blog: things you should check out

Last year, I participated in Genius Northwest, a gaming competition inspired by the Korean gameshow The Genius and its ilk.

It’s a reality show without the cameras — a 3-day, all-inclusive weekend retreat structured around a series of challenges and puzzles, in which personalities and dealmaking matter as much as playing games.

It’s truly a remarkable thing. I came in dead last in the competition, but I still had a great time participating.

The event is held annually in the Pacific Northwest (hence the name) and applications are now open to participate in the 2026 competition!

Learn more — and apply — at GeniusNW.com.

Dr. Bob Nicholson is a wonderful historian of Victoriana — with a special focus on the printed material of the era. I’ve enjoyed following his work for some time!

In this video for Wired, he does a lovely job answering reader questions about Victorian England.

Over on Bluesky, Ryan Estrada has done a deep dive on the 22 (!) Christmas stories that Dickens wrote in the aftermath of the success of A Christmas Carol.

An old thread is making the rounds again, so here's an updated version. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is one of the most enduring and adapted works of literature in history. But did you know that he wrote 22 sequels? Some are great! Some are trash! Some are bizarrely fascinating.

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— Ryan Estrada (@ryanestrada.com) December 24, 2025 at 6:24 PM

That is all

Back in 2020, an official website was launched for Gary Larson and his comic The Far Side, which until then had only existed online as unofficial fan archives and so on.

Along with the site, which reruns a smattering of daily cartoons, there was a section called “New Stuff” in which Larson described the joy of learning to draw with a digital tablet for the first time.

Since then, the “New Stuff” section has been very infrequently updated with new cartoons — including one quite recently. It’s lovely to see more work from Larson; for many of us, The Far Side is like an old friend.

I also recommend looking through the “Sketchbooks” section to see a ton more proto-comics and draft ideas, many of which might easily have become a classic during the comic’s run.