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Tedium. The newsletter all your other newsletters look up to.

Since 2015, Ernie Smith's Tedium has been hunting for the end of the long tail, and we've yet to find it. But we'd sure love it if you followed us on our journey. Especially now that we're ten friggin' years old and we're still using a Street Fighter II slogan as our subscribe button. Validate the use of obscure video game slang as a successful subscription strategy. Click the button.

 

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WINE Cooler
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WINE Cooler

Lessons on laying out the 404 Media zine using a relatively weird setup—on Linux, using Affinity, with the help of the Windows translation layer WINE.

By Ernie Smith • December 10, 2025
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Compartmentalizing

How the shipping container, a dominant force in ocean shipping, came from a truck driver whose invention proved to be too good at its job.

By Ernie Smith • December 9, 2025

Break On Through To The Other Side

On doorbuster deals, and the way that shopping events like Black Friday help channel our deep-seated shopping rage.

By Ernie Smith • November 29, 2025

War Copter, Peace Train

Considering the inherent tension of the Ovation guitar, which applied aerospace concepts to the acoustic guitar. It’s a brilliant object, but perhaps a conflicted one.

By Ernie Smith • November 24, 2025

Big Opinion, Big Budget

The New York Times’ choice to publish a video op-ed by the CEO of Patreon points at why exec-produced video op-eds might be a bad idea.

By Ernie Smith • November 19, 2025

Typing With Your Thumbs

Thumb keyboards built for home theaters represent one of the more forgotten niches in computing. But with computers encroaching on the living room again, could that change?

By Ernie Smith • November 16, 2025

Having Fun On Stage

Pondering why, despite the fact that bands and musicians have to do it every single night, many suck at stage banter—particularly, but not limited to, Elvis.

By Ernie Smith • November 8, 2025

Frost On The Pumpkins

Coming back for a second helping of pumpkin spice pop culture as a way to try to get relief from these trying times.

By David Buck • October 31, 2025

Rotate 180°

Canva makes a bold bet with Affinity: The real money is in the rank-and-file office worker, not the professionals. It just turned the pro tool into the loss leader.

By Ernie Smith • October 30, 2025

Grokked & Pilfered

Elon Musk’s new Wikipedia clone has been criticized for nicking Wikipedia. Something else it also does: Aggressively cite the Tedium archive.

By Ernie Smith • October 29, 2025
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