It has been a hot minute since I’ve written one of these compilations, though I’ve been coming across more cool websites than ever. So today, I thought I’d finally sit down and show you what pixel-populated pages have been captivating me recently.
Looking at this cartoonish website for a game called “Civitas” makes me happy. It is one of the play-to-earn games that came to the spotlight when the number of discourses around Web3, DAOs and crypto suddenly skyrocketed.
They have a collection of PFP (profile picture)-style NFTs for players, called Chosen and these have multiple uses both in and out of the game, like access to exclusive communities and airdrops of something called “Ever Crystals” (just another in-game reward.) Here’s what a Chosen NFT looks like:
Source: https://raritysniper.com/the-chosen-of-civitas
I came across a product called the “Mind Expander”, in a post on LinkedIn and was immediately intrigued. After very little research, I found out that it was a nootropic - a drug that is claimed to increase your cognitive function, which basically means that consuming this drug can enhance your learning, thinking, problem-solving and remembering abilities. Reading this, I was immediately reminded of the 2014 movie “Lucy” — though I’m sure now that nootropics don’t promise the results that ScarJo experienced.
Since there was very little research done, I’m not sure if these are placebos or if they actually work, but it was a cool legal drug find anyway.
Mind Expander™, a product of Nanogenesis Labs
I have fallen down a skincare rabbit hole in the past month and I can’t seem to get out of it, probably because of how good the internet algorithms are at learning.
There’s a few things I’ve learnt — vitamin C is used for brightening the skin, retinol helps with signs of aging but only a pea-sized amount needs to be applied, skincare products should always be applied from thinnest to thickest, and exfoliating is important to remove dead skin cells.
One of the brands that instantly caught my eye, as I was falling down this rabbit hole, was Inde Wild. Founded only late last year, they’ve already been making waves globally as the world’s first skincare brand that uses “ayurvedistry” (a mix of ayurveda and chemistry.) It’s a pricey product but their AM serum, consisting of vitamin C, niacinamide, ashwagandha and turmeric among other ingredients is the first product on my wishlist.
Source: https://www.indewild.com/products/15-vitamin-c-face-serum
While this news itself doesn’t count as “cool stuff”, it’s pretty interesting. Liz Truss has recently emerged as the UK prime minister who has served the shortest term length in history - 44 days.
These many days ago, she narrowly beat her competitor Rishi Sunak (who is back in the running now) and replaced Boris Johnson to become UK’s third female prime minister. It was a good day for feminism, but after a series of horrible decisions that dragged down the british currency and economy, it’s safe to say that’s been tainted now.
In her defense, she came to power at a very tumultous time - rising inflation, energy prices, and the economy falling all together. She tried out some “novel” ways to reverse these. For example, she cut taxes and energy prices in the hopes that the public spends this deficit to bring up the economy (previous governments have imposed high taxes while maintaining low deficits) and what ended up happening was the british pound losing a lot of value very fast - because if people believed that a country could self-destruct, then they wouldn’t want to hold the country’s currency.
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cj8rpXis8bJ/
This is a very cool website that lists all of Google’s discontinued products, and there’s lots of them - 166, to be exact. Going through this website and seeing products like Hangouts, Allo and Orkut unlocked a few memories, but there were also some new finds that totally surprised me - they made an ATS called Hire, and even a ride-sharing service called Ride Finder!
They worked on Hire for 3 years and it was apparently even succesful, but they decided to unalive it to focus on other Google Cloud projects. On the other hand, it looks like the reason Ride Finder died is because it was brought to the market way before the market was ready - in 2007 and discontinued just as the market began warming up to the idea - in 2009 (which was the year Uber was founded.)
Something about the fact that even the most gigantic, information-loaded tech company of the world has failed several times is comforting to know.