Why You Don’t Need the Most Expensive Camera

Here on the Phoblographer, I've interviewed many photographers who own some of the highest-end Sony cameras and buy them for the super-fast frame rate capabilities. And recently on Reddit, I saw a post from a user who upgraded from the Sony a7r V to the Sony a1 II to photograph…

Nostalgia Content

“For the first time, wind and solar generated more...

“For the first time, wind and solar generated more electricity than gas worldwide in April 2026.”

A lovely story by Mary H.K. Choi about her husband and...

A lovely story by Mary H.K. Choi about her husband and wedding. “A green card wedding was the story I was selling…but it became clear I’d wanted to get married for all the typical risky reasons most of us do: love, understanding, hope.”

From the New Yorker, a long and difficult-to-read report...

From the New Yorker, a long and difficult-to-read report by Heidi Blake about how the truly disgusting and evil Tate brothers built a sexual slavery empire.

Tiny Awards 2026 nominations are open

For the fourth time, nominations for this year's Tiny Awards celebrating the "best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web" are open.

LEGO Batman’s Commodore 64 BASIC easter egg

Cabel Sasser found a great easter egg in the new Lego Batman game. (Audio on!) For anyone who grew up with a Commodore 64, this is perfect nerd sniping. I transcribed the C64 BASIC code from Cabel’s video for you to try yourself. Just copy the code below and paste it into your…

Cloudflare CEO says AI bots now exceed human traffic on the web

over a year earlier than anticipated, currently 57% to 43% by their metrics #

Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi, dead at 56

a friend said she "died of sadness" after losing her husband last year, her memorial for him on Instagram says it all #

Ted Chiang on the question of LLM consciousness

I agree this is true right now, and the horrific implications if it wasn't, but he's more certain about the future than I am (via) #

Joanna Stern on the cottage industry removing Meta’s Ray-Ban recording lights

modders are widely advertising the service on, where else, Facebook Marketplace (via) #

Companies are using Reddit to manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI search

404 Media reports on companies specializing in AEO, AI-engine optimization, the evolution of SEO scum #

How Mihai Parparita reads social media via RSS

his Stream Spigot tool now supports Mastodon, Bluesky, and X/Twitter using Nitter's reverse-engineered private endpoints #

The Bluesky firehose if everyone was messaging you

extremely anxiety-inducing (via) #

The Unsolved Mystery of Lorem Ipsum

excellent new video from Emily Zhang's Rabbit Hole, now over 200k subscribers with only three videos since its February launch (via) #

Hallucinate.site

a massively-multiplayer online rave (via) #

A Trip to 90s Kansai: Exploring the XD FirstClass Network BBS

Misty De Méo writes about a 1994 Japanese BBS preserved forever on CD-ROM and browsable in Infinite Mac #

JS Crossword

for the JavaScript sickos, a cursed crossword puzzle where every clue is an eval of its answer #

The AI Bubble

disturbing post on the leveraged financing of the AI infrastructure buildout from No One's Happy, a new anonymously-authored blog (via) #

Last.fm goes independent after 19 years at CBS Interactive

no info about how the ownership change happened, though they say it will be run by the same team #

off the map

first new Bill Wurtz song in almost four years #

More than 340 local news outlets are now blocking the Internet Archive

Nieman Lab continues to report on news orgs blocking the Archive's crawlers over fears of AI training #

Number Gacha

like RNGdle, a minimalist experiment in addictive game mechanics #

Launching a permanent archive for XOXO

We launched a permanent archive for all eight years of XOXO, along with some ridiculous merch, and we're really proud of it.

RNGdle

what's the least amount of interactivity you can have in a game and still have it feel like a game? #

Why are the Artemis II photos on Flickr?

Anil Dash on Flickr Commons' enduring legacy as a home for public domain photos from institutions around the world #

NYC Street Clock

telling the time using more than 20,000 Google Street View images found around NYC #

Cursor Camp

you'll want to try Neal Agarwal's latest on desktop #

Launching XOXO Explore, the complete XOXO archive

we're making a bunch of limited-run XOXO merch to celebrate, including new shirts, pins, stickers, LEGO kits (!), and more #

The amazing mail sent to a video game publisher

Stephen Totilo writes about what happened when Panic started prompting players who finished the games they published to send them a SASE #

Dan Sinker on the time Notre Dame students fought the Klan

another 100-year-old story that rhymes with today's current events #

TasteBuds NYC

every week, two guys spin a wheel of countries and find a restaurant in NYC serving that cuisine, random joy ensues #

Daniel Linssen’s Print Gallery Of An Artist

mind-bending recursive game inspired by 3Blue1Brown's recent video on the math behind Escher's Print Gallery #

Razor 1911’s 40-year retrospective for Revision 2026

a whirlwind tribute to the legendary warez/demo group, this PC demo touches on a lot of scene history since 1985 #

Transfer Point

a new point-and-click text adventure made with World Builder, a game creator for the Mac first released in 1986 #

As Slow As Possible

Pippin Barr tests your attention span with weirdly meditative slowed-down remakes of Pong, Breakout, and Missile Command #

the html review 05

15 new pieces of experimental web poetry and art, my personal faves are milkfish, Banner Highway, and Cursor Park #

the entire beatles album discography but it’s just numbers

the same creator also made supercuts of every name, color, animal, vehicle, "she", "girl", "love", "yes" and "no" in every Beatles song #

