PREVIOUS RANDOM SITES OF THE WEEK

The links below all open in the same window or tab as this page by default. Clicking the star (★) at the end of the entry will open the headline link in a new window or tab instead. This seems to me to be the best way to make it a bit more convenient to visit random sites without closing or losing this page while not making it a surprising or annoying default. Based on my tests so far, the new tab should pop up to the right of the parent tab, and the new window on top of the parent window.

Another thing to draw attention to is that this feature began in 2018, and so some sites have changed a great deal over the past several years. If you want to be sure to get a sense of the version of the site that originally featured on The Moonspeaker, it is worth looking the link up on the wayback machine and dialling back to at least the year of the random site date. This is especially important for multi-author, political projects and their associated blogs, which will inevitably reflect changes in personnel and other outside pressures. With politics also come accusations of various types of malfeasance, which may or may not be well-grounded when made or at the time the site was encountered, so it is all the more important to check the source.

Current | 2008-2014 | 2015-2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025

• Women's Studies Online (2020-12-31) : A canada-based radical feminist-oriented research, education, action, and community bulding platform. Their tagline is wonderful, "putting women back in women's studies," and they run a busy schedule of online classes and lectures funded by donation. ★
• GatherVictoria (2020-12-25) : Danielle Prohom Olson's intriguing website covering wildcrafting, seasonal recipes, and reclamation of Goddess rituals and traditions. She focusses especially on recipes, but also writes and updates long and intriguing essays on major holidays and the seasons, and has an ongoing series of videos. ★
• History of Scientific Women (2020-12-21) : An intriguing aggregator site of material on female scientists from antiquity to the present. There is not much information about who owns or administers the site, although there is enough to tell that they are likely european and based in paris. It also has an extensive resources page and solid coverage beyond europe and the united states. ★
• Magazines, Travel and Middlebrow Culture in Canada 1925-1960 (2020-12-08) : A bilingual site produced as part of a project examining "the hypothesis that travel is a part of the middlebrow, aspirant psyche – a symbol of achievement, cultural literacy, savoir-faire and personal means – and that magazines are key to creating a link between travel and upward mobility." ★
• TrowelBlazers (2020-12-07) : An intriguing new project founded and edited by the fur woman team of scientists Brenna Hasset, Victoria Herridge, Suzanne Pilaar Birch and Rebecca Wragg Sykes to document and raise the profile of women archaeologists, geologists, and palaeontologists. There focus is of course those who have been working earlier and in other places than most people might expect or assume. ★
• Greenham Women Everywhere (2020-11-25) : An amazing and ongoing project of documenting and presenting oral interviews with women who held the space of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. Photographs, essays, and oral interviews are the core of the site, and to the credit of the Scary Little Girls theatre hub and The Heroine Collective, they are hosting the audio on the site itself in accessible formats. ★
• Our Bodies, Ourselves (2020-11-20) : This is the companion website and blog to the project initiated in 1970 by the boston women's health collective to improve the quality and accessibility of health information for women. New material relevant to women's health, information on adaptations and a vigorous commenter community feature on the site. ★
• Gender Dissidents Survey, The (2020-11-19) : This is an incredibly important presentation of the results of a survey run by Maya Forstater in order to document dissent and challenges to gender identity dogmas being pushed by a range of extremely moneyed interests who claim to represent "transgendered people." Get ready to read an extraordinary range of people expressing their concerns and questions in a constructive and respectful way, which is too rare right now on any controversial topic. A great place to start is with Janice V's testimony. ★
• Historic England - Women's History (2020-11-17) : A set of excellent resources, including information on how to use archives. Available on and from this site or many high quality digital copies of photographs, articles, and archived websites covering women's history in britain. Notice how diverse the women are in interests, appearance, whether and how they created archival materials. ★
• Goldenrod Music (2020-11-11) : Founded in 1975 and based in michigan, Goldenrod started as a women's music distributor, and remains a leader in this area. Their excellent online site includes cds, electronic formats, and a wide range of clothing, books, and other material. Company representatives set up at music festivals and events throughout north america. ★
• hCaptcha (2020-11-02) : I have no argument with any webmaster who wants to prevent abuse and spamming of their websites by scripts, bots, or coordinated teams of bac actors. It is a great relief to me to learn about the hCaptcha alternative to google's snooping and general dishonesty. More and more evidence is building up that google is using "reCaptcha" to crack browser blocking of third party advertising cookies. There are additional alternative captchas and alternatives to captchas out there too. See Bye google reCaptcha at switching.software for more information. ★
