NEWSLETTER: "I WISH TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS NEWSLETTER YET RETAIN ALL THE BENEFITS OF RECEIVING IT"
This Week:
* QUIZ - Test your resistance to clickbait
* IMAGE CHALLENGE - Kids' covers for adult books
* TYPE-IN - For your Amstrad CPC 464 (or 6128+)
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________ ____ __ ___
____/ _)|_ // /_/ _ | 'We're saving the web
___/ _ |/_ </ __/ __ | largely to 3.5" disks
__/____/____/\__/_/ |_| in an unreadable format'
B3ta email 681 - 8 June 2018
Read this issue backwards and summon "Web Satan":
http://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue681
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: CLICKY CLICKY CLICKBAIT QUIZ
Monkeon tests your resistance to clickbait
Quiz genius Monkeon has read all the clickbait
on the internet and selected all the headlines
he thinks are particularly difficult to resist,
to see how many you can read before you succumb
to clicking. We managed 53% resistance to
clickbait. Can you beat us?
https://www.monkeon.co.uk/clickbaitimmunity/
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Bands where the band name is a band member's surname:
Van Halen (Eddie)
Bon Jovi (Jon)
King (Paul)
Goldfrapp (Alison)
Dio (Ronnie James)
Danzig (Glenn)
Fox (Noosha)
Gillan (Ian)
Santana (Carlos)
BONUS ANSWER: The Spice Girls all had the surname "Spice"
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: AMSTRAD BUS FABRIC SIMULATOR
A type-in for your CPC 464
Rob writes "If art is the stuff you feel
compelled to make and happens with or without
an audience, then this is my art: code written
for a 34 year old computer to approximate the
designs on council tiles in the 1970s and the
fabrics used on bus seats." And what's more,
there's a complete listing for YOU to type into
your Amstrad. HOORAY!
https://b3ta.com/blog/amstrad-type-in/
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Dear BBC. Twitch stream Top Of The Pops next. Thank you.
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: BUY SOME FUCKING TROUSERS
Sponsored patreon
Hebtro make awesome trousers. And they're made
by some old newsletter contributors in the UK.
They also sell shorts and want you to buy lots
of them so they can pay their VAT bill. GO
SPEND!
https://hebtro.co/
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: WASHING UP SONG
Surprisingly good song about washing up
When people send songs in we always cringe a
bit as it's a tough job to make this stuff
likeable, but Elliotmason has succeeded with an
utterly charming tribute to the thoughts he has
whilst washing up.
https://youtu.be/fVn0Iq0CmvY
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Mum jokes will get you far.
But Dad jokes will get you father.
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: B3TA IMAGE CHALLENGE
Kids’ covers for adult books
This week's challenge is all about designing
new covers for children's books. Do make sure
you join in, as you get out what you put into
this stuff, you know.
https://www.b3ta.com/challenge/kidscoversadultbook...
Last week's challenge about 'farm films' is
still going strong. From a title that you might
argue sounded unpromising, or maybe left-field,
it has produced a really strong challenge with
over 100 entries, with many of them being
laugh-out-loud funny. Well done, people.
https://www.b3ta.com/challenge/farmfilms/popular/
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What do you call a big reptile that gets someone else to bite you?
A deligator
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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."
Thank you Ed. You're the BEST. And you have
100k followers on Twitter. Which is pretty
impressive, can we borrow some?
https://twitter.com/edzitron
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: MASH-UP KING SWEDEMASON IS BACK
With something about doctors
You know Swedemason - he did the mash-up of
Donald Trump singing Talking Heads. Well he is
back and writes, "Another old one that sat on
the backburner for 10 years or so. No prizes
for guessing who influenced the vid." Hmm,
we're guessing an angry guy who shouts 'doctor'
a lot?
https://www.b3ta.com/links/Doctors
BTW: Mr Mason is looking for work doing this
kinda stuff, so if you reckon you could use him
get in touch via @swedemason on Twitter.
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: LOL SHIT TORY YOUTH
Activate #Deactivates
Spellingmistakescostlives writes, "Last year I
set up an Instagram account for tory youth
group Activate as a sort of sleeper cell. Plan
was to gather right-wing followers until the
election and then flip it into an anti-Tory
account. Unfortunately they've folded before I
got a chance to #activate my plan, so I wrote
their goodbye announcement instead."
https://www.instagram.com/p/BjqgUHynwhj/
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What's the difference between tarka dal and regular dal?
