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curiobot.bsky.social
CurioBot
@curiobot.bsky.social
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A bot posting links from the Web Curios newsletter (www.webcurios.co.uk), because, weirdly, not everyone wants to read 10,000 words at a time. Unlikely to reply to you.
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curiobot.bsky.social
AI Post-Bubble

https://archive.is/20251027180951/https://www.wired.com/story/ai-normal-after-ai-plateaus/
AI Post-Bubble: WIRED put out a whole bunch of pieces on AI this week (just in case you hadn’t read enough about it over the past few years), but this was the pick of the bunch imho; it’s a sensible, clear-headed look at what might practically happen should the financial bubble surrounding the tech finally pop, and what the next evolution of the technology, post-froth, might look like, and how and where it might be applied. The basic premise here is ‘it will be better, because all of the hypemerchants will stop shouting and instead people will quietly get on with making this stuff better and implementing it more effectively, and we will get the benefits without the annoyance’, and I for one am happy to believe this take.
November 11, 2025 at 11:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
Acid Patriotism

https://britishchaos.substack.com/p/acid-patriotism
Acid Patriotism:  Perennial Web Curios favourite Clive Martin has launched a newsletter (ffs Clive, must you?!) and his inaugural dispatch is a typically-Martin-esque piece on the current weirdness of the flags’n’fury brigade and the way intersects with the remaining vestiges of rave culture; this is effectively an evolution of the ‘cosmic scallie’ stuff that got a bit of attention during lockdown as Liverpool became something of an epicentre for conspiratorial thinking and ‘5g Bill Gates’ memes, but now writ national, and I think that Martin nails a lot of smart things here, not least ‘protest against the government’ fulfilling the need for communal hedonism that is no longer necessarily met now. A useful lens for Britiain Right Now, I think: “Some days later, I was sent a video from a colleague who is part of an England away supporters ticket group. It shows a group of young men (and one very old man), gathered outside a community centre in Portsmouth, all decked out in body warmers, caps and calf tats, with Union Jacks and St George’s flags draped over their shoulders like Crusaders’ tabards. From a PA system pumps the immortal meme-trance anthem ‘Sandstorm’ by Darude, while red, white and blue flares burst into the drizzly sky. As the track builds to a crescendo, a man with a microphone starts ranting about a “show of dominance against Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.” He seems angry but ecstatic, wired for havoc. The overall effect falls somewhere between an Identitarian flash protest and a Gatecrasher party from 1997. “We need to take it to the politicians, local and national,” read the message underneath. Although they were slightly more ‘with it’ than the man at Waterloo, he and they were clearly getting stuck into the same Kool-Aid, a new version of that age-old union of euphoria and rage, the missing link between mobile disco and the kettling pen – a rave culture-infused take on right-wing bile. Acid Patriotism, if you will.”
November 11, 2025 at 9:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
Egg

https://terrycavanagh.itch.io/egg
Egg: THIS IS FUN! Would you like to play a surreal, nonsensical, oddly-funny 3d platform game in which you play, er, an egg? YES OF COURSE YOU WOULD! This is tricky to get the hang of, but it’s also very forgiving – there are no limited lives, just the continued attempt to jump your oeuf to the end of the trail. This is an EXCELLENT way to waste the last 30 minutes of your working day.
November 10, 2025 at 7:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
FeetGen

https://www.feetgen.com/
FeetGen: You know how AI is going to take all the jobs? Yeah, well that includes ‘people making a few quid off feet pics on OnlyFans’. Sorry, I don’t make the rules here.
November 10, 2025 at 5:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
NoFrilldos

https://www.funkittoys.com/nofrilldo
NoFrilldos: On the one hand, I am including this because I think it’s a generally good idea – a range of no-frills sex toys aimed at people who maybe can’t afford something fancy but who still want a functional, high-quality way of getting off; on the other, I am also including it because ‘nofrilldos’ is a legitimately-hilarious name, and I am now slightly obsessed with the concept of a Tesco Value range of masturbatory aids.
November 10, 2025 at 3:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
The Golden Demon Miniatures Painting Contest 2025

