🪤 Birch Bark Issue #66
Hello and happy Friday! We’re just jumping right into things today!
Links
Today’s top link is Slap Kirk, a fun website that lets you slap Kirk…what more could you want?
This whole gas shortage thing is quite the self-fulfilling situation, huh? The idea that there could be a shortage makes people go buy tons of gas, which in itself creates a shortage 🙃
This guy mailed an AirTag to himself to see if the Find My network could track it. Spoiler: it could!
Apparently 80%+ of the comments submitted to the FCC about net neutrality in 2017 were BS.
In total, about 18 million of the 22 million comments sent to the F.C.C. during the debate over the net neutrality rules were fake, the investigation found. More than nine million fake comments were filed at the F.C.C. supporting the rules, arguing that repealing them would leave consumers paying more for a slower internet, according to investigators. A 19-year-old computer science student was responsible for more than 7.7 million of them.
Apple is Holding Back the Creator Economy addresses the App Store conversation from the perspective of “creators”. I thought its framing of the challenge of “product companies” running platforms as an interesting angle.
This level of control essentially makes Apple the central arbiter that decides how creators establish and monetize relationships with their fans.
Videos
Big video week, so strap in! First up is a little self-promotion as I’m really happy with my latest video about how Resident Evil 4 helped me understand how to give better presentations at work. How often do you see zombies getting killed(?) in an videos about office work?
Adam Savage has been answering a ton of questions on his Tested channel over the past year, and this one stood out to me as Adam was especially excited that Mythbusters was able to show science as a messy thing that anyone can do. The show helped show people that science wasn’t something that “special” or “uniquely smart” people do and bestow upon the rest of society, and I think that’s super important.
This video is just good vibes and shows some great creativity to get awesome photos on a budget.
I recently discovered Glarses, and if you like both mechanical keyboards and laughter, then you’re going to love his channel.
And finally, this video of someone restoring an old, disgusting GameCube controller was exceptionally soothing to me.