NEWSLETTER: "REMEMBER THE B3TA NEWSLETTER? SO DID ROB... FINALLY."
This Week:
* QUIZ - Are You Smarter Than Twitter?
* BRITISH ROAD SIGNS - Vandalised for lols
* ENO - Let's play 'Oblique Strategies'
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________ ____ __ ___
____/ _)|_ // /_/ _ | "We're saving the webs
___/ _ |/_ </ __/ __ | to make a museum
__/____/____/\__/_/ |_| for spiders to visit"
B3ta email 678 - 18 May 2018
Read the inferior web version, email forever!
http://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue678
Block b3ta on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/b3tan
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: ARE YOU SMARTER THAN TWITTER?
Almost endless internet quiz
Monkeon has made a quiz based on searching for
instances of people saying "I can't tell the
difference..." and turning their observations
into a quiz. It's actually ingenious.
http://www.monkeon.co.uk/areyousmarterthantwitter/
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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.
If you want to know what £110 trousers look
like then click, nobody is forcing you to buy
them. That's not how it works.
https://hebtro.co/
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: BRITISH STREET SIGNS IMPROVED BY VANDALS
Bateman Lane = Bat-man Lane
Accidentally kicked off a great Twitter thread
of people sharing their local street signs that
keep getting vandalised with the obvious jokes.
Apse Heath = Arse Heath
Dogpool Lane = Dogpoo Lane
Aftherstone Mews = Ratherstoned Mews
Prentis Road = Penis Road
Clint Lane = Cunt Lane
Essex Drive = Sex Drive
Wellingborough = Well Rough
Bellenden Road = Bellend Road
Corn Street = Porn Street
Shilbottle = Shitbottle
And the classic... Canal Street = Anal Treet.
We'd like to add to this so make sure you send
some more in.
http://b3ta.com/blog/british-street-name-vandalism...
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: REJECTED GOVERNMENT PETITION BOT
"A mix of hot gammon and pure lunacy"
Jonty writes, "Two years ago I discovered that
all the rejected UK government petitions were
posted publicly, including such recent classics
as 'Princess Diana should be the hologram that
meets you at the airport' and 'Criminalise cat
ownership in Sawtry'. It's a mix of hot gammon
and pure lunacy. I did the obvious thing and
made a bot to publicise them all." This is
flipping genius, a genuine mix of humour and
saying something about the world we live in.
The London Review Of Bots gives it FIVE STARS.
https://twitter.com/rejectpetitions
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: COPYWRITER WANTS JOB
Sponsored patreon
One of our sponsorships slot has been taken by
Josh who writes, "A good friend of mine is
looking for a decent job doing good copywriting
for someone who's not a cunt. I've not told him
I'm going to do this but how would you feel
about plugging him in the newsletter? His name
is Thom Wong."
https://allknown.info/
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: OBLIQUE STRATEGIES FOR WORK
Happy 70th birthday to Brian Eno.
In celebration of Eno reaching three score and
ten we've opened B3ta's own version of Oblique
Strategies, but instead of solving problems in
the music studio, it's solutions that have
solved problems at work.
Here's some of your card ideas so far:
* Put fake meetings in your shared Outlook
calendar
* Ignore the client until they solve the
problem by themselves
* Don't solve any problems. Otherwise people
will start bringing problems to you
* Hide in a cardboard box until they stop
looking for you
* Strategically book a holiday
* Blame an ex-employee for the screw up and
tell the customer that as a result, she's been
fired
Please suggestion some work solutions without
giving away the problem they were solving:
http://www.b3ta.com/questions/obliquestrategies/
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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. (Oh go on, it's free
Government money. Possibly.)
https://www.cuttingedgeanalysis.com/
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What do you call a royal wedding sandwich?
Anything that's in bread.
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: GOING OUT B3TA STYLE
Events for your busy social calendar
* WATCH CASSETTE BOY LIVE - Mash-up chaps
Cassetteboy are playing live in Sheffield
tomorrow night (Saturday 18th May). We asked
them for some blurb and they said "How do you
turn a YouTube channel into a live show? If
you know, tell Cassetteboy, but in the meantime
we'll be playing old favourites and previously
unseen videos, dressing up in stupid outfits
and generally prancing about. It's unlike
anything you've ever seen before, unless you've
seen us before in which case it will be pretty
much the same as last time."
https://goo.gl/xrbDCk
* SMERSH POD LIVE EVENT - Unless you've been
living under a rock you might have noticed
podcasts are now a big deal, it's basically a
way of the internet filling your brain when
you're not looking at a screen in a cunning
ruse to make you buy mattresses and meal boxes.
One of the best pods is Smersh Pod and they're
doing their first live Smersh next Wednesday,
including a screening of some terrible old film
to laugh at. We're going and so should you.
https://goo.gl/2hpx4r
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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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: THREE VIDEOS FROM B3TANS CORNER
Thrice as nice as once the nonce
* ASHENS STAR WARS VIDEO - Stuart Ashens is a
big star now, with over a million followers on
YouTube and writer of two hit books and he
wants you to watch his fake-ad for the
shittiest Star Wars toys you've ever seen,
"Please feature this as it took ages to make
and made me laugh and I wish it got more views
thank you." We lost it at "fixy barrel."
https://www.youtube.com/watch
* LLOYDS BANK - SUMMERISLE BRANCH - Smaggers has
been editing the current big Lloyds Bank ad to
make it a bit more sinister. See if you agree.
http://www.b3ta.com/links/Lloyds_bank_Summerisle_b...
