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Tedium. The newsletter all your other newsletters look up to.

Since 2015, Ernie Smith's Tedium has been hunting for the end of the long tail, and we've yet to find it. But we'd sure love it if you followed us on our journey. Especially now that we're ten friggin' years old and we're still using a Street Fighter II slogan as our subscribe button. Validate the use of obscure video game slang as a successful subscription strategy. Click the button.

 

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Severed Edits
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Severed Edits

Whether it was trying to or not, Apple exposed a huge flaw with its pitch to professional video editors with a new Severance promotional video.

By Ernie Smith • March 29, 2025
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A Clarifying Moment

In case you were on the fence about whether OpenAI was a positive force in the world, they sort of revealed their hand this week by leaning into a meme.

By Ernie Smith • March 28, 2025

Greenlandia

What does popular culture look like when you’re in the Arctic, thousands of miles away from any major population centers? Let’s talk about Greenland and pop culture.

By Ernie Smith • March 24, 2025

Fasten Furious: When Laptops Had Hooks

Considering the period in laptop history where Apple built PowerBooks with hooks that only exposed themselves when they got close to a magnet.

By Ernie Smith • March 22, 2025

2 Fasten, 2 Furious: Oh, Snap

It turns out that the history of the snap fastener is actually surprisingly relevant to the political moment that we’re currently in.

By Ernie Smith • March 20, 2025

The Fasten, The Furious

The story of the guy who nearly drowned on his way to inventing a fundamental fastening device you’ve probably already used today.

By Ernie Smith • March 17, 2025

Could &udm=14 Break?

That popular single-serving site I built to work around Google’s AI snippets could, unfortunately, see an infusion of AI soon. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

By Ernie Smith • March 14, 2025

Shaking The Wasp’s Nest

Looking back at Gamergate, a flash point in internet history, and what it has to tell us about our current moment.

By Ernie Smith • March 11, 2025

Everything To Everyone

Companies like Amazon and Apple are attempting to do business in so many spaces that, when the cracks show, they really show. Hence why Apple Intelligence looks like a hot mess right now.

By Ernie Smith • March 8, 2025

Tiny Type On Yellow Pages

Why AT&T had to redesign its primary phone-book font in the late 1970s to keep with the times, and the clever typographical trick it used.

By Ernie Smith • March 5, 2025
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