Links #63

Carbonyl, a Chromium browser in a terminal. More impressive than I expected.

Andrew Plotkin on the new 3D VR version of Colossal Cave. I spent many hours of my childhood playing interactive fiction like Colossal Cave and Zork, building my own with TADS and AGT, frequenting the IFDB and the annual IF Competition. Ah, memories. I’ve tried to play some of the old text adventures with Frotz, but I’m no longer a gamer and my brain refuses; it would rather read books. (I also struggle to watch movies for the same reason. I know this is weird.)

Hundred Rabbits’ Oquonie game. Gamer though I’m not, games still interest me, and I love the art on this one. The new pixel art version they’re working on also looks good.

Stephen Winick at the Library of Congress on the origins of ring-around-the-rosie. It’s more modern than I expected.

Fiona Harvey on Colossal Biosciences trying to de-extinct the dodo. This is the company that’s also trying to bring back the woolly mammoth and that clearly took the wrong message away from Jurassic Park.

Bertrand Delacretaz on the web platform being back. “We strongly believe in making maximum use of the Web Platform for our current and future developments, and in being frugal with anything that we put on top of it.” Yes.

Jason Wang’s videos showing exoplanets orbiting their stars. That first one! (HR 8799.) Wow!

Ewen Callaway on a study showing that microbiomes become similar among cohabitants over time. Which could have interesting ramifications.

Amelia Pollard on the intriguing architecture of the Vancouver House apartment tower. I would not live in that tower. Whew.

Rach Smith on a recommendation from Steven Pressfield: “Start whatever you’re writing with ‘this is what a bad version of this idea looks like:’, or something similar to free yourself from thinking that whatever you write needs to be good.” I like that a lot.

Felt map showing the number of times each U.S. state appears in an NYT crossword. No idea why Utah and Ohio are so popular.

Oliver Burkemann on how to forget what you read. I like that idea, of forgetting as a filter. (I probably like it especially because I never take notes anymore.)

Andy Bell on speed for developers vs. users. Yep.

Lincoln Michel on qualities of fairy tales. This is good and makes me want to write some fairy tales with these qualities.

Animation Obsessive on how to paint like Hayao Miyazaki.

Tyler Johnson on soulcraft at BYU. I liked this, and also quite liked Laura Miller’s watercolor illustrations for the piece.

Information Is Beautiful on the most successful Hollywood movies of all time, including some new ways of looking at the data.