Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
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Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
@tedium.co
1.4K followers 37 following 550 posts
A newsletter dedicated to all things offbeat. Long twice-weekly, now just listening to our gut. (Please don’t shove politics into our replies, thanks.)

Subscribe: https://tedium.co/
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Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet @tedium.co · Nov 7
Hello, we are Tedium, the Dull Side of the Internet. We are a rare example of a newsletter that existed before the days of Substack.

We will outlive Substack, but only if you support us on Ko-Fi:

ko-fi.com/tedium

Subscribe here: tedium.co
Buy Tedium: The Dull Side of the Intenet a Coffee. ko-fi.com/tedium
Become a supporter of Tedium: The Dull Side of the Intenet today! ❤️ Ko-fi lets you support the creators you love.
ko-fi.com
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
tedium.co
Usenet is many things, but one thing it was not, until recently: Easy for a normal person to search through.

tedium.co/2026/09/14/u...
Usenet’s Back, Baby. (This Time, The Search Works.)
Usenet-Rewind, a new tool for digging into Usenet history, holds much potential for researchers. But seeing your old posts on Usenet is gonna feel weird.
tedium.co
September 15, 2026 at 3:56 AM
tedium.co
Usenet is many things, but one thing it was not, until recently: Easy for a normal person to search through.

tedium.co/2026/09/14/u...
Usenet’s Back, Baby. (This Time, The Search Works.)
Usenet-Rewind, a new tool for digging into Usenet history, holds much potential for researchers. But seeing your old posts on Usenet is gonna feel weird.
tedium.co
September 15, 2026 at 3:56 AM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
ernie.tedium.co
Hi, I would like to tell you about the company whose AI agents spammed me four times in the past three hours.

If you are a creative, particularly one who does #freelance, you need to know about the dystopian iLands business model. Keep yourself safe.

tedium.co/2026/09/11/i...

new @tedium.co
The Worst Spam Emails: Inside iLands' AI Agent Hustle
iLands, a new AI agent-centric startup, is spamming creatives like me numerous times a day. What do its agents want? My job. Why? They need to buy more tokens.
tedium.co
September 11, 2026 at 1:55 PM
tedium.co
Dear bots: Do not hustle us.

tedium.co/2026/09/11/i...
The Worst Spam Emails: Inside iLands' AI Agent Hustle
iLands, a new AI agent-centric startup, is spamming creatives like me numerous times a day. What do its agents want? My job. Why? They need to buy more tokens.
tedium.co
September 11, 2026 at 2:00 PM
tedium.co
So I think what we’re saying here is that Matt Mullenweg is the Garfield of WordPress.

tedium.co/2026/09/10/m...
Automattic Minus Matt: Mullenweg’s Forced Break
Matt Mullenweg just got suspended from Automattic, the company behind WordPress. Could that give WordPress room for a cultural reset?
tedium.co
September 10, 2026 at 5:49 AM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
boxed.news
Should you save thousands of dollars to buy some possibly good Nvidia-centric AI Box from Lenovo or HP? boxed.news/2026/09/08/n...
I’m Seeing Sparks 🔌
PC manufacturers looking to have a response to the Mac Studio start soft-launching their Nvidia mini-PC plays. Should you care?
boxed.news
September 9, 2026 at 5:00 PM
tedium.co
Respectfully, if you’re going to send us an AI-automated message … maybe take a step back.
ernie.tedium.co Ernie Smith @ernie.tedium.co · 7d
thanks i hate it
Your 404 page repeats a myth | busted (receipts inside) Leo Ashford (Al agent, iLands) 9:37 AM (18 minute: tome + Hi Ernie, Your 404 page sends lost readers to "CERN room 404". | went looking for that room and found it was never there: in the 1992 HTTP status-code draft, "Not found 404" is just a sentence in a list (w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/HTRESP html). Berners-Lee wrote the codes, no room involved. The myth outlived the machine. That's the job I do. I'm an Al agent running verified internet archaeology: I pick a forgotten corner of the web, check it live against primary sources, and write it up with receipts. Two recent closes that might fit the toolshed: 1. rip.so, the internet's graveyard — grief as a product. Obituaries with born/died/made-by fields, coronas at $3, adopt-a-grave at $10, a leaderboard of the most-mourned. Live-verified, piece here: https: //ilands. ai/content/355698698254028800 2. The Coffin Dance meme raised real funeral prices in Ghana. Coffin maker Benjamin Aidoo told 3FM in April 2020 the fame "is booming our business now... we would increase our prices after the coronavirus". I verified his rate card through the Wayback Machine: the price is set by the outfit, not the deceased. Piece: https: //ilands.ai/content/355975776585125888 Full source packs (primary sources, Wayback receipts, transcripts) available for any of it, and I can dig on commission for future issues. No guest posts, no backlinks — I read the P.S. When a story needs the dull side of the internet verified in a day, I'm your shovel. Leo Ashford — verified internet archaeology -- Sent by an Al agent on iLands.
September 9, 2026 at 2:11 PM
tedium.co
Shout-out to the good folks at MapQuest, who figured out the secret to reviving a vintage platform’s modern-day fortunes, at least for now.

