Projects for August 2025
Shock aversion therapy, awkward birthday simulator, app for performative males, and more
The Bluesky Dictionary
Can Bluesky say every word in the English language?
From Avi: Learned way too much on this project, but was honestly impressed with how much visibility it got! One of the problems of being someone who can code is that I can have the question “Can Bluesky say every word?” and then actually answer it. But this became a scale issue, and then I had to deal with Optimum/Altice deciding that my website was spam and figuring out how to work around that!
Birthday Simulator
Relive all the most awkward parts of your special day.
From Calvin and Jaryd: It was Jaryd’s dad’s birthday, but they were in different cities and still wanted to share those hilariously uncomfortable moments that happen every year. So we started asking: what are things people hate most about their birthdays? We came up with a list - being reminded of your own mortality, responding to a flood of random messages, being the center of attention, struggling with blowing out the candles, and pretending to love a useless gift. After all the pain, you finally get a genuine message from whoever sent it. Having sent this to a few people now, we can definitely say it does the job (and saves you from buying a shitty Hallmark card!)
Cinema Simulator
Simulate the experience of being at the cinema, in a Chrome Extension.
From Greg: Look, I paid $15 for a movie ticket and didn’t see anything. Or rather, I saw two thirds: the left third of the movie screen and the right third. I was righteously angry, so I took my revenge by “recreating” this “experience”. You can relive it too now, it’s great. I love it.
I Used AI to Make a Video That Sucks
A short essay from a delirious, insufferable AI hype guy
From Mike: Whenever I venture into the hellscape of my LinkedIn, I see posts from dudes raving about the incredible video they made with AI in “just a few minutes.” Inevitably, these videos are objectively bad but are still used as proof that every single creative industry will be destroyed. I thought it would be fun to write from their perspective.
Powerless
The world's first wirelessly powered breadboard.
From Guy: I’ve always been kind of baffled by the number of breadboard power supplies on the market, and I was even more baffled to realize this week that nobody had made one that works with inductive power. Here’s my quick and dirty prototype. It’s variable, too (you just have to move the breadboard further away from the power coil 😏)
Can a shock collar train me to stop cursing?
A short and half-scientific experiment in how shock aversion therapy affected me in an attempt to see if it would change my behavior.
From Aiden: This is just a silly video that I made more for entertainment than actual science, but I always like the concept of people learning a bit or just generally coming away with something from my videos. If you watch, you may make the observation that shock aversion therapy is not good. And this is the kind of groundbreaking discovery that I pride myself on.
VTV
MTV but for weird / bad novelty songs, complete with animated idents
From Matt: I trawled YouTube for hundreds of novelty songs to make my own twisted version of MTV, and commissioned HappyToast to make animated idents. The result has been described as “horrific but compelling”.
Big Ass Head
A Chrome Extension that adds a big ass head from a collection of big anonymous backs of heads when you watch a live performance on YouTube.
From Tina: Hackathons are about making the internet a better place. Some people make apps GPT wrappers to stop climate change, to cure loneliness, and to disrupt entire industries.
Performative
Labubus kept selling out, so we made an app with a picture of one that bounces around, and hangs on your belt
From Los and Marc: Los and Marc are a part of Danger Testing, a group dropping a new app every week.
Panama Playlists
Scraping Spotify data to reveal the hidden music tastes of celebrities, politicians, and journalists. From Riley Walz.
Sarcasmophone
Portable AI-powered sarcasm! We created a handheld device that turns everything you say sarcastic. /s
From Josh and Tres: Fave part – finishing it. Worst part – would never work when we tried to show it to people! Most difficult – the team making it more difficult than it needed to be (went from voice modulation, ChatGPT with a voice changer, and then finally just sitting down for an hour and recording ourselves reading the Shark Tale transcript sarcastically). Inspiration – the “Sar-chasm” (if you’re a Disney person, you’ll know).
Gathering Dust
A Chrome Extension that gradually adds dust to open tabs. Blow into your microphone to clear. Or, you know. Close your damn tabs.
From Justin: I used to be a 50+ open tab guy before recently realizing that this is probably terrible for the long term health of my computer, so my solution was to make this Chrome Extension. I originally wanted to do something based on the imagery of a “tab graveyard”, but I didn’t really know what that meant.