cool places on the 'net

Discuss technology, especially things related to free software, self-hosting, privacy, and anything in the associated Kaczynskiverse.
User avatar
netdoll
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed May 27, 2026 1:52 am
Has thanked: 11 times
Been thanked: 8 times

cool places on the 'net

Post by netdoll »

In the interest of providing access to nice things on the internet without the gatekeeping search engines and mainstream SNS confer, this thread will be a gathering place for anything on the internet which is of real interest. Note the usage of *internet* here, because the inaugural posts won't actually be related much to the World Wide Web at all.

Starting off we have gopher://magical.fish , the premier portal site (think like Yahoo if anyone here is old enough to remember that) for Gopher. Search the gopherspace, check the weather, read classic literature from Project Gutenberg, see the distant past of Karl Jobst browsing archived GameFAQs, and many more, all without ever having to leave the comfort of lynx in your terminal!

Then, as our other inaugural entrant, Eternal September is a *free* Usenet/netnews provider which provides access to all text based newsgroups. Usenet itself is kind of a ghost town these days outside of a few major newsgroups, but it's still interesting to browse and it affords the chance to mess around with Usenet clients which offer features that in many cases aren't equalled today by any web forum software.
User avatar
drummyfish Online
Posts: 29
Joined: Wed May 27, 2026 1:10 pm
Location: Czechia
Has thanked: 25 times
Been thanked: 24 times
Contact:

Re: cool places on the 'net

Post by drummyfish »

I'll leave a classic one here for people who don't know yet (please don't be jumpscared by the gif explosion, it's not another one of those "nostalgia" sites, it's actually a quite deep rabbithole):

https://dukenukemis.cool/news
Spoiler
Also I didn't really want to shill my site, but since you specifically encouraged other protocols: rsync://self.tastyfish.cz:12069/site. I have a whole personal link collection there among tons of other stuff. Don't download if you're sensitive and triggered easily.
love everyone, help selflessly
User avatar
netdoll
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed May 27, 2026 1:52 am
Has thanked: 11 times
Been thanked: 8 times

Re: cool places on the 'net

Post by netdoll »

Oh shit rsync, I was not expecting that lol (based)
To clarify, the thread will mostly be web links, I just got the stuff related to gopher and news out of the way first because there's comparatively little of it.
User avatar
Amlux
Site Admin
Posts: 64
Joined: Mon May 25, 2026 11:25 pm
Has thanked: 51 times
Been thanked: 26 times
Contact:

Re: cool places on the 'net

Post by Amlux »

Nice links! I want to give a special shout out to the other forum that I hang out on mostly these days:

Deluoode BBS

At its core, it's a SCI-ADV fan site (Steins;Gate, Chaos;Head, and Occultic;Nine), but it's a lot broader than that and you're sure to find like minds there. The admin has done a lot of awesome work into making the site pretty and I hope to add some of the cool features here to this forum eventually.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Please message me with any comments or concerns, either on this forum or by email: pantsuprophet@disroot.org
User avatar
May
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu May 28, 2026 2:11 am
Has thanked: 6 times

Re: cool places on the 'net

Post by May »

Decided to edit in a few links of my own since I have a fuckhuge directory laying around.

AnimeMusicVideos.Org - A still-active community for people who make AMVs. Very cool site.

1337.net - A website that teaches you how to be leet

Dreamcast-Talk - Biggest forum for the Sega Dreamcast.

SuperMario64.Com - Lovely web 1.0 site about Mario 64 speedrunning.
Amlux wrote: Wed May 27, 2026 11:50 pm
Nice links! I want to give a special shout out to the other forum that I hang out on mostly these days:

Deluoode BBS

At its core, it's a SCI-ADV fan site (Steins;Gate, Chaos;Head, and Occultic;Nine), but it's a lot broader than that and you're sure to find like minds there. The admin has done a lot of awesome work into making the site pretty and I hope to add some of the cool features here to this forum eventually.
Thanks for the kind words and good luck with your forum as well! I am the admin of Deluoode and would just like to say to any prospective newcomers that anyone who's cool with Amlux is also cool with me. :D
User avatar
netdoll
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed May 27, 2026 1:52 am
Has thanked: 11 times
Been thanked: 8 times

Re: cool places on the 'net

Post by netdoll »

And now for some web sites.

Back in the 90s and I will add up to the 2000s and in some cases later, there was a stereotypical style of web design for academic types ("Prof Dr") that used unstyled/barely styled HTML, little/no CSS, and the only concern being to pack large amounts of substantiative content into bare webpages without concern for "responsiveness" in the webdev sense (the expectation being that mobile browsers can reflow the text themselves and if yours can't, "here's a nickel kid, buy yourself a real computer").