Tarka's a little 'otter.
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: B3TA SWAG
Send us shit in the post (not literally, you wags)
We're running a swag page: you send us your
stuff that you're selling and if we like it
we'll tell people.
Best thing this week? Some badges saying "Never
work for The Sun" which is good advice.
https://b3ta.com/blog/b3ta-swag/
PS. Never work for The Sun.
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Where do mad people go to shop?
In Sainsbury's
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: SITES IN BRIEFS
Three mini-lols for your rofl inspection
* LOL AT THIS PRANKSTER - getting the BBC to
read out something utterly horrendous.
https://twitter.com/slartybartfarst/status/1004034...
* LOL AT THIS CAFE - sticking the Flintstones
theme on a Mozart menu.
https://twitter.com/theshums/status/10027796151972...
* LOL AT THIS CRUDELY DRAWN COCK TATTOO - via
E4's Tattoo Fixers.
https://twitter.com/AliCatterall/status/9856620529...
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: PROJECT IDEAS
Stuff we'd like to see next week
* WHO THE HELL UPDATES CELEB DEATHS ON
WIKIPEDIA SO QUICKLY? Maybe do a data project
where you check the edit history of celeb
deaths for patterns.
* WHAT ARE THE FILMS ON IMDB THAT WOMEN LIKE?
We have a theory that there's loads of
interesting data drowned out on IMDB because
men vote more. We'd be interested in seeing a
list of movies with the widest disparity of
appeal between men and women (not including
obscure stuff with 5 votes).
* SUPER BASIC - messing around with the Amstrad
emulator made us want a project a bit like the
fantasy emulator Pico 8, but based around a
fantasy 8-bit computer running fast BASIC
rather than Lua. Bit of a big project idea
there, but we're sure you're capable of
tackling it. Get to work, gang.
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: FOLLOW UPS
Mini news updates on last week's news
* CYRIAK'S BOOK 85% FUNDED Please throw him
some money to get his weird horse over the
final hurdle.
https://unbound.com/books/horse-destroys-the-unive...
* YORE COMPUTER SCORED OVER 6,800 FOLLOWERS -
proving that... well we dunno, but if you enjoy
reading old computer mags then there's worse
things you could do with your time.
https://twitter.com/yorecomputer
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: CREDITS
Written by Rob Manuel using a 6 year old
Macbook Air with two broken keys, so there's no
using the right arrow or right shift. A cup of
tea did that. Thanks tea.
Subjlols via barbarossa69.
General yays to Happy Toast, Wil and Kris.
Proofing via mollywallop.
Jokes by spacefish, pingudownunder, Chuckman,
horace & cumquat may. If you've written a joke
then please tell us at "I'm Sorry I've Written
A Joke".
https://www.b3ta.com/questions/imsorryivewrittenaj...
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https://www.b3ta.com/subscribe/
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: PATREON THANKS
The people who make it all happen
*JOSH MCMILLAN* *AARON HOLMES* *TOM JENKINS
BATES* *JON GRANT* *SHOWRAT * *SIMON JAMES*
*TREVOR BURTON-MCCREADIE* *MR PHIL DONNELLY*
*KATE * *JAMES PETTS* *STEWART NOLAN* *BRYAN
PEACOCK* *MARK MCCREADIE* *ALEX MORRIS* *JAMES
O'BRIEN*
ANDREW WREN, JAMES CRONIN, ALISTAIR , IAN
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CARLINE, BRIAN EELES, MICHAEL TRINDER, 5 +
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BURNETT, PETER COOPER.
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Richard Hobbs, Scott S. Kramer, Joe Simmonds,
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Leader, Ivan Kelly, Jǐm Mcnǐven, Paul Healey,
Andy Ashton, Tom Rees-Williams, David Mills,
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: PLEASE SUPPORT B3TA PATREON
This is all funded by you. Please chuck money
in so we can do stupid newsletters and write
Amstrad BASIC instead of doing a proper job.
https://www.patreon.com/b3ta
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TOP TIP:
Normal-sized Mars bars make ideal mini sized
Mars bars for giants.
http://www.b3ta.com/questions/toptips/