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/n4tadgwz/golden-demon-2025-winners-at-spiel-essen-revealed/
The Golden Demon Miniatures Painting Contest 2025: When I was a kid, expressing an interest in anything like Warhammer or Blood Bowl would have gotten you ripped limb from limb by the more…aggressively-normal children, which is one of the reasons why I never got into the whole ‘miniatures’ scene (that and my total lack of artistic skill and limited patience, fine); still, now that Games Workshop is one of the few legitimate British business success stories of the modern era (that and OnlyFans – WHAT A NATION WE ARE!) it’s safe to presume that there are actually an awful lot of people who REALLY like wearing a loupe and meticulously rendering the rust on a Space Marine’s boltgun (I am not judging, honest). If that is your idea of fun then prepare to feel MASSIVELY inadequate as you gaze upon the winners of this annual contest to reward the most talented miniatures artists in the world.
November 10, 2025 at 1:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
All Of The Old Film Posters

https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll84/search
https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll84/id/1586/rec/8
All Of The Old Film Posters: An astonishing digital collection maintained by the University of Texas, this has seemingly THOUSANDS of old film posters spanning years and genres, running up to the late-70s as far as I can tell…seriously, if you’re interested in poster design or the history of cinema or (look, I know my audience) if you just want to look at 100-odd ‘erotic’ film posters from the golden era of cheesecake bongo then WOW are you in luck (and if anyone has any idea where I might be able to buy an original of this then PLEASE LET ME KNOW).
November 10, 2025 at 11:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
Fondfolio

https://fondfolio.com/
Fondfolio: This is a lovely idea but MAN is the name unpleasant – it reads like ‘fondle’ which, well, isn’t a word anyone likes I don’t think, and if you try saying it out loud it feels quite a lot like attempting to speak with a mouth full of sand and tissue paper (it does, try it!), but leaving those frankly minor and unimportant quibbles aside I also think it’s a potentially cool idea which some of you might rather like; basically it’s a print-on-demand service for books of tributes and testimonials, which, when you sign up, gives you a questionnaire link that you can share with anyone who you’d like to contribute. The platform gathers all the responses, formats and compiles them, and then prints them into a one-off personal “YOU ARE FCUKING AMAZING!” texts (unless of course everyone filling out the form decides instead to share the reasons you will likely die alone and unloved! No reason it couldn’t be a hate book!). Rather beautifully this is seemingly a one-person business and the resulting books are handmade by someone called Fiona and, honestly, I think this is a rather lovely idea and could be a perfect gift for someone (or a really, really elaborate way of telling someone how much you and a whole bunch of other people despise them, and all the reasons why!).
November 10, 2025 at 9:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
Conversation Starters

https://conversationstartersworld.com/
Conversation Starters: There was a wonderful bit of clickbait feature writing in the Guardian the other day about how someone had ‘given up smalltalk’ and it had ‘transformed their life’ – what this practically meant was that they hadn’t in fact given it up at all, but had just replaced ‘what have you been up to then?’ with ‘tell me about your relationship with your mother?’ (I am paraphrasing, but you get the idea) as an opening conversational gambit and how this had TRANSFORMED THEIR SOCIAL LIFE (the article was…less vocal about whether the other people in said reporter’s life were as enamoured with this HARD PIVOT into BIG CHAT, but, well, who cares?!); anyway, if you too have problems with finding ways into conversations but don’t quite feel ready to go full-existential on first meeting someone, you might find this website of potential interest. Per the blurb, “Hi, my name is C.B. Daniels and I started Conversation Starters World. I’m from the USA. Florida to be specific. But I taught English in South Korea for many years. I used conversation questions a lot to help my students practice and learn English. But I noticed something interesting. I looked around for conversation questions for people who speak English as a native language and noticed there weren’t many sites around. And the sites that do exist didn’t have many questions to choose from. So I decided to remedy that by creating Conversation Starters World.” I personally think that some of these options are maybe a BIT high-risk – I worry, for example, that ‘have you ever saved an animal’s life?’ is potentially an immediate trauma-gateway – but on the other hand I am 100% going to try out “what’s the strangest place you’ve defecated?” on a stranger before the year is out.
November 9, 2025 at 7:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Eyeball

https://tryeyeball.com/
Eyeball: Another link tracking/management system! This one’s an iOS app and it basically does that whole ‘save your links! Search them! MANAGE THE KNOWLEDGE TSUNAMI!’ thing; per the blurb, “Eyeball effortlessly saves your links, automatically adds summaries, and sends an update every Sunday morning specific to you about what’s useful and interesting.”  Sound useful? GOOD.
November 9, 2025 at 5:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Slop Evader

