Thinking of checking out some websites

[DeafIdiotGod]

idk about you, but the internet feels a lot smaller lately. Even though I'm at my computer much more than usual nowadays I still find myself flicking between the same few websites (twitter --> reddit --> news site --> twitter etc) that I visit more out of habit than anything. Seems like having access to the largest repository of information in history should be more varied and interesting.

What are some websites you regularly (or used to) check out that aren't mainstream social media, general news or basic internet 101 stuff like Youtube? Can be forums, interesting writing, places to discover music, art, film etc. The more niche the better.

I'll start

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/

Online magazine about sustainable technology, articles are usually deep dives into specific high-tech problems or low tech solutions with a lot of technical detail. The website itself is apparently held on a solar powered server so sometimes it's down on cloudy days. It can be dry reading sometimes but it's nice that there's a publication writing about these topics with actual curiosity.

Also old internet nostalgia/discussion thread or w/e

[rjbman]

https://logicmag.io/ is a triannual themed physical magazine that comes in a lovely bound book size. Tries not to be luddite or techno-utopian but examines technology and how it affects us.

Manifesto:

Spoiler:

Technology is a scourge!, technophobic scolds tweet from their iPhones. Technology will fix it!, techno-utopians proclaim on Medium. Indistinguishable middle-aged men tout indistinguishable products in front of a press all too eager to write gadget reviews indistinguishable from ad copy. Companies tank; companies IPO. Legacy media editors commission lifestyle pieces about CEO sneakers and office cafeterias brimming with lacinato kale. Press releases are distributed and regurgitated on TechCrunch. Academics write screeds against Facebook and post them on… Facebook. We can’t stop watching. We’re so, so bored.

Tech is magic. Tech lets us build worlds and talk across oceans. Whatever kind of freak we are—and most of us are several kinds—tech helps us find other freaks like us.

But most tech writing is shallow and pointless. It’s nobody’s fault; everyone is just doing their job. Communications teams feed reporters winning anecdotes about their founders that explain exactly nothing. (“One day, Chad was eating a ham sandwich and realized…”) The reporters are overworked and underpaid and need to file a new story by EOD. Who can blame them for taking the bait?

Editors are desperate for shareable content, which too often means some kind of caricature. Tech is either brilliant or banal, heroic or heinous. The best minds of our generation are either curing cancer, or building a slightly faster way to buy weed. The robots will either free us from drudgery or destroy civilization. Hate-click or like-click, the stories tend to be about a handful of people. The pasty boy genius. The tragic token woman. The fascist billionaire. The duo of white dudes dueling to lead us to Mars.

We deserve a better conversation. By “we,” we mean you, because everyone uses technology. We are all both its subject and object. Tech is how you find the place you live. It’s how you turn your car into a taxi or your spare room into a hotel. Tech lets you see the faces of the people you love from thousands of miles away. It helps you buy clothes, and track the steps you take trying to fit into them. You use tech to order your dinner, find a date, or at least stream the video you masturbate to when you don’t have the energy to go out.

Someday, when you do swipe right on that special someone, and they swipe right on you—it’s a match!—tech will shape how you flirt, how you define the relationship, how you plan and brag about your wedding. When you have children, you will use tech to track their development and find a babysitter. By then, maybe the babysitters will be robots, and school will be software. As we grow old, tech will help you find a caregiver. Your children will manage your physical decay remotely via app. When you have a bowel movement, they will receive a push notification. They will know what to do. They will have been on Instagram since they were a twinkle in the first fetal ultrasound photo you posted. The NSA will have been spying on them since before they were born.

The stakes are high, is what we are saying. Like you, we are both insiders and outsiders. Luckily, this is exactly the position you need to be in to observe and describe a system. In the social sciences they call it “logic”: the rules that govern how groups of people operate. For engineers, “logic” refers to the rules that govern paths to a goal. In the vernacular, “logic” means something like being reasonable. Logic Magazine believes that we are living in times of great peril and possibility. We want to ask the right questions. How do the tools work? Who finances and builds them, and how are they used? Whom do they enrich, and whom do they impoverish? What futures do they make feasible, and which ones do they foreclose?

We’re not looking for answers. We’re looking for logic.

[skunk ape]

The always wonderful UbuWeb deserves your eyes.

[titkitten]

i have been feeling the same about the internet being a small place — for me it’s tumblr, youtube, and the bachelor. i only realised this year that discord was a thing, but it seems increasingly that communities are moving into or forming in there, privately, compared to public forums or even subreddits of old.

i do think there’s a bit of nostalgia bias though. when i think about my internet habits of before, it isn’t like i was visiting a huge range of websites either: it was still a small circle of neopets and (later) facebook. i think maybe a better explanation of the “mental claustrophobia” at least for me has been fatigue more than a decrease in variety. (while it’s true that a blog or two have disappeared, i think that has been grossly surpassed by people with effective blogs on instagram — whether you like following influencers is a different story i guess.)

anyway, in the past two years i’ve just been reading a lot more books once i get bored of tumblr and youtube. some high brow, but mostly a lot of trashy contemporary romance. (i think we used to have more variety in entertainment, if not websites — reading the magic treehouse, watching cartoons, playing with physical toys, or simply sitting around indulging our imagination.)

