NEWSLETTER: "GIRL! I'M GOING TO TAKE YOU TO A SPACE BAR!"
* EGG CHALLENGE - jokes, yolks, image results
* IS THERE GOOD AI? Occasionally, maybe
* FUND CHRIS BARKER'S BOOK - Oh go on
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________ ____ __ ___
____/ _)|_ // /_/ _ | "We're saving the web
___/ _ |/_ </ __/ __ | by not giving up, or
__/____/____/\__/_/ |_| letting YOU down, Rick"
B3ta newsletter 984, 10th April 2026
Toast this newsletter over dub reggae & echo fx:
https://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue984
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: WHAT B3TA PEOPLE HAVE MADE THIS WEEK
Other than making 'Babylon an ting' yelps
* A GOOD USE FOR AI? We've got pretty mixed
feelings about artificial intelligence at B3ta
towers, in that the sight of AI art gives us
physical revulsion, but at the same time using
AI to knock up a quick script to solve an admin
problem, well it is very tempting. Anyway,
enjoyed this from Shardcore who has been using
Satan's tools to help a disabled friend to put
together the captions in his videos, in a less
arduous way. So a cautious three cheers for the
soul stealing robots.
https://www.shardcore.org/spx/2026/02/20/ai-in-not...
* FUND BARKER'S FILM BOOK - Chris Barker is back
on his book jizzle and is making a collection of
imaginary film posters. He's been Whatsapping
them to us as he goes and they're supernaturally
good. Click the 'notify on launch' to make
little Chriss-wissy a happy photoshopping bunny.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/davidquantick...
* YOUR GUITAR LEARNING ODDESY STARTS HERE -
enjoyed this tutorial from 'Chuffley' where he
teaches wannabe guitarists to use power chords.
The secret? Listen very carefully.
https://b3ta.com/links/Power_Chords
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: HEBTROCO SPONSORSHIP
Buy some clothes, that's the pitch
You've just enjoyed your Easter break and now,
undoubtedly, in an orgy of egg eating, your
clothes no longer fit. So it's time to buy some
new threads that'll make you look fantastic in
your ovum-expanded form. All made in the UK, to
the highest standards, designed to last and also
ideal for slim people too, who've refused the
egg and spent the break eating low-carb bunny
meat. (Hey Hebtro, this copy is OK right? We
just write stuff and you never complain, it's a
fantastic arrangement.)
https://hebtro.co/department/new/
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: FESSHOLE
Your confessions, fessed up once again
In the pre-now past we opened a Google form and
told you to pop your confessions into it,
imagining that it would be an afternoon of shite
lols on social media but somehow it never died
because you never stopped typing. Some OK ones
in the last couple of weeks included:
* AWKWARD - "When I was a teen, I had a boss who
said when he was a boy in the 1940s, his family
'escaped Germany and moved to Argentina.' I was
so naive I assumed he was Jewish until I read
his obituary and learned he was... not."
* DOING PARENTING RIGHT - "Six y/o daughter fell
and needed to get stitches. To distract her from
the pain I showed her a summary of research on
how swearing helps you endure pain. She went
back to school the next days and called her
teacher a cunt. Cue awkward telephone
conversation."
* YOU'LL MISS 'EM WHEN THEY'RE GONE - "My house
is next to a bus route. My parents use the bus
to go shopping. My mum calls me to inform me
that they will be passing by and to wave at
them, my dad is deaf so all the passengers can
hear her. They all look up at me as I have to
wave at the driveby. I'm 50. I hate it."
Follow the account that's not been cancelled yet
making it more popular than Gentleman's Relish,
and just as horribly pungent.
https://www.instagram.com/fesshole/
Come to the shows. It's the Sweden ones next,
which is an absurd state of affairs. Make a
Google form, end up in Sweden. You couldn't
Jim'll Fix It if you tried.
https://sites.google.com/view/fesshole
Buy the red book, buy the yellow book, wave them
in front of your face very fast and make a
coloured book that causes shame in Liberal
Democrats.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s
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: SITES IN BRIEF
Web gubbins not made by people we know at all
* VIDEO BOX ART GEN - A nifty little AI-free
generator that allows you to select shows from
TMDB and create old school VHS box art so you
can print off some nice covers for all those old
recordings of Taggart that have been in your
loft since 1998.
https://shorturl.at/jB2PE
* CHUCKIE EGG, IN AN 8-BIT GROUNDHOG DAY
NIGHTMARE - A daily game of Chuckie Egg,
featuring new levels and a very steep difficulty
curve. Even a Chuckie Egg pro like us can't say
if you get more than four levels a day. It's
that tough.
https://stecurran.com/chuckie/
* CLOCK OFF CLOCK FUCKERS - Good to have a clock
of the week (best of all the measuring
instruments), and this one is absolutely
unusable as they've experimented with what
happens if clocks were alphabetical. Next week?