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/slop-evader/mlofdhcgaaimlpbjlhpfnpjfpebjpdpp?hl=en-US&pli=1
Slop Evader: I genuinely can’t express quite how fcuking bored I am of the term ‘slop’ and its seeming ubiquity (see also the perennial expansion in meaning of ‘ensh1ttification’) – still, I imagine there will be some of you for whom this Chrome extension is hugely-appealing and as such I will suspend my distaste for long enough to share it with you, because THAT’S HOW NICE I AM. Slop Evader is a Chrome extension which, basically, limits Google searches to the period before November 2022 and so before the generative AI boom, and which, as a result, promises to guarantee you only HIGH-QUALITY, AI-FREE RESULTS! Except, well, it won’t eliminate all the human-made rubbish, of which there is loads because, remember, we’ve been fcuking up the web thanks to misaligned, VC-induced incentives for an age!
November 9, 2025 at 3:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
The Morl Society

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf4ugLgTdggC2ypXiWzOXtenbZDdIL8q_14PIJ2j0bQAUEPqw/viewform
https://interesting.blot.im/
The Morl Society: Sean Morley is a (very good) standup comedian who I *think* reads Web Curios every now and again – HELLO SEAN IF YOU ARE READING THIS I AM A FAN! – and who, at the end of November, is running the fourth instalment of The Morl Society, which is basically a virtual version of Interesting Conference and which, basically, is an evening of short, interesting presentations about whatever people want to do presentations about. Per the blurb, “The Morl Society is a livestream showcase of presentations on niche and underappreciated subjects. No topic too specific, no interest too unusual. The Morl Society showcase will be broadcast live on twitch.tv/seanmorl on Friday 28th November at 7.30pm GMT. Presentations can be between 3 -5 minutes long (if we are undersubscribed the length may inflate slightly). Presentations may be presented live or be pre-recorded. For live presenters you may appear on webcam or just on audio if that’s easier for you. Presenters are invited to participate in a short live Q&A after their talk.” Honestly, this sounds FUN and the sort of thing I have the vague impression some of you might be rather interested in.
November 9, 2025 at 1:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
The UK Deprivation Map

https://deprivation.communities.gov.uk/maps?type=imd&geog=lsoa#5/51.85/-8.75
The UK Deprivation Map: A newly-released dataset from the UK government mapping relative deprivation across the country; this is hugely-interesting, not only for the obvious ‘so where does where I live rank relative to the rest of the country and the surrounding area?’ but also as an insight into the intensely-complex and variegated demographic picture of the country; spend a bit of time with this, particularly looking at urban areas of the UK, and you quickly get an understanding of how thinking of ‘rich areas’ and ‘poor areas’ is desperately-reductive, and even parts of your city or town that you think of as ‘posh’ aren’t quite that monolithic. Curious for most of you, potentially very useful for a small minority.
November 9, 2025 at 11:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
6-7

https://daftlimmy.itch.io/67
6-7: The World’s Greatest Middle-Aged Streamer (™), Scotland’s Brian ‘Limmy’ Limond, has made this, which if you have children who are doing your head in with the 6-7 thing (I pity you, honestly) might prove a useful antidote and which you might want to bookmark on your phone for the next time some little scrote starts shouting it at you.
November 9, 2025 at 9:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
The Most Beautiful Swiss Books

https://themostbeautifulswissbooks.com/
The Most Beautiful Swiss Books: Perhaps unsurprisingly I wasn’t previously aware that there was an annual celebration of the best-designed books to be published in Switzerland each year but, well, there is! The awards have already happened this year, but this is a really pleasing site celebrating the nominees and winners – I really like the fact that the homepage is just full-bleed video showing pages flipping, and, honestly, there’s part of me that quite wants to just zone out and look at that right now because it turns out that FCUK ME I am flagging (0824am, in case you were interested, and I am really regretting not going to bed earlier last night).
November 8, 2025 at 7:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
ISS In Realtime