• Gabriel Rockhill (2020-10-26) : I first stumbled upon Rockhill's writing on the interest of the united states "central intelligence agency" in french theory and the odd twists and turns in the development of post-modernism and post-structuralism, only to lose the link, much to my annoyance. He provides copies of his specific writing on this topic and several relevant sources while generally chronicling his academic and political work on this site. ★
• Téa Smith (2020-10-26) : A political scientist and old-fashioned webmaster who has already packed one hell of a wild ride into life before getting firmly and uncompromisingly into challenging the latest political bullshit. She has a patreon and is busy on both a book and an ongoing videocast series in which she considers political strategies and the peculiar interconnections of the current crop of hair raising right wing movements. Thanks to her I relocated the following random site. ★
• Radical Notion, The (2020-10-23) : A brand new Radical Feminist quarterly, with both electronic and hard copy formats. As the introductory page of the site notes, the editors are committed to a materialist analysis of the oppression of women, and that means that contributors will not be hiding behind spurious claims about how supposedly all that is needed to change the world is to change the words. Materials included are not just written either, images are accepted as well. ★
• Jamie Anderson (2020-10-20) : Following further along the thread of brilliant women historians. Anderson is a practising musician, songwriter, teacher, and now author of a history of the women's music movement through the 1970s and 1980s. She also has an excellent comic wit and a marvellous laugh, combined with a busy music journalism and web copy practice. ★
• Bonnie J. Morris (2020-10-18) : Lesbian historian Bonnie J. Morris has been doing her part in recording and compiling women's and lesbian history, from chronicling the women's music movement to challenging misrepresentations of the feminist movement over time. Besides her non-fiction work, she is a prolific poet, has two successful novels and several hilarious plays to her credit. ★
• LibrarianShipwreck (2020-10-18) : An intriguing blog exploring topics around radical librarianship, technology, and critical theory. As the main writer on the site notes, one of its main topics at the moment is impending doom. The plague poems are well worth a look, and if you'd like some excellent references on the luddites all properly in one place, see the 2018 post why the luddites matter. ★
• Métis Architect, The (2020-10-17) : A research project and blog documenting and exploring Métis approaches to designing, building and structuring their own housing and buildings. It is funded by the Louis Riel Institute in winnipeg, the Gabriel Dumont Institute in saskatoon, and laurentian university in sudbury. The sudbury base is a bit curious, but probably reflects the academic affiliation of the research lead. ★
• Carolyn Gage (2020-10-15) : Veteran lesbian playwright, whose works range across genres including musicals, one-woman shows, one-woman shows, dramas, radio plays, murder mysteries, farces, and comedies. She is leading the Butch Visibility Project, including writing and producing a long list of plays and monologues. Her fiction and non-fiction is great too, keep an eye out for Like There's No Tomorrow: Meditations for Women Leaving Patriarchy. ★
• Gordon Lab, The (2020-10-03) : Founded by Deborah M. Gordon to continue her research into collective behaviour using ant colonies. Gordon's research first won major attention in 2011 with her book Ants at Work: How an Insect Society is Organized, which explained her findings that debunked the assumption that ant colonies are organized as absolute hierarchies ruled by a single queen. Many of Gordon's papers are open access published, and it is also possible to view several of her talks. ★
• Biographies of Women Mathematicians (2020-09-30) : An ongoing documentation project at Agnes Scott college in the united states. There are nearly two hundred women mathematicians profiled already, and the contributors have consciously sought to cover those from other than north america or western europe. They are also accepting essay contributions to add to existing profiles and increase coverage. ★
• After Dinner Party (2020-09-28) : In the early 2010s Lynn Schirmer founded and led the now completed multidisciplinary and multimedia project intended to better share correct information on clitoral anatomy and prevent it being strategically "lost" in the ongoing patriarchal conditions. The project and website refer back to Judy Chicago's monumental art project, The Dinner Party. ★
• Wild Womyn Workshop (2020-09-24) : A lesbian owned and woman centred business busy making and selling amazing radical Feminist and lesbian art, from mugs to pins and shirts. Recently given a great boost by a recommendation from J.K. Rowling, I suspect not least because their work is beautiful, unshrinkingly political, and often funny. ★
• Lesbian Avengers (2020-09-24) : For information on the origins and history of this remarkable direct action group founded in 1992, this site is the place to visit. They produced newsletters and engaged in multiple funny, irreverent, and powerfully change making actions right into the early 2000s. They are now engaged in writing books and producing documentaries. ★
