Assorted links
Here are some links and stuff of things I like. Maybe you'll like them too!
Everything heading is a valid link to the section. This is so you can share a specific section if you wish.
Interesting links
I will try to add to this over time as I find things I find interesting.
History
- The Taiping Rebellion, a forgotten-about war in the West, and one of the most deadly wars in history. At least 20 million people died.
- Photos of the Seattle Regrading, a project to make Seattle less flat. Anyone who's ever been to Seattle knows it was an abysmal failure and overall a bad move.
- The Denny Regrade, part of aforementioned project.
- Photos of the Tulsa Race Massacre, lest we forget. The leaders of the city and state would rather you never remember this. Do your part and never forget.
- County seat wars, that time when people fought to be the king of the molehill. Entire towns lived and died by these forgotten wars.
- The Red River Bridge War; Ever wonder why Texans and Oklahomans hate each other? This is one reason. That and Texas just sucks. Hitler was said to have thought that the war was a sign of disunity in the US.
Places and things
- Chicago's Underground, a forgotten part of Chicago lore except by locals.
- The Tulsa Underground, although it's more than that, you can actually go between most buildings downtown through a series of aerial bridges and tunnels.
- The Seattle Underground, visit the former now underground front doors of various shops.
- Statue of Lenin, a Seattle icon for over 25 years, you can buy it for $250,000 if you want it. Just like Lenin would have wanted. Also, his hands are frequently painted red. Make of that what you will.
- The Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota; yes, I have been. It's a palace made of corn, and also an arena. Quite strange.
- Chicago's Ed Debevic's, great food, deliberately horrendous service; if you want to be insulted by a waitress, this is the place.
Stories, books, and assorted literature
- The Principia Discordia, few books have had an impact on me like this one. I can only describe it as Zen Buddhism on LSD, but there is serious intent behind the work, and it's in my opinion one of the greatest works of counter-culture in the past 100 years.
- Tao Te Ching, the founding work on Taoism. It's a rather difficult read, as the original texts often have hidden and double meanings everywhere. I recommend finding other translations if this one interests you, to find other perspectives.
- The Zhuangzi, another classical work in Taoism, and similarly full of double meanings.
- Know your System Administrator: A Field Guide by Stephan Zielinski. I'm a bit of all of those, at times.
- RFC 1925, The Twelve Networking Truths. Indeed, they are true.
- The BSD logo story, a classic.
- An elaboration on Murphy's Laws
- Academic Programmers: A Spotter's Guide. I have found this to be accurate. I can be a little bit like the "It's Safety Critical!" type at times.
- Alan Perlis's Epigrams On Programming, mostly true to this day.
- The Tao Of Programming, as a student of Taoism, I love this.
- The Unofficial Unix Administration Horror Story Summary, version 1.1, still amusing.
- Odd Comments and Strange Doings in Unix, funny old Unix lore.
Informative and educational
- earth.nullschool.net, a dude living in Japan created this beautiful visualisation of our planet's weather.
- The Unix history repo, track Unix back to its earliest days in version control.
- The Unix-Haters Handbook, not all its criticisms hold water anymore, but many do.
- Go vs Brand X, I won't spoil it, but it compares Go to an old predecessor of C.
- C Isn't A Language Anymore, it's a protocol, and a crusty one at that.
- To Save C, We Must Save ABI, a proposal to fix C's ABI.
- Why C and C++ are Awful Programming Languages, I use both and indeed, they are quite terrible.
- A Case Of The MUMPS, a story about a truly awful programming language that somehow escaped the lab.
- How To Write A JIT Compiler, if you've ever wondered.
YouTube creators
Here are some YouTube channels I enjoy. I'm not going to link to super popular channels, but channels who are off the beaten path that I happen to like and I think deserve more exposure. That isn't to say I don't enjoy some popular YouTubers, but they have plenty of exposure as it is. I don't need to give them a boost.
- Plainly Difficult, which covers all sorts of topics I absolutely love.
- History Matters, little shorts about history which are also amusing.
- Chief MAKOi, he makes interesting videos on maritime stuff that I find endlessly fascinating.
- Cathode Ray Dude, his videos on old tech are awesome!
- FranLab, Fran Blanche makes videos on cool retro tech and takes deep dives into old things.
- Applied Science, who does very cool DIY things.
Weird things
- The Gay Bob Doll (NSFW), uhh... a gay doll from the 70's, made by a straight guy, also anatomically accurate.
- The Strange, Sad Story of the Ken Doll's Crotch, just as the title says, it's very strange.
- "Take the poo to the loo" campaign for sanitation and ending public defecation in India.
- ZomboCom, a relic of the dot-com boom that almost feels still relevant in this era of endless useless startups.
- Space Jam 1996 website, pretty sure this is still up for the meme value.
- Arngren, it's like an admail circular in website form.
- Dole/Kemp's '96 campaign site, needless to say he lost, I'm not sure why this is up.
- Klingon Language Institute, an ancient fossil from Web 1.0 that got updated sometime recently apparently. wo’ batlhvaD!
- The Heaven's Gate Cult, former cult survivors maintain the website as a memorial. The entire story is sad, but this site is out of this world.
- Amazon Dating, I don't even know what to make of this.
- Endless horse, it's exactly what it says on the tin.
- Bury Me With My Money, I don't know.
- Cross Divisions, this site should have been a screensaver in Windows 98.
- Koalas to the max, run your mouse over the dots until you get too angry to continue.
- The Anglo-Zanzibar War, the shortest war in history, which lasted 38 minutes.
- The useless web, find another useless site, like one on this list.
- "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball", a funny children's rhyme sung in Britain; the Wikipedia article has some entertaining explanatory images.
Friends
- Anna Wilcox, my best friend for over half my life.
- sfr, good friend and platonic thing.
- Madeline Sparkles, I'm sort of a maternal figure to it (not in a kinky way get your mind out of the gutter -_-).
- Lucy Osmond, great friend of mine and I enjoy her company.
- Kio, good boy (usually).
- Jesse, awesome.
- Ariadne Conill, my cousin.
- nul, cool friend of mine.
- Slips, Tulsan (I was once one too), friend, pretty cool.
- Maddie, friend as well, I remember her as "the Furret on my timeline."
- The Antlerverse, a plural system friend of mine.
- Yuki, another friend from Fedi.