https://issinrealtime.org/
ISS In Realtime: WOW this is a treat for space-lovers – per the blurb, “ISS in Real Time is an interactive experience that lets you explore the past 25 years onboard the International Space Station. All data on this website is original, public mission material sourced from across the internet. We have placed the data into mission context so you can experience each day as it happened.” This is quite an incredible effort – you can go back to literally ANY day in the history of the Space Station and see videos, photos and data collected by it,  see where it was over the Earth, see who was onboard at the time…why do you need to be able to do this? I DO NOT KNOW AND I DO NOT CARE, REVEL IN THE AIRLESS VACUUM OF INFINITE INKY BLACKNESS AND DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS!
November 8, 2025 at 5:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Hidden Door

https://www.hiddendoor.co/
Hidden Door: This is another AI thing – SORRY SORRY I PROMISE THIS IS THE LAST ONE THIS WEEK – which I have been vaguely-following for a while now but which is now open to play with and which I can therefore share with YOU despite your almost-certain indifference; Hidden Door is basically an ‘interactive story game’-type toy, where you select from various scenarios and get to ‘play’ through a variety of different narrative settings, with the idea being that your choices and actions shape the direction of the story; this uses an LLM to develop the story based on your prompts and choices, effectively making this a souped-up choose your own adventure-style system. There are all sorts of bells and whistles on top of it; story cards you can collect and play, persistence of inventory, characters accruing memories and motivations as you play, theoretically allowing for interesting narrative developments…except, obviously it doesn’t QUITE work as its creators probably intend, and there’s a general sense of ‘well, this would be interesting if there was a human here guiding the narrative a bit because without one there’s no real sense of any real jeopardy or interest’ which you always get with this sort of thing because of The Machine’s natural reticence to introduce failstates or to let the player fcuk up…still, I found this curious enough to spend half an hour with earlier in the week, and I think that there’s something interesting here for any of you who spend time thinking about games, fiction and interactivity.
November 8, 2025 at 3:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Moflin

https://www.casio.com/us/moflin/
Moflin: Longstanding readers will know that I have long been fascinated by the idea of AI companions as physical objects – toys or dolls or whatever with The Machine inside, creating things that you can talk to and which will respond to you and react to stimuli…not necessarily because I think they will be ‘good’ or indeed that it’s a wholly-positive development and more because, well, it’s weird and interesting and sort-of scifi! Except, well, every time I see something of this ilk in real life I am gripped by a feeling of very, very intense soul-sadness and want to have a small cry! So it is with the Moflin, a Casio-produced device which is described on the site thusly “Moflin is a calming presence and offers quiet reassurance. As an AI friend, they ease stress and bring comfort when it matters most. Enjoy the warmth and lifelike bond of a smart companion that uses emotional AI to respond to you, understand you, and grow with you.” Moflin is, basically, a sort of featureless fluffy blob (but with eyes! So emotive!) which looks a bit like a cross between a guinea pig and a floor duster and which “loves gentle pats and warm cuddles wherever you carry them, and they also love sleeping in their bed to recharge” and which “provides emotional connection without social pressure, offering comfort and balance in daily life…a gentle, understanding AI friend that makes each day feel a little calmer and more fulfilling.” Obviously there are people who would like pets and who for various reasons can’t have them, and I can totally see the principal behind this, but, well, am I the only person who on reading statements like that pictures a future of lonely pod-people all living in high-rise apartments, venturing downstairs only to procure more protein units, spending their days stroking and murmuring to their fluffy AI companion who they love and who provides them with all the emotional support they could possibly need? Er, anyone? Anyway, this is making me well up, so I am going to move on swiftly before I get all lachrymose.
November 8, 2025 at 1:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
An Auction of Incredibly Gay Art

https://auction.vallots.com/auctions/vallot-auctioneers/after-dark-autumn-20522
An Auction of Incredibly Gay Art: Seeing as we’re doing auctions (SEAMLESS!), those of you less interested in felted puppets and more interested in, er, c0ck, might appreciate this collection of lots for sale at Vallots – this comprises sketches, paintings and photos and there is…well, there is a LOT of intensely-homoerotic artfilth here, basically, and if you are the type of person who would like a beautifully-shot chiaroscuro of some very taut buttocks then, well, get your wallet ready.
November 8, 2025 at 11:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
Grokipedia