• Encyclopedia of Concise Concepts by Women Philosophers (2020-09-21) : One of the ongoing projects of the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists Project based at Paderborn university in germany. This specific subproject could be used as an introduction to the overall work, while it seeks to properly credit women philosophers for their work by drawing on specific concepts they originated and/or developed in the course of their writing. ★
• Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum (2020-09-04) : This is the companion site of the now permanent home of Judy Chicago's major artwork at the brooklyn museum since 2007. Unfortunately the two book set she and Susan Hill composed on the project are no longer in print, but this is an excellent overview. The gallery that the artwork is installed in is named for a member of the infamous Sackler family of opiate marketing fame. ★
• Frauenkultur (2020-08-31) : Another impressive project started by Bec Wonders, this one indexing second wave feminist texts written between 1965-1995. It ranges from poetry to philosophy and political theory to novels and sharp critical exposés and historical reconstructions. Many of the periodicals and pamphlets are available to read from the rapidly expanding digital archives at institutions like duke university. ★
• LGB Alliance (2020-08-28) : A new organization founded to actually start working on protecting the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people in the united kingdom who have been abandoned by the established so-called "LGBT+" non-profits. "LGBT+" non-profits and a range of gender identity activists have attempted to claim that it must be by default a hate group. See what the LGB Alliance says about itself. ★
• FeministWiki (2020-08-28) : Feminism and women generally are actively censored on wikipedia and basically all of social media, from basic historical information to politically complex topics. FeministWiki is provided and technically supported by the non-profit organization gemeinnützige UG (haftungsbeschränkt), and centres radical and second wave Feminism. ★
• 100 Signers Project (2020-08-26) : The editors at mainstream wikipedia having opted to abuse their malformed notability criteria to justify refusing to host this project thereby demonstrating just how far-reaching and persistent sexism is online, Bill Hunt has opted to pursue this project independently. In it he is seeking to research, write, and present brief biographies of all the signatories of the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights. See some of the results he has found so far. ★
• Janice Raymond Official Site (2020-08-24) : Long a controversial scholar and hard working activist, Janice Raymond is another of those people whose work should be read in the original, rather than accept secondhand accounts. She is a great Feminist activist engaged in opposing sex and child trafficking as well as arguing for an end to forcing anyone to behave according to sex role stereotypes. ★
• OpenEdition (2020-08-22) : A primarily french-based open-access project founded in 1999, featuring publication of past and ongoing research in french and german with spanish and english contributions rising rapidly. It brings together four publication lines, books, journals, research blogs, and an events calendar. All items are free to read, available in html and pdf format, with fulsome footnotes and other apparatus. ★
• Literature Network, The (2020-08-12) : A now roughly twenty year old site with over 3 000 books along with short stories, and poetry in english. Subscribers can access an advertising free version. There are some perhaps unexpected gems, such as the unexpurgated english translation of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, and a full and linked table of contents for it. This can be of great assistance with sorting out the scanned french volumes at the internet archive. ★
• XX Amazons (2020-08-11) : A political and literary site founded in 2017 by Susan Wiseheart, Paula Mariedaughter and Jeanne Neath, in part as a response to the continuing deplatforming and increased social abuse of lesbians across the political spectrum. They make a powerful editing trio of determined lesbians holding space for ways of being sex role stereotype defiant for younger lesbians other than transing, while honouring that for some women and men, transing is the right path for them. ★
• moodle (2020-08-11) : This free software learning management system really doesn't get the respect it deserves. It may not be as pretty as blackboard or brightspace, but it is an excellent and highly functional system, often in spite of some truly terrible user interface decisions. It is worth delving into this site to better understand what the project is about and the educational philosophy it is meant to enshrine. ★
• Ancient [European] History Encylopedia (2020-08-10) : Founded in 2009 and published by a non-profit company based in london, england with an eye to providing a more reliable basic encyclopedia of ancient european history. The About page notes that they strive not to eschew nationalistic articles. It does appear that they are seeking to expand their coverage beyond europe, as they do have some material pertaining to Maori, Nubian, and Chinese societies. ★
