Comments on: Help me fall in love with the Internet again

Question: Help me fall in love with the Internet again

cloudsandstars — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:26:45 -0800

I have reached the end of the Internet. Well, my Internet, anyway. Please recommend some sites that will refresh my surfing experience.

I feel like I visit the same 5-10 sites over and over. As you can imagine, it's getting really boring (with the exception of The Meta, of course, which is always marvelous).

So, what cool sites would you recommend for me to try? My interests are eclectic, so I'm open to pretty much anything. Tell me which sites you find wonderful and why.

Thanks in advance!

By: stray

stray — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:31:19 -0800

It would be helpful if you told us what those 5-10 sites are.

By: spockette

spockette — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:32:20 -0800

Stumbleupon is a good way to find new, interesting sites.

By: reenum

reenum — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:37:59 -0800

I subscribe via RSS to a lot of aggregator or link sites, like The Daily Beast, Microkhan, The Inquisitr, and the blue.

I also subscribe to RSS feeds from magazines. Right now, I read Wired, The New Yorker, Businessweek, Portfolio, Rolling Stone, and Slate.

With the above two kinds of sites, I find a lot of cool and eclectic stuff.

Also seconding Stumbleupon. You might even check Digg, but the quality of stuff on there has gone way down.

By: hellojed

hellojed — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:42:24 -0800

Reddit is my drug of choice. Any user can make a sub-site dedicated to any subject, from questions, to politics, or even the offbeat.

Be warned, it's addicting.

By: Edubya

Edubya — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:43:00 -0800

My personal favorites at the moment:

zeaLOG - life-tracking, personal metrics, etc

Ultracondensed Movie Reviews - hysterical super short and sarcastic movie reviews

Fail Blog - self explanatory. sometimes painfully funny.

BrokenPictureTelephone - like the ol' game of telephone, but online.

By: davoid

davoid — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:43:40 -0800

post secret is often wonderful~people decorate postcards and write secrets anonymously. Sometimes the secrets are marvelous, some shocking, some boring, but almost always there is something stimulating. Good to do with a friend or lover. Refreshes every Saturday night around midnight.

Domai for tasteful nudes. Mostly eastern European young pretty women in happy, less pornographic, style.

Worth 1000, fun "photography" much photoshopped. You'll find pix of all those combined animals here and lots of other imaginative pix.

Good question. Will help spread the wealth around.

By: cloudsandstars

cloudsandstars — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:45:17 -0800

It would be helpful if you told us what those 5-10 sites are.

The only reason that I didn't list those is because I'm really looking for different stuff. New horizons, you know, that kind of thing. Didn't want my usual haunts to flavor the answers.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:50:17 -0800

Yeahbutt—If you don't tell us what those five are, it's easier to rehash them.

What I check pretty regularly:

Fivethirtyeight.com: Politics done right.
Joshreads.com: Daily comics mocked.
MarkMaynard.com: Liberal in Ypsi does fun stuff.
BlessYouBoys.com: Because I love the Detroit Tigers.
Ilxor.com: The I Love Music board has pretty much replaced traditional music criticism for me.

By: pyro979

pyro979 — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:51:55 -0800

boingbong.net
cuteoverload.com
englishrussia.com
seconding postsecret.com
notnswf.com
violentacres.com
overheardinnewyork.com (and the rest of that family)

By: Rhaomi

Rhaomi — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:58:56 -0800

Telling us the sites could help steer the answers towards those new horizons, cloudsandstars. Without knowing the kind of thing you've grown tired of, we're bound to give you some "stale" answers.

In absence of that, I'd recommend Wonkette for snarky political humor, Futility Closet for interesting stories and anecdotes, AVClub for pop culture musings and TV/movie/music reviews, and Daisy Owl for a pleasant ongoing comic strip to read.

Also Metachat, for an unofficial extension of the Mefi Experience™.

