The next game from the creators of Monument Valley is going to be a virtual reality experience, at Kotaku. I’m getting excited about VR.

Sorry Ello, the Real Anti-Facebook Is Good Old Email | WIRED. They call out the old fashioned newsletter, specifically Tiny Letter, here and I have to agree — I’ve signed up for a few newsletters in the past months and it’s like getting my journal-blog days back.

TouchArcade Game of the Week: ‘Dust: An Elysian Tail’ | TouchArcade.

Little Inferno creator’s new game is about programming people | Polygon. Tablet version coming soon. Yes!

The 50 Best Free Games On PC | Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Knytt is in the top ten!

Cool Tools – The Best Factual Podcasts.

At last, a handy storage solution for your phone! | Sugru. Easy, cheap, removable DIY for an iPhone holder, awesome. Via Swissmiss.

Ovenly’s Gluten-Free Salted Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe | MUNCHIES. There is no flour of any kind in these and I must try them.

maple-candied bacon – The Clever Carrot. It’s so beautiful. Via The Wirecutter.

DIY Gelatin Confetti Sprinkles | Sprinkle Bakes.

A Chocoholic’s Dream – Seven Different Kinds of Chocolate in One Wonderous Bar | Nerdist. They are only making 50 of these. I think it’s time for a DIY right here.

Geeky cake pan will turn you into a Mother of Dragons – CNET.

How to Make Rainbow Unicorn Piñata Cookies That Poop Star Sprinkles at Laughing Squid. This is a very smart mashing together of geeky/crafty worlds.

Adorable and Edible Panda Tapioca Milk Tea | Nerdist.

How to Line a Baking Pan with Aluminum Foil | David Lebovitz. Clever!

Easter Eggs! | Flickr – Jen Cooper. Chocolate Faberge! These are fantastic.

Orangette: June 26. Delicious watermelon popsicles.

A Quick Way to Make an Oreo Ice Cream Sandwich, at Laughing Squid. Simple and smart.

IDEAS IN FOOD: Rice Krispy Treat Lace Cookies.

HOW TO MAKE CRUFFIN WITH PASTA MACHINE | Lady and Pups – an angry food blog. I’ve made a few attempts at this an my results have been varied, it’s fun to eat the failures though.

This Waffle Recipe Will Change Brunch Forever – Eater.

Roasted Cabbage Wedges Recipe | Martha Stewart.

Yogurt Worth Waiting For – Edible Seattle. On how the best yogurt in Seattle came to be.

A primer and FAQ for Ingress, Google’s odd/awesome mobile game | ITworld. Via How Ingress, Google’s Real-World Smartphone Game, Got Me Out of My Shell, at Lifehacker.

A brief history of yarn in video games – Boing Boing.

Portal Stories: Mel Released Free On Steam | Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

The first episode of King’s Quest, A Knight to Remember, arrives July 28 | Polygon.

Royal with cheese: A King’s Quest primer | Polygon. We weren’t allowed to have a console as kids (I had to sneak in Mario time at a friend’s house) but we did have a PC so I grew up playing King’s Quest and Space Quest games. Me and Sierra were besties.

‘Blossom Tales’ is “A delightful mix of ‘Zelda’ and Princess Bride,” Coming this Winter | TouchArcade.

Fantastic Contraption for the Vive. 3D in VR. Wowzers. Via belong.io.

Whispering Willows Review: Riddles in the Dark – Gamezebo.

Gamasutra – Game Design Essentials: 20 Open World Games.

Your Super Mario Maker level has no chill – Offworld.

games « Indie Fund. This is a note to myself to check out more of the games that Indie Fund has supported.

Manhattan Drink Recipe – How to Make a Manhattan, at Esquire. Lately I’ve been loving the drink histories and variations offered by Esquire. See also: the Old Fashioned, Daquari, and the Martini.

How to Have Your Drink and Drink It, Too | A Cup of Jo. On session beers and session cocktails for lazy summer afternoons.

Hazy Whiskey Cocktail – Gather Journal. Using smoke created by lighting cinnamon and cloves.

Cocktail IN an Ice Sphere | Molecular Recipes.

Meet the Flower That Naturally Colors Drinks Blue – Eater.

Ginger Beer Business Is Booming in Seattle | Seattle Bars | Seattle Met.

A Menu of Gin Tonics & A Feast For Juniper at Cask Strength. This is how other countries do gin and tonics right.

Make Perfectly Clear Ice Balls Using Insulated Mugs – Alcademics.com. I found this on Facebook somewhere, if it was you let me know!