• Amazing Women in History (2020-08-01) : Although this site does lean at times towards "great woman" history, it is in fact a rapidly growing collection of 500 to 1 500 word articles not published elsewhere intended to provide coverage of women otherwise ignored by most male historians regardless of their importance. ★
• HTML Character Entity Reference (2020-07-23) : This is still the best and easiest reference I am aware of for html character references for version 5 of the standard. The site itself is now static and not going anywhere, which is all the more useful, because it is better to be a bit behind in adopting newfangled references. Also see the draft html5 reference. ★
• naked capitalism (2020-07-23) : I stumbled onto this website some time ago, and have been impressed by its journalistic and comment board quality overall. It provides good skeptical coverage of economics and politics around the world including an excellent daily link round up. Site bills are paid by a combination of online advertising and voluntary subscriptions. One item to note is its commentariat is primarily from the united states, and so has been having some difficulties maintaining its usual equanimity due to the severe straits that country is slipping into. ★
• GenderTrending (2020-07-23) : As she promised, Gallus Mag did not give up when the first censorship wave imposed by automattic took down her blog providing journalistic coverage of developments in women's rights and transgender activism in late 2019. Whatever your opinion on those issues, Gallus has also taken care to provide exemplary coverage of ban waves and other forms of censorship via search engine result manipulation and other techniques, and it is worth watching for her updates on that subject. Unfortunately, she was not able to continue, in part because wordpress software is designed to make it hard to get data out. ★
• instructables.com (2020-07-23) : This is a remarkable community site that has managed to sick to a PG-13 level in terms of projects and imagery for arts, crafts, food, and even basic classes on writing, drawing, and some basic software and mathematics. There is something quite awesome about seeing guides on how to build projects by elementary school kids right up there with the adults. It is not nearly so commercial as makezine.com, but I should note that it is a subsidiary of autodesk and it is under the privacy laws of california with respect to data collection. ★
• Independent Voices (2020-07-20) : A solid open access archive of newspapers, journals, and zines from the "alternative press" from the 1960s to 2000 in canada, the united kingdom, and the united states. Default scan size and legibility is good, and the selection of sources wide. My only quibble is that their thematic lists include no links to start accessing the periodicals. ★
• Public Domain Review (2020-07-17) : Founded in 2011 to help surface public domain works that have already been digitized as well as support the digitization of others, the site is full of essays related to different works, and several galleries of featured items. Galleries are divided by medium, so you can look at video, audio, or books. ★
• Nina Paley (2020-07-17) : If by some mischance you have not read or seen any of Nina Paley's remarkable work, which includes long running comics, animated movies, an excellent blog, and important, hard hitting activism, then you are in for a treat by taking a closer look at it today. She is among the more careful thinkers and participants on the internet who lives by acknowledging change and complexity in herself and others. ★
• Heath Robinson Museum (2020-06-30) : Readers with an interest in world war two code breaking may have encountered this english artist's name, as the crew at bletchley park named one of their machines after him. He was a prolific illustrator and author with a special interest in absurd virtual machines held together with string and the odd workings of chance. ★
• Sealaska Heritage Institute (2020-06-29) : The flagship website of the institute founded to counter the colonial effort to destroy Indigenous cultures in the settler state of alaska and beyond. It supports education via providing scholarships and classes, building campuses, and supporting important linguistic and social research for and by Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian communities. ★
• Digital Cavendish - A Scholarly Collaborative (2020-06-27) : An ongoing scholarly project making Margaret Cavendish's works available in one place online. Faced with social conditions and intense pressure against women pursuing advanced education and working as philosophers, Cavendish determined to be what we might now call a guerrilla scholar, who hacked the scholarly systems to participate anyway. ★
• Low End Mac (2020-06-27) : An excellent resource for those of us still running older apple hardware, in many cases of course no longer web connected for the especially old examples. Great for checking basic questions that apple itself has completely submerged on the corporate site when you are finalizing upgrades or replacement of specific elements. ★
• Eve Tuck (2020-06-26) : Activism and academic website of Indigenous scholar Eve Tuck, who works on undermining the very roots of oppressive structures embedded in education at all levels. She is engaged not just with text, but also with podcasts and visual art. Don't miss the amazing podcast, The Henceforward, and her wonderful selection of papers, just the tip of the iceberg of her work. ★
