Quick Links for Wednesday, January 3

Turkish photographer Uğur İkizler composited all of the photos here to create this incredible image.

Social Internet Is Dead. Get Over It. “The internet, as we have known it, has evolved from a quaint, quirky place to a social utopia, and then to an algorithmic reality. In this reality, the primary task of these platforms is not about idealism or even entertainment — it is about extracting as much revenue as possible from human vanity, avarice, and narcissism.”

+ My buddy Om at his best.

The Beepberry is pretty sick.

+ I love that Eric—the co-founder of Beeper—is doing this, and I may end up buying one just for the nerd factor alone. The idea behind Beeper (and Texts, which I preferred from jump because it broke no app’s native E2EE, and almost nothing touched its servers) is to bring all of your messaging apps under one roof (sort of like Trillian back in the day, which supported AIM, ICQ, IRC, etc.).

In 12th-century England, Roland the Farter paid his rent in flatulence. “In some ways you could call him a court jester, because he performed for the amusement of the king, but Roland was a specialist. He could fart on command, and apparently did it very well. [...] Roland was paid well, with the grant of an estate of around 100 acres... This grant came with one stipulation: Roland was to perform once every year at the king's Christmas feast, and that performance was to include one jump, one whistle, and one fart.”

Speaking of spacesuits, Prada will design and produce NASA’s lunar spacesuits for the Artemis III mission. 🤷🏼‍♂️