NEWSLETTER: "B3TA BUMPER CHRISTMAS ISSUE - MERRY CHRISTMAS READERS - YOU MOSTLY DON'T SMELL AND WE LIKE YOU, A BIT"
* SWEDE MASON RETURNS - like a Prodigy-ical son
* YOU ARE THE AI - learn to be human
* ANON OPIN - The best replies (new reg feature?)
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________ ____ __ ___
____/ _)|_ // /_/ _ | "We're saving the web by
___/ _ |/_ </ __/ __ | refusing Clippy's help
__/____/____/\__/_/ |_| on this newsletter"
B3ta newsletter 973 - 19th Dec 2025
Bleep this in morse code over the Glitter beat:
http://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue973
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: WHAT B3TA PEOPLE HAVE MADE THIS WEEK
Other than making their pee orange with Berocca
* YOU ARE AN AI LEARNING TO USE THE INTERNET -
Matt Gordon writes, "I made this game for a
hackathon and people seem to like it. You are an
AI and have to gather training data by playing
silly microgames. PS it came second in the
hackathon." This is stupidly fun. Well done
Matt.
https://vibeware.vercel.app/
* THE SWEDEMASON IS BACK - Back in the day Swede
would make mash-ups for b3ta, then he got a job
doing the same for Joe IE and he writes, "Hello.
I got given the boot. AI indirectly pulled the
rug, so I'm back to the homegrown stuff. I
Thought I'd pick someone as apolitical as
possible to tell the story." This is brilliantly
entertaining stuff and boo hiss AI ruining
everything and meaning talented people lose
work. Although, there is a little bit of us very
pleased to see Swede back on our /links board
making new shit. Art will not be stopped.
https://b3ta.com/links/Berry_Bars
* HAVE YOU LENGTHED YOUR DOG YET? DngDng writes,
"I made a children's card game called Long Dog,
in which you have to make the longest dogs you
possibly can, and then also I made this web
version of it too, so everyone can try." This is
very silly and you can create long pigs too,
which is a tasty treat for everyone.
https://dngdng.itch.io/long-dog-and-other-elongate...
* THE END OF SGT PEPPER DEATH WATCH - Chris has
made his final image after ten years and
exclusively posted it on B3ta. Ok he's probably
posted it fucking everywhere but B3ta too. Your
editor loved being part of his show at the
Museum Of Comedy this week and thanks to
everyone who turned up and made it drunken fun.
https://b3ta.com/board/11423804
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: HEBTROCO SPONSORSHIP
It's five days to Christmas, buy some presents
There's probably still time to grab some last
minute presents for yourself and family at
Hebtro. All sturdy as fuck and designed to last.
Make Christmas this year a Hebtro Christmas
where Santa is dressed like a sexy lumberjack.
https://hebtro.co/new/
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: FESSHOLE
Your fesses fessed up once again like fess sick
If you read this every week where we introduce
the fesses, remember although we sometimes say
we hate it for shit lols, we actually love it.
Here's your best fesses this week, and thank you
to everyone who has contributed, you're all
fucking awful.
* CLIPPY BEING HELPFUL - "In a moment of extreme
boredom at work I photocopied a paperclip using
an entire pack of paper which I then reloaded
into the copier, paperclip image right side up.
I'd forgotten about this until a photocopier
repair man had the machine in pieces looking for
the paperclip."
* LEZ BE FRIENDS - "Went to Belfast for a
weekend away with my wife. Saw a parade going
past and assumed it would be a great Gay Pride
event. It turns out I know very little about
Northern Ireland and the orange people don't
want to be joined by lesbians. That said, we had
a lovely weekend."
* MIND YOUR LANGUAGE - "English isn't my wife's
first language, but she's lived in UK 20+ yrs.
This morning, at a carol concert, I learned she
has been singing that 'Christ, Arse Saver' is
born during 'Silent Night' the whole time.
'Because he saves our arses, yes?'"
