Random Site of the Week Archive (2022)

Where some ideas are stranger than others...	RANDOM SITE ARCHIVE at the Moonspeaker
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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 GNUnet (2022-12-19) : A much-needed project to build a new network stack to support an internet that is not primarily oriented to military, surveillance, and propaganda uses. In other words, a network stack that is actually secure and privacy respecting, as well as resilient and suitable to real life needs. If the current malaise of the world wide web and other familiar parts of the internet are going to be overcome, this project is absolutely crucial. ★ Old English Wordhord (2022-12-19) : A rather fun site by mediaevalist Hana Videen, based around her "Old English word of the day" series and her recently published book, titled logically enough, Word Hord, The: Daily Life in Old English. Truth be told I am not quite convinced about merely referring to "old english" instead of "anglo-saxon" as a means to "decolonize" and make the language and the period more welcome to more students. I think it would help far more to find or write more texts in the language besides the bible and christian poetry. ★ Betsy Damon (2022-12-11) : I first encountered Betsy Damon's work in a book by Elinor Gadon, who was discussing the imagery and symbolism of the performance piece, 7,000 Year Old Woman. Her work is always intriguing to think with alongside Judy Chicago's, because overall Damon tends to prefer a grittier, less polished finish with more evidence of the unruly unexpected. Damon is also a prolific author, with a brand new book out this year, Water Talks: Empowering Communities to Know, Restore, and Preserve Their Waters. ★ Judy Chicago (2022-12-11) : Judy Chicago continues a vigorous and busy artistic practice ranging from installations, paintings, and performance pieces to writing, photography, and classes. Always controversial in the best and most thought provoking ways, her distinctive style and determination to overcome malestream attempts to dismiss her as only the artist from The Dinner Party continue to bear fruit. ★ Heretics, The (2022-12-11) : Website home of Joan Braderman's documentary film about the Feminist art movement, with a focus on the Heresies Collective, a significant participant in what was a worldwide drive contributed to by thousands of individual women and women's groups. All this it is worth noting, long before "the internet" and including extensive adaptation of newer visual techniques and performance modes. Don't miss the archive of the 27 issues of the Heresies journal. ★ Medieval Names Archive (2022-11-29) : Another partly society of creative anachronism inspired site, with a narrower focus on mediaeval naming practices. The site is still active and has at least sixty contributors building up pages of names based on language and culture as well as a notable anthology of articles. It is also well worth checking some of the resources on webmaster Ursula Georges' personal site, including an article that may also be mirrored on this archive, her guide on How to Read a Latin Dictionary. ★ Viking Answer Lady (2022-11-29) : One of a number of fun sites partly inspired by participation in the society for creative anachronism in the united states, this one is of course focussed on the so-called viking age, roughly 800 – 1100 when people from the scandinavian countries decided to try getting rich quick by raiding much further afield. The site brings together an impressive amount of research, and its author and webmaster Christine Ward has also taken pains to make sure it works well without javascript. ★ Thomas Frank (2022-11-04) : Author of excellent studies of united states history, including an important debunking of the claim that populism is some sort of hideous evil. Besides his well-known books What's the Matter With Kansas, The People No and Listen, Liberal he is a founder editor of The Baffler which he worked on until 2010. ★ Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (2022-11-01) : A leftist civil and political education organization founded in 1990, operating internationally. It produces a wide range of publications, brief articles, and multimedia presentations. Among the notable authors contributing to these are Barbara and John Ehrenreich, Nancy Folbre, and Walter Echo-Hawk. ★ Monica Sjöö (2022-10-16) : The central site curated by Feminist artist, writer, and activist Sjöö's family in her memory. It delves into the wider range of her many projects, from her central visual works to her books, including the best known, The Ancient Religion of the Great Cosmic Mother of All authored with scholar and poet Barbara Mor. ★ Monica Sjöö Art Online (2022-10-16) : An online gallery of a selection of Feminist artist and activist Monica Sjöö's visual art works. Prolific and hardworking, Sjöö produced hundreds of paintings and posters reflecting on women's rights and women's rites. This gallery was created and is maintained by her family. ★ Women'n Art (2022-10-16) : Natasha Mouran's site documenting the art and lives of women visual artists. So far many of her posts are for fairly recent artists, including many in current practice with their own websites. Moura is determined to keep this information available and to prevent these women artists from being lost to view at all or again, and so has licensed her site under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. ★ Projet Homère - Le site de la langue Grecque (2022-09-14) : A true tour de force by Hélène Kémiktsi in 2008 and in continuous development and diversification ever since. She includes an extraordinary number of verified resources for all dialects of the greek language, from grammars and dictionaries to translation tools and textbooks. She is also founder of a wonderful project to provide recordings of greek texts via librivox, including ancient greek texts using the reconstructed pronunciation. ★ Contra Chrome (2022-09-09) : A brilliant remix of a comic meant to announce a "new and improved" google chrome that unpacks what a surveillance and general privacy invasion nightmare it is alongside all of google's other products by Leah Elliott. It is currently available as an online series of pages or a 33 page pdf in english, german, and french, with more translations to come. ★ Olympe de Gouges - English Translations of the Original French Texts (2022-07-22) : An ongoing translation project by Clarissa Palmer, herself a biographer and playwright. De Gouges was among the earliest bluntly feminist and highly effective female political activists in early modern france, and as is all too usual has been buried in obscurity under accusations of being a prostitute. She was in fact a bold theorist and