anyway, as for obscure websites, i don’t have much to offer, so i’ll leave it to the others of this fine forum (love)

[bels]

If you like websites you should join the mastodon server and explore the FEDIVERSE. Lots of people on there have personal websites like the internet of yore.

merveilles has a nice looking webring.

https://webring.xxiivv.com/

[DeafIdiotGod]

i do think there’s a bit of nostalgia bias though. when i think about my internet habits of before, it isn’t like i was visiting a huge range of websites either: it was still a small circle of neopets and (later) facebook. i think maybe a better explanation of the “mental claustrophobia” at least for me has been fatigue more than a decrease in variety. (while it’s true that a blog or two have disappeared, i think that has been grossly surpassed by people with effective blogs on instagram — whether you like following influencers is a different story i guess.)

Yeah in the past I didn't exactly visit many more sites than I do now, I spent most of my teens on the bungie.net off-topic forum and that was enough back then. I think what's different now is still related to the internet getting "smaller", in the past I think there were a lot more active online communities that existed away from centralised platforms, like forums for a specific game developer / hobby etc. Now almost all posting has been concentrated into FB, Twitter, Reddit and Tumblr (although tumblr seems a bit different for reasons I'll get into*). Because all the posting takes place on the same sites you end up with much larger userbases so it's harder to make out individual personalities unless they develop a large following or they're like a subreddit mod or something, as well as this, the restriction to the format of a specific website for everything makes everything look a lot flatter, in the case of twitter, the distinction between "communities" basically exists outside of the site's own formatting. All these things make it harder for current online social spaces to develop a distinguishable culture or identity and I think it's holding back the internet's potential for ~*connecting people*~.

I think you're right that a lot of communities are forming on discord instead now but I think that still has some of the same problems I mentioned in that it's still restricted to a platform with a largely fixed format and appearance. I've tried joining discord servers before and I think the main issue I have with them is that my native language is posting, not instant messaging and I find the constant stream of messaging disorientating.

*re: tumblr
Tumblr has a different feel to the other sites, like things are a bit less concentrated there than on reddit, for instance. I never used it much so I don't know much about it myself but my gf reckons that because it's such a weirdly organised and non-streamlined site that it's a lot harder for large groups of people to even end up in the same place so you get a much more fragmented userbase.

anyway, in the past two years i’ve just been reading a lot more books once i get bored of tumblr and youtube. some high brow, but mostly a lot of trashy contemporary romance. (i think we used to have more variety in entertainment, if not websites — reading the magic treehouse, watching cartoons, playing with physical toys, or simply sitting around indulging our imagination.)

I need to use my kindle more, I noticed that I get through ebooks much quicker than regular books because I can more easily read them in moments when I would otherwise be on my phone, like when I'm on the loo or something. It's a shame, regular books are much nicer objects but it's harder to trick my online poisoned brain into reading them.

[rjbman]

I need to use my kindle more

quite genuinely think that the kindle is one of the platonic ideal devices, tbh. does one thing and does it 110% perfectly.

[Julio]

i feel like i used to get way more lost on the internet prior to social media becoming what it is now. as a kid i used to find countless random transformers fan sites, just hosting reviews and photos and collection breakdowns, etc. i miss those days, somewhat.

i recently went through one of my bookmarks folders, mostly japanese blogs (retailer/stockist, stylist, etc.) running back a decade or so and i had to remove a lot of them as they'd become dead links.
as of right now it's 90 bookmarks, is there a way to efficiently share that with anyone who might be interested?

in other news, a site i found long ago but is still alive and fun to check every now and then is https://www.damninteresting.com/
lives up to its name i fathom, nice to just press the random article button if you want something to read

[jrisk]

I love checking out Geographic Information System maps for my state. I think most states have one - they're interactive maps where you can click around and view who owns property anywhere. It can be interesting to just putz around to learn more about the area around you. I've specifically used it to find city or state-owned property to go hiking and birding at.

Here's the massachusetts one:

[skunk ape]

GIS maps remind me of this cool website: http://www.clui.org/section/programs-projects

[rubymtn]

GIS maps remind me of this cool website: http://www.clui.org/section/programs-projects

My girlfriend has said before that she knows I'm doing okay if I'm looking at maps and I'm doing poorly if I'm looking at new reports from old natural disasters

[skunk ape]

http://www.kunstderfuge.com/ - The largest resouce [sic] of classical music in .mid files

[Trench Witch]

https://jstris.jezevec10.com/

play tetris for free

[foxtail_grass]

https://earth.nullschool.net/

Worldly Wind Map

http://radio.garden/

Worldwide Radio Stations

http://50watts.com/

Global Illustration/Design

(:

[CMYK]

Site based on the construction and history of various forms of temporary structures https://simplydifferently.org/

[lionfir44]

http://internetarchaeology.org/heaven/h ... tml#bottom

the most spiritual virtual journey ever created

[skunk ape]

Archive for a UK teletext gaming magazine, Teletext being a thing that really only entered my consciousness upon learning about an archive for a UK teletext gaming magazine: http://www.superpage58.com/index.html