Doomiablo
Phil Nelson 
Some poor soul has created a mod for Diablo 2 that re-implements Doom 2 as an isometric Diablo 2-style dungeon crawler. It has been dubbed “Doomiablo.”
Takeshi no Chousenjo is being released for iOS and Android in Japan
The classic Famicom kusoge (literal translation: “shitty game”) is coming to Japan, but likely not the US. I’ll have to be happy with my Famicom version.
Related: This game was Arino-san’s very first challenge on Game Center CX!
June Foray, RIP (1917-2017)
We have lost a titan. She almost made it to an even 100.
It’s hard to put into words how big of an effect on my personality Rocky and Bullwinkle had, even though it was cancelled decades before I was born. My mom loved it, and it would come on one of the local stations my grandparents picked up via antenna (no cable tv was even available where they lived in those days) and it’s the first thing I have a memory of laughing at with my mom and my brothers.
Aside from the Simpsons I don’t think any single bit of popular media was more important to my development as a person.
Adobe Announces Plans To Discontinue Flash, Will Stop Supporting Entirely in 2020
Ding, dong, the witch is dead:
But as open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured over the past several years, most now provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins pioneered and have become a viable alternative for content on the web. Over time, we’ve seen helper apps evolve to become plugins, and more recently, have seen many of these plugin capabilities get incorporated into open web standards. Today, most browser vendors are integrating capabilities once provided by plugins directly into browsers and deprecating plugins.
Given this progress, and in collaboration with several of our technology partners – including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla – Adobe is planning to end-of-life Flash. Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats.
My own experience with Flash was mostly terrible, and it really did tear your battery life to shreds, but without it we wouldn’t have Homestar Runner, and for that I am thankful.
What Happens When You Run Away to Join ISIS, Then Want to Come Home
What a story. Somehow I feel like this isn’t the last time we’ll hear it, though:
After fleeing to join ISIS in 2016, 16-year-old German Linda Wenzel has been found in Mosul with a baby boy. She says she wants to leave ISIS and come home. But what will happen to her now?
Wreddit loves Rassler
Yesterday I posted my game, Rassler, to the pro wrestling subreddit /r/SquaredCircle. They love it? It seems like they love it. I don’t know how to handle feedback this positive.
The Bone Mother
Amazon’s shipping robot has informed me that David Demchuk’s book, The Bone Mother, has shipped. I’m looking forward to it:
Three neighboring villages on the Ukrainian/Romanian border are the final refuge for the last of the mythical creatures of Eastern Europe. Now, on the eve of the war that may eradicate their kind—and with the ruthless Night Police descending upon their sanctuary—they tell their stories and confront their destinies.
Eerie and unsettling like the best fairy tales, these incisor-sharp portraits of ghosts, witches, sirens, and seers—and the mortals who live at their side and in their thrall—will chill your marrow and tear at your heart.
Sounds spooky. Buy it on Amazon.
Latest experiments reveal AI is still terrible at naming paint colors
Such classics as Bleedwood, Spiced Rope, Bull Cream, Dorky Brown, Drimple, and Dad. Many more at the link.
TransProse
Using natural language processing, TransProse reads in text and determines densities of eight different emotions (joy, sadness, anger, disgust, anticipation, surprise, trust, and fear) and two different states (positive or negative) throughout the novel. The musical piece chronologically follows the novel. It uses the emotion density data to determine the tempo, key, notes, octaves, etc. for the piece depending on different rules and parameters.
via Steen’s newsletter. You can buy the first album of generated music on Bandcamp.
Matt Gemmell on the iPad and It’s Failures as a “Laptop Replacement”
Incredible burn on every tech journalist who has written this.
Hacker Behind Massive Ransomware Outbreak Can’t Get Emails from Victims Who Paid
A very modern situation: Company does spin control without considering the ramifications, ends up screwing over the already victimized:
A German email provider has closed the account of a hacker behind the new ransomware outbreak, meaning victims can’t get decryption keys.
The exploit, unofficially named Petya, uses the same vector as WannaCry.
Kill sticky headers
Like most web trends intended to increase “engagement” (nobody knows what this actually means), sticky bars are overused and poorly used. Kill ’em all with this bookmarklet.
A beginner’s guide to Dungeon Synth
What I Like About Dungeon Synth is, primarily, the music and the wide range of emotions it encompasses; the bombast and the subtlety, the melancholy and the fury, the epic and the transient. It blends genres that are dear to my heart, from medieval airs to black metal malevolence, into something that is neither new nor old but atemporal. By stepping out of time Dungeon Synth can use multiple, opposing streams of influences and styles, to create a single entity and, by doing this, it embodies something that is often deliberately avoided in more mainstream music; conflict.
‘GLOW’ Is the Past and the Future of Women’s Wrestling
An excellent review and historical contextualizing of Netflix’s new Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling show, by Mairead Small Staid for the Ringer.
Police Drag Wheelchair-bound Protestors From Mitch McConnell’s Office
Police drag away protesters, some in wheelchairs, outside of Sen. McConnell’s office after draft of Senate health care bill is revealed pic.twitter.com/uWRR0uJniY
— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 22, 2017
The Quintessential Americanness of Juneteenth
Vann Newkirk on the most famous American emancipation holiday, and why it must be celebrated:
Juneteenth, rather, celebrates a belated liberation. Enslaved people in the Confederacy who didn’t manage to escape to Union lines or find themselves in occupied territory were not all made free by Lincoln’s proclamation, and had to await the end of the Civil War to take their first free breaths. In isolated Texas, word of the official end of fighting, the surrenders of generals Lee and Johnston, and the capture of President Davis through May of 1865 arrived late. Freedom finally came to Texas on June 19 of that year, after a proclamation by General Gordon Granger in Galveston solidified the emancipation of the quarter-million enslaved people in the state.
Make it a national holiday. It’s long overdue.
Algorithm designs seven million different jars of Nutella
An article about a cool thing with a goofy lede:
An algorithm has usurped the traditional role of a designer to generate millions of unique packaging designs for Nutella.
Emphasis mine. It’s goofy because nothing usurped anything. A designer created an algorithm to create variations. It’s just a different kind of design.