https://grokipedia.com/
Grokipedia: I honestly don’t particularly want to dwell on this, but it feels…sadly, undeniably, sort-of important; even if this, Elon Musk’s ANTI-WOKE Wikipedia knockoff, doesn’t ever get any traction (and it won’t, to be clear; leaving aside the hideous, ignorant political leanings of its owner, a) it isn’t very good; and b) there isn’t, thank fcuk, a large enough body of people convinced of Wikipedia’s LIBERAL MADNESS to ever make Grokipedia more than a fringe concern) it is, I think, worth noting its existence simply as another waypoint in the culture wars and general trend towards ‘you don’t like this version of objective reality? No problem, look over here at this one which I have sculpted to fit your hideous opinions!’. Anyway, Grokipedia is the answer to the hitherto-unasked question ‘What if Wikipedia but with all the images and links removed, and rewritten by an LLM to read as though it was written exclusively by forum-dwelling neckbeards with STRONG OPINIONS?’ – it seems from initial cursory explorations that a lot of the content is lifted wholesale from Wikipedia,with some of it rewritten to cast it in a manner more aligned with Elon’s general belief systems (specifically the racist and increasingly-fascistic ones). There’s something just really…bleak about this, honestly, which I think stems from the contrast between the ethos and mechanics of the original Wikipedia – a passion project for thousands of actual people who volunteer their time, knowledge and expertise to create a shared corpus of human knowledge for the benefit of everyone! – and the mechanics of this horrid simulacrum.
November 8, 2025 at 9:30 AM
curiobot.bsky.social
A Genuinely Good Little AI Film

https://bsky.app/profile/amysiskind.com/post/3m3ygmeou7k2u
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ6TE9Awcuc
https://becausetheinternet.substack.com/
A Genuinely Good Little AI Film: “NO MATT EVERYTHING MADE WITH AI IS BAD AND YOU ARE SCUM FOR LINKING TO IT!” Oh, look, go and shout at someone else, you are BORING and your lack of curiosity is beginning to grate. Ahem. Sorry, I really ought to stop arguing with imagined hecklers. Anyway, this is a link to a post on Bluesky sharing a really nicely-made bit of AI film; yes, it’s obviously AI; yes, it has THAT general sort of look and feel about it, but, look, it’s a nice example of how to use the tech for effective communications; the whole vibe of this clip is a little too ‘RESIST DRUMPF!!!1111’ for me in general, but the general message and delivery is, I think, strong. I’ve shared previous examples of honkingly-bad AI satire before, but this is, I think better – not just because, fine, yes, it’s peddling a message I agree with, but because, as with the best examples of this stuff, you can see that whoever’s storyboarded this has at least a rudimentary understanding of ‘visual storytelling’ and so there’s some decent directorial nous underpinning the selection of AI video clips; see what you think. Personally I think we’re going to see an absolute boom in stuff like this as everyone and their dog starts to get access to high-quality text to video. BONUS GOOD AI VIDEO THING!: this is a good advert and it made me laugh and, again, it demonstrates that you can actually now make pretty good stuff with The Machine as long as you accept that it can’t write a decent script and you shouldn’t let it anywhere near the copy (via Paddy).
November 7, 2025 at 7:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Doublespeed

