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We’re Gunning For IBM
Today in Tedium: The history of computing is full of stories that follow a specific arc, or a slight variation on it. Here’s the gist: A company has massive success, dominating an entire era of...
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Tear Down This Paywall
Editor's note: I wrote this on Medium last night, but am also sharing here in hopes of giving this issue the attention it deserves. I write stuff that is driven on research. It’s an important part of...
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Delivered To Your Door
Today in Tedium: Don’t let the talk of content on the cloud fool you. It’s easier than ever to get physical stuff mailed to your duplex nearly every single day of the year. (OK, maybe it’s not...
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Pass Over The Beer
I'm not a very good cook, though I've gotten better over the years. One of the best examples of my culinary struggles involved an infamous attempt to create a concoction I called "French toast hummus,"...
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No Comment
Editor's note: Back again for another round is Andrew Egan, who most recently brought us the story of Scatman John. Tonight, he tells us about his time digging in the menus on random DVDs. (By the...
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The Game Of Life
There isn’t a better explanation for the current state of the American psyche than the impressive success of The Wall, which just had its season finale last night. It has a name that evokes a certain...
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Are You Not Entertained?
Today in Tedium: There was a time when in-flight entertainment was better than anything you could actually bring onto a plane. That time has long passed, and some airlines are looking to get rid of...
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a lowercase controversy
the thing with uppercase letters is that if they aren’t there, you start to miss them after a while. they tend to carry a certain weight about them, one that speaks to a certain authority. (IT’S AN...
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Lemony Fresh
Today in Tedium: Plastic, barring all the environmental problems and health concerns that might come with it, is awesome as a moldable product. It shows up in all sorts of places, from laptop cases,...
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A New Coat of Paint
Last year, Anthony Dortch suffered a major personal setback—surviving a stroke at a young age. This health struggle threatened to stop Dortch, a Washington, D.C.-based artist, from following his muse,...
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Your Code Is Junky
Today in Tedium: As I’ve covered a few times in the past, the hard part about any budding technology—whether it’s delivering packages, driving down interstate highways, or beaming satellite signals to...
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The Great Gnome Fad
Quick: Four decades ago, back in 1977, what was the biggest pop-culture phenomena around? You probably said disco, maybe Star Wars. Fleetwood Mac was big that year. Maybe you thought of Laverne &...
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This Van Could Change Your Life
On the grand scale of rock-band gimmicks, the move by The Shins to give away their old van to a deserving up-and-coming artist is pretty noble, despite the fact that, well, James Mercer is the only...
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Reverse-Engineering The Industry
Today in Tedium: When it comes to video game consoles, the manufacturers don’t like it when you bend the rules. But it happens anyway. Technically inclined individuals inevitably want to bend the...
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This Is My Top Secret Room
These days, The Legend of Zelda is getting a whole lot of well-deserved extra attention as a franchise, thanks to Breath of the Wild being one of the Nintendo Switch’s launch titles. (Side note: We...
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It’s Not Styrofoam
Today in Tedium: In the age of instant takeout, there may be no greater scourge than polystyrene, a necessary evil of many a food delivery. New York City, famously, tried to ban the foamy substance...
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Ink-Stained Headlines
You know what’s a terrible racket? Printer ink. Driven up by artificial markets and complex, incompatible cartridge systems, printers have become one of the most depressing parts of any computing...
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Frickin' Laser Beams
Today in Tedium: When the Beatles took their earliest U.S. tours, the limitations of the concert infrastructure at the time showed themselves in a big way. Put simply, you couldn’t actually hear the...
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Going Soft
Dial-up modems were underpowered enough back in the days of AOL, but at the height of their popularity, manufacturers figured out a way to make them even worse. During the late ‘90s, a spate of...
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Stuck On You
Today in Tedium: It was the cup that comical YouTube unboxing videos were made for. Last year, the Mighty Mug, a drink receptacle that’s designed to not fall down under normal circumstances, gained a...
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