Welcome to Booze Science, Our Drunkest Video Series Ever | WIRED. The first video is about ice and dilution with Jennifer Colliau of the Interval at The Long Now who shows off some ice with less surface area than an ice sphere. Yup.

Solerno Blood Orange Liqueur Cocktails | Chilled magazine. The first cocktail here looks great, it includes Lillet Rouge and Hendricks.

We Experimented With Powdered Alcohol So You Don’t Have To | WIRED.

Jim Meehan’s Cocktail Primer: Terminology, Essential Equipment and Recommended Reading | Food & Wine. I added one kind of shaker and two types of ice after reading this, a concise breakdown of the how/why of cocktailing.

The Only Reason Why Your Scotch Doesn’t Taste Like Meat And Bad Eggs, at io9.

Spiked Watermelon Popsicles – Lulus.com Fashion Blog. Clever and easy.

Ardbeg’s space whisky tastes “noticeably different” from Earth-matured whisky | Ars Technica. It spent three years ageing on the ISS.

Club-Mate: The Favorite Drink of German Hackers and Club Kids Is Here – Eater.

The Delicious Secret Behind Your Favorite Whiskey: The Best Spirits from MGP | Serious Eats. Your small batch artisanal spirit might come from a huge warehouse, but that doesn’t mean it tastes bad. While I’d love to say that small batch is always better there is a growing distillery business in Seattle and I’ve had plenty of bad whiskeys from them.

Jamie Oliver’s Chicken in Milk Is Probably the Best Chicken Recipe of All Time — Recipe Review | The Kitchn. I will be trying this soon.

How to Make a Pizza Decorated to Look Like Captain America’s Shield at Laughing Squid.

Compact Charcoal Grills — Shoebox Dwelling.

crunchy cabbage salad with spicy peanut dressing | Scaling Back. Yum, via Whoorl.

How to Cook Spanish-Style Pimientos de Padrón | Serious Eats. I’m excited for Padron pepper season to return.

Genius Kale Salad Recipe – 101 Cookbooks.

Heirloom Seeds – Vegetable Seeds and Plants, Melon, Charentais. This is a note to myself to plant these in our garden next year. We had one of these melons from a local market and it was absolutely delicious. Wait, maybe it was the Vedrantais. In any case, it’s worth seeking out.

Roasted Broccoli Rabe with Lemon Vinaigrette and Grilled Chicken – Not Without Salt. After a trip to Vegas we had a few weeks of dinners with lots of deep greens, this option looks delicious.

10 Easy Molecular Gastronomy Recipes :: Paste.

19 Easy, Travel-Friendly Bean and Grain Salad Recipes We Love | Serious Eats.

Discovering The Small Miracle Of The Soup Dumpling | KUNC. I think the first time I heard about soup dumplings it was from Megnut and since then I moved to Seattle and Din Tai Fung has two (always packed) restaurants here. My favorite, though are at Long’s in Vancouver, BC. More tasting needs to be done!

The Food Lab: The Best Way To Grill Sausages | Serious Eats.

Chopped Asian Zucchini Salad – iFOODreal | Delicious Clean Eating Recipes.

French Mushroom Lentil Paté – Vegetarian Foie Gras, at David Lebovitz.

15 Homemade Fast Food and Takeout Favorites (That Are at Least as Good as the Originals) | Serious Eats. Shamrock Shake! Also, beef and broccoli and a Double Double Animal Style.

takeout-style sesame noodles with cucumber | smitten kitchen.

A Common Nomenclature for Lego Families – The Morning News. What to call the various Lego bricks.

The Essential Cyberpunk Reading List at io9.

Aladdin: When Chaos Comes Calling Episode Trivia – TV.com. Under “allusions” here they describe a scene with a whale and a bowl of petunias which is a reference to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The moment lasts seconds and it’s over and when I saw it as a kid I nearly thought I’d imagined it. Glad to finally have confirmation that it was real.

Inner Vision for the weekend of July 10, 2015 | The Wirecutter. I enjoy their weekly collection of links but for whatever reasons all of the links in this set were worthy of sharing.

How To Clean Silver Jewelry Without Buying Silver Cleaner | Apartment Therapy.

The Enduring Paint-on-the-Face Mystery | Best Of MetaFilter. A while back somebody posed a question to Ask Metafilter which was essentially: do you remember the opening credits of an 80s/90s sitcom where Person A ends up accidentally rollering paint over Person B’s face? And yes, everybody remembers that. I remember that. But collectively we cannot find any proof of this actually existing. It’s fascinating!

Check Out This Steel Maze at a Belgian Coal Mine — Design News | Apartment Therapy. Incredible!

