Here’s my Junited entry for June 2026. I’ll aim to share one post each day in this note. You can find others who are participating this year in Robert’s Junited page.
June 1st
IndieWeb Carnival (June 2026): No way!? by Alex Hsu is an invitation for bloggers to write about something unexpected that they’ve learned.
Has anything ever happened in your life that felt like a movie plot twist? Something that made you go “No way!?” but turned out to be completely true?
I felt this was an appropriate kickoff to this year’s Junited: if we’re sharing blog posts by people, why not start with one that encourages you to write more blog posts.
If you’re interested in web development or games, you’ll find even more blog posts in Alex’s blog that will likely interest you.
June 2nd
Jodi’s The Curious About Everything Newsletter is always such a joy when a new issue finds its way to my RSS reader. Most of the blogs I follow, fall into one of maybe two or three categories and what I end up reading thus tends to be of a limited pool of topics.
This newsletter however, exposes me to wonderful stories from so many different topics that I would have never ran into otherwise. One of my favourites from the 63rd issue was this Ella Frances Sanders’ piece on weather that taught me words like gluggaveður (Icelandic) and hatsuyuki (Japanese) that I’ll try to incorporate into my day-to-day life.
June 3rd
This is not exactly a blog post and it’s 20 years old thing but I learned about it today and it’s a lot of fun so I’m using Junited as an excuse to tell you about it.
Rock-Paper-Scissors is a classic game. Rock beats Scissors, Scissors beat Paper and Paper beats Rock.
But how about Rock-Paper-Scissors 101 that has 101 different options instead of just the boring three.
Here it is… the largest creative project I’ve ever worked on, period. A 101-gesture version of Rock-Paper-Scissors. It is a game so complex, I highly doubt anyone will actually even want to attempt to play it. It’s not just remembering what beats what, but remembering how to actually say all 5,050 outcomes is something only a savant could manage.
My favourite is obviously number 39, a Train.
It
- requires Brains
- scares Duck
- reflects Rainbow
- intriques Alien
- amuses Devil
among other things.
If you want to learn more about to get from RPS to RPS-101, Fractal Philosophy has a nice video Rock Paper Scissors 2 that goes deeper into the math:
To do that we analyze Rock Paper Scissors from a mathematics and game design perspective, looking at the topological and mechanical properties that make it work. We then look at variants on the core rules, and how most of them make the game worse instead of better. After, we look at how larger video games use Rock Paper Scissors in different ways to get around those difficulties, and use that as the basis for introducing the two paradoxical RPS variant - something I think has a large amount of untapped potential as a game mechanic.
Today’s entry went a bit more towards TILvember than Junited but we can’t all be perfect all the time.
June 4th
Designing with Mustard by Anna E. Cook is a wonderful piece about design, design tools and prototyping.
It’s a really good read for anyone who works with any kind of product, whether physical or digital. She writes about the different goals of prototypes and how those drive your decisions for choosing the tools and approaches for building them.
The article also is a take on using generative AI for prototyping.
Models only know averages. And no human is average.
Design is the edges. It’s the human reasoning, strategy, empathy, and collaboration required to think within and beyond our own lived experiences.
AI cannot replace that.
and
One thing about designing that I didn’t fully appreciate earlier in my career: the act of making something is how you figure out what it is. It’s the process of taking role, look and feel, and implementation questions and finding answers until you integrate it together into one cohesive solution.
(I have similar ideas about AI with your notes and how thinking IS the important part of the process)