By: geekyguy

geekyguy — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:03:41 -0800

PopURLs
fimoculous
SeriousEats
Neatorama
CakeheadLovesEvil

By: bellbellbell

bellbellbell — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:40:02 -0800

i love kottke for finding new and interesting things.
(my current favs are postcards from yo momma, questionable content, and xkcd.)

By: Rhaomi

Rhaomi — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:54:32 -0800

One I forgot to mention: TVTropes.org, a Wikipedia-like site that aims to catalogue every type of storytelling cliche used in television, movies, and literature. It sounds dull, but browse around a bit and it's endlessly fascinating.

By: damn dirty ape

damn dirty ape — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:03:16 -0800

Ive been visiting The Awesomer lately.

By: knile

knile — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:14:57 -0800

If you're into food, Tastespotting FTW. Pretty looking food, usually links to recipes (though not necessarily). Lots of daily updates, lots of archives to surf through. Dangerous when you're hungry or on a diet.

By: meeshell

meeshell — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:40:44 -0800

I like dvice its another gadget blog, just because I like gadget blogs, I don't think it has been mentioned here yet.

I also like fortean times breaking news links page.

By: meeshell

meeshell — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:42:58 -0800

ontd is good if you like to keep up with which celebrity trash

By: christhelongtimelurker

christhelongtimelurker — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:54:30 -0800

To be honest, I find the Wikipedia is still pretty interesting. Check out the Rotten library. Should keep you occupied for a bit. They also run the Notable Names Database.

By: anthy

anthy — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:00:27 -0800

I tend toward fannish media-related things? So some my links are rather on the weird side. Not sure if that's what you're looking for, but...

Seconding TV Tropes. Really interesting, and quite a time sink.

Livejournal. Search by interest and you'll likely find a community to match that interest.

To go with davoid's suggestion of Postsecret, there's also LJSecret and Fandom!Secrets.

Others sites I like:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Delicious - searchable community bookmarks.

MetaFandom - fannish essays (tag cloud). In the same vein: MetaQuotes, Fandom Wank, Fandom Lounge, Random Lounge.

SurLaLune Fairy Tales - annotated fairy tales.

Yuletide Treasures - yearly fanfic exchange archive for obscure fandoms.

PaperbackSwap for swapping/buying books.

AllRecipes Daily Recipes Feed

Slickdeals and Fatwallet - internet deals.

Eatliver.com - crazy, naughty, funny pictures of insane internet. (NSFW)

Creepypasta.com - creepy stories. Also, Dionaea House and Ted's Caving Page.

Axis Powers Hetalia - scanlations of a Japanese web comic featuring anthropomorphic countries.

Digital Elfquest - archive of Elfquest comics.

RubyQuest Game Archive, and LJ Roleplay Listing.

Crunchyroll, Animesuki, and Fansub TV for anime.

By: intermod

intermod — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:00:45 -0800

Not sure if this will appeal to you or anyone here, as it's pretty heavy on the nerd factor, but I spend way too much time at www.nasaspaceflight.com, an independent site that covers NASA activities in grotesque detail. In their forums you will find like-minded guys obsessing over every shred of data; for example, here are the threads where they are tracking STS-125 / Hubble prep activity (it launches in 2 weeks). This is a particularly useful during live events, when the community posts play by play reports of what's happening, in far more detail than you will get from NASA TV or press releases.

Similarly, whenever there's a breaking news situation involving a commercial aircraft, I head straight to the airliners.net General Aviation forum, where they will know everything before everyone else.

Emily Lakdawalla's blog at The Planetary Society is flat out fantastic. Alas, she just (like, 3 days ago) gave birth and so is out for a while, but she'll have substitutes, including Alan Stern who is a rock star in those circles. Even without those subs, though, there's years worth of fascinating posts about space science and exploration, mostly regarding unmanned probes to Mars and Saturn since that's what's been active lately.

Or, you know, just stay in the metaculturesnark comfort zone.

