Pigtail
R74n
Dear reader,
Uno comes running to Ana, laughing. He asks her to translate “ο μπαμπάς μου είναι το θέμα του αστείου« with her phone. He heard it at school. He knows Ana recognises the Greek sounds, and he knows the phone will turn them into English so his parents can follow along.
It happens often. Whenever we don’t know something, Uno says, »ask your phone”. What’s the weather? Ask your phone. Who is the God of humans? Ask your phone. You see the pattern.
He learned it from us. We check our phones for everything: the time, directions, translations. From the eyes of a five-year-old, the phone is a modern day oracle, a magical object adults consult for answers.
We’ve started telling Uno that the phone is more a finder of things. It gathers answers made by others. The rain forecast comes from someone studying the weather, not from the phone itself. I want Uno to know that knowledge has a source, a place, a labour behind it. That matters even more now, as the phone’s answers slide toward algorithmic predictions, further obscuring the lived places and practices that shape knowledge.
Still, the best solution would be to use the phone less. As the Greek sentence says, »my dad is the butt of the joke.«
With care,
Kristoffer
𖡼𖤣𖥧𖡼𓋼𖤣𖥧𓋼𓍊
R74n
R74n is a collective founded in 2017 creating web-based projects.
What is R74n?
R74n is many things. If you follow the lore, it’s a multiversal entity breaching into our world. But at its core, R74n is a collection of websites and artistic webpages. There isn’t a general theme, but it includes browser games like our most notable Sandboxels and Infinite Chef, useful references like the Copy Paste Dump, and massive silly collections like Hello in Every Way or our Shapes icon set. R74n also does large amounts of archiving work for subjects relevant to our collective and community, and seeks to be omnipresent around the web.
Why did you start it?
Even before R74n, I was creating projects and sharing them with my inner circle. I initially started R74n as a way to share these projects with the public.
Who or what inspired you?
I am constantly inspired by indie websites, new and old. I click links all the time and take in all the little details, such as 88x31 buttons, which I’ve been particularly interested in recently. I am also inspired by gaps in the web’s content that I encounter myself, like the lack of a unit converter that can convert dog years to Minecraft days. The urge to make these large projects even bigger, along with feedback and suggestions from our viewers, keeps me going.
Visit https://r74n.com/
☆.𓋼𓍊 𓆏 𓍊𓋼𓍊.☆
Field notes
1.
»I think everyone on MelonLand is an oddball to some extent. A lot of the time, people just like having a place where they can be something that they can’t be in regular life.«
— Daniel Murray in Web Craft.
2.
Your Desktop Is An Open World. A short seven-minute video that shows experiments on how to look at the desktop rather than through it. Imagine your desktop as a chessboard, puzzle, or keyboard.
3.
Interview with Joanna Walsh. I’m happy to see a new book written about the (internet) amateurs. The “professional” internet gets enough attention, so it is nice when an author and publisher decide to make a stage for the understory of the web. Without the amateurs, the internet would be a convention hall full of salespeople. Sounds like a nightmare, right?
4.
Call for Participation: SFPC Winter 2026 Application (Nov 17), send your fridge to oio (N/A), and Orbital Studies Magazine (Dec 10).
5.
Poetic Web Calendar: The Wrong Biennale (Nov 1-ongoing, online), Crash Course (Nov 10-20, Rotterdam), Tiat 13 (Nov 16, SF), Star Quest (Nov 18, NYC), Wordhack (Nov 20, NYC), d*sign week (Nov 24-30, Linz), Bookmarklet Instruments (Nov 27, online), De-growing Infrastructures (Nov 27, AMS), River Computer (Dec 1, SF), Chinatown JS (Dec 2, NYC), and The Web You Want (Apr 17, Amsterdam).
₊˚✿𑁍.ೃ࿔*:･
Wayside flowers
Last email was sent to 5046 inboxes. Fifteen people support me with a paid subscription (thank you for the upgrades, Emily & Whitney). You can send questions, comments, products, sites, links, and more to kristoffer@naiveweekly.com. I read everything you send me :)