https://doublespeed.ai/
Doublespeed: You will, if you’ve spent any time at all on the web over the past 5 years or so (or, specifically, if you’ve spent anywhere near as much time on the web as I have over the past 5 years, which, well, I hope not tbh), seen videos floating around social media of basement setups in which dozens or even hundreds of phones are set up to automatically spam posts to various social networks at scale; the sort of large-scale botnets that everyone now assumes are behind so much coordinated online activity (should any of you ever want a pointed, cautionary tale about the importance of the difference between ‘bots’ and ‘coordinated inauthentic activity’ then you can buy me a pint and I will tell you about The Time I Caused A Small Journalistic Sh1storm) but which in the main aren’t talked about or alluded to in politice, salubrious circles…well, in a not-particularly-great sign for the future health of online existence, this stuff is now OUT OF THE SHADOWS and peddling itself quite openly, all with the official backing of everyone’s favourite venture capital techno chucklefcuks Andreessen Horowitz! Doublespeed recently got funding from A16Z to expand on its vision to, per the website, “orchestrate actions on thousands of social accounts through  both bulk content creation and deployment”, via tech which “mimics natural user interaction on physical devices to get our content to appear human to the algorithims” and with feedback loops which “analyze what works to make the content smarter over time…the best performing content becomes the training data for what comes next.” As the homepage proudly proclaims, “AI does the heavy lifting, humans add the final 5% that makes platforms trust it’s real. We’ve automated the arbitrage between perfect and believable.” Is it…is it positive that one of the world’s largest and most-famous VC firms is openly funding companies that peddle synthetic online activity and the ability to spin up digital ‘movements’ for cash? NO IT IS NOT AND YET HERE WE ARE! The general Curios viewpoint – to whit, “BELIEVE NOTHING ON THE INTERNET UNLESS YOU ARE READING IT HERE, I AM THE ONLY SOURCE OF TRUTH, TRUST ME AND MY WORDS FOR I AM YOUR SOLE TRUE ORACLE” (or, well, something like that) – continues to have much to recommend it.
November 7, 2025 at 5:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
VIDEO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmK978jFxMk
There was a period about, what, 20 years ago, when UK producer Danger Mouse was the hottest musical property around, off the back of the Grey Album mashing up JayZ and the Beatles (which still really does work, by the way) and his (still) excellent album with Jemini…anyway, that was then and I hadn’t thought about him for YEARS until this track cropped up in my recommendations this week and reminded me that he really is an excellent producer; the vocal on this track by him and Black Thought is great too, and overall this is an excellent slice of old-school hiphop called ‘Up’ (it’s also the second time this year I’ve featured Rag’n’Bone Man, which isn’t something I would have expected to write tbh but it’s a nice hook).
November 7, 2025 at 3:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
VIDEO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5lq4mlZDi4
A RETURN TO THE TRISHAVERSE! I don’t post all of these here because, well, I know most people don’t like it, but I continue to be utterly charmed by Trisha Code and the compilations Trishasodes that come out every couple of weeks or so – they continue to be funny, neatly-packaged variety show packages and as a longtime viewer I am…surprisingly-invested in the Trisha extended universe. Also, though, it’s a really interesting window into How This Stuff Looks These Days, and what is possible to knock up with AI tools, particularly from the point of view of creating consistent, replicable themes and characters and environments and the like – honestly, I still maintain that this would be truly EXCELLENT post-midnight Friday night linear TV programming. Also, aside from anything else, there are some fcuking CRACKING beats in this one.
November 7, 2025 at 1:30 PM
curiobot.bsky.social
Queen of Darts

https://victoryjournal.substack.com/p/queen-of-darts
Queen of Darts: A piece all about the OTHER darts championship – not the annual Christmas cirrhosis-and-gakfest at Ally Pally but the Dutch Open, apparently the largest in the world by number of participants. This is, honestly, GREAT – whether or not you like darts it’s just wonderfully written, contains some excellent anecdotes and characters and does a GREAT job of communicating the unique, weirdly-feral atmosphere of hedonistic, messy revelry that is THE DARTS. “This year, in 2019, 5,857 entrants have paid their 22.50 Euros to take a chance at some kind of glory while thousands more have come to swirl and gawk and cheer. And as I pop out of the tree line, there is that heat. Already, the patio of the De Bonte Wever is overrun by the clamor and the smoke of hundreds of dartspersons happily getting beer-drunk before noon. Inside, a complex of carpeted conference rooms has been made over with batches of plywood and partition walls covered in blue tarp. Before, perhaps, there would have been metal fold-up chairs. Drowsy lectures. Now, everywhere, there are the demarcation lines known as oches and dartboards, and, everywhere, there are children and women and men smashing darts into them, thwack thwack thwack, three at a time. There is a feel here akin to the World Series of Poker—the hope, the collective desire, is that a complete unknown will make a madman-run to glory. Players are surrounded by clusters of supporters, and as they wheel around after a victory they’re greeted with fist-pounds, back-slaps, skull-slaps, howls, and sighs of relief. “Da return of da legend!” comes, in a clipped accent, from atop the din of one such cluster. They are all here for you, enjoying the reflected flow of your temporary glow.” Thanks to reader Keith Griffin for sending this to me – thanks also to Keith for opening his email with the line ‘as a former vicar’ which, ngl, was an unexpected insight into the Curios demography that I really appreciated. Anyone else out there a person of the cloth, current or lapsed? ABSOLVE ME SOMEONE, PLEASE, CLEANSE ME OF THE FILTH!
November 7, 2025 at 11:30 AM