NEWSLETTER: "ON THE FIRST DAY OF PISSMAS MY TRUE LOVE SAID TO ME: FIVE GOLDEN SHOWERS"
* SKIP THE ADS GAME - how fast can you do it?
* BILLIONS INVESTED IN AI - the text adventure
* END YOUR PROCRASTINATION - do it NOW!
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________ ____ __ ___
____/ _)|_ // /_/ _ | "We're saving the web
___/ _ |/_ </ __/ __ | by making shit, and not
__/____/____/\__/_/ |_| giving up... together"
B3ta newsletter 972 - 12th Dec 2025
Read this issue in Keir Starmer's adenoidal voice:
http://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue972
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: WHAT B3TA PEOPLE HAVE MADE THIS WEEK
Other than making "urine marmalade" again
* HOW FAST CAN YOU SKIP THE ADS - "I've made a
reaction test which took far longer than it
should have", writes Monkeon, "A game I'm sure
everyone plays when watching commercial TV, I
ended up moving away from the idea of just using
nostalgic ads everyone remembers and also
populated the database with failed products,
shit Amstrad tech and ads with comedians who
didn't pass Bill Hicks' purity test." This is
the best thing Monkeon has done in yonks, a fun
clicky game and a load of stupid ads that are
either nostalgic or a bit funny. The boy is a
fucking genius.
https://www.monkeon.co.uk/skip-the-ads/
* "YOU'RE THE VENTURE CAPITALIST, NOW DOG" -
Woeindustries writes, "Hello! We are pleased to
share YOU HAVE BILLIONS INVESTED IN GENERATIVE
AI. It is a text-based adventure in which you
play a fearless venture capitalist who is not
having any second doubts at all about their
gigantic investment in a technology that tells
people to drink bromide. Enjoy!" This is great.
Woe Industries is great.
https://woe-industries.itch.io/you-have-billions-i...
* YOKO ONO BOT PRESERVATION GROUP (2017-2025) -
coming good on his promise last week your editor
writes, "Yoko Ono Bot has made the transition to
the blue side." Well, a tribute to the original
bot, posting the best ones, according to Yoko
Data Science.
https://bsky.app/profile/yokoonobot.bsky.social
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: HEBTROCO SPONSORSHIP
Our favourite sponsors want you to buy clothes
It's nearly Christmas so buy your family
presents at Hebtro, coz your family all want
chunky shirts, denim that lasts a lifetime and
scary knives. All made in the UK to the highest
standards and run by good eggs who've supported
B3ta for ages. Dig deep.
https://hebtro.co/new/
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: FESSHOLE
Your fessticles, fessed once again
Each week this project creeps closer to the
point it ends, which is probably either when
your editor dies, or is arrested for publishing
shoplifting advice. Your favs include:
* THE BAR IS LOW, MEN - "When I met my husband,
the date wasn't great, the sex was also mediocre
but he made the bed in the morning and then made
me breakfast. Married for 36 years now."
* WE WANT TO HANG OUT WITH THIS PERSON -
"Recently single, went on Tinder, found an
incredibly hot guy, put on my best frock, went
for a drink. He was so boring that at one point
I started calculating the square root of 17 in
my head - it's 4.122 something - and stabbed my
wrist with a fork. Still shagged him."
* YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO - "I live in Wales and
today received my Join Us letter from Reform UK,
complete with SAE which I posted back to them,
immediately, empty. If every other person in
Wales did this, Reform would spend over £1.5
million on postage. Not sorry. Join me Cymru."
Follow the account that now has 104k followers
on Instagram, which makes it our third most
popular Fesshole account. It's beaten BlueSky
into fourth place, for those keeping tabs on the
only UK charts that matter.
https://www.instagram.com/fesshole/
Come to the shows. Leicester, Leeds, Luton, and
Sweden. They'll be fun, they're always fun. And
if you go you can say you saw Rob Manuel before
he re-invented himself as a Sandie Shaw tribute
act.
https://sites.google.com/view/fesshole
The red book is 99p on Kindle. What a swindle
(for us).
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s
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: SITES IN BRIEF
Your internet type-ins, already typed in
* REALISTIC BBC TV CLOCK SIMULATOR - click
spanner in the corner to get various BBC clocks,
our favourite is the 1975 one because we're now
so old we've started thinking homebrew and jam
making is good.
https://zxnet.co.uk/clock/#template=BBC1-1975
* DON'T EAT EVIL - Lady writes code to find a
good restaurant to go to and discovers the
secret algorithmic sauce of how Google maps
controls what restaurants are in or not and what
we go to. We live in hell, tasty hell.
https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/how-google-maps-...
