the cubist robot figures!

Happy Friday, and farewell to Peter Mayhew, the very best Wookiee.

From Zazoo: A long, very good article on Robert Smith’s wife Mary and the thirty year anniversary of Disintegration (ye gods, 30 yrs?).

Via Darran Anderson’s Twitter: Thibaud Poirier’s jaw-droppingly amazing photos of modernist churches…including Notre-Dame-du-Travail, built in 1902 and a steampunkesque marvel. Also, additional photos of modern churches in Iceland! (I spent a lot of time and even got married in a modernist church of sorts, so these are near and dear to my heart.)

Have a safe and spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

The Library of Congress has an online exhibit of old children’s books available for reading! I explored The Book of the Cat.

Awful Library Books takes a look at 1970s home decorating. I…think we may own this book. (Bunny likes bonkers ‘70s designs.)

Speaking of Bunny, here’s a link for him: Graffiti from 1700s bathrooms! It’s as crass/bizarre as one might expect.

Jessamyn visited all 183 of Vermont’s libraries, and did a talk about the quest. There’s a similar one going on in Massachusetts right now!

Hello! Happy Beltane, Happy May, and Happy Reiwa Era. Today got unexpectedly hectic, so only two links today.

One of them, however, may keep you reading for quite a bit. Go to the Oddment Emporium and stay a while!

Meanwhile, Indonesia is considering moving their capital city, because Jakarta is sinking.