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Dec 12, 2022

In 2009, after the U.S. digital television switchover, broadcasters kept the public informed by offering an “analog nightlight,” a note that the party has moved elsewhere.

@readtedium

is in analog nightlight mode. Find us on Mastodon:

social.tedium.co

Tedium (@tedium@social.tedium.co)

78 Posts, 50 Following, 407 Followers · The dull side of the internet. An internet history newsletter by @ernie@writing.exchange. Active since 2015—seen on such fine sites as Vice’s Motherboard and...

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Jul 8, 2020

The secret to Hot Pockets’ functionality has everything to do with that plastic sleeve. https://bit.ly/2YYhSRI

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Jul 8, 2020

“While most people see a full spectrum of colors from red to violet, dogs lack some of the light receptors in their eyes that allow human beings to see certain colors, particularly in the red and green range. But canines can still see yellow and blue.”

theconversation.com

Do dogs really see in just black and white?

Your faithful friend’s view of the world is different than yours, but maybe not in the way you imagine.

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Jul 8, 2020

People tend to collect everything. This guy collects menus. He has more than 6,000:

atlasobscura.com

Meet the College Student With 6,000 Takeout Menus

He's not quite sure what to do with them.

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@readtedium

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7h

#Thread on songwriting and the #GRAMMYs:

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Ernie Smith is also @ernie@writing.exchange

@ShortFormErnie

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7h

The #Grammy award for Song of the Year—Bonnie Raitt’s “Just Like That”—is a major anomaly in 2023. It is the first song to win the award since 2008 that was credited to just one writer. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Skd0XR3twCA…

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Jul 8, 2020

Everything you wanted to know about the clothing people buy from ShopGoodwill, along with significantly more than that.

goodwill.awardwinninghuman.com

Goodwill Hunting

A weirdly in-depth graphical analysis of women's tops sold on the Goodwill website.

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Jul 9, 2020

Pretty cool invention right here: https://bit.ly/31YuKsK

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Sep 24, 2020

Trying for normalcy after being a death metal musician isn’t easy.

tedium.co

The Hard Part of Playing Death Metal is What Comes After

For people who have spent their youth touring the world in death metal bands, trying to transition to normalcy is where things get tough.

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Aug 11, 2020

Remember when chlorophyll was a massive fad in consumer products? Of course you don’t, it was 70 years ago. https://tedium.co/2019/01/15/1950s-chlorophyll-fad-history/… https://bit.ly/2Mf5VPF

tedium.co

The Great Chlorophyll Fad of 1952

During the early 1950s, you could not get away from chlorophyll at the grocery store—all thanks to a thinly sourced belief that the plant pigment fought odors.

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Jul 11, 2020

“The perpetually smiling, tear-shaped blob that first greeted adventurers is undoubtedly the most successful slime in history.” https://bit.ly/3gP9cD0

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Sep 23, 2020

How CompuServe got newspapers to give away their content 40 years ago.

tedium.co

Early Digital News: Newspapers' Many Online Experiments

Newspapers said they wanted to protect the print product, but they were raring to go when it came to experimental online news approaches in the early '80s.

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Aug 11, 2020

The researchers who specialize in finding new cuts of beef.

tedium.co

Beef Cuts: How Scientists Discovered New Kinds of Steak

For years, the beef industry has leaned on universities to discover new cuts of steak. Don't laugh: Meat science is behind at least one breakout hit.

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Sep 23, 2020

The obscure math problem that became Intel’s biggest headache.

tedium.co

The Equation That Bested Intel’s Pentium Processors

How one of the most famous computer bugs of all time, the Intel Pentium floating-point division glitch, blew out of proportion into a PR crisis.

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Jul 27, 2021

Raffi, the children’s music legend, once used his major-star clout to push for smaller CD cases. https://bit.ly/2IhVTdj

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Jul 13, 2020

Just because a calculator has a spot for a solar cell doesn't mean it's real.

tedium.co

Fake Solar Calculators: Solar Cells Just For Show

Amid recent (depressing) revelations that some cheap calculators have fake solar cells on them, a short history of real solar cells on calculators.

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Sep 23, 2020

Why computer dongles are so freaking hard to avoid.

tedium.co

Why Your Dongle Junk Drawer Will Never Be Empty

Pondering the many ways that dongles have taken over our lives, for better and for worse. One port will never rule them all, apparently.

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Jul 21, 2020

“If you buy the Pinebook Pro, you’re buying into the community as much as the device—and Pine64 has a really interesting community right now, one that will become fundamental to its future growth.” https://bit.ly/2GA3XqN

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Jul 10, 2020

Is there anything worse than a bright LED light in your face, making it impossible to sleep? Perhaps product designers should move away from them.

tedium.co

Why Are LED Indicator Lights (Especially Blue Lights) So Annoying?

Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? These lights are everywhere, and they make it hard to sleep. Here’s a case for some less-annoying indicators.

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Oct 10, 2020

The odd artifacts the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles left behind.

tedium.co

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Early Pop-Culture Oddities

Looking back on the early multimedia adventures of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with a bit of nostalgia on the side.

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@readtedium

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Feb 4

These days, it’s not uncommon to see a pop song with a laundry list of credited writers. Has songwriting changed? Or has the process of doling out credit? More from

@cdallarivamusic

:

tedium.co

Why Do Modern Pop Songs Have So Many Credited Writers?