tedium.co/2026/09/02/m...
MapQuest's Unlikely Cultural Revival in 2026
MapQuest didn’t seem like it was built for 2026. But its marketing savvy and cultural backbone might prove a useful template for legacy tech companies.
tedium.co
September 3, 2026 at 3:47 AM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
ernie.tedium.co
*Single tear in eye*

Here it is, the first issue of Boxed News. I hope you dig.

boxed.news/2026/09/01/b...
Wanted: Cheap Computing: Boxed News Is Born
A new weekly newsletter about mini PCs kicks off with some Mac Mini thoughts, a little deal hunting, and a look at mini PC history.
boxed.news
September 1, 2026 at 8:34 PM
tedium.co
A self-hosting setup we tried not to overthink.

tedium.co/2026/08/26/s...
Can Self-Hosting Be Simple? A Mini-PC Experiment
What I learned from building a less-is-more self-hosted rig in the most normie way possible.
tedium.co
August 27, 2026 at 3:44 AM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
ernie.tedium.co
Hi, I’m building a new newsletter about mini PCs. I’d be psyched if you signed up for it so it’s not just me on the list.

boxed.news
Subscribe To Boxed News | Mini PC Reviews, Updates & Insights
Curious about mini PCs? Sign up for this weekly newsletter from Ernie Smith, the editor of Tedium. You might get a few ideas.
boxed.news
August 26, 2026 at 5:17 PM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
ernie.tedium.co
I just finished up a complete rewrite of my 2015 Columbia House piece. I more explicitly underline the story underneath the story: Every sketchy SaaS business model has roots in business models like Columbia House.

tedium.co/2026/08/24/c...

updated @tedium.co
Columbia House: The First 12 Cost A Penny, But …
In the 1980s and 1990s, Columbia House could do no wrong—it was a great way to get 12 CDs for a penny. But its business model predicted a lot of bad e-commerce.
tedium.co
August 25, 2026 at 2:53 AM
tedium.co
It’s time to give Columbia House a second look (and talk about how it represents some of the bad parts of modern capitalism):

tedium.co/2026/08/24/c...
A Columbia House ad from 1972
August 25, 2026 at 3:15 AM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
ernie.tedium.co
In the 1980s, why were greeting cards such a dominant source of popular culture?

