Welcome to this week’s somewhat more sober than usual hand-picked links. Let’s take a quick look at the status of the fires on the West Coast before moving on to lighter fare.

Los Angeles Fires

Multiple fires continue to burn in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. Many in the Cotton Bureau community have been affected including our friends Hrishikesh Hirway and Joshua Malina from The West Wing Weekly and Ben Golliver from the Greatest of All Talk podcast. Both shows have announced products to raise money for disaster relief in their city.

The West Wing Weekly

The brand new “Untied Sates of America” windbreaker and tee celebrates the cast of The West Wing sharing a moment in front of the unfortunately decorated Marine One helicopter.

The limited edition jacket is available in a formidable black on black, while the shirt is available in any color you want (as long as that color is black). Sales of all Untied States of America items include a donation from TWWW to the American Red Cross as well as an additional $2 per sale directly from Cotton Bureau.

Greatest of All Talk

Andrew Sharp and Ben Golliver have a reminder for you. It’s cool to care. And they’re inviting you to be a part of the team. All Greatest of All Talk proceeds from this tee will go toward relief efforts for the Palisades, Eaton and other Los Angeles-area wildfires. Cotton Bureau will be adding to those contributions with an extra $2 per item for any “It’s Cool to Care” shirt purchased in January.

Stimulation Clicker

The perfect end-of-the-week distraction, try Neal Agarwal’s latest internet project, Stimulation Clicker. Part satire, part actually a lot of fun clicker, Neal’s game is short enough to beat quickly (maybe an hour total?) and deep enough that you might just have to go back and play again to make sure you get all 35 achievements (✋ guilty).

P.S. I checked in with Neal last week, and 100% of the game is human-made. The podcast script, the voice actors, the [redacted] YouTube videos… all real.

Christian Selig’s Custom Keyboard

Prefer to watch a relaxing video instead? Check out this nifty custom keyboard, made from scratch by friend of Cotton Bureau Christian Selig.

You might know Christian from his work on the beloved Reddit client Apollo (murdered by the jerks at Reddit), the YouTube app Juno for Apple Vision Pro (murdered by the jerks at YouTube), or his current project Pixel Pals (still alive and well, thankfully).

Brand New Conference Identity 2024

We’re suckers for good branding here, particularly branding that is not just well-designed and well-executed but, more importantly, well-conceived. The Brand New conference design for 2024 checks all of those boxes. Plus, it gets the traditionally exhaustive Brand New breakdown.

Check out the incredible, outrageous amount of working that went into this year’s conference. Full marks for Armin and Bryony. Tremendous.

TimeCapsule

ElevationLab, maker of many thoughtful products to improve your life, recently released a smart solution to a problem many of us have: replacing AirTag batteries far too often, or, worse, not realizing the battery is dead until you really need to find the thing it was supposed to be tracking.

The TimeCapsule is a rugged, extremely long-lasting superstructure that can power your AirTags for (at least) 10 years on a single charge. Only $40 for a four pack. Not bad for peace of mind.

Thanks for reading, as usual. We hope you found it worth your while. Don’t forget to follow @cottonbureau.com on Bluesky to avoid 50 years of bad luck.

Welcome back, friends. We’re talking beautiful jigsaw puzzles, delicious candy, fun videos for the whole family, coding challenges, and a quick Wordle-style geography game. Enjoy.

Parkside Puzzles

It was a sad (and confusing) day in 2023 when Four Point Puzzles announced they were going out of business. The design, packaging, and product were all fantastic. Our family loved building the Moon and the Earth. We bought a few more (including the entire set of The Planets) on clearance and didn’t think much more about it until late in 2024 when we were treated to a wonderful surprise as Four Point Puzzles rose from the dead, reincarnated as Parkside Puzzles.

Lindsay was kind enough to share the full behind-the-scenes story on the new site. If you’ve ever sold (or even purchased) anything online, you’ll probably be able to guess what happened. The popularity and success of Four Point led to an avalanche of ripoffs, and not just the designs — entire fake storefronts were created to trick people into believing they were purchasing from the her directly.

Thankfully after some much needed time off, Parkside née Four Point Puzzles is back and better than ever. Highly recommended for the puzzle enthusiast in your life.

Nerds Are Back

To be fair, Nerds (the candy) never went away. As a sour candy aficionado, I have many fond memories of tiny boxes of Nerds growing up and my personal favorite Dairy Queen blizzard of all-time, the Nerds Blizzard. Even after they stopped advertising it, you could still get it off-menu if you asked.

When Nerds Rope was introduced, it was a revelation. A nearly perfect combination of crunchy and chewy, plus the classic, mildly sour Nerds flavor. According to this New York Times article, the true breakthrough was Nerds Gummy Clusters. Revenue has skyrocketed as a result of this sublime confectionary combination. Good for them, I say. A well-deserved revenge of the Nerds.

Bonus pro tip: any hard, sour candy goes great with vanilla ice cream. Try the new freeze-dried Skittles.

The Kid Should See This

Surely you are already well-acquainted with the incredible resource for edutaining, beloved-by-people-of-all-ages videos, The Kid Should See This?

If not, there’s no better way to start than Rion’s list of the Top 10 Videos in 2024.

Check out this year’s number one video, -37F Winter in Yellowstone National Park by Drew Simms.

Advent of Code 2024

Is Advent over? Yes. Can you still complete the 2024 Advent of Code? Also yes. Go forth* and join the elite few who have conquered all 25 challenges. Once you’re done, celebrate with 10th anniversary Advent of Code merch on Cotton Bureau.

* That’s a programming language joke.

Travle

A daily puzzle for geography enthusiasts. Get from country to country via the shortest route. Much fun, minimal time investment. The ideal game.

That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to follow @cottonbureau.com on Bluesky for a good time.