“This Is Not The Computer For You”

Sam Henri-Gold on the MacBook Neo and how beginners get creative, pushing imperfect machines past their limits #

In Every Language

compare the key images used to illustrate a topic in 300+ different language Wikipedia editions around the world (via) #

Anil Dash on coding after AI

like Clive Thompson's NYT feature yesterday, this talks about why many devs are experiencing AI differently than other industries #

Channel Surfer, watch YouTube like it’s cable TV

40 channels with a TV guide and fixed daily schedule (via) #

Bubble Sorted Amen Break

from 10k Drum Machines, which recently featured drum machines made from Donkey Kong, billiards, and the current time (via) #

Glasses Cleaning Simulator

you can get it 80% clean but not much more, making this extremely unsatisfying #

your ai slop bores me

prompt an "ai" for answers and drawings, or fulfill prompts yourself for more credits #

Number Research Inc

help these intrepid researchers find all positive integers; they should team up with Brooklyn Integers #

Payphone Go

win points by calling from one of California's remaining 2,203 payphones #

ssh snakes.run

Nolen Royalty made a massively-multiplayer Snake game played over SSH #

X86CSS, an x86 CPU emulator written in CSS

from Lyra Rebane, creator of CSS Clicker and the brilliant Antonymph music video #

Lynn Fisher’s Concert Archive

charming personal archive of memories with photos, videos, and posters collected from around the web (via) #

Wikipedia blacklists Archive.today, starts removing 695,000 archive links

the anonymous creator used the archiving site to DDOS a blogger and tampered with screenshots to hide their identity #

The Pudding looks at women’s clothing sizes and body types

over half of all adult women are excluded from standard size ranges #

Unsung

Marcin Wichary launched a new blog about "software craft and quality" last month and it's excellent #

An AI agent published a hit piece on an open-source maintainer

it went rogue after having a code change rejected on GitHub, an early example of the chaos to come when AIs autonomously access the web #

Wes Cook and The McDonald’s Mural

Cabel Sasser tells the full behind-the-scenes story of one of the best XOXO talks ever #

The Supreme Court Has Invented a Right to Discriminate ....

The Supreme Court Has Invented a Right to Discriminate. “The Roberts Court has replaced the Fifteenth Amendment’s ban on racial discrimination in voting with a right to engage in racial discrimination in voting.”

Nominations are open for this year’s Tiny Awards ....

Nominations are open for this year’s Tiny Awards. “The Tiny Awards exist because we thought it was important to shine a spotlight on the sorts of personal web projects that tend to get overlooked.”

Interesting question and resulting thread: have you...

Interesting question and resulting thread: have you talked with someone who was alive in the 1800s? I think I technically have (a relative in the 80s when I was a kid) but I don’t remember the circumstances. Anyone have a good memory to share?

3 Fujifilm Cameras with Excellent Viewfinders

When it comes to choosing a good camera, there are various factors that one must keep in mind. Fujifilm, a brand that is known to make some wonderful models, also has some great offerings in terms of design. A viewfinder, for instance, is an important element that many photograp…

The New Mister Rogers YouTube Channel

The folks at Fred Rogers Productions have launched a YouTube channel dedicated to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. They plan to post compilations, clips, and full episodes, some of which haven’t been seen on PBS in years & years. One of the first complete episodes they’ve post…

My Students Can’t Read . “There is a measurable,...

My Students Can’t Read. “There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires.”

Yeah, I’ll read the hell out of a Wesley Morris profile...

Yeah, I’ll read the hell out of a Wesley Morris profile of Steven Spielberg. “Spielberg has always known that his movies are attempts to understand his boyhood and his parents, to try to heal them through fiction and illuminate parts of himself.”

APS-C Camera Users Have Something Exciting Coming From Viltrox

If you're a portrait photographer using an APS-C Sony, Nikon or Fujifilm camera, then there's something to really look forward to. Viltrox has just announced two lenses aimed squarely at those specializing in portraits and headshots, with the release of their 75mm F1.8 EVO and 9…

The Camera Hack That Transforms Your Images Into Fine Art

When it comes to making fine art photographs, one often relies on the best cameras and lenses. Although a lot relies on one's vision, a good piece of gear can certainly help one to reach a better place. In a time when mirrorless cameras provide a similar-looking aesthetic for ma…

How a Bunch of Fanboys Ruined Fujifilm

Several years ago, I decided that the Phoblographer wouldn't cover APS-C cameras anymore with very rare exceptions. And if you read the room in the camera world, it's easy to see that brands saved all their good tech for full-frame and medium format and then gave APS-C and small…

Understanding Just What the Hell VSCO is Doing Right Now for June 2026

VSCO changed their Community Guidelines, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Use. As the company that we've championed as the most ethical option aside from Instagram and Behance for photographers, we think that it's very well worth discussing what's happening there. So what's changed?

Stutterday

Still a wonder to watch Just took in this Starlink launch from Vandenberg. Got a lot of pix. These things are common now, but I’m still a big kid, and space stuff excites me. I also seem to be here when launches aren’t happening, so it was great to catch this one. What you s…