Cool Things on the Open Web

[dubsartur]

In the tea, Jubal said that people have trouble finding good things and community on the open web.  Obviously a lot of that is people using the heavily censored and wacked internal search engines on closed social media rather than a real search engine on the open web.  So in this thread, lets post some cool things which are on the open web not a giant social media platform.

I don't have a good definition of the open web, but "findable on any search engine not just an internal search engine" is a good sign, and so is "creators can export their work in some simple standard format like bbcode, html, etc. and re-post it somewhere run by someone else."  If you have to enable scripts and log in to see it, that is a bad sign.

Today I will post three out of the United States.

Adventure Cartoonist Lucy Bellwood with comics about tall ships and jerk brains and how soap is a metaphor for breaking up with her ex https://lucybellwood.com/

Statistician Andrew Gelman of "Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State" fame has a very active blog https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/

Siderea in Boston was posting about the present emergency since January https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/

What about you?  What on the open web still brings you joy?  What do you wish more people knew about?

[Jubal]

Thanks for these

I don't think I've got a lot of factual information things to add to this sort of list - possibly we should have a thread like this for arts/comics/etc and a separate one for factual stuff.

A few things from my RSS reader anyway:

Gwenfar's garden is quite a nice garden blog that I nose through now and again:
https://www.gwenfarsgarden.info/

A Book of Creatures is a wonderful modern bestiary with some very nice art and takes on particular folkloric beasts:
https://abookofcreatures.com/

Fantastical Logic is quite a nice blog too - often quite serious topic matter with a literary conceit of being translated wizards' notes:
https://fantasticallogic.wordpress.com/

A Viennese friend of mine occasionally blogs at My Moveable Feast - a lot of quite forthright discussions of feminism and other somewhat enraging things about the world:
https://mymoveablefeast.blog/

And because I'm vain I suppose my own politics blog can count here as something I wish more people knew about:
https://thoughtsofprogress.wordpress.com/

I'll have a think, there are probably many more things I'm forgetting right now.

[dubsartur]

I guess we could move Lucy Bellwood into a more 'artsy' thread.  Her comics tend to be educational or autobiographical but they are still webcomics.

Despite what some people would have us think, most visits to my site come from search engines not social media, and most users a year ago used larger screens.  I think if you create a 'smart phone' site (in terms of content and design philosophy not 'can you read it on a 6 cm wide screen') you get 'smart phone' traffic and vice versa.

[dubsartur]

I guess I have always been more comfortable talking about facts than big ideas or art.  To me, art is more for enjoying than talking about, aside from some basic mechanical things.  And the things I like rarely seem to be in fashion with my communities, and I have trouble getting people I know to geek out about whatever they are in to right now.  So some of the folk songs and filk and early music groups I learned through random online links or browsing in libraries and stores, I never sat face to fact with someone else who thinks they are awesome except at one or two Ritterfest type events.

Its been a really really long time since my brain was in a state that let me be creative.  This month I can sometimes reproduce things, but that is more 'engineering' and 'problem solving.'

Big ideas are fun, but the more I learned about epistemology and the gap between some people's ability to sound convincing and back it up, the more I treat them as 'desert' to the main course of facts and side dish of mid-range theory.

[Glaurung]

One thing I'd like to suggest here: a blog named A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry. It's written by Bret Devereaux, an American military historian who is also a fantasy and SF fan. Much of the content is short series of posts on single topics: recent ones have included analyses of the battles of Helm's Deep and the Pelennor Fields as portrayed in The Lord of the Rings (both films and both), and an overview of food production in pre-industrial societies. The writing is accessible and informative for the non-specialist, and laced with a certain dry humour. Posting is weekly, and it looks as if there is some reasonably civil discussion in the post comments.

[dubsartur]

Yeah, I think I will thank him in my year-end post!  He is reaching a big audience with traditional writing, not some of the newer video-based projects.

[Othko97]

This is a great thread! I've definitely found it hard to find things on the "open web" (never heard this term before, but I very much like the sound of it) and so all the hitherto suggested things have been duly added to my RSS reader.
Most of my existing subscriptions are technical software or maths blogs, so probably of limited interest. However below I'll list the ones I have which are of more general interest:

   
• https://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/ - A blog critiquing poorly designed or misleading charts and graphs found in the wild
• https://fractalkitty.com/ - Generally seems to live at the intersection of Mathematics, Art and Software, usually just fun bits of geometry
• https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/ - Accessible maths and comics

It's a real shame that these social media giants have reshaped the web from a federated and syndicated network into a largely a huge conglomerate. 

[dubsartur]

For those of you who think that Canadians lost the dry British sense of humour to frostbite somewhere near Winnipeg, I give you the following crash report from the Aviation Safety Network:

A Cessna 172P Skyhawk owned by the Victoria Flying Club, was on a sight-seeing flight south of Victoria International Airport (CYYJ) when smoke was noticed coming from the instrument panel. Shortly after, the engine (Lycoming O-360-A3A) began to run rough and the windscreen became covered in oil. The pilot declared a Mayday and began a return to CYYJ but the engine lost all power and a forced landing was conducted in a field about 9 nm south of CYYJ. The aircraft overturned on landing and was substantially damaged. The pilot and passenger received minor injuries.

Company maintenance found the crankshaft had broken several inches aft of the propeller flange and the propeller departed the aircraft in flight.

"the propeller departed the aircraft in flight" ... is that what the kids are calling it these days?

[Glaurung]

"the propeller departed the aircraft in flight" ... is that what the kids are calling it these days?

I suspect it's standard accident report terminology for "the propeller was ejected from the aircraft at high speed when the mechanism disintegrated". "Fell off" might have been used, but I suspect it's felt to imply that the offending part simply dropped downwards, rather than zinging off at high speed in a random direction.

[Jubal]

One thing I note is that Bret Deveraux's A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry has opened the possibility of "introduce yourself" guest posts: https://acoup.blog/2021/03/26/fireside-friday-march-26-2021-on-the-nature-of-ancient-evidence/

I'm considering maybe trying to write something for it? I'm hesitant for two reasons: firstly because I had sort of started to engage with the comments sections of his blog a bit and ended up retreating after finding responses... rude would be too strong a term, but uncharitable might work. And secondly, because I keep feeling I ought to have an academic blog I can point people at for these things, or maybe broaden out Thoughts of Progress, or something, but I don't actually have the energy to get into academic blogging properly. But maybe I should do anyway...

[dubsartur]

I don't see a comment policy on his site, although I block scripts by default so it could be hidden.  It seems like he needs some volunteer mods.

[Jubal]

I don't think the issues I had were moderation-worthy. But people - especially some sorts of rather snarky nerd - can manage to be quite hostile without crossing that line. Anyway, continuing to think about this and I might offer something at some point: I've started sketching out a first few hundred words so we'll see where it gets to.

[dubsartur]

I don't think the issues I had were moderation-worthy. But people - especially some sorts of rather snarky nerd - can manage to be quite hostile without crossing that line. Anyway, continuing to think about this and I might offer something at some point: I've started sketching out a first few hundred words so we'll see where it gets to.

People on the Internet seem especially crabby right now.  I think its a mix of the pandemic and 'outgroup culture' from smartphone-oriented corporate social media (the culture that tells people that gentle questioning is sealioning and sealioning is wicked).  The problem is that I can't see people off the Internet because of the crown flu.

I commented a few times on his site but did not see many clicks through.

I see some very strange nationalist nonsense on https://historum.com/