* TOO MUCH FUCKING PERSPECTIVE - Neal's new
thing takes you from the smallest life on this
planet to the biggest, and weirdly doesn't go
from Donald Trump's penis to his ego.
https://neal.fun/size-of-life/
* PLEASE BURST MY BUBBLE, IT IS VERY SICK -
Every day, this site asks Gemini when the AI
bubble will burst to see if it can at least
predict its own demise without fucking up. And
if you want the human version,
hastheaibubblepoppedyet.com uses the wisdom of
crowds to ask the same question.
https://pop-the-bubble.xyz/
* PROCRASTINATION BUSTER - Waiting for the ideal
time to start a project? This site calculates
when exactly the ideal time will be. So why not
ask for the ideal time to begin that bonkbuster
you've always wanted to write, open up Word and
wait patiently for the perfect moment to arrive.
https://ideal.greg.technology/
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: THE UNWELCOME RETURN OF GOASTE CORNER
Please, no, just stop
Anton writes, "Are you still doing Goatse corner
in the newsletter? The legend that is Darren
Cullen AKA Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives has
bought out an offline ChatGPT magic 8 ball with
a logo that gives a nod to Goatse. Who wouldn't
want one for Christmas, eh?"
https://www.spellingmistakescostlives.com/single-p...
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: IMAGE CHALLENGE
Movie Poster Recycling
Here's the best images from last week:
* Well obviously it's Monkeon's newsletter this
week as he leads the newsletter, and wins the
challenge hands down with this. It did massive
numbers on BlueSky; well nearly 500 favs, so
that's like going viral to a million people in
old money. There's more Monkeon later on,
Monkeon fans.
https://b3ta.com/board/11423387
* Enjoyed the literalness of this one from 'The
Twisted Momentum'
https://b3ta.com/board/11423319
* And HappyToast brings us something that made
us say "ouch" but not quite as often as all the
victims
https://b3ta.com/board/11423552
* See all the other images from the 'Movie
Poster Recycling' challenge:
http://b3ta.com/challenge/movieposterrecycling/pop...
>> This week: Internet Christmas <<
For this year's Christmas challenge, let's take
our favourite internet sites, memes & other web
gubbins, and make them more festive.
http://b3ta.com/challenge/internetchristmas/popula...
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: WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
Two updates from old Monkeon projects
* MONKEON BRINGS WIKI GAME BACK - he writes,
"Got this broken old game working again and
removed the Twitter share whilst I was at it.
Weird playing your old games and realising how
tough they are to fresh eyes. Should have made
more of the Hangman element or made it
multi-choice, I reckon." We agree here, people
generally want a fun / interesting experience
rather than anything tough, and games work best
if the player an inuits a solution from clues
rather than a general knowledge test.
https://www.monkeon.co.uk/wikiinthemiddle/
* JSW GUESSR SPEED RUN - amused to see a
YouTuber has speed run a Monkeon game launched
in this very newsletter from an idea in this
very newsletter. Ok, we found out about this by
telling Monkeon we're got a great idea for a
game and he told us we'd told him years ago, he
built it, and here's the speed run. Blimey,
we're got a memory like a ZX81 rampack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch
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: STAR IN NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE
Some ideas to set you off
* AN APP CALLED "WHAT WOULD I LOOK LIKE IF I WAS
SARAH JESSICA PARKER" and you upload a photo,
and it waits a bit, and then shows you a photo
of Sarah Jessica Parker. (You thought we were
going to say horse there didn't you, but we're
better than that.)
* TURN THE 'TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR' COVER INTO
SPACE INVADERS - based on Chris Barker's
turdally great photoshopping.
https://bsky.app/profile/christhebarker.bsky.socia...
* A COMPLETE HISTORY OF SHIT REVIEWS AT
SUPERMARKET WEBSITES - bored, we looked up
cigarette reviews on Waitrose recently and found
someone saying they enjoyed smoking them between
puffs on the vape.
Send us your project, what's the worst thing we
could do? Send your IP address to the police?
https://b3ta.com/mailus
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: PATREON THANKS
We love all these people. Almost romantically.
*HEBTROCO* *JAMES O'BRIEN* *MARK MCCREADIE* *MR
PHIL DONNELLY* *STOOBERT* *DION ASHTON* *MARK*
*24-7 DEATH* *DAVID GREEN* and *GUB~GUB*.