David Icke's alarm clock "wake up, sheeple."
https://boat.horse/clock/
* SLOW SLOW PONG - The internet is quick,
everything is about the hottest take you can
make in the shortest time, reacting to rolling
titbits of undigested news. But what if things
were different? And the zeitgeist asked you to
meditate, and be as slow as possible? This
artist is posing that exact question by making
treacle slow versions of classic video games. So
relax, stick on UB40's debut LP, the good one
before they wanted hits, and play slow Pong. And
if you beat it, like a soul reaching Nirvana,
your reward is to play it even slower. Put this
on the curriculum Starmer, let's fix the minds
we've destroyed through digital acceleration.
https://pippinbarr.com/as-slow-as-possible/
* 2026 ADVENTURE GAME CREATED WITH 1986 SOFTWARE
- did you know that two thirds of the B3ta
co-founders are colour blind? This makes us
deeply suspicious of this new-fangled technology
to put colour into video games, and so we were
overjoyed to see this new adventure, created in
the only two shades that matter: 0x000000 and
0xFFFFFF.
https://robotspacer.software/transfer-point.html
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: IMAGE CHALLENGE
Egg, the results
We asked you to celebrate the resurrection of
Jesus with a resurrection of our 2006 Egg
challenge and you rose to the challenge, like
Christ rising to the challenge of eating lots of
chocolate.
* Congratulations to 's4rk' who reminded us of a
little known film called Star Wars, nope, never
heard of it either.
https://b3ta.com/board/11427078
* Props to the 'legendary pink dot' who's
bigging up an up and coming artist called Bob
Dylan who'll you'll be hearing on the pop parade
soon, if we know anything about pop music.
https://b3ta.com/board/11427193
* And finally, lots of love to 'Andy-R' who
takes scotch eggs to their logical conclusion,
and produces a concept which matches about 50%
of our diet this year.
https://b3ta.com/board/11427135
Check out all the egg based content on the egg
enthusiast website, b3ta dot yolk.
https://b3ta.com/challenge/eggs/popular
>> Ooh, let's do a challenge about space <<
The Artemis II mission has been a good
distraction from earth-bound anxieties, so let's
keep that going by seeing what would happen if
everything was relocated off-earth.
https://b3ta.com/challenge/seteverythinginspace/po...
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: BEST ANON OPINs, FEATURING REPLIES
It's the opinion bin, 'Binpinion', if you will
Our currently theory is the
internet/politics/media nexus has enforced a
monomania onto discourse where the only subject
is whatever the orange man brain farts into
reality, however we are a small pocket of
resistance, helping the the human collective to
think of other, often more trivial things, so
join us, in discussing absolute bollocks.
* SPORTS OPINION - "Ski jumping looks easy. You
bend down while you slide down what is basically
a flat rail, then jump and hold a weird position
while gravity brings you down, then just stick
the skis down at the same time and glide down.
Where's the skill?" Best reply? "Getting to have
more than one go at it" (thx kylie4Bob)
* PORN OPINION - "Porn actors should have
transparent hands so you can better see their
bits when they're masturbating." Best reply? "I
can see where they're coming from." (thx Stewart
Ness)
* SUPERMARKET OPINION - "The hierarchy of
supermarkets in the UK is as follows - M&S Food
Waitrose Tesco Sainsbury's Morrisons Aldi/Lidl
Co-Op Asda Iceland" Best reply? "This person
shops at Tesco and is trying to elevate
themselves." (thx Catsmeat)
Follow the account that would be more popular if
we hadn't given it such a rotten name. Learn
from us, young readers, name your projects well,
because you will be stuck with those names. Like
calling this website B3ta was a good idea. Pfft.
https://bsky.app/profile/anonopin.bsky.social
Oh and a bonus reply, because it's self-serving
for your own editor to stick his own replies in,
but this one did happen to be the second most
faved one in two weeks. Try harder, everyone
else, you can beat the artist formerly known as
the Ginger Fuhrer. (Hmm, that looks bad with
hindsight, best get a new, safe moniker, maybe
Prince Andrew? No one is using that.)
