Assorted links

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.