Spaghetti in a cone: a miracle of physics, a genius food delivery system | The Guardian.

The Donald Trump Republican Presidential Debate Drinking Game | The Everywhereist. I went to a local bar that had it’s own drinking game going on but I’m sure I’d have been a lot drunker if I’d brought these rules with me.

Podcast: Mystery Show: Case #6 Kotter | FanFare. Metafilter user maxsparber gives us a history of knotting the arms of shirts as a prank.

Why You Should Wear the Same Outfit to Every Meeting – Racked. Solid advice. Via The Working Closet.

Soapbox, pretty and simple furniture. Via Swissmiss.

Ceiling Hook — Shoebox Dwelling. A clean way to reposition that pendant light that hangs in the wrong spot, I need this for my own dining room.

Easy Houseplants – Easy To Care For Indoor Plants, at House Beautiful. Via The Wirecutter.

28 DIYs You Need for Your First Apartment | Brit + Co. I love the suggestions for cheap, giant art treatments here.

14 Ways to Decorate With Air Plants (aka the New Succulent!) | Brit + Co. Having killed a few non-air plants I might be reconsidering my choice of interior plants.

A Box-Like House is Full of Surprises on the Inside – Design Milk. This is gorgeous.

Upgrade Your Headboard with Peel-and-Stick Wood Boards | Man Made DIY | Crafts for Men.

My daughter and I almost escaped from a sealed cavern before running out of air – Boing Boing. I’ve done one of these real life room escape games and it was super fun. See also: Let Me Out of Here! Inside Seattle’s Real-Life-Room-Escape Boom.

I’m wondering if anyone knows where the title for “The Breakfast Club” film came from. | Ask MetaFilter.

Seven Of The Most Beautiful Botanical Mazes On Earth at io9.

Flexible, Fluid ‘Revision’ Bounces From Rom-Com To Sci-Fi : NPR. Huge congratulations to Andrea on the great reviews in her first book, I cannot wait to read it!

The Price of Nice Nails – NYTimes.com. I recently found a nail place whose owner is the sole employee as well. It’s popular and can be hard to get a same day appointment there but it makes me feel good knowing that I’m not unknowingly participating in any unfair trade.

7 Pre-Vacation Life Hacks, and The One Thing You Should Never Do | The Everywhereist.

Popular Exercises To Avoid At All Costs—Unless You Do Them Right at io9.

Volunteer work for loners | Ask MetaFilter. Lots and lots of options for making the world a better place while not, you know, dealing with other humans. I will say that I worked as a page in my local library system when I was in high school and it was both a decently paying job and one with minimal social contact. I find myself cringing at the idea that somebody who can work for free could have taken away that job from me, while at the same time my high school self was a listed volunteer with the local parks department. I’m kind of conflicted right now – ?

WIRED Binge-Watching Guide: Scrubs | WIRED. Last winter I watched all eight seasons of Scrubs (I fear that season 9 will throw all my happy fuzzy memories off so I avoided it). It was the perfect comfort watching for when you feel nostalgic for not that long ago.

The Frisky Recommends: Podcasts For Everyone! – The Frisky.

How to Make an Awesome Death Star Piñata | Make:.

Watch these plants explode – Boing Boing. Touch me nots grew along my daily route to school and getting to make them pop open was one of my favorite things.

In Space, Even A Single Grain Can Lead To Catastrophe, at io9. I just finished reading Seveneves which deals a lot with collisions like this in space.

The Royal Order of Sartorial Splendor: Tiara Thursday: The Ocean Tiara. This video briefly (around 2:35) shows how tiaras can be detached from their frames to become necklaces. Thanks go to phix for finding the video after I wondered out loud!

Game of Thrones Finale Recap: Death Is a Gift | WIRED. This is all spoilers, you’ve been warned. This is a great summary of what happens at the end of Season Five of the Game of Thrones television show compared with the where the story lines are at the end of the fifth book. It’s great if you consume one but not the other and are curious about how they are diverging.

Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves: five thousand years of apocalypse and rebirth – Boing Boing. I absolutely loved this book and spent a few very late nights reading because I couldn’t not know the fate of, well, all of humanity. A lot of reviewers don’t like the amount of technical explanations but I like those here as I liked those in Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and in Andy Weir’s The Martian. Of all the reviews of Seveneves that I’ve read Cory Doctorow’s here sums up a lot of what I think. Added I also love the perspective of Laura Miller at Salon who wrote of one aspect of surviving in space: “I enjoyed it as the aerospace version of all those how-to passages about maple sugar boiling in “The Little House on the Prairie” books.”