• Radical Democracy Project, The (2020-06-14) : An intriguing project intended to reconnect citizens of the united states with the more radical and democratic strands of their own historical traditions. Included on the site is a link to download an ebook full of documents and interviews. Much of this material can also be viewed at the internet archive. ★
• Audacity (2020-06-13) : To my knowledge Audacity is one of the best documented and supported open source audio processing software packages available. It is available for all desktop platforms, and runs lightly even on older machines with less RAM to play with. To date, I have also found it rather easier to handle than apple's garage band. Both programs are relatively simple to learn, it's putting them to work where things can get a bit complicated. UPDATE 2021-08-12 - Well, Audacity has been bought out by a questionable outfit and a sensible fork is not yet available. ★
• Aliette de Bodard (2020-06-13) : De Bodard is a prolific and hardworking author of speculative fiction, thought provoking long essays, and a regular newsletter for subscribers. Besides her intriguing work chock full of alternate universes that don't just re-skin the british or american empires, her ouevre includes a wonderful series of recipes which forms one of the major secondary sections of her website. ★
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman (2020-06-13) : An excellent site republishing Perkins Gilman's diverse works online. A complex figure whose work included a wide ranging critique of oppressive structures affecting women and children and people living in poverty, she also struggled to recognize and critique oppressive structures rationalized by racist and xenophobic claims. Considered a heretic in her own day, Perkins Gilman refused to stand still. ★
• AWOL - The Ancient World Online (2020-06-10) : Charles E. Jones' remarkable documentation and signal boosting project for open access electronic publications and resources on the ancient world and supporting the study of ancient history. It is one of the most practical applications of online and digital approaches to cataloguing at work today. ★
• History From Below (2020-06-10) : Excellent and busy blog of ancient historian Sarah Bond, full of great posts for autodidacts, undergrads, and instructors dealing with topics in greek and roman studies and the ancient world more generally. She has been working on a fascinating post on whether "we," meaning citizens of the united states of course, are "romans." The link url refers to "chicken littles," which gives a hint of Bond's acerbic wit. ★
• Uncommon Ground (2020-06-09) : With so much effort going into silencing dissent and general violence in response to actual diversity, it is refreshing to find a team committed to providing a platform for reasoned, constructively expressed views that apparently can hardly be expressed anywhere. Uncommon Ground Media is a private media company, and sets that right up front together with its editorial policy. Well worth keeping an eye on, and you will see articles that raise your eyebrows. ★
• Ethics DB - Spinoza's Ethics (2020-06-02) : Just as the subtitle says, this is a digital, multilingual edition of Baruch Spinoza's treatise on ethics. Spinoza is (in)famous for having been excommunicated by his portuguese-jewish community and regularly misunderstood as arguing for atheism even though he did no such thing. In fact, a much better claim could be made that he was arguing for pantheism instead. ★
• Native Circle (2020-05-27) : An excellent educational site written and maintained by Indigenous scholars and instructors on the basics of actual Indigenous histories, philosophies, and current social issues. Anywhere is a wonderful place to start, yet one of the best is Mascots - The Damage Defined, which sets out in plain language just why "Native Indian mascots" are anything but an honour or honorable in intent. ★
• Project Censored (2020-05-11) : In 1976 a concerned professor founded a project at sonoma state university, california intended to improve the critical thinking skills of his students while opposing media censorship and supporting democratic self-government. Carl Jensen's project has grown since then, providing ongoing critical coverage of news both "fake" and otherwise, annual reviews of underreported stories, and hard hitting documentaries. ★
• Evelyn Rosenberg (2020-05-11) : Have a look at the examples of Rosenberg's personally developed technique of "detonography." What this entails is using a thin layer of plastic explosive to fuse together different metals and other objects in a mould to produce sculptures. Both fascinating in principle and remarkable in result. ★
• Zero Anthropology (2020-04-30) : Founded in 2016 by concordia university-based anthropologist Maximilian Forte, this online magazine takes a multiformat and multimedia approach to the study of the relationship between anthropology and imperialism, as well as the anthropology of imperialism itself. Full of critical and well-referenced pieces by several steady contributors, this is a site well worth keeping an eye on. ★
• Project Continua - Women Who Persist (2020-04-29) : A collaborative female biography archive and ongoing project spawned by the Female Biography Project (further information on the Project itself) in which an international team of women scholars annotated and added to Mary Hays' 6 volume work Female Biography originally published in 1803. The website, founded circa 2014, is busier than it looks, so keep checking back for new biographies. Alternatively, you can check out the site circa february 2015, before the server move that has caused some rendering issues. ★
