#OneStepAhead Here's some COVID-19 Contact Tracing visualizations I made, in collaboration with epidemiologist Marcel Salathé! Read his Twitter thread on this. And/or my thread. All pix are CC Zero / public domain – remix & reuse freely! (right click & save) (Here's the first image split
ART Make Plushie Patterns with Play-Doh & Paper Towels So, you want to design a plushie! ("soft toy", if you're English) And not just a flat, two-pieces-of-cloth plushie. No: you want three D's. To do that, you first need
What Did I Learn This Decade? (2010-2019) A zillion words about being queer, going indie, and mental health (35 min read)
Nicky Reads My Most Meaningful Media of 2019 From murder clowns to quantum computing to furry lesbian vampires (9 min read)
Curse of the Chocolate-Covered Broccoli (or: Emotion in Learning) So earlier this year, I learnt my whole career was based on a lie. As one does.
Short Stories Calm Down My friend's hand shivered over the Nuke Canada button. He yelled: "CALM DOWN?! I AM CALMED DOWN. YOU CALM THE FUCK DOWN." I pinched the bridge of my
Short Stories Fun Games To Play While You're Waiting To Be Born "Hey, sis! Wanna play I Spy? I spy... something sof–" "Placenta." "Wow! Okay okay next thing, I spy... something mois–" "Placenta. It's always
Short Stories The Boy-Weapon The knight returned with a half-human, half-dragon boy. The king scowled. "Fool, I commanded you to slay the dragon, not lay the dragon!" They trained the boy, wrapped
Short Stories Lone Wolf Group #1 that keeps hassling me at my job: furries, who want a big Werewolf Daddy Group #2 that keeps hassling me at my job: the local werewolf gang, who
Short Stories Normal Guy Look I swear I'm a totally normal guy. Sure maybe I have long hair, a couple tattoos, a secret superpower that lets me lift anything of any weight, but other
Short Stories Lizard Person “First of all, we prefer Reptile American, not lizard person,” said Liz, the lizard person. Bill from BuzzFeed jotted this down in his overpriced Moleskine. He couldn't believe it – here
Short Stories mom's secret NOTE: the following is a work of fiction. don't @ me I learnt through Facebook that mom died last week. Sure enough, there was an email I'd missed from a lawyer
Short Stories Mr. Sacks What part of “ezam a ni eud emit revo dna” don't you understand? Bloody hell, none of my so-called "peers" get it. The subject we've been interviewing – one
New Project! My Experiment "Pre-Registration" For the last few years, I used interactives to explain science. Today, I launched an interactive to do science. The post is me "pre-registering" my hypotheses before I
Nicky Reads The Most Meaningful Books I Read in 2018 Every once in a while, you find a great book, a masterpiece. It stirs your emotions, excites new thoughts, buzzes in your heart and brain. And months later, long after
This Time It's Personal Habits I (Tried To) Make in 2018 Fuck resolutions. The typical New Year's Resolution is some grandiose goal like “i'm gonna write a novel! after this ooone more episode on netflix.” And though dreaming big sounds nice,
New Explorable! “How To Remember Anything Forever-ish” What if you could make long-term memory a choice? And what if you could do that... through a card game? My new explorable's out! This one's about the science of memory, spaced repetition, and shoeboxes: 💭 HOW TO REMEMBER ANYTHING FOREVER-ISH 💭 This project came out
Behind The Scenes A Way-Too-Philosophical Behind-The-Scenes Post When you're overwhelmed with over-philosophical questions about life, there's only one thing to do: make a graph. Here's a totally scientific graph of all things people make. Each dot is
Explorable Explanations The Explorables Jam! Note: the following was originally posted on my Patreon, in two parts. Part I: (posted Aug 12) Hi all! Sorry I didn't update in a while – I forgot to mention
Short Stories The Lamps “Before I die...” I said, coughing up blood, “...I want you to know: you're a big doody pants and your hair smells funny.” “No YOU smell funny!” Andrea made a
Short Stories The Caterpillars “Is this... just one long setup for a 'Monarch Butterfly' pun?” “Jun-mo, I know my report may be hard to believe...” “You don't fucking say!” “Which is why I brought
Short Stories AfterLife Welcome, the clockwork corpse says, to AfterLife. Still the same booming voice after all these years. I first visited AfterLife with my mom and dad when I was seven. I
Explorable Explanations Nicky's Next Explorable: Survey Results! For the past few years, I made games that teach ideas – but, I wondered, can I make games that teach skills? Apparently, I don't have the skill of making my
Explorable Explanations Explorable Explanations: 4 More Design Patterns Four years ago (wow, already four?), we had the first-ever Explorable Explanations meetup, to talk about teaching through play. We had no idea what we were doing. Still don't. But,