The Internet is looking for who designed this cup. What does Springfield have to do with it?. Tracking down the designer of the Jazz pattern shown on disposable Solo cups and plates and the fanbase around the design.

What in the Hell Is a Tefifon? – The Stranger. If you’re into music technology this is pretty darn cool.

Shades Review | Touch Arcade. A Tetris-like game for the iPhone, with a free trial version of the game in case you’d like to test it out.

GLaDOS and The Sniper: A Voice Acting Love Story | Motherboard. Via Gamefilter.

What Happens When There Are No Boys in the Room: A Report from Robyn’s Tekla Conference | The Pitch | Pitchfork. Via the Two Bossy Dames newsletter.

Get ready to blindfold your friends in this neat local multiplayer game – Boing Boing. I’m not a huge fan of their earlier game Spaceteam but this looks like it could be a lot of fun.

25 Best Puzzle Games Ever Made For PC | Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Doxxing defense: Remove your personal info from data brokers | Computerworld. Via The Wirecutter.

Could this beautiful game signal the end of our dystopia fetish? – Offworld.

KFC Plans to Roll Out Edible Coffee Cups in the U.K. | TIME. Eee! Via The Morning News.

The Makings of Beecher’s Amazing Flagship Cheese | Serious Eats.

The Food Lab: For the Best Sichuan Dry-Fried Green Beans, Ditch the Wok and Turn on the Broiler | Serious Eats.

Sprinkle Bakes: Rainbow Spiral Cookies.

How to Make Uovo in Raviolo: Showstopping Runny Egg Yolk Ravioli | Serious Eats.

The Session Beer Project™: SESSION BEER DAY 2015. I am all for this proliferation of lower alcohol beers, keep bringing it on.

magic chocolat flower dessert – YouTube. It’s a chocolate flower! That opens! Ohmigosh! Thanks to juv for pointing it out. That page on YouTube suggests a whole lot of great edible amazingness.

Orangette: Doing it right. An excellent recipe for an easy to throw together cake made with frozen raspberries.

The Seven-Minute Egg | SAVEUR. Article by Molly Wizenberg, aka Orangette.

Snazzy 3D Printer Creates Stunning Works of Pancake Art – Eater.

Sweden’s Attempt to Preserve the Pastry That Could Break Your Teeth | MUNCHIES. I am fascinated by spettkaka.

How to: Make Your Own DIY Smoked Cocktails | Man Made DIY.

Stir-Fried Beef With Chinese Broccoli | Serious Eats : Recipes.

A Helpful Beginner’s Guide to Hunting and Cooking Morel Mushrooms | Man Made DIY.

“Guardians of the Sexy” Was Freaking Phenomenal | Nerdhole. Also see Nerdhole’s highlights of ECCC’s celebrity panels.

Sophie McDougall brilliantly explains the problem with “Strong Female Characters” – Boing Boing.

Best credit card for traveling outside of the U.S. | Ask MetaFilter. I like to keep an eye on updates to the best options.

[BB-Blog]: Which doll would you rather play with?. Tree Change Dolls remakes dolls, just have a look at her “after” of discarded Bratz dolls! Via Swissmiss.

You Can Get Your Name On A Pendant In Gallifreyan | The Mary Sue.

butterscotch pudding | smitten kitchen. I am mostly linking to this because it introduced me to Valrhona’s Dulcey Chocolate crunchy pearls. I’m already a fan of dark chocolate crunchy pearls and keep them in the house to sprinkle on ice cream and, you know, just eat.

A 24 ‘Carrot’ Cake Packed With Baby Carrots and Shaped Like a Gold Bar.

8 Nonalcoholic Drinks That’ll Satisfy When You’re Craving a Cocktail | Serious Eats. These all go far beyond fizzy lemonade.

How to Make a World-Class Cocktail Out of Berlin’s Convenience Store Booze | MUNCHIES.

Freeze Fresh Herbs for Long-Term Storage | Serious Eats.

The Food Lab: The Easiest Way to Make April Bloomfield’s Ricotta Gnudi at Home | Serious Eats.

Bon Appétempt: Upside-Down Lemon Meringue Pie.

The Food Lab: Why Chicken With Pan Sauce Is Always Better at Restaurants (and How to Make Yours Just as Good at Home) | Serious Eats.

57 Best Cooking Tips of All Time | Epicurious.com.

The “Food Babe” Blogger Is Full of Shit – Gawker.

Make Powdered Nutella for Snack and Dessert Toppings with Maltodextrin, at Lifehacker.