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2020-04-29) : Despite its rather bombastic title, this project is based at the university of tennessee at martin, and complements elements of the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Similar to its larger congener, contributors must be philosophy professors who take part in a peer review process. Unlike stanford, there is no sign that the project is seeking to draw in non-white, non-male, or even non-united states contributors at the moment. Updates are posted approximately twice per month. ★
• Raceshifting (2020-04-23) : The companion website to Darryl Leroux's excellent book, Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity. It is updated somewhat intermittently at the moment, but its list of raceshifter organizations in eastern canada bibliography, and GIS storymap are all excellent and well worth the time spent exploring and reading them. Start here when trying to make sense of the wild and racist declamations of men claiming to be "metis" east of northwest ontario. ★
• No More Potlucks (2020-04-23) : By its own description "a bilingual online and print on demand journal of politics, art and culture," it originally published issues every two months. Now it releases new work via blog posts and still sells print on demand versions of the earlier issues. Overall it is an intriguing mix of political and cultural analysis with complex and non-cynical art. They host audio and video projects as well as visual and written ones. ★
• Sarah Lucia Hoagland - Lesbian Feminist Philosopher (2020-04-17) : This site provides an excellent overview of Hoagland's research and publications, including a way to order a copy of her major publication, Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value. She is busy with the task of breaking down false definitions of oppressive systems as equivalent to society and insisting on human capacity to make ethical decisions under constrained conditions. ★
• ICU User Guide (2020-04-07) : Even if you have never had reason to script or code anything, chances are that you have encountered date and time format strings and may even have had to use them in spreadsheets. The ICU project is a standardization initiative intended to facilitate software internationalization. But most of us probably just use their chapter on formatting dates and times. ★
• Chaucer's Pronunciation, Grammar and Vocabulary (2020-04-02) : A doughty survivor from the 1990s, this site still has working audio files attached, including the recording of a section of The Canterbury Tales. It is quite useful for anyone trying to read the received text of the tales relatively close to the original pronunciation, and its longer section is worth contrasting with reconstructed Shakespearean pronunciation. ★
• Landmark Ancient Histories (2020-04-01) : If you have a general or more specific interest in ancient histories by authors working in latin and ancient greek, then this is a series well worth your considerations. Each book is a full translation, including extensive maps, sidebar and footnotes, plus essays that dig into specific topics taken up by the historians. A great example is one of the earliest books in the series, an edition of Herodotus' Histories. ★
• Tricontinental, The (2020-03-08) : A website intended to continue the work begun by the 1966 cuban-hosted conference of representatives from revolutionary movements in africa, asia, and latin america (evidently intended to encompass spanish and portuguese speaking portions of the americas). The perspectives on the site are varies, and well-worth reading and considering. ★
• Kari Polanyi Levitt (2020-03-01) : Now retired after a long career as a professional academic economist, Polanyi Levitt remains a key contributor to the interpretation and development of her father's writings and theoretical ideas. In her own research, Polanyi Levitt has focussed on the role and development of financialization and its effects on society and economy. ★
• Karl Polanyi Digital Archive (2020-03-01) : Hosted like the paper archive at concordia university in montréal, québec, this is a thorough digitization project covering the majority of the materials available. Karl Polanyi was of course the famous hungarian political economist who endeavoured to make sense of how fascism and authoritarianism could develop in a supposedly free world in the mid and late twentieth century. ★
• Register, The (2020-02-29) : An all-round news site for all things computers, but an especially valuable complement in its security section to Krebs on Security. They skewer all software and hardware companies without mercy or partiality, but unfortunately the comment sections are rarely as useful as they are at Brian Krebs' site, descending from useful additions and information to shit flinging almost as quickly as at united states-based counterparts. ★
• Krebs On Security (2020-02-29) : One of the best places to watch for internet security alerts, including excellent digests on the latest micro$oft patches if that is the software now mostly advertising company your computer gear is running. His in depth explanations of card skimming and how ransomware works can be a bit harrowing, but worth every moment spent learning from them. Forewarned is definitely forearmed. ★
