It’s newsletters all the way down

Thicc Pokémon, a secret Japanese horror connection, and a boat stuck in a lake

Howdy [subscriber:firstname | default:yall],

This is the Wolfpaw Weekly. Don’t remember signing up or don’t want this anymore? It’s easy to unsubscribe.

I read a lot of newsletters. It can become overwhelming to keep up at times, so basically it’s like all other social media.

My friend Allie Nimmons recently started a newsletter of her own, and I suggest you subscribe. I love how she does recommendations and links to interesting things online. Plus, the challenges at the end are something actionable to make you think. And this isn’t just because she was kind enough to link this little newsletter 💝

I’ve had another interesting week, and I’m planning on taking some time to decompress over the next few days. I suggest that you do the same if you’re able, and I’ll see you next week!

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screenshot of an NFT sale page for a Thicc Raichu Pokémon card

Look, I had to see a gallery of NFTs for thicc Pokémon, so now you get to.

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📚

I’ve really been enjoying this newsletter series that is presenting the first fifty years of text games with one important game in the genre published in a specific year being examined per week.

The series starts with the 1971 version of The Oregon Trail, and goes from there. I particularly like the issues on dnd, Zork, Mud, and last week’s story about 1982’s The Hobbit.

Jay Hoffman has been continuing his article series on Web History over on CSS-Tricks, with the latest chapter about Standards for the web. There’s a lot of history to unpack

A Boy, His Brain, and a Decades-Long Medical Controversy – Seema Yasmin, Wired

These kinds of stories terrify me. While the types of illnesses described are specific to children, who’s to say that similar things can’t happen later in life? Pair this with the following: When the Body Attacks the Mind by Moises Velasquez-Manoff

No Pandemic Emoji? No Problem 💖 – Jennifer Daniel

Sometimes it’s not a new word that’s needed, but a new way to describe something with existing words. The same thing applies to emoji! There are a lot of ways to express how this pandemic has been. If I were to make a short chain now, it’d probably be 😔😷👬🐶💉

Why Generation X will save the web – Heather Burns

I hate to think that Ms. Burns is right, but I’m betting that she is. She looks longer and harder at tech policy than anyone I know, and I can believe that people my age are ready to give away rights that older technologists have been fighting for over decades.

Mafia fugitive caught after posting YouTube cooking video – Angela Giuffrida, The Guardian

can’t help but be an influencer these days.

I Like That The Boat Is Stuck – Sarah Gailey, Stone Soup

If you are sad that the boat is no longer stuck, you can use this Microsoft Flight Simulator mod to keep it stuck forever! You can also see how big it really is (or get it stuck wherever you want) with this nifty Glitch.

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a picture of the Ever Given freighter positioned in Lake Eola in downtown Orlando

It looks like the Ever Given is just about the length of Lake Eola in downtown Orlando

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🎥

The Origin Of The Term Gamer

Did you know that Gamer has been around as a term for 600 years? Or that it came into prominence well before video games? Or that the people who started using the term for video games preferred “arcader”?

Metric Paper & Everything in the Universe

Folding paper seems simple: paper is thin, right? But what happens if you make your paper very small? Or very large? Sure, this is a take on an old type of “our space in the universe is so small” video, but still interesting. When you’re done, why not fold a piece of paper yourself?

The War of the Golden Stool • Puppet History

No one sits on the stool, not even the king. Learn that and more on one of my favorite game shows about history and trivia with The Professor!

The Golem and the Jewish Superhero

Listening to Jacob Geller talk about Jewish Folklore and comic books almost makes me forget that his Discord moderator added “furry stuff” to a list of suggestively adult topics under an nsfw rule.

Food Theory: Grubhub Lore Exists and It’s WEIRDER Than You Thought!

I want to say, “who would devote so much of their time to thinking up this concept and making an 18 minute video about it?” but then I remember that MatPat is probably doing pretty well with the ad and merch sales against these videos.

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