MARK ADAMSON, IAN SHEEN, RICHARD BARCLAY,
SPAZZCAPTAIN, CARL DENCH, MICHAEL TRINDER, MIKE
STRINGER, MICHAEL KITT, and AUSTIN HOFEMAN.
Eugenie vT, Tom Dolan, Chris Carline, lee
burnett, Paul Cherry, Tom Wright, Matthew
Wilkes, Kev Adams, Rich, Dominic Haigh, Dave
Nattriss, Dan Stott, Konrad Petrusewicz, David
Ault, '@mattdawhit, Adam Lloyd, Anna, Chris
Evans, d@m0, Dave Tickle, David Catley, David
Mills, Derek Law, Emma Lay, Eric von Borstel,
Gia Milinovich, Greg Neilson, Iain Brassington,
Iain Ruxton, Ivan Kelly, James Donnelly, Jason
Stewart, Jim Frayling, Jim MacArthur, Jude
Evans, Kate Devlin, Martin Peache, matsimpsk,
Matt Buchanan, Matthew Collinge, Matthew Morris,
Neil de Carteret, Nick Ross, Paul Smith, peter
wouda, pookong, Ricardo Autobahn, Rich Pope,
Richard Beckett, Rob Mahon, Rob Vincent, Robbie
Lesiuk, Simon Holmes, Simon McDougall, Simon
waterfall, Stuart Ashen, the wub, Tim Jokl, Tom
Ryan, Wil Hadden, Byron Geoffrey Farrow, Chef
Twat, Craig Turner, fourstar71, Jonty Wareing,
Stevey Garland, Helen Gaskell, Ben Ward, Andy
Tillett, Stafford Lawrence, Simon Balch,
omnipiss, Claire Turner, James Heaver, Phil
Lovell, Jon Morris Smith, Stuart, Mellyfish,
Phillip Spowart, Roy Santos, Daniel Calvin, Rich
Corcoran, John Daly, nevillebartos, Mike Wilcox,
Geoff Tidey, Ian Walker, Leighton Stevenson,
Funny_Hat, Gillian Parrott, Phil Bennett, Matt,
Benjamin Blundell, Katie Steckles, Luka Mikec,
Stuart, Peter Henningsen, Simon Howard, Kier
Fox, tom yeoldeforge, C Bond, lucas seven,
mattcox303, Robert van Dijk, Ian Walker, Paul
Martyn, Richie Hindle, Patrick Hudson, Gerry
Spencer, John Davies, DrumGui76, Harry Simpson,
Paul Pod, Tom Loosemore, and Mark Arnold.
Also thanks to the 79 lovely people who also
support us: NM, BB, JB, GT, SR, JF, CW, LA, CJ,
ES, MC, SF, JB, CO, AD, AS, AR, CN, DM, DS, HA,
IS, JM, NH, PR, SM, MB, MC, AC, CK, DG, DC, NK,
CA, IB, BG, BS, CC, CZ, DH, DP, DE, EN, GS, GF,
IO, JE, JL, JB, LB, LE, LJ, MM, MB, MF, NJ, OL,
PB, PW, PB, RT, RA, RM, RS, SC, SR, SW, TB, TH,
WI, AH, CW, RP, TK, VW, DW, BC, SE, and BB. You
are all legends. Legends that look like a ZX
Spectrum HEX type-in.
And also thanks to our newest benefactors: Mark
Arnold, DrumGui76, Patrick Hudson, John Davies,
Paul Pod, Tom Loosemore, Gerry Spencer, Harry
Simpson, Paul Martyn, and Ian Walker.
YOUR NAME COULD BE HERE - Remember you TOO can
contribute to the Patreon, it means your editor
can afford to write this newsletter thing as it
takes time and effort. Getting in some cash
makes such a difference.
http://patreon.com/b3ta
EDITORIAL THANKS: Monkeon & Matt Round
additional links; Monkeon for image challenge
help; and Dr Dunno for extra support. Proofing
by Kat E. Thanks Kat. (NP Rob - Kat)
And remember to subscribe, and tell your friends
to subscribe. Even tell your enemies, numbers
are numbers.
https://b3ta.com/subscribe/
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: BONUS "DIVORCE TIPS" FESSHOLE
"After 30 years of marriage, I noticed my spouse
always takes the opposite view to me so I've
started to suggest the opposite of what I want
knowing they'll go with the alternative. Fancy a
Chinese? Ask for an Indian. Eat out? Suggest
we stay in. It works like a dream."