• Beatles, The (2020-02-29) : A site that is just what you would expect, but as of 2021 full of scripts that hide all the excellent photographs and articles. There is of course a store, and it appears a proliferation of remastered recordings and remastered remastered recordings, reminding us that "the Beatles" are an industry in themselves. An interesting project to keep an eye on is the Peter Jackson edit of the Get Back video recording sessions, although it now seems to have mutated into a disney funded project, again as of 2021. ★
• Ormsby Review, The (2020-02-18) : A publication specializing in reviews of books on "british columbia" topics by writers and publishers based in that settler province. This basic description undersells the quality of the reviews, which include extensive thoughtful essays as well as shorter squibs and links to several other interrelated sites focussing on poetry. ★
• Folger Shakespeare Library (2020-02-18) : Whether or not you agree with their official position on whether William Shakespeare was literally the playwright's name or a pseudonym, it is certainly undeniable that the Folger maintains its place as a key source of information on and related to Shakespearean plays. They have been building up an intriguing selection of digitized materials to complement their own encyclopedia and a stolid online catalogue. ★
• AI Weirdness (2020-02-12) : If you have not yet visited Janelle Shane's excellent blog of posts that illustrate and explain the realities of machine learning via hilarious and strange examples generated by her own experimental work, then you should run, not walk to look at it. Shane makes a strong argument that we have little to fear from "AI" being too smart, but perhaps a great deal from when "AI" is far from smart but also figuratively "trying very hard." ★
• ImageTexT (2020-02-07) : An excellent peer-reviewed open access journal focussed on study of "imagetexts," including illustrated books, comics, picture books, and so on. The editorial team is also pursuing a policy of translating relevant articles in other languages and republishing them. ★
• Make Your Own Astrolabe (2020-02-07) : Another approach to making an astrolabe, including scripts set up to generate templates for your latitude. There are also related plans for building a planisphere and several pdf versions of related papers that are helpful for sharing. ★
• Astrolabe Project, The (2020-02-07) : Still following the intriguing astronomical thread from the previous few websites, this time to look into how to build a version of one of the original hot gadgets of the ancient world. Astrolabes were once standard gear on ships and surveying expeditions. ★
• Webpages on the History of Astronomy by Robert Harry van Gent (2020-02-07) : Supposing that you might want to see the original site that the previous random link is tied to, here it is. In this case the scholar at work is an astronomer working at the mathematical institute of utrecht, who is busy slowly implementing the different systems of ephemeris calculations in javascript. His pages include full references for further reading and unpacking the equations. ★
• Ancient Luni-Solar and Planetary Ephemerides (2020-02-07) : Further to the previous site, ancient astronomers, whose tasks included calculating charts for what would now be called astrology, used a variety of systems for their work. Among the most famous is Ptolemy's, which was preserved in part through the efforts of arabic-writing and speaking scholars while europe was preoccupied with trying to excise roman tyranny and its reflexes. ★
• ephemeris.com (2020-02-07) : This site's free ephemeris generator still works and is great fun to play with. The resources curated there have not been updated for awhile, while remaining excellent places to start including useful potential keywords for searches and good descriptions of software to calculate ephemerides. ★
• Chris Wind (2020-01-24) : Somebody is still working at the Feminist critique of the bible started by The Women's Bible, but even more important, Chris Wind has written numerous brilliant monologues and frankly unnerving short stories. This site provides a sampling of her work and a range of possible project opportunities. ★
• Resistance Radio (2020-01-24) : Derrick Jensen's long-running podcast, in which he interviews activists and scholars whose work is focussed on challenging and replacing the pathologies of mainstream culture with healthier and more constructive alternatives. Neither doom and gloom nor hyper-optimistic, it chronicles a sobre and practical assessment of the challenges we are facing and the many options open to us to act differently. ★
• Bite-Sized Subversions - Challenging Thoughts About Everyday Things (2020-01-24) : Peg Tittle is a vigorously busy philosopher and author, whose website is full of great and thought provoking articles and links to summaries of her books, which include fiction and non-fiction works. The front page is always a great place to start, but if you would rather start from a different angle, try her book reviews. ★
• We Were Not the Savages (2020-01-21) : Daniel Paul is one of the first Indigenous historians to get a major monograph into print that combined both european and Indigenous historical sources to firmly disabuse the reader of the various fantasies about "friendly" and "civilized" europeans entering the lands of the Wabenaki and Three Fires Confederacies. He keeps this parallel site and continues to add more material in order to make the information as accessible as possible. ★