October 2023
Hey all,
Like many others, I'm sad, horrified, depressed, angry, outraged, upset (and all the other emotions) about the situation in the middle east. I've been both binging news, and then purposely trying to take mental heath breaks from the headlines.
I really liked this Pete Davidson cold open for SNL. And I think it's important to know that I don't have to post about my outrage. Neither do you. (NTY gift article).
The amount of anti-semitism (both witting and unwitting) has been terrifying to witness (also NYT gift article). In my mind, there’s space to both condemn terror and want peace for innocent people on both sides.
I'm largely going to avoid the topic of the conflict in this newsletter. There are other, better, news sources if you want those updates. Instead, we're going to keep things rolling here like every month past.
With all that said, let's get to the stories.
-Dann
🪦 Meme Cult
I don't think the movie Dumb Money (about WallStreetBets and the GameStop short squeeze) is worth your time. I only saw it because I have an Alamo Drafthouse Season Pass (unlimited movies) and I was curious how the creative team would approach dramatizing this highly-online story. The movie was throughly fine.
What was missing from the story, however, was the insanity that emerged after Keith Gill's testimony before congress in February of 2021. Those who stuck around in the movement in the following months were effectively sucked into a doomsday cult.
For that story, we turn to Dan Olsen of the YouTube Channel Folding Ideas, and his two and a half hour(!) documentary This is Financial Advice. Think: if The Big Short were created by a talented indie YouTube content creator.
From around 01:15:05 in the video (emphasis mine):
The thing that truly separates a meme stock from every other garbage ticker is that the act of buying, in and of itself, becomes the meme. A combination of absurdist performance and inherently gamified exercise. In 2023 though, that wave has crested and broken. The joke is over but the investors are still around. And, as we'll see, the gleeful contrarianism is gone, replaced with stone-faced dedication to a perceived cause.
This "perceived cause" went completely off the rails, leaving Occupy Wall Street territory and entering doomsday-cult, QAnon land. These retail traders' behavior becoming so predictable that they've been scammed by the very people they were fighting against, all while believing they're on the verge of ushering what is effectively the rapture.
It's a sad story, but wildly interesting for anyone who remembers the GME craze.
♟️ Keeping Score
The indie game designer Zach Gage (whom I've written about before) is back with his most ambitious project yet. It's called Puzzmo, and it's not just a game, it's an entire website, styled like a newspaper, full of different daily games.
If this sounds familiar, it's because it's a direct competitor to the New York Times' gaming hub. Puzzmo is backed by NYT competitor Hearst, which was insanely smart to partner with someone like Gage to launch this new platform.
In addition to a riff on the classic crossword puzzle, it'll contain games like Spelltower, Really Bad Chess and Typeshift (all created by Zach Gage) as well as his new game Flipart.
Perhaps the most fun part is that access to Puzzmo is currently limited. Each day, "keys" are awarded to the first 500 people to solve a daily puzzle. If you're among those lucky few, you'll then receive a physical key, arriving via snail mail, to get in. Mine should arrive in the next day or two. I'm excited.
⏯️ StumbleAgain
When the Internet was still new (back in 2001), a new website called StumbleUpon was launched. It was a time before widespread use of social media (Myspace started in 2003) or link aggregators (Digg started in 2004).
Back then, the Internet felt magical, with a seemingly endless sea of fun, niche, individual-created content just waiting to be discovered. And StumbleUpon was one of those portals into that bottomless world: a button that, when pushed, would bring the user to a semi-random website or video that matched the user's interest.
But the Internet grew and evolved. The multitude of small, passionate, independent websites were eaten up by massive, ad-driven corporate entities. Today, time online is mostly spent hopping from one massive company's website to another.
But this is all just background information to tell you about a free new website that recreates the joy of early-Internet exploring via StumbleUpon.
It's created by premium search engine Kagi (whom I love), and cycles between recent posts from a curated list of small, independent content creators (like yours truly).
You may not spend quite as much time browsing Kagi Small Web as you did with StumbleUpon, but it's a great way to re-capture some of that magic of the early Internet.
🌎 Line Go Up
World population is officially over eight billion. If you're curious where you fit in, you should check out Population.io by World Data Lab.
Plug in your birthday, birth country, and sex at birth, and get all your personal stats, presented in beautiful visualizations. As for me? I'm older than 59% of the world's population and older than 48% of all people in United States.
It's also interesting to compare how my expected lifespan is different as a United States citizen compared to the world average.
But the biggest take away is that the world has a lot of people.
🔈 Talking to Joe
I can't seem to get enough of Joe Pera. If you know him, you probably know him as the slow-talking comedian with a (former) 15-minute wholesome, feel-good show Joe Pera Talks With You on Adult Swim (and streaming on HBO Max) or his evening comedy podcast Drifting Off With Joe Pera, specifically designed to help lull you to sleep.
He's been on my mind because he has a new free standup comedy special on YouTube, which I highly recommend to those who are already familiar with his work, and moderately recommend to everyone else.
While it's wonderful to have more Joe Pera in my life, it also comes with a tinge of sadness. His series Joe Pera Talks With You was a victim of the pandemic, cancelled before the creative team was able to complete the final season of the full planned story.
In many ways, this comedy special feels like the ghost of Joe Pera's unfinished business. It's wonderful to see him and his team continuing to work together, but it only re-affirms that he has more to say.
Hopefully someone will pick Joe Pera Talks With You up for its final season. It's a wonderful show that deserves the ending that the creative team intended.
End note
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I'll be sending out these emails once per month, and I'm happy you're along for the ride. I'm trying to make it one of the best things that arrives in your inbox each month, so thoughts and feedback are always appreciated. You can just reply to this email.
Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.
Thanks for reading. Until next time,
Dann
The Dann Chronicles: October 🦇