* HOW TO DO PHOTOGRAPHY REALLY GOOD WITH TIM
CHEESE - "Wow B3ta newsletter is back and I
recently (ish) made a video tutorial for people
learning how to use DSLR cameras. Simple and
helpful advice." Wow, we're experts now, thank
you Mr Cheese.
https://www.youtube.com/watch
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What's old and white and lies on a bus?
A brexitter
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: B3TA IMAGE CHALLENGE
Birds
Doing a one word challenge 'birds' so do your
worst - some great entries so far, the Twitter
one from S4RK is particularly great.
http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/birds/popular/
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: SITES IN BRIEF
Stuff we like that wasn't made by our mates
* CONGRATS TO THE COOL-AS-FUCK SHEFFIELD MAYOR
- he's an ex refugee called Magid Magid and the
leather jacket with ceremonial chains is just
style.
https://twitter.com/SheffCouncil/status/9966627920...
* 50-YEAR-OLD CRISP PACKET FOUND ON NORFOLK
BEACH - local news loves doing mundane stories
to make people go 'lol local news' and scoop up
the viral traffic, and this one is a doozy.
Headline of the week.
https://goo.gl/pwFMdW
* CILLA BLACK WAS GREAT, YES SHE WAS - Ms Cilla
Black outing a undercover journalist on Blind
Date is still a gripping bit of TV 20 years
later. Love the zoom on Nicola's face on the
reveal. She somehow delivers the death blow but
never looks like a bully and keeps the audience
on side. Such skill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch
* YOUTUBE AS STUDY PARTNER - how is this for a
weird online trend? Korean youtube channels
dedicated to watching someone study for 6 hrs.
Viewers have it on while they study. Maybe we
should try it to help us write this thing
instead of tweeting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch
* HOW TO MAKE IFFY URLS - Changes legitimate
URLs into legitimate URLs that look dodgy. We
don't want to quote them as spam filters but
yeah, amused us.
https://verylegit.link/
* INTERACTIVE COLOURING-IN POP VIDEO - do you
ever find yourself absentmindedly clicking the
screen as you watch videos? Well this is the
perfect synthesis of that user experience, as
you can colour in the video characters as they
play their song.
https://www.stainedglassvideo.com/
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mc@hammer: ~ $ ls
file.txt
mc@hammer: ~ $ touch this
touch: cannot touch 'this': Permission denied
mc@hammer: ~ $ sudo !!
[sudo] password for mc: **********
mc@hammer: ~ $ ls
file.txt
This
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: WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
Follow-ups on previous stories
* WAR ON DAILY MAIL - @dontusemypics writes,
"Update on Lee's complaint to MailOnline: after
saying they can only offer £100 for 3 photos
and ignoring his response, I knocked together
an invoice in Word for £575 and Lee sent it to
them with a demand for payment in 2 weeks or
he'd take it to the small claims court. They
wrote back the same day saying they'll give him
£300 to avoid that and he's accepted. So
definitely worth holding out and threatening
them with small claims court."
https://twitter.com/dontusemypics
* JOEL VEITCH CO-WRITES SHORT FILM - we saw the
premier of the short Joel co-wrote this week
and it was great. It'll be on the festival
circuit shortly and is called Making Friends
and if you squint you can spot Rob Manuel in
the party scenes.
https://bit.ly/2IOZnbc
* WEEBL FUNDS ALBUM - Jonti has funded his new
LP to the tune of the £32,000 goal which
impressed us. Crowdfunding is apparently how to
do stuff these days (please fund B3ta patreon
too!)
https://goo.gl/jpZLE3
* AND FINALLY - Murray writes, "Thank you for
the newsletter! It's like the good old days!
Your Drew Barrymore / Clare Balding / Amber
Heard / Tom Cruise bit made me think of a
favourite of mine. My wife is an art teacher,
so on our bookshelf we have a book by Gillian
Wearing. *Every* time I sit on the sofa I can't
help but think 'what is Gillian Wearing?'"
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My Scouse uncle does green grocery deliveries in
Shoreditch
He doesn't have a van.
He does avocado.
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: SEND B3TA SWAG
We noticed we'd started to accumulate requests
from people asking to send us stuff in the post
and figured well if this is a thing then let's
encourage it. So please send us your books /
CDs / whatever creative projects you are
selling and if we like it we'll bung it on our
swag page.
Maybe it'll grow into a lovely list of stuff
you can use as present ideas? That's the hope
anyway.
Currently featuring a brilliant goth colouring
book, a load of comedy DVDs and MJ Hibbett's
new compilation album on the exciting medium of
tape.
http://b3ta.com/blog/b3ta-swag/
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: TELL US ABOUT YOUR STUFF
This newsletter is written by you sending stuff
in, so send stuff in and if we like it we'll
feature it.
http://b3ta.com/mailus/
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: CREDITS
This issue was written by Rob Manuel.
Stuff sent in by Jody Smith, MikeHolden42,
The_cold_stare, Monkeon.
‏
Jokes by Dr.Dunno, cumquat may, Wanksock.
Giff by garidead.
Tech by Cr3, Kris & Wil.
Challenges from Happy Toast, Chris & Monkeon.
Subjlols via The_cold_stare.
Proofing by @muninnherself.
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Have you written a joke? Go and apologise for
it at "I'm Sorry I've Written A Joke"
http://www.b3ta.com/questions/imsorryivewrittenajo...
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: LOVELY SPONSORS:
Josh McMillan
Ed Zitron
Kevin Prescott
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