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T.C. Sottek

T.C. Sottek

Executive Editor

T.C. is Executive Editor at The Verge, where he has obsessed over headlines and internet speeds since 2011. Prior to The Verge, he worked in the nation's capital as an advocate for the National Park System, which continues to be America's best idea. (The internet is a close second.)

Ethics statement: T.C. is the creator of Quest, a tabletop roleplaying game. As such, he is not involved in any kind of coverage of tabletop games for The Verge. Additionally, he has a personal relationship with an employee of Squarespace; he therefore does not report or edit stories about Squarespace or its competitors.

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    Twitter
    We’re running out of things to add to cars.

    I mean, sure, seats that vibrate to music is... interesting? But why’d Land Rover have to say it promotes wellness? I’ll only believe if it studies show that it reduces road rage.


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    External Link
    Nearly 800,000 Maryland license plates now advertise an online casino.

    Back in 2012, the state of Maryland decided to commemorate the War of 1812 with a license plate that displayed a URL. (Once upon a time, I had one of these on my own car.)

    Motherboard reports that Maryland no longer controls the URL, and all of those license plates are now linking to an online casino in the Philippines. Oops!


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    Youtube
    Tearing through tears.

    Whenever a new game is released, the race is on to complete it as quickly as possible. As Eurogamer spotted, despite being released less than three weeks ago, Tears of the Kingdom players are already completing the game in under an hour. You can watch the (current) record-setting run below:


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    External Link
    Salt Life, somewhat explained.

    If you’re in my neck of the woods, you’ve seen a remarkable uptick in car stickers bearing the words “Salt Life” in an outrageous typeface, propagating across the automotive populace like so many coastal weeds. I’ve been too afraid to ask what it all means, but thankfully the Times is on it.


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    Are you flying the colors of Vatican City? It might be a literal false flag.

    Catholic News Agency reports — based on some prior Reddit sleuthing — that a bunch of Vatican City flags out in the world are wrong because they’re based on a bogus file from Wikimedia Commons.

    According to the file history, the fateful edit was made in July, 2017 for purposes of “color correction.”

    (The reverted file can be seen below.)


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    TikTok
    Shoutout to Sophie Kihm who nailed the Succession finale.

    I won’t spoil who turned out to be the #1 boy in the Roy family, but I must credit the EIC of the baby-naming site nameberry.com for predicting it with flair. (Warning: the TikTok contains spoilers.)

    When I first watched this clip before the finale I thought the argument and evidence were incredibly compelling — despite my skepticism of anyone predicting the outcome sucessfully. Nonetheless, she crushed it. Well done, Sophie.


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    Youtube
    Comcast invents a streaming CDO.

    As I read through the list of channels offered in Comcast’s new $20 per month “streaming” package I couldn’t help but think of this bit from The Big Short where Anthony Bourdain explains how he repackages stale fish to create a “new” seafood stew.

    Soup’s on!


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    The Verge
    We want to hear your networking stories, and we’ll put ‘em on the front page.

    It’s about to be the 50th anniversary of ethernet, and we’d love to hear your stories about local networking.

    Were you really into LAN parties? Did you (we’re not cops) pirate a bunch of stuff on the college network? Did you run miles of cable to have Halo parties? Share your story in the comments on this article and we might add it to the front page of The Verge.


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    Youtube
    Verizon Chipotle Exxon might be Parks and Rec’s best joke.

    I’ve been rewatching Parks and Recreation recently and I forgot about this absolutely hilarious fake ad from the final season, which imagines a future where America only has 8 companies and one of them is Verizon + Chipotle + Exxon.

    Consolidation is real.