By: tumples

tumples — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:16:56 -0800

1000awesomethings.com for a growing list of well, 1000 awesome things
1001rulesformyunbornson for the same sort of things as above
boingboing.net a directory of wonderful things
cakewrecks.blogspot.com bad cakes
dailydoseofimagery a photograph a day
englishrussia.com oddities from our favourite ex soviet power
foodporndaily.com daily photograph of food, so good that the name clearly makes sense
fuckmylife.com anonymous twitter length stories, some bad some good
graphjam.com jokes through graphs
last.fm download the scrobbler and let it clock up all of your music, it will recommend you new artists based on this information
lifehacker.com tech and life tricks and tips
nightjack.wordpress.com browse through popular posts he links in that recent post
omegle.com anonymous chat with a stranger, hit and miss as it depends on who you are talking to
passiveaggressivenotes.com does what it says on the tin
peoplewhodeserveit.com again, self explanatory
postsecret.blogspot.com updates every sunday, anonymous postcard confessions. mostly tragic and sobering though
reddit.com, sign up and configure your subreddits for better links
boston.com/bigpicture current affairs through high resolution photography. the internet needs more sites that display big pictures, why are we still stuck with crap 200x300 pictures as standard?
smbc-comics.com great webcomic
guardian.com/commentisfree good news commentary and opinion from The Guardian UK newspaper which I recommend too
thisiswhyyourefat.com pictures of food that is excessive on purpose

By: knguyen

knguyen — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:21:55 -0800

Give Me Something to Read compiles popular bookmarks from Instapaper. It's handy if you're looking for something longer to read, if you're not in the mood for cat pictures.

By: rivenwanderer

rivenwanderer — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:12:30 -0800

http://cabinet-of-wonders.blogspot.com/
http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/

Both are in the "lovely and strange things from a long time ago" category, though they have different focuses.

By: thaivagabond

thaivagabond — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 01:45:26 -0800

My first read every morning is 3quarksdaily.com. Always something here to get the gray matter churning.

By: allkindsoftime

allkindsoftime — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:48:53 -0800

popurls.com

By: allkindsoftime

allkindsoftime — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:00:36 -0800

BTW, we've done this before at least once or twice.

By: Caravantea

Caravantea — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:26:20 -0800

Mental Floss - If you go anywhere, go here. Interesting things about everything. And there's a daily collection of links, so it can lead you to more interesting places. They're actually a magazine, but this is a a link to their blogs section.
Pajiba - Scathing Film, TV and Book Reviews
The Speculist - Exciting & Positive developments in Science
Comics Curmudgeon - Hilarious commentary on newspaper comic strips

By: theora55

theora55 — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:36:57 -0800

When you're bored with the Internet, it's time to go outside. I don't mean this in a snarky way, it's a message I give myself pretty often.

By: andshewas

andshewas — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:24:29 -0800

indexed

By: Drasher

Drasher — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:09:30 -0800

J-Walk - strange and interesting
Izismile - diversion
DarkRoastedBlend - cool stuff

By: djgh

djgh — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:28:44 -0800

Related, previously.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:46:28 -0800

One link to rule them all: del.icio.us/tag/awesome

By: toni_jean

toni_jean — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:31:22 -0800

www.forgottenbooks.org has over 1000 books that can be read online for free. I aggregated this list with the "1001 books to read before you die" list, and came up with 300 or so titles. Memail me if you would like the spreadsheet.

By: flutable

flutable — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:47:18 -0800

Zombo.com It's the only site you will ever need to visit.

By: Midnight Skulker

Midnight Skulker — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:31:43 -0800

WeirdUniverse contains my daily dose of News of The Weird, by Chuck Shepherd.

By: aniola

aniola — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:50:48 -0800

xkcd - Updates Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays
Buttercup Festival - Updates... every other Monday?

Savage Love - Updates Wednesdays
Orwell Diaries
Virginia Bicycling Federation

NACLA
Mother Jones

Ted
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

By: tehloki

tehloki — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:13:45 -0800

I have a browser. Upon that browser sits a bookmarks toolbar folder. Within that folder are the sites I visit every day. Let me show you them.