Follow the account that has 99.8k followers on
BlueSky, come one, help it over 100k as a
Christmas present to your poor editor who has to
read all this stuff and whose only high is
vibing off numbers.
https://bsky.app/profile/fesshole.bsky.social
Come to the shows. Leicester, Leeds, Luton,
Sweden. Also Anon Opin shows available.
https://sites.google.com/view/fesshole
And buy the book. Red one is 99p on Kindle and
will be something to read on the bog instead of
looking up sexy serial ports or whatever it is
that our demographic does on the shitter.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s
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: SITES IN BRIEF
Your pages from ceefax this week
* CAN YOU GUESS WHAT COUNTRY IS SHOWING THIS
LIVE TV? Probably shouldn't be too judgemental
about how shit everyone else's TV looks, as the
UK was represented by Bid Up TV when we got that
as a question.
https://www.tvguessr.garden
* DESIGN YOUR CHRISTMAS JUMPER IN 48K - A Speccy
simulator in which you get to design your
festive jumper and wear it out to the Christmas
do. I'm actually missing the drunken Christmas
jumper guys, now that it's all become so
subdued. The Reform guys could at least put some
tinsel around the lampposts and pop in some
coloured lightbulbs to cheer us up in these
skint, anxious times.
https://robertmorrison.me/jsspeccy/
* DOG SPINNER - simple throw away web toy that's
kinda nice because it looks like real drawing
and the product of a human being rather than the
vibe-coded ghost of Hitler with a prompt engine.
https://www.pigenpalace.com/dogspinner/
* IT'S THE 1975 CHRISTMAS RADIO TIMES FOR YOU
YOUNG FOLK - Matt Round recommends that you read
this "this PDF has links to watch everything on
youtube etc, the BBC should nick this idea for
promoting old iPlayer stuff."
https://visualmutterings.com/1975-christmas-radio-...
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: IMAGE CHALLENGE
Internet Christmas
Here's the best images from last week:
* 'Captain Howdy' reminds everyone what
Christmas is about, at your editor's home anyway
https://b3ta.com/board/11423637
* 'AJRed' has made us like this meme again, one
that we were very bored of.
https://b3ta.com/board/11423629
* And 'HappyToast' has made us look forward to
when this Christmas nonsense is all over and
they start selling the good stuff.
https://b3ta.com/board/11423675
* See all the other images from the 'Internet
Christmas' challenge:
http://b3ta.com/challenge/internetchristmas/popula...
>> This week: Rob Reiner <<
We lost Rob Reiner this week, so let's pay
tribute to him and his films by giving them a
good Photoshopping. Suggested by The Twisted
Omentum and Unclepills.
http://b3ta.com/challenge/robreiner/popular
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: WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
Follow ups on old stories
* "WE LIKE THE MO.. CHOIR!" - Joel Veitch
recently did a gig and the whole audience sang
'We Like The Moon' along with him. If you're an
old internet fart, and let's face it, who else
would be reading the B3ta newsletter in 2025,
then you'll be strangely moved.
https://b3ta.com/links/We_Like_The_Moon_live_at_th...
* RICO MONKEON MENDS HIS WAYS - Monkeon is
continuing to fix up old games and he writes,
"Doing a bit of maintenance, so my Shuttleworth
or Chiles quiz now has: no links to Twitter or
Facebook and 12 new Adrian Chiles questions. My
big discovery on making this one was the early
Shuttleworth tapes, which are worth your time
tracking down."
https://www.monkeon.co.uk/shuttleworth-or-chiles/
* TOM SCOTT IS FED UP AI DOING 'RESEARCH' -
B3tan alumni Tom Scott's has added a load of LLM
instructions to his site to try to fend off spam
& inaccuracies, best bit is sternly saying not
to use the term "youtuber." Clearly this is
opening up a fascinating / terrible new era
where all those SEO wankers are going to pivot
to LLM optimisation wankers.
https://www.tomscott.com
* BARKER PLAYS HIS CARDS RIGHTS - Chris Barker
does not stop does he? He's got a Doctor Who
Tarot Card thing out, which was funded in five
hours, and now three times over. Jump on board
if you want one. Potentially entertaining when
you can do tarot readings to your mates "You've
selected The Master. You're going to have a
creepy beard and then die."