How modern songwriting evolved into a game of aggressive credit—even for the people who didn’t technically do the composing.

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Ernie Smith is also @ernie@writing.exchange

@ShortFormErnie

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Feb 4

While you’re waiting, read the original internet-breaking piece that forced NPR and Rick Beato to take notice:

tedium.co

How the Billboard Hot 100 Lost Interest in the Key Change

One of the key changes—pun intended—to the pop charts in the last 60 years is the demise of key changes. What happened?

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Ernie Smith is also @ernie@writing.exchange

@ShortFormErnie

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Feb 4

You read (and shared, and complained about) “The Death of the Key Change.” Tomorrow morning,

@cdallarivamusic

will be back in hopes of topping himself with a few more music-themed charts. Keep an eye on your inbox for

@readtedium

in the AM. #music

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Oct 14, 2020

How an “Eternal September” mindset permeates online tensions. Still.

tedium.co

Why the Eternal September Mindset Needs to End

For decades, technical users looking down on the less knowledgeable have set the stage for a lot of bad online discourse. Can those users break the chain?

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Aug 23, 2020

Iceland had a very specific problem with Spain that ended its prohibition of alcohol … well, mostly.

tedium.co

Why Iceland Banned Beer For Nearly 75 Years

For decades, it was easier to get a bottle of vodka in Iceland than a pint of beer. The reason says more about Iceland’s politics than its temperance movement.

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Jul 21, 2020

“By comparing the skulls of woodpeckers and chickens, we discovered that woodpeckers have impact-absorbing adaptations that other birds do not have.”

tedium.co

Why Do Woodpeckers Peck Wood? And Does it Hurt Their Brains?

How do woodpeckers avoid brain injury? It all comes down to their bones. A few interesting facts about the woodpecker’s aggressive pecking approach.

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Oct 16, 2020

John McAfee beat Zuckerberg to social media by a decade.

tedium.co

Why John McAfee Was Secretly a Social Media Innovator

The controversial jailed antivirus software mogul John McAfee followed up his virus-fighting work with one of the first social networks. Really.

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Jul 11, 2020

“But it may hearten Black Lives Matter consumer activists to learn that the first-ever boycott—organized over 50 years before the term was even coined—was ultimately a success, if not in the way the woman behind it intended.”

theconversation.com

How one woman pulled off the first consumer boycott – and helped inspire the British to abolish...

A scholar of slavery in the British Empire describes the first boycott against sugar made with slave labor in the West Indies.

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Jul 7, 2020

Commercials talking about C.O.D. in the ’80s and ’90s: “Like airplanes telling people not to smoke, it felt like nobody was actually doing it, but they still had to say it anyway.” https://bit.ly/3hp8OMD

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Oct 21, 2020

The threat to local news coverage is changing. And not in a good way.

tedium.co

Beyond Outsourcing: The New Threats Facing Local Journalism

Local newspapers have already faced issues with outsourcing and an array of cuts for years. But the threat is changing—and you should know what it looks like.

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Jul 7, 2020

Sandra Bullock’s internet-themed 1995 movie “The Net” actually inspired one of the most important parts of the modern internet: Food delivery. https://bit.ly/2EX2Z87

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Jul 13, 2020

How the touch-tone phone made call centers possible: https://bit.ly/2arnCbY

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Jul 22, 2020

“RIPscrip’s fundamental design and philosophy is geared toward allowing you, the service provider, the ability to display information in any manner that you want. This is simply not possible in most traditional GUI environments.” https://bit.ly/2WJ9wfh

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Oct 24, 2020

What happens when a high vehicle meets a low overpass.

tedium.co

The Reason Low Overpass Crashes Are So Fun to Watch

Why low overpasses are often so damaging to trucks, RVs, and other large vehicles—and why the ensuing crashes are so fun to watch.

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Jul 17, 2020

“Finish your story, let go even if it's not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.” https://bit.ly/3fsrn1p

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Jul 16, 2020

The Lingering Legacy of America's First Cookie-Cutter Suburb

atlasobscura.com

The Lingering Legacy of America's First Cookie-Cutter Suburb

Inequality was built-in.

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Jul 16, 2020

Drinking games go way back.

historytoday.com

The Rules of Drinking

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Jul 22, 2020

“I just think that destiny just took charge of this, and I’m in the right place at the right time.”

atlasobscura.com

Meet the United States’s Only Female Lighthouse Keeper

Sally Snowman belongs to a tradition of freedom, loneliness, and pride.

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Jul 24, 2021

“While it may not be as popular today, scale modeling impacted an entire generation and left its mark on our pop culture.” https://bit.ly/2zjW0C0

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Jul 30, 2020

“Simply put, we were slowly moving from being a rag-tag, unorganized group of disabled people … to a cross-disability movement.” https://bit.ly/331uSYY

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Oct 28, 2020

Why McDonald’s should bring back the Pumpkin Pail—every year.

tedium.co

McDonald’s Plastic Pumpkin Pail: The Greatest Happy Meal Toy Ever?

Why McDonald’s is missing a major marketing opportunity by not handing out its ’80s era plastic pumpkin buckets to modern kids. (I feel strongly about this.)

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