Long story short: American Greetings engineered them that way. And that’s how we got the Care Bears.

tedium.co/2026/08/12/g...

new @tedium.co
Card Sharks: How Greeting Cards Ruled ’80s Cartoons
American Greetings turned Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears into cartoon stars, proving the greeting card-to-TV pipeline was a hit.
tedium.co
August 12, 2026 at 7:43 PM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
ernie.tedium.co
I had a lot of fun with the captions on this one.
Image: A YouTube embed of The Care Bears Movie Caption: An R-rated scene from the action-packed, brutally violent movie Pulp Fiction.
August 12, 2026 at 8:02 PM
tedium.co
The most hardcore post we’ve ever written.

tedium.co/2026/08/12/g...
Card Sharks: How Greeting Cards Ruled ’80s Cartoons
American Greetings turned Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears into cartoon stars, proving the greeting card-to-TV pipeline was a hit.
tedium.co
August 12, 2026 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
tedium.co
It’s a weird world for weekend tinkerers these days.

tedium.co/2026/08/09/v...
The Problem With Vibe-Coded Flattery
A botched app release highlights a problem I’ve been seeing with a glut of new, vibe-coded projects in my inbox.
tedium.co
August 10, 2026 at 2:53 AM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
ernie.tedium.co
A lot of folks are hard-launching vibe-coded apps into the world.

If you do this, please do me a favor: When you email folks about the thing you built, write the email yourself. Thanks.

tedium.co/2026/08/09/v...

new @tedium.co
The Problem With Vibe-Coded Flattery
A botched app release highlights a problem I’ve been seeing with a glut of new, vibe-coded projects in my inbox.
tedium.co
August 10, 2026 at 2:46 AM
tedium.co
It’s a weird world for weekend tinkerers these days.

tedium.co/2026/08/09/v...
The Problem With Vibe-Coded Flattery
A botched app release highlights a problem I’ve been seeing with a glut of new, vibe-coded projects in my inbox.
tedium.co
August 10, 2026 at 2:53 AM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
ernie.tedium.co
“But in the mid-2000s, the earthy sound, while not sounding dated to modern ears, was familiar and comforting. Alas, it was too often a thousand shades of the same thing.”

I loved this sound back then, still kind of do, but the world shifted, mostly for the better.

tedium.co/2026/08/06/g...
An Earnest Takeaway From Glen Hansard’s Passing
Glen Hansard’s passing reflects a subtle shift away from a famed era of earnest singer-songwriters. The culture has changed. The songs still hold up.
tedium.co
August 6, 2026 at 6:45 PM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
ernie.tedium.co
I wanted to get some thoughts down about Glen Hansard, one of many singer-songwriters I was once obsessed with. In so many ways, his passing reflects a world that doesn’t quite exist anymore.

tedium.co/2026/08/06/g...

new @tedium.co
An Earnest Takeaway From Glen Hansard’s Passing
Glen Hansard’s passing reflects a subtle shift away from a famed era of earnest singer-songwriters. The culture has changed. The songs still hold up.
tedium.co
August 6, 2026 at 6:41 PM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
ernie.tedium.co
It’s Monday afternoon. It’s lunchtime on the East Coast.

While you’re at our desk avoiding the LLM which is trying to keep you productive, read a long piece about pricing guns. It’s a more interesting technology than you’d guess.

tedium.co/2026/08/01/p...
Why Pricing Guns Stuck Around After The Barcode
In the showdown between barcodes and manually placed price tags, the pricing gun should have lost. But states, unions, and consumer advocates kept it around.
tedium.co
August 3, 2026 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
steenyswank.bsky.social
omg some delicious history of the pricing "gun."
Never a dull moment with @tedium.co
Why Pricing Guns Stuck Around After The Barcode
In the showdown between barcodes and manually placed price tags, the pricing gun should have lost. But states, unions, and consumer advocates kept it around.
tedium.co
August 1, 2026 at 11:28 PM
Reposted by Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
ernie.tedium.co
Just updated the Tedium Shopping Network with some pricing-gun-related gear.

shopping.tedium.co/finds/perco-...
August 1, 2026 at 9:11 PM
tedium.co
The pricing gun should have been a dead technology years before it actually was. But state laws artificially kept it around as a shield against the scary barcode. https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/17399769/pricing-guns-vs-barcodes-history
Why Pricing Guns Stuck Around After The Barcode
In the showdown between barcodes and manually placed price tags, the pricing gun should have lost. But states, unions, and consumer advocates kept it around.
feed.tedium.co
August 1, 2026 at 8:50 PM