What are your favorite websites?
January 28, 2021 3:47 AM Subscribe
Hi all;
I getting bored of the websites I keep in my favorites.
I need some new ones--have any you want to share?
Science stuff,vintage true crime,vintage photography, whatever you want to share.
Not into gaming though.
Thank you :-)
Living in a Retro World is a Tumblr (yes, it still exists!) chock full of wonderful images. Here's the archive, if you don't want to scroll forever. Some images may be semi-NSFW.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:22 AM on January 28, 2021
posted by Thorzdad at 4:22 AM on January 28, 2021
Damn Interesting frequently lives up to its name. The Greatest Hits page is a good place to start.
posted by justkevin at 4:37 AM on January 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by justkevin at 4:37 AM on January 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Dark Roasted Blend has hundreds of links in their Link Latte section to peruse.
posted by waving at 4:42 AM on January 28, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by waving at 4:42 AM on January 28, 2021 [4 favorites]
I use a combination of social media platforms and content link websites to keep me busy with interesting stuff on the web. As well as having a heavily curated Twitter and Facebook stream I also use:
- Popurls: fantastic front page for the entire web. News, and weird stuff depending on how you arrange your own page
- The Web List: Similar thing to Popurls
- Flipboard: once you have added your interests, or even followed particular sites you like, Flipboard can become a really useful browsing buddy. Works best on a tablet or phone, but the web version works well enough.
- Pocket: I use this to save articles I want to read later on my phone/tablet/ebook reader, and it is fantastic for this, but you can also follow content sharers with similar interests to you, and again expand your reading and browsing in multiple ways.
- Reddit: pretty obvious, but again, follow what you are interested in, browse a bit every day, and see what you discover. There are entire subreddits out there devoted to weird websites and content that you would otherwise never see.
- Metafilter :) Don't just use askmefi and the front page, there are literally decades of fascinating links and websites to look back on.
All these are better the more you curate and work with them. It takes time, but these days I rarely have a moment online where I am not perusing something fascinating.
posted by 0bvious at 4:44 AM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
- Popurls: fantastic front page for the entire web. News, and weird stuff depending on how you arrange your own page
- The Web List: Similar thing to Popurls
- Flipboard: once you have added your interests, or even followed particular sites you like, Flipboard can become a really useful browsing buddy. Works best on a tablet or phone, but the web version works well enough.
- Pocket: I use this to save articles I want to read later on my phone/tablet/ebook reader, and it is fantastic for this, but you can also follow content sharers with similar interests to you, and again expand your reading and browsing in multiple ways.
- Reddit: pretty obvious, but again, follow what you are interested in, browse a bit every day, and see what you discover. There are entire subreddits out there devoted to weird websites and content that you would otherwise never see.
- Metafilter :) Don't just use askmefi and the front page, there are literally decades of fascinating links and websites to look back on.
All these are better the more you curate and work with them. It takes time, but these days I rarely have a moment online where I am not perusing something fascinating.
posted by 0bvious at 4:44 AM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
I love Astral Codex Ten (formerly called Slate Star Codex). The author, Scott Alexander, is a very talented writer and all-around smart person. The comments section typically contains some truly intelligent and polite discussions, in contrast to most on-line conversations. Check out the archives, as well.
I also enjoy reading Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science, by Andrew Gelman. He's a statistics professor at Columbia University. Some of his posts (or perhaps the majority of them) are over my head, but there is lots of interesting stuff there.
John Horgan is among my favorite science writers. Check out his articles on the Scientific American website.
posted by alex1965 at 5:59 AM on January 28, 2021
I also enjoy reading Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science, by Andrew Gelman. He's a statistics professor at Columbia University. Some of his posts (or perhaps the majority of them) are over my head, but there is lots of interesting stuff there.
John Horgan is among my favorite science writers. Check out his articles on the Scientific American website.
posted by alex1965 at 5:59 AM on January 28, 2021
For a moment of fun, How Many People Are in Space Right Now.
posted by FencingGal at 6:33 AM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by FencingGal at 6:33 AM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
Uni-Watch is interesting on its own, but frequently features vintage photography as well.
Arts & Letters Daily is the best site on the internet. Even if you're not interested in the links they post, they've got a comprehensive list of links (what used to be called a blogroll) that should help you find something you like.
The Ringer is the best sports website, and also has great pop culture content. I'm not normally a pop culture guy, so for me to say that it's even worth reading is high praise.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:34 AM on January 28, 2021
Arts & Letters Daily is the best site on the internet. Even if you're not interested in the links they post, they've got a comprehensive list of links (what used to be called a blogroll) that should help you find something you like.
The Ringer is the best sports website, and also has great pop culture content. I'm not normally a pop culture guy, so for me to say that it's even worth reading is high praise.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:34 AM on January 28, 2021
Two of my faves are kottke
Kottke is self described as "Founded in 1998, kottke.org is one of the oldest blogs on the web. It’s written and produced by Jason Kottke and covers the essential people, inventions, performances, and ideas that increase the collective adjacent possible of humanity. Frequent topics of interest among the 26,000+ posts include art, technology, science, visual culture, design, music, cities, food, architecture, sports, endless nonsense, and carefully curated current events, all of it lightly contextualized. Basically, it’s the world’s complete knowledge, relentlessly filtered through my particular worldview, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entails."
and
Cool Tools - amalgamation of tools, makers and otherwise useful stuff. Cannot count the number of times I've read about something useful on that site and bought it - tools I would not have known about otherwise.
posted by leslies at 6:59 AM on January 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
Kottke is self described as "Founded in 1998, kottke.org is one of the oldest blogs on the web. It’s written and produced by Jason Kottke and covers the essential people, inventions, performances, and ideas that increase the collective adjacent possible of humanity. Frequent topics of interest among the 26,000+ posts include art, technology, science, visual culture, design, music, cities, food, architecture, sports, endless nonsense, and carefully curated current events, all of it lightly contextualized. Basically, it’s the world’s complete knowledge, relentlessly filtered through my particular worldview, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entails."
and
Cool Tools - amalgamation of tools, makers and otherwise useful stuff. Cannot count the number of times I've read about something useful on that site and bought it - tools I would not have known about otherwise.
posted by leslies at 6:59 AM on January 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
I spend an egregious amount of time on the Classic Horror Film Boards.
