Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet

Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet

@tedium.co

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 reposted

Ernie Smith
@ernie.tedium.co

I get to show some appreciation in this to the guy who has one of the internet’s best stories, Jon Postel.

Ernie Smith@ernie.tedium.co

Excited to share my latest piece with @gravesitemedia.bsky.social, where I talk about the fact that you cannot register a domain for longer than 10 years. Which is kind of a problem when you die. gravesite.media/p/your-websi...

gravesite.mediaYour Website Should Outlive You: The Case for Forever DomainsYour online legacy is one failed credit card payment from disappearing. Why your website should outlive you, and how forever domains can protect your life's work.

Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet reposted

Ernie Smith
@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

tedium.coThe Worst Spam Emails: Inside iLands' AI Agent HustleiLands, 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: The Dull Side Of The Internet reposted

Ernie Smith
@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

tedium.coColumbia 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: The Dull Side Of The Internet reposted

Ernie Smith
@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

tedium.coCard Sharks: How Greeting Cards Ruled ’80s CartoonsAmerican Greetings turned Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears into cartoon stars, proving the greeting card-to-TV pipeline was a hit.

Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet reposted

Ernie Smith
@ernie.tedium.co

I had a lot of fun with the captions on this one.

Ernie Smith@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

tedium.coCard Sharks: How Greeting Cards Ruled ’80s CartoonsAmerican Greetings turned Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears into cartoon stars, proving the greeting card-to-TV pipeline was a hit.

Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet reposted

Ernie Smith
@ernie.tedium.co

Replying to @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...

tedium.coAn Earnest Takeaway From Glen Hansard’s PassingGlen 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: The Dull Side Of The Internet reposted

Ernie Smith
@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

tedium.coAn Earnest Takeaway From Glen Hansard’s PassingGlen 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: The Dull Side Of The Internet reposted

Ernie Smith
@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...

tedium.coWhy Pricing Guns Stuck Around After The BarcodeIn 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: The Dull Side Of The Internet reposted

Ernie Smith
@ernie.tedium.co

Just updated the Tedium Shopping Network with some pricing-gun-related gear. shopping.tedium.co/finds/perco-...

shopping.tedium.coMake This Pricing Gun Your Weapon Of Choice | Tedium Shopping NetworkA handheld price gun with enough adhesive labels to mark down an entire discount store, one clack at a time.
Ernie Smith@ernie.tedium.co

I wrote a hell of a lot of words about pricing guns, which were once ubiquitous parts of grocery stores, but faded out thanks to the barcode. However, state laws ensured they stuck around a lot longer than you’d expect. tedium.co/2026/08/01/p... new @tedium.co

tedium.coWhy Pricing Guns Stuck Around After The BarcodeIn 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: The Dull Side Of The Internet
@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

feed.tedium.coWhy Pricing Guns Stuck Around After The BarcodeIn 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: The Dull Side Of The Internet reposted

Ernie Smith
@ernie.tedium.co

You know how much of a dark pattern Facebook is? Simply typing “fa,” two home row characters, is enough to trigger it in most browsers. I had to come up with a brain hack to stop typing it and visiting this site I freaking hate. tedium.co/2026/07/27/f... new @tedium.co

tedium.coMy Brain-Breaking Trick to Quit Using FacebookStruggling to quit Facebook? Maybe it has something to do with the home row of your keyboard. Here’s how I fixed it.

Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet reposted

Ernie Smith
@ernie.tedium.co

This is definitely one of those weird obsessions I’ve always had.

Ernie Smith@ernie.tedium.co

When a giant, seemingly never-ending road ends, why isn’t it more of a big deal? In today’s @tedium.co, I ponder my obsession with the terminus. tedium.co/2026/07/17/t...

tedium.coTerminus History: What Happens When A Road EndsWhy do major highways end anticlimactically? The Romans revered boundaries as sacred, but U.S. interstates just fade out. Is it a cultural thing?
Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
@tedium.co

When a really long road ends, why don’t we do more to celebrate the staggering amount of collective work that went into it? The ancient Romans really outclassed the federal highway system on this front. https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/17382177/terminus-road-ending-history

feed.tedium.coTerminus History: What Happens When A Road EndsWhy do major highways end anticlimactically? The Romans revered boundaries as sacred, but U.S. interstates just fade out. Is it a cultural thing?
Tedium: The Dull Side Of The Internet
@tedium.co

With Sony clobbering the physical game market and Grand Theft Auto 6 eschewing discs entirely, it makes one long for kiosks that could make disks on demand—a model that actually once existed in the UK. https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/17381035/edos-disk-copying-system-history

feed.tedium.coThe Forgotten Kiosk Concept That Physical Media NeedsSony and GTA 6 are killing physical games. But EDOS, a former UK kiosk concept, shows we could still have on-demand disc burning. Bring it back!