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NEWSLETTER: "WHY HAVE WE CROWDFUNDED WRITING A NEWSLETTER? WE HATE WRITING NEWSLETTERS"

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"Why have we crowdfunded writing a newsletter? We hate writing newsletters"
This Week:
* RUDE COUNTDOWN - man collects all THOSE moments
* BOOK - Emails to Jesus, of course
* "THIS IS WAR!" - Twitter account takes on pic theft

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________  ____  __  ___
____/  _)|_  / / /_/ _ | "17 years of saving the 
___/  _ |/_ < / __/ __ |   web... you'd get less 
__/____/____/ |__/_/ |_|       for murder"

B3ta email 677 - 11 May 2018

"Siri! Wipe shit on the curtain and blame the cat!"
http://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue677

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: HOLY SHIT-BALLS BATMAN, THE PATREON WORKED
  B3ta is back, Back, BACK!

  Yep. We've returned, did you miss us? (Yeah!)
  We asked you give us Patreon money and enough
  of you did to make us go 'bugger me with a
  fork, an ASCII newsletter in 2018 is exactly
  what people are begging for.'

  So here it is. You paid for it. On your head be
  it.

  Ok, let's be bit more honest here, we want to
  do lots of things and not just retro
  newsletters, we want to be here with you for
  life.

  This is the long haul - B3ta until we die. Are
  you with us. ARE YOU FUCKING WITH US?

  Make sure you contribute. We need your support
  and we'll support you. Let's do this. Let's
  make this bigger.
https://www.patreon.com/b3ta


-------------------------------------------------

: RUDE RACHEL RILEY 
  Countdown lady standing in front of rude words

  WordsFromLee writes, "According to my
  girlfriend, spending years collecting
  screenshots of Rachel Riley standing in front
  of rude words on Countdown  is 'weird'. So to
  get myself back up in her estimation, I've
  decided to actually do something productive
  with them and archive them on an Instagram
  account. Within 48 hours of starting it, I had
  already had two DMs from wrong-uns."
https://www.instagram.com/ruderiley/


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: BUY SOME TROUSERS
  Sponsored patreon

  Hebtro make awesome trousers. And they're made
  by some old newsletter contributors in the UK.
  They keep trying to send us some but we don't
  want to admit our waist size to strangers....
https://hebtro.co/


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: WORK RELATED FUCK UPS
  Our twitter question goes viral
  
  We asked our 14,000 Twitter followers "We want
  to hear about your work related fuck-ups.
  Reply, quote tweet, do your worst" and it went
  mental. Still getting replies to this.

  * "Spent six months with the typo 'kind
  retards' in my email signature. I was Senior
  Nurse, Learning Disabilities."

  * "Working at small agency & our big client was
  Greenpeace. An email came in from supporter
  asking what we were going to do about saving
  the whales. Sent group email to office saying
  “the plan is to eat them - the white meat of
  the sea” And yes accidentally sent it to
  supporter..."

  * "I once sent a company-wide virus warning by
  forwarding the email so they could see what it
  looked like should they receive one, and forgot
  to remove the infected attachment."

  Read the best 17 or so at:
http://b3ta.com/blog/work-related-fuck-ups/
  
  Or read the glorious thread which is better than our write-up.
https://twitter.com/b3ta/status/992000687935557632


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: BIRD FLIGHT SIMULATOR 
  This is pretty relaxing

  Foxglove writes, "One theory is that those
  flocks work by the members only observing how
  far apart they are from others. If you were
  walking down the street with two of your
  friends, you wouldn't have to worry about where
  you're going if you just stayed between them.
  Changes in direction are dictated by members on
  the edges of the flock."
  
  Just watch it, it's beautiful.
http://personal.kent.edu/~jtboehm/murmuration/


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: NEED PR? BEST CALL ED
  Sponsored patreon

  "I'm Ed Zitron and I'm running the best PR
  company in the world - and I've been reading
  B3ta for 15 years so have sponsored them."
https://www.ezpr.com/


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: I'M SORRY I'VE WRITTEN A JOKE

  How many gammon does it take to change a
  lightbulb?

  Millions. First to successfully campaign to
  leave the EU, and then to wait in the dark for
  the proper inefficient incandescent light bulbs
  to make a comeback.
  http://b3ta.com/questions/imsorryivewrittenajoke/a...


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: EMAILS TO JESUS BOOK
  Praise satan!
  
  B3ta friend Scott Williams used to work at
  Google and nabbed the email address [obvious
  Holy thing]@gmail.com for the hell of it. What
  he didn't expect was that people would send the
  account daily emails begging for holy
  intervention. He's made them into a book "It's
  overly-priced because we don't want people to
  buy it."
https://goo.gl/5QvJ4t


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: NEWSPAPERS STEALING PHOTOS 
  The war on pic theft starts here
  
  "No you can't use my pics" is a new Twitter
  account that retweets people telling
  journalists to fuck off when they ask to nick
  their pics for news sites.

  Started after [redacted] read a comment on the
  B3ta /links board saying that this would be a
  good idea. 1300+ followers so far and it should
  be more. Make sure you follow.
https://twitter.com/dontusemypics  

  Read the thread that started it:
https://goo.gl/nYXvv7


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: GET YOUR GRANT FUNDING APPLICATION WRITTEN
  Sponsored patreon

  Need grant funding for a tech project or idea?
  Get Cutting Edge Analysis to write a no win, no
  fee proposal for you.
https://www.cuttingedgeanalysis.com/


-------------------------------------------------

: SMASH HITS BOT INTERVIEWS YOKO ONO BOT

  If you've been following your B3ta editor Rob
  Manuel for the last few years you'll know he
  became weirdly obsessed with writing bots.