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sgtpx10/the-o...
* LET MATT ROUND SPONSOR YOUR CONKERS TEAM - And
finally a request from Matt Round, "Something
I've wanted to do with the vole site for years
but not managed to arrange: sponsor a sports
team, with a tiny amount of money, but they'd
also get a site treating their results & news
like they're superstars. If you know of any
suitably quirky underdogs feel free to put them
in touch." There's contact details on his site
if you look on the 'buy this site' page.
https://vole.wtf/
* GOLF SALE ERROR - Anton writes, "Just catching
up on newsletter 961 and I had the feeling the
Wikipedia game had been done before and featured
in the newsletter. Lo and behold, back in 2010,
in issue 432. What's really odd is that the
creator of Wikipedia Golf didn't find the other
one, which is still up, and instead duplicated
the work." Good catch, but we think to be fair
to them - the idea has been around ages
independent of people coding it - it's even got
a Wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Game
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: BEST ANON OPIN, REPLIES
We posted your opinions, you replied
Recently someone moaned at us that we don't
stick the best Anon Opin stuff in the newsletter
and we said it didn't really work because it's
more about the conversation it generates than
the post being great.
Then today, we had a brain wave - let's try a
'best reply' format, so to get a few jokes in
and a bit of a flavour of the chat.
* SEXY NAMES - "Women who shorten their
forenames to traditional men's names are sexy.
Alexandra/Alexandria to Alex is the best, but
Georgia/Georgina to George is a close second."
Best reply? "And Kate being shortened to...Bob."
(thx Rob Blundell)
* SLAP DOWN - "HR departments have ruined the
art of blagging a job based on personality
alone. I got my first break by calling a company
and saying that the last person I spoke to
offered me a trial. I now earn a 6 figure salary
still never written a CV." Best reply? "Anyone
who mentions their '6 figure salary' is
invariably a twat." (thx Tony Stead)
* COOKING - "It's a very lucky coincidence that
almost every kind of food can be cooked in the
oven at exactly 180 degrees." Best reply? "If
you cook it at 180 degrees, isn't it upside
down?" (thanks smurfomatic)
Follow the account where opinions MATTER not a
jot, but we have them anyway - oh and buy some
tickets to the shows. It's on the Fesshole
tickets link.
https://bsky.app/profile/anonopin.bsky.social
Hmm. Maybe we like this best reply format, might
do it again at the bottom of the newsletter.
Look out for that, bottom of newsletter fans.
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: STAR IN NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE
Some ideas for you to code on your Vic 20s
* "IT, THE TEXT ADVENTURE" - "You're in the
north corner of the playground. A boy is rushing
towards you. TICK! You're IT!" Resist the urge
to have a clown hiding in the drain.
* "HUNGER STRIKE, THE TAMAGOTCHI" - You're the
government, playing with their wonderful digital
pet: several political prisoners who are
refusing to eat to further their political aims.
What do you do? A. Discourage media reporting?
Yes, you hammer A.
Ok, that one came out a bit grim, let's try for
something more fun for the final one this week.
* MARGERET THATCHER STRIP POKER - Can you bluff
the Iron Lady into the buff? "This lady is not
for turning, she's folding" "We have become a
grandmother you'd like to fuck" OK, that's
enough, we're ashaming even ourselves with this
nonsense.
Make some stuff. Tell us about it.
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.
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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
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Phillip Spowart, Roy Santos, Daniel Calvin, Rich
Corcoran, John Daly, nevillebartos, Mike Wilcox,
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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
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WI, AH, CW, RP, TK, VW, DW, BC, SE, and BB. You
are all sexy beautiful people who we think about
when we pleasure ourselves.
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 rubles
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, especially
tell them wankers.
https://b3ta.com/subscribe/
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: BONUS "REPLY OF THE WEEK" FESSHOLE (thx Severin)
"There's a photo of me from my wedding day where
I'm laughing and I look what can only be
described as gay. I have a gay face when I
laugh. It probably wouldn't bother me so much
but I actually am gay and haven't yet worked out
how to tell the wife." Best reply? "So, you
can't keep a straight face?"