BOOK OPINOIN - "Martin Amis's books are
revolting. He was a good writer, and I know it's
all satirical, but there are still only so many
times I can read about an irredeemably awful man
being racist and sexist whilst contemplating his
own tiny flaccid dick before I want to scream."
Best reply? "It's good but could we have a
shorter quote for the back cover please?" (thx
B3ta)
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: FOLLOW UPS
What happened next on old stories
* BACK TO THE EGG (POD) - Chris Shaw is
returning to his podcast roots with a sequel
podcast to the much missed Eggpod. We know
exactly what it's all about, and no spoilers,
we're not allowed to tell you, but we can tell
you, all will be revealed on the 3rd of May.
* OH FUCK GOATSE IS BACK - Jez Bray writes,
"Newsletter 983 resurrected goatse at exactly
the right time, please see my Bluesky post here.
I know you're probably ambivalent at best about
the whole goatse thing, but simply telling
someone about this lifts a weight." Please, we
beg you, stop tell us about art which looks like
a man tearing his anus apart with his own
fingers, our mental health is struggling.
https://bsky.app/profile/jezbray.bsky.social/post/...
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: STAR IN NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE
Some ideas to inspire you to greatness
* GUESS WHO - Anon Opin writes, "I've invented a
game called Seven Degrees of Doctor Who. Pick a
British actor, male or female, any age, working
from 1950 onwards. Then count how quickly you
can find a connection with Doctor Who. I have
never ever got beyond three degrees of
separation. Mostly it's two." A few people
thought this should get a newsletter mention
too, in the hope it makes someone make a game.
But ignore the Doctor Who obsessives who say
it's too easy, they've never had sex.
* EMOJI MIKE - our old QOTW bloke Mr Trinder
recently said, "There's an emoji called 'person
biking with no skin tone' and I feel seen" which
made us think that "Mike acts out very specific
emojis" is a project that has our full support.
However Mike is never going to do this, so you,
you be our Mike dear reader.
* ASWAD - THE COMPUTER GAME. The ASWAD keys on
your keyboard control each limb of the dub
reggae stars, in a QAOP style racer, where you
have to get all three members, from the sofa to
the fridge to get some snacks, after they feel a
bit wobbly after too much strong weed.
Right, it's a simple thing, you turn the
thoughts in your head into reality and we supply
a few people to look at your work via an
itnernet newsletter. This is how art works,
thougts to action to artifact to audience. Make
stuff because the alternative is boring.
https://b3ta.com/mailus
BONUS PROJECT - In ideas we won't do as we don't
fancy the hassle that might rain on us from
lawyers, so just putting it out there, it would
be entirely possible to write a bot that replied
to any posting of say, a Telegraph URL, and
reply with a paywall busting link. Just sayin'
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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, AUSTIN HOFEMAN, and
NATHANIEL TAPLEY.
BevS, Tom Dolan, Chris Carline, lee burnett,
Paul Cherry, Tom Wright, Matthew Wilkes, Kev
Adams, Rich, DoHa, 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, 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, Gerry
Spencer, Ian Walker, Paul Martyn, Richie Hindle,
John Davies, Patrick Hudson, Harry Simpson, Paul
Pod, Tom Loosemore, DrumGui76, Mark Arnold, and
collin.
Also thanks to the 78 lovely people who didn't
opt to be thanked by name: 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, MC, MB, 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, BC, SE,
and BB. You are all lovely people.
And also thanks to our newest benefactors:
collin, Mark Arnold, DrumGui76, Patrick Hudson,
John Davies, Paul Pod, Tom Loosemore, Gerry
Spencer, Harry Simpson, and Paul Martyn.
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.
https://patreon.com/b3ta
EDITORIAL THANKS: Monkeon & Matt Round
additional links; Monkeon for image challenge
help; and Dr Dunno for extra support.
And remember to subscribe, and tell your friends
to subscribe.
https://b3ta.com/subscribe/
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: BONUS "REPLY" FESSHOLE
"I assumed most guys masturbated to Miss Piggy
growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s;
having mentioned this to friends down the pub;
it turns out I was very very mortifyingly
wrong." Best reply? "A bit of a hamfisted fess,
if you ask me" (thx mike)