  Here he's made his Smash Hits Bot (it
  interviews you like a popstar from the 80s)
  interview his Yoko Ono Bot (she mostly posts
  mystical truisms about teabags).

  It's what one journalist at Buzzfeed dot com
  described as "The future of content - jokey
  twitter accounts stuck in a never-ending
  tweetloop."
https://twitter.com/yokoonobot/status/994527110738...


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: JOEL VEITCH KITTEN VIDEO
  Would it even be a b3ta newsletter without this? 

  Joel writes, "We done a video for Ride On Time
  by Black Box. It's got kittens in it and stuff.
  Rargh!"
https://goo.gl/6R5EUb


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  * Who Drew Barrymore?

  * Is Clare Balding?

  * Has Amber Heard?

  * Does Tom Cruise?

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: HOMEMADE OSCILLOSCOPE GAMING MACHINE
  Holy shit balls. This is amazing.

  Matt writes, "Hey folks. I designed and built a
  simple microcontroller powered arcade system
  that can be plugged into an oscilloscope
  screen. It's like a pseudo-Vectrex. I think
  it's the kind of oddball gizmo you'd enjoy."
http://www.mrdictionary.net/ocelot/


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: THE MEANING OF GIFF 
  Mamble (v)

  To attempt to refute an accusation of
  mansplaining with an even longer and more
  patronising explanation.
http://www.b3ta.com/questions/themeaningofgiff/all...


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: LOOKALIKES
  Alan Davies and some Belgian singer dude

  MatthewWilliamSimpson writes, "Hi, do you think
  this guy on this album cover looks like Alan
  Davies?" Holy shit balls, yes!
http://b3ta.com/blog/alan-davies/


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: BRIEF SITES IN BRIEF
  Very brief coz fuck loads of old links 

  * ANIMATED GIFS OF PEOPLE VOMITING IN MOVIES
http://film-vomit.tumblr.com/

  * INTERESTING TOOL FOR PUTTING COMEDY CAPTIONS
  ON VIDEOS - example goes to a Theresa May /
  Hitler reacts video "Anyway, my friend (Stuart
  Prior) made a Hitler reacts video, and I
  thought it was really good" writes blakeney.
https://goo.gl/A4a7nS

  Fuck it, if you want more links just go on the
  B3ta links board - we want the newsletter to be
  mostly stuff from B3tan universe rather than
  stuff that trending on Twitter yesterday or was
  on Reddit last week.
http://www.b3ta.com/links/popular/


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: B3TA IMAGE CHALLENGE
  Two Panel Album Cover Jokes
  
  We're playing a game on B3ta where you look at
  an LP, think of a joke and then run it
  side-by-side with the actual LP. It makes
  sense, trust us.

  Also we figured it would be nice to run
  something that's quite easy to enter for people
  who aren't necessarily visually minded but can
  think of an odd joke.

  Do join in - it's a lot of fun.
http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/2panelalbum/popular/
 
 
-------------------------------------------------

: STAR IN NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE

  Right. For the newsletter to work we need to
  know about YOUR projects, you need to tell us
  and we can then tell the world.

  We are a funnel, a small publicity machine that
  can get eyes on your projects.

  We have two things we look for: funny or
  interesting, and that's the only thing you ever
  need to be.

  Do make sure you tell us about your stuff via
  our mailus form:
http://b3ta.com/mailus/


-------------------------------------------------

  THANKS:
  This issue was written by Rob Manuel. 

  Special thanks to

  @cr3 - speeding up site. Wil - Fixing up site
  problems Kris - making cool newsletter sending
  tech.

  Happytoast / Monkeon / Chris - working hard on
  challenges

  Joke by Monkeon.

  Stuff sent in by @mwilliamson5014,
  @drakestonehotel, @Berlinseshdmtv, cumquat may,
  @Nicnackery, @Entropy72, social hand grenade,
  Valentin.lagunilla.
  
-------------------------------------------------

  TOP TIP:
  Avoid being shot by not going to school in the USA.
http://www.b3ta.com/questions/toptips/


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THANK YOU PATREONS

Ed Zitron Kevin Prescott HebTroCo

*TOM JENKINS BATES* *JON GRANT* *SHOWRAT* *SIMON
JAMES* *TREVOR BURTON-MCCREADIE* *MR PHIL
DONNELLY* *KATE* *JAMES PETTS* *STEWART* *BRYAN
PEACOCK* *MARK MCCREADIE* *ALEX MORRIS* *JAMES
O'BRIEN*

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Make sure you are generous. Good things happen to
the generous. https://www.patreon.com/b3ta


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: SUBS GUBBINS
  How to sub/unsub from this lovely newsletter

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  If you hated it, then remember, this newsletter
  is called NTK.


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HOLY SHIT - THANKS FOR SCROLLING TO THE BOTTOM

And finally some advice to live by from JT, "I
don’t have a project to big up in the newsletter
but I would like to remind everyone, in true Bill
& Ted style to be excellent to one another. Go
make someone you like a cup of tea. Better yet,
do it for someone you’re a bit iffy about."

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