#65: How fan tokens have impacted sport

💎 Word gems

The Open Secret of Google Search (The Atlantic / Charlie Warzel)

The article gets at something I’ve felt - Google’s search results have gotten worse. Simple queries don’t give simple results, but instead endless SEO sites, some with questionable reliability (especially when searching for a product to buy). The article is a tad click-baity, but explores something that feels inherently real.

For years, researchers, technologists, politicians, and journalists have agonized and cautioned against the wildness of the internet and its penchant for amplifying conspiracy theories, divisive subject matter, and flat-out false information. Many people, myself included, have argued for platforms to surface quality, authoritative information above all else, even at the expense of profit. And it’s possible that Google has, in some sense, listened (albeit after far too much inaction) and, maybe, partly succeeded in showing higher-quality results in a number of contentious categories. But instead of ushering in an era of perfect information, the changes might be behind the complainers’ sense that Google Search has stopped delivering interesting results. In theory, we crave authoritative information, but authoritative information can be dry and boring. It reads more like a government form or a textbook than a novel. The internet that many people know and love is the opposite—it is messy, chaotic, unpredictable. It is exhausting, unending, and always a little bit dangerous. It is profoundly human.

An AskHistorians thread that explains modern US political history via a 90s Simpsons joke (thread by u/fearofair)

I love the r/AskHistorians subreddit. The heavy-handed moderation means it’s one of the rare utopian-like examples of what the web can be at its best - a community where individuals sharing their expertise on obscure topics.

I stumbled across this thread that explains the origin of a political joke from a 1994 episode of The Simpsons, and the answer gives a really good explanation of the ideologies of the two political parties in the US. Simpsons clip included below too:

How the crypto crash has impacted each Premier League club (The Athletic / Joey D’Urso via a Twitter thread)

Crypto fan tokens have seemingly become pervasive in professional football. I remain mildly intrigued by the idea of a token re-imagining how we access things. However, the fan token actually giving real, meaningful access just isn’t the reality. Tokens don’t give ownership of the club, so their inherent value is meaningless. This Twitter thread gives a great club-by-club breakdown of how the crypto crash has impacted these tokens.

💩 Cool shit

Latest screenshots - A wonderful collection of the latest homepage of over 200 news sites.

...and by islands I mean paragraphs - A whimsical website that lets you explore ‘islands’ made up of paragraphs of text.

The Overedge Catalog - An intriguing and useful collection of newer research organizations that don’t fit into typical categories.

Running Stories app - This is a really fun idea; it turns your runs into an interactive story.

Point in History - This is cool. Tap on anywhere in the map and take a tour through time to see how borders have changed throughout history.

The Malware Museum - Digital history is history, too. This site has a collection of 80s and 90s malware.

Reddit map - Search for a subreddit and see how it connects to other subreddits.

Platformer Toolkit - This video essay is simply incredible. It’s a platformer game that lets you change parameters like your characters jump height and more, giving you a hands-on way to learn how platformers are made.

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