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About me and the blog

My name is Marcin Wichary (he/him). I’ve worked as a UX designer, typographer, front-end person, and manager at Google, Medium, and Figma. I’ve also written a book about keyboards and typing, gave talks, and published essays about design, typography, and technology.

Unsung is my blog about software craft and quality.

More info about Unsung

Send me feedback, tips, bug reports, and anything else:

More info about Unsung

“An unnamed arcade in some sleepy suburb of Portland”

It’s the last day of Halloween Week on Unsung, where we’re sharing scary, spooky, and creepy stories.

A great video about Polybius from Ahoy/​Stuart Brown:

Polybius was a rumoured rare or secret 1981 arcade game published by Sinneslöschen that was addictive and had adverse effects on its players, causing hallucinations, amnesia, and seizures.

In contrast with some of the August 32 videos which sport a certain “we know the authors denied this, but” posture, this video doesn’t waste time pretending Polybius is anything more than an urban legend. Instead, it goes straight to investigating what happened and who might have started the rumour.

It’s a really fun watch – and a really well-made mini-documentary, too – and ends up being a meditation on mythmaking in general.