Disclaimer: this website is composed of symbols and images that do not in themselves carry meaning outside of a total social situation which none of us choose.
Hi, I'm Drew Pendergrass. My gluten-free, GMO-free, artisanally-crafted website is lovingly built from whatever I decide to post online. It hosts a variety of projects, resources, and ephemera made over the years, including experimental music, my writing, a video game, a fake startup that sells logs on wheels, a stupid Chrome extension, and esoteric sorting algorithms, as well as my research papers and conference presentations in atmospheric science and related fields.
Currently, I am a doctoral student in Environmental Engineering at Harvard University, studying under Daniel Jacob, and I freelance on the side for publications including Harper's and The Guardian (send me stories at drew@drewpendergrass.com). More importantly, I proudly possess object permanence, I appreciate knowledge of the outcome of a given situation, and I did not orchestrate the Camp David Accords.
Spotlight
My feature on dirt, and the scientists who study it, for the June 2020 issue of Harper's Magazine: "Ground Control."
A Brief Q&A
Q. Who are you?
A. Well, to start off, I accept the axiom of choice, I have never commanded an army composed of more than 100,000 soldiers, to my knowledge, there is no portrait of me that ages in my place, I have nothing to do with explosions, and I have absolutely no intention of running for Senate in the great state of Minnesota. If you for some strange reason would like to know something substantial about me, you can check out my projects page or my CV.
Q. How can I contact you?
A. You can follow/DM me on Twitter, but I'm trying to stop using it so much, so it's best to email me at drew [at] drewpendergrass [dot] com (or the academic address in my CV). However, if your email is unpleasant, you should direct it to grievances@drewpendergrass.com, an inbox I definitely read.
Q. Why does this page keep changing?
A. This page is randomly generated by the server on each load. Most of the page's contents are not displayed on one particular load, so for the full experience reload a bunch of times.
Q. Why don't you just host this crap on Github like a normal person?
A. Github only allows static websites. I wanted my website to be different for every visitor. DrewPendergrass.com, like life itself, must always be in flux. You could say I'm an artist.
Q. What are your favorite websites?
A. I love Web 1.0, that era of the Internet where everyone had their own weird page with terrible design hosted on GeoCities or AngelFire. My site is inspired by that aesthetic and feel, and a few particular sites left over from that era. Graham Starr's site beyonce.horse is where I learned about the insane marquee tag in HTML, which allows for moving elements (all credit to him for the bouncing DVD logo on this site, perhaps the greatest comedic innovation of all time). Cliff Stoll's online Klein Bottle site makes brilliant use of the table tag, which inspired the design of Log on Wheels. David Morgan-Mar unfortunately switched to a WordPress template recently (who can blame him), but some of his old pages are still up. His esoteric algorithms and programming languages are some of my favorite things online, and the sorting algorithms below riff on his original ideas. Finally, the yellow highlighting on links are inspired by the writer Jon Mooallem's incredible site. If you want to make your own weird webpage, but don't know where to begin, email me. I'll happily send you the PHP code for this site or refer you to some tutorials.
This website proudly supports Otto Neurath and the ISOTYPE picture language
Please represent all social facts pictorially in your correspondence with the owner and proprietor of this website. Do your part to help build a pluralistic and anti-metaphysical theory of knowledge.
Some true statements
A Moving, and Random, Quotation
Ideology hides itself in probability calculations.
-Adorno and Horkheimer, from Dialectic of Enlightenment
Read more here.
Play Alchemy!
"So fun you won't even need friends!"
Bonus Content Zone!
Three Cryptic Messages Regarding Matters of Supreme Importance
- Now watch your enemies before they blame your dreams.
- All beliefs have been surrendered. Please belittle the safeguards.
- Your captors will be trivialized.
One randomly-generated sorting algorithm, please!
Do you have an unsorted list of N natural numbers? Do you just hate it when programs are guaranteed to terminate? Do you get angry when algorithms do better than factorial time? Then you're in luck! The following algorithm has been generated just for you:
- Begin with a gaslighting strategy. Insist to everyone that the list is already in order, even if it is not. If they give up arguing with you, terminate the program. If they insist that you actually sort the list, proceed to the next step.
- Uh oh! You've triggered a penalty step. Before you proceed, you must perform a task. Obtain one (1) chess grandmaster. You are generous, so you let them go first. After they move their piece, move a random one of yours to a random cell on the board. If this move violates the rules of chess, flip the board in anger and start again. If it is a legal move, continue playing until either the board is flipped or checkmate. If the grandmaster has won, repeat the game. If you won, proceed to the next step. You've paid the penalty.
- Produce N blockbuster action films, each with an advertising budget proportional to a number in the list. For consistency, ensure each film is released in the same theaters at the same time of year. (Practically, this means the list cannot exceed a dozen or so items. If N>12, simply delete all but twelve items from the list). Read off the box office earnings for each film in order, printing the number corresponding to each.
Congratulations! Your list is now sorted. You can find a permalink to this particular algorithm here.
Facts about corn or facts about Korn?
Click the line you think is about corn!
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Score: 0 • Streak: 0
All facts lovingly taken from Wikipedia.