Two of the largest exemplars of this style in my mind are https://friesian.com/ and https://bactra.org/. While I can't speak for the veracity of large parts of what's written in those places, what I have read over (Philosophy of History and Notebooks respectively) I enjoyed greatly, in addition to appreciating the design sensibility.
User avatar
Amlux
Site Admin
Posts: 64
Joined: Mon May 25, 2026 11:25 pm
Has thanked: 51 times
Been thanked: 26 times
Contact:

Re: cool places on the 'net

Post by Amlux »

日本トンデモ本大賞 [Nihon Tondemo-bon Taishou]

Found out about this one from the Touhou Wiki as ZUN referenced it somewhere. I forget where exactly but I think it was in Curiosities of Lotus Asia for those who care. It's the site and records of the Japanese "Tondemo-bon" Prize (or "Academy of Outrageous Books" to use their official English name). "Tondemo-bon" is a combination of the terms "tondemonai" (meaning "outrageous" or "unbelievable") and "hon" (book) and refers to wacky books that propose over-the-top conspiracies, pseudoscience, etc. This cheeky organization, which seemed to be connected to some doujin research group, would award a prize to the craziest book they could find every year (active from 1992-2015). Their site is really nice too.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Please message me with any comments or concerns, either on this forum or by email: pantsuprophet@disroot.org
User avatar
ccloverclub
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat May 30, 2026 2:34 pm
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 8 times

Re: cool places on the 'net

Post by ccloverclub »

Madame Eulalie’s Rare Plums has all of wodehouse's work that's in the u.s. public domain. right now i'm using their annotations for the jeeves stories. if anyone can link other annotations/author fansites that'd be great :chiyo:
User avatar
Alrune
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed May 27, 2026 6:42 am
Has thanked: 6 times
Been thanked: 10 times

Re: cool places on the 'net

Post by Alrune »

ccloverclub wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2026 2:53 pm
if anyone can link other annotations/author fansites that'd be great :chiyo:
Here are some of my bookmarks, it's a bit haphazard but maybe something will be of interest :ase:

https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/ -- Text of the Divine Comedy with side-by-side Italian and English + commentary

https://www.worldofdante.org/ -- maps, artwork, recitations, historical context, and scholarly commentary related to Dante

https://dante.princeton.edu/ -- The Princeton Dante Project. Digital archive of historical commentaries and scholarly resources on the Divine Comedy.

https://www.joyceproject.com/ -- Ulysses presented chapter-by-chapter with annotations

https://fweet.org/fweet/ -- Specialized search engine for Finnegans Wake allowing searches across the text

https://finwake.com/desktop.htm -- Full text of Finnegans Wake with annotations

https://annotatedwasteland.blogspot.com/ -- Line-by-line annotations to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land

https://sebald.wordpress.com/ -- Essays and other scholarly resources devoted to W. G. Sebald.

https://www.thomasbernhard.org/ -- Thomas Bernhard site with bibliographies and selected texts.

https://blanchot.fr/ -- site dedicated to Maurice Blanchot (in french)

https://williamgaddis.org/ -- Steven Moore's annotations to Gaddis's novels + interviews and essays

https://sorenkierkegaard.org/ -- repository of Kierkegaard texts, with introductions, commentary, and secondary literature.

https://archive.spinoza.ca/ -- Digital edition of Spinoza's Ethics with visualizations of its geometrical structure

https://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/ -- Hyper-annotated edition of Nabokov's Ada

https://www.powermobydick.com/ -- Entire text of Moby-Dick with annotations and commentary

https://melvillesmarginalia.org/ -- Digital archive of books owned and annotated by Herman Melville, with his reading notes and markings.

https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/ -- Shakespeare's works with annotations, textual notes, facsimiles, and performance history.

https://www.shakespeare-navigators.com/ -- Another Shakespeare site

https://www.proustarchive.org/ -- Digital archive of Proust manuscripts and drafts

https://whitmanarchive.org/ -- digital archive of everything Walt Whitman

https://www.edickinson.org/ -- Emily Dickinson Archive

https://www.blakearchive.org/ -- facsimiles and scholarly editions of William Blake's illuminated books and artworks.

https://www.kafka.org.uk/ -- Resources related to Franz Kafka.

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ -- Ancient Greek and Latin texts with dictionaries, morphology, translations, and linked references.

https://digitalthoreau.org/ -- Digital critical edition and annotation project for Henry David Thoreau's writings.
User avatar
Amlux
Site Admin
Posts: 64
Joined: Mon May 25, 2026 11:25 pm
Has thanked: 51 times
Been thanked: 26 times
Contact:

Re: cool places on the 'net

Post by Amlux »

Alrune wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2026 4:25 pm
Here are some of my bookmarks, it's a bit haphazard but maybe something will be of interest :ase:
Awesome set of literary resources! I have just one to add to it:
https://milton.host.dartmouth.edu/readi ... text.shtml - The Dartmouth John Milton Reading Room. Contains full texts of most of his writings with extensive and helpful annotations.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Please message me with any comments or concerns, either on this forum or by email: pantsuprophet@disroot.org
Post Reply