It was started by a bunch of us back on AOL, and then it migrated to an actual forum.
If you like a certain type of old movie, even if it's not horror, then we have you covered.
Go down the rabbit hole!
posted by Bill Watches Movies Podcast at 7:11 AM on January 28, 2021
It was started by a bunch of us back on AOL, and then it migrated to an actual forum.
If you like a certain type of old movie, even if it's not horror, then we have you covered.
Go down the rabbit hole!
posted by Bill Watches Movies Podcast at 7:11 AM on January 28, 2021
Another vote for Dark Roasted Blend, which has nothing to do with coffee but lots of retro stuff, including but not limited to sci-fi, architecture, weird vehicles, etc.
Centauri Dreams is a fascinating website in which the author "looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities." If you're interested in the mechanics and possibilities of space travel, planet formation, and the astronomy of working out what's in the universe, this is for you.
Jesus and Mo is "a weekly comic strip, dealing in religious satire." It is utterly hilarious, or completely blasphemous, depending on your point of view about the Abrahamic religions. Needless to say YMMV.
posted by underclocked at 8:31 AM on January 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
Centauri Dreams is a fascinating website in which the author "looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities." If you're interested in the mechanics and possibilities of space travel, planet formation, and the astronomy of working out what's in the universe, this is for you.
Jesus and Mo is "a weekly comic strip, dealing in religious satire." It is utterly hilarious, or completely blasphemous, depending on your point of view about the Abrahamic religions. Needless to say YMMV.
posted by underclocked at 8:31 AM on January 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
If you're interested in popular and/or unpopular music; culture including popular, underground, and sub-; high weirdness, low weirdness; art and not art; crazy fuckers and people who are certain they're not crazy fuckers; and, I dunno, other stuff, you'll love dangerousminds.net.
posted by scratch at 8:40 AM on January 28, 2021
posted by scratch at 8:40 AM on January 28, 2021
There's also lithub.com, which has a subsection called Crimereads. I generally like Crimereads, and I sort of like the rest of the site, but it has to be the worst-proofread literary website in creation and that drives me crazy.
posted by scratch at 8:44 AM on January 28, 2021
posted by scratch at 8:44 AM on January 28, 2021
Oh, and https://www.shorpy.com for old photos!
And, although I'm pretty sure it's subscriber-only, the New York Times' TimesMachine offers full-page images of papers from their entire archive.
posted by scratch at 8:59 AM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
And, although I'm pretty sure it's subscriber-only, the New York Times' TimesMachine offers full-page images of papers from their entire archive.
posted by scratch at 8:59 AM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
The SCP Foundation is a collaborative writing website where authors create articles that are notionally the files of a clandestine global conspiracy to "secure, contain and protect" objects and people who break the normalcy of human life. They have over 4000 items and each "Object" page is deliberately written in an style that leads off with "Containment Procedures" that are usually super-specific and weird and create a sense of anticipatory dread around what the object could be, followed by a "Description" that unfolds the scary/weird thing in a psuedo-scientific explanation.
They also have a "Tales" section, which are in-universe short stories, and some spin-off websites about other organizations, some antagonistic/some not, that deal with these paranormal objects differently.
Basically it depends on how much you like existential sci-fi/horror/mystery.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:42 AM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
They also have a "Tales" section, which are in-universe short stories, and some spin-off websites about other organizations, some antagonistic/some not, that deal with these paranormal objects differently.
Basically it depends on how much you like existential sci-fi/horror/mystery.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:42 AM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
Design is fine. History is mine. Stupendous visual library of art & design history. Mostly 20th century.
posted by miles per flower at 10:11 AM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by miles per flower at 10:11 AM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
I usually hit these web sites based on what shows up from them in my RSS reader.
Colossal
The Morning News
Bullets
The Markup
The Conversation
posted by emelenjr at 10:46 AM on January 28, 2021
Colossal
The Morning News
Bullets
The Markup
The Conversation
posted by emelenjr at 10:46 AM on January 28, 2021
The Comics Curmudgeon is a blog that has been roasting lousy newspaper comic strips for more than a decade and almost every day I get a very satisfying belly laugh out of it. I've realized that comedy that can actually make me roar with laughter on a regular basis is vanishingly rare, so I heartily recommend checking it every day and perusing the archives.
posted by zeusianfog at 11:06 AM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by zeusianfog at 11:06 AM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Wow--Thanks everyone for those interesting websites!
posted by LOOKING at 12:07 PM on January 28, 2021
posted by LOOKING at 12:07 PM on January 28, 2021
I would third Dark Roasted Blend, which labels itself a 'weekly collection of the best links on the web' but unfortunately, its status is almost dormant, now: only updated twice, last year. So for today, I recommend Messy Nessy, who has a regular, almost-weekly and worthwhile feature called "13 Things I Found on the Internet" (among other things).
posted by Rash at 9:12 PM on January 31, 2021
posted by Rash at 9:12 PM on January 31, 2021
And for near-daily updates, see Everlasting Blört (although most of its linkage is into Twitter).
posted by Rash at 9:49 PM on January 31, 2021
posted by Rash at 9:49 PM on January 31, 2021
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 4:18 AM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]