mary.codes

Five-ish things that I loved this week.

Pokémon and Japanese Craft Traditions Unite in a Fantastic Exhibition of 70+ Works (article)

I can't understand why Colossal published an article about this mere days before this art show closed. Not like I would've been able to visit anyway. Regardless, I'm glad that this hit my radar. These Pokémon-inspired artworks created with traditional Japanese techniques are stunning.

Japan House LA has an excellent write-up spotlighting each different craft and the Pokémon artwork being represented in the show. Pokemon.com showcases more pieces and has some embedded videos. Finally, the Pokémon x Kogei official site has additional images of the artworks and a schedule of the upcoming museum tour in Japan. Hopefully I'll be in Japan next year and I can try to see it in person!

The Curse (television)

The final episode airs today, but I'm calling this a fave simply because it has been appointment TV since the beginning. Even if the finale is bad (I sincerely doubt it), I enjoyed the entire watching experience. Maybe I should put "enjoyed" in quotes because it is such a cringe-inducing, squirmy watch that probably turns a lot of people off, but I absolutely love the weird-not-weirdness of this show.

The video embedded below isn't a trailer for The Curse, but a pilot episode for the show-within-a-show. Absolutely brilliant.

Another of Nathan Fielder's recent series, The Rehearsal, is another favorite of mine. If you like The Curse, you'll probably like The Rehearsal too.

I solved the Megaminx

Remember last week when I said I wasn't sure I would ever solve the megaminx? Well, I ended up looking it up on Ruwix and it turns out that the solution is very similar to the regular 3x3 cube.

Here's my next challenge, which has been scrambled for probably three years at this point:

I'm already making progress, with one face almost solved. The trick seems to be to make a flat face on one side, then use those solved pieces to put the other pieces into place. Wish me luck!

Website aggregators

I've been looking for ways to find great websites made by real people who share similar interests to me. The article Where have all the websites gone? says it well.

Somewhere between the late 2000’s aggregator sites and the contemporary For You Page, we lost our ability to curate the web. Worse still, we’ve outsourced our discovery to corporate algorithms. Most of us did it in exchange for an endless content feed.

I'm trying to find my way of curating the internet. Currently, I have a couple of RSS readers (one on my desktop, one on my phone) that I use to keep up with sites that I've already discovered. But I'm still looking to discover more.

Here's a few aggregator/directory/search sites that I found this week that I've been using to find new cool personal websites:

• lobste.rs - Similar to Hacker News, but also has tags that you can filter by.
• ooh.directory - A directory that feels sort of like old-school Yahoo. Sites organized by category. I submitted this site to the web development category last week!
• search.marginalia.nu - An independent search engine that focuses on non-commercial content. A wonderful place to find rabbit holes.

Solving Cicada 3301: Decoding the Internet's Greatest Mystery (video)

Years ago I made a post about alternate reality games. I still think they're a cool concept. This video dives into Cicada 3301, one of the alternate reality games that I mentioned in the post.

I'm surprised that nobody has solved Cicada 3301's final quest.