How Do I Butter Popcorn Without Making It Soggy? Includes another maltodextrine hack, via Lifehacker.

Use Liquid Nitrogen to Make Modern Ice Garnishes – Eater.

These Are Probably The Most Exciting Ice Cubes You’ll Ever See, And It’s Thanks To 3D Printing. Well, sort of, it’s more of a super detailed 3D router.

The Jezebel Staff, Perfected. A demonstration of photo editing software that makes people look extra pretty. Its a send up of our overly perfected Instagram age but it kinda sold me on getting one of these apps.

Meet the Man Behind ‘Solarized,’ the Most Important Color Scheme in Computer History | Observer. Via The Wirecutter.

Explorable Explanations. Via Waxy.

A word on the iPhone 6/6 Plus and third-party headphones | The Wirecutter. What to look for to be sure your headphones will fit, and if not a few DIY solutions.

Something Has to Change in Videogames: Everything & Everyone | Unwinnable.

Replacing an inkjet printer with a laser printer | Ask MetaFilter. I recently noticed that my current inkjet printer is nearly a decade old, which means that despite zero signs of something going wrong it’s going to brick itself due to the extra attention. So, laser is what I’m looking at next as well.

Next iPhone game for a Monument Valley lover | Ask MetaFilter.

Weekend Getaway: Telltale Games’ Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent | The Mary Sue. I love this game and it’s sequel.

What are some novels in which the genders of some or all of the central characters is not revealed to the reader? | Ask MetaFilter.

Cool Tools – Google URL Shortening Service. If I’m forced to shorten links this is the one I use, it also keeps stats for you on how many times the link was clicked on.

Internet slang meets American Sign Language — Hopes&Fears.

The Web’s Grain by Frank Chimero.

50 Wonderful Things From 2014 : Monkey See : NPR.

Prayer Nuts, Small 16th Century Wooden Spheres That Conceal Incredibly Ornate Carvings.

Cool Tools – Kadomaru Pro Corner Cutter. This would be great for all those people who print or order their own cards for tabletop games.

How Not To Get Swatted – Digg. Good resources here and they have the Reply All podcast on swatting, which you should listen to.

A Poem Composed Entirely of SXSW Panel Titles.

‘La Linea’, An Italian Animation Series From the 1970s and 1980s Starring a Man Drawn With a Single Line. I used to watch these, but where would I have seen them? Nickelodeon maybe?

My Shining Maze Build Notes – Tested. Adam Savage built a model of the hedge maze in the movie The Shining and there are lots of great facts in his build notes here.

How to Fix a Torn Nail at Millihelen.

This Archer easter egg was seriously, deeply hidden · Great Job, Internet! · The A.V. Club. Wow, that is some dedication on part of the finder as well as the people behind Archer who hid it all.

Mandarinquat, Limequat, and Centennialquat | Go Mighty. I have recently become enamored of the mandarinquats being sold at a local market.

Hack Together a DIY Cold Smoker Gun for Less than $20 at Science Fare. I feel like I’ve linked to this before and if so please forgive me.

Melissa Clark’s Braised Beans with Bacon and Wine – The Wednesday Chef. Via Orangette.

A bottle of wine, a pot of ragu « Tea & Cookies. I have had this experience with the annual block party that Tea talks about here. Seattle can be weird and isolating if you let it so bravo to Tea for disrupting the norm.

Biang Biang Noodles – The GastroGnome. I had the pleasure of learning how to make dumplings at the dining room table in this video. These noodles look like a project but a very worthy project. And Naomi? That girl knows her noodles. I’m going to try these very soon.

Lifesaver Noodles – With Cabbage & Carrots » delicious:days. I’ve already made this three times and it’s become a recipe I’ll keep around, and it makes very yummy cold leftovers. If I buy cabbage and an onion I can manage to make it with a bunch of those Dorot frozen herbs I’ve talked about before. Napa cabbage is a good substitute for the pointed cabbage in the recipe if you, like me, cannot find pointed cabbage in your usual grocery store.

Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuanese Chopped Celery with Beef – The Wednesday Chef. I chose this as a simple option when my cookbook club did a Fuchisia Dunlop book and it very quickly became a go to weeknight dinner in my house. After I had the fancy vinegar and the Sichuan chili bean paste in my pantry (so so good) and some cooked rice in my freezer it turns out that a very tasty dinner is as easy as picking up fresh ground beef and celery at the market. It’s like magic.

Giant Creamy White Beans with Kale – at Food 52. This recipe is from Heidi Swanson’s first cookbook Supernatural Cooking and it remains my favorite recipe worthy of seeking out and soaking gigante beans. Yum.