social critic "whose vision is still so relevant today" as Palmer observes in her introduction to the site. ★ Stuart McMillen (2022-07-21) : Australian non-fiction cartoonist with many intriguing long-form comics to his credit already, along with a series of shorter reflections on various issues that interest him. McMillen may be most famous so far for his Rat Park Drug Experiment comic and his trilogy (last part still pending) on the The Town Without Television. ★ Shavian – An Alternate Alphabet for English (2022-07-06) : Inspired by a proposal by playwright Bernard Shaw and developed primarily by one of the winners of a competition to develop it, Kingsley Read. The alphabet looks quite like Pitman's shorthand, not least because Read worked with Isaac Pitman. Overall his developed a script that is both alien-looking and aesthetically pleasing, as well as capturing the phonemic representation Shaw advocated. The site is an excellent introduction to the alphabet and the variations in english pronunciation. ★ Women in Book History Bibliography (2022-07-06) : Another important bibliographic project pulling together and annotating information concerning women and print, this time focussing on "secondary sources about women's writing and labour." It began focussed on "anglo-american" materials and is now undergoing an expansion to other regions, but seem to now be struggling with an excessively porous filter and the horrors of squarespace site templates. To work around the squarespace issue, switch to "no page style" for viewing the site generally, and for the bibliography itself, begin by browsing older records. ★ Women's Print History Project (2022-07-06) : A well-annotated online bibliographic database of women's participation in british and irish print culture between 1700 and 1836 initiated in 2015, now undergoing expansion to include north american and french works. For an intriguing and useful overview, ignore the official about page and go straight to project methodology which also briefly describes the project's short essay series and podcast. ★ Linux From Scratch (2022-07-01) : Site that provides an updated version of the like-named book on how to compile a custom linux kernel, ready to add more software from the extensive GNU suite to build a full GNU/linux system. Well worth examining to get a practical sense of the relationship between the kernel and other software, as well as the nature of the software parts of the kernel itself. ★ Canadian Drug Shortage (2022-06-14) : Founded by Jacalyn Duffin to document and seek evidence to explain the growing shortage in prescription drugs in canada, especially generics. A notable example of a drug that is often in shortage but supposedly "doesn't cause any harm when not taken regularly through a full course" is a major anti-breast cancer drug used by women who are working on preventing a the cancer from returning after treatment for an acute phase. ★ Jacalyn Duffin (2022-06-14) : Website of author, hematologist, historian, recorder player, and reed organ buff Jacalyn Duffin. Her book History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction is a standard text and excellent read. She writes periodically on her blog, and posted a striking discussion of Lac Mégantic years after the rail disaster. ★ Web3 is Going Just Great (2022-05-19) : Project by software engineer Molly White to track what is happening in the blockchain/crypto/web3 ponzi scheme and energy wasting racket. Besides coverage of what is going on, she provides critique and commentary. White is concerned about free software, but not quite so concerned about privacy as she uses google analytics, though to her credit she says she is using google's spyware and explains how to block it. ★ nonsite.org (2022-05-08) : A fairly new open-access and peer-reviewed online journal affiliated with emory university in atlanta, georgia in the u.s. The essays are long and diverse in content, often challenging the new fascism and identitarian nonsense. It is intriguingly text-biased, eschewing fancy logos and multiple photographs. ★ Robin Morgan (2022-05-05) : Radical feminist activist, author and poet, editor if the breakthrough anthology Sisterhood is Powerful among many other books, and still raising hell today. This site provides an overview of her career, many publications and political actions, as well as access to her blog, which she updates regularly. ★ Equal Earth Map (2022-04-27) : Hunting for a map to help illustrate an article, I stumbled on this project with its free and open files for printing and other uses with appropriate credit. The maps are well done with excellent colouring, political and topographic versions, and a small and growing number of translations. ★ Official Website of the Tolkien Estate (2022-04-27) : This is quite a new thing online, and remarkably does not overtly try to sell visitors anything. The frequently asked questions page is mostly a central source of all the ways they say no or redirect people to the bodleian library. Instead, it is better to focus on the other sections, which include many carefully done scans and complementary articles. ★ DIY Book Scanner (2022-04-15) : The original place to learn about how to rig up a do-it-yourself book scanner at home, allowing this to be done without such appalling actions as sawing off bindings or putting undue stress on older items. The toughest item to manage is typically the strong, directed light, although nowadays the relatively common two-headed lamps available from cheap furniture stores can help a great deal because the second lamp head is on a flexible neck and can be fitted with higher wattage bulbs. ★ Home Things Past (2022-04-15) : A cousin site to Old & Interesting below, although a bit trickier to navigate as it makes use of a type of blogging software that depends on javascript to do basic tasks. The webmasters understand this though, and have made sure that there is a "categories" menu to get to articles instead. In terms of materials covered, this blog has a slightly narrower range, but many more photographs and diagrams. ★ Old & Interesting (2022-04-15) : A fine and appropriately old-school site with excellent information on older types of household tool and how chores were completed when repair and recycling were not options. They seem to have a particular interest in laundry and beds, but that may be an accident of their most recent series of posts. ★ Cheapskate's Guide to Computers and the Internet, The (2022-03-25) : A solid site with excellent long form articles on how to set up personal web servers, reviews of peer to peer networks and other alternatives to the current corporate internet and dealing with hardware issues. Occasionally very u.s.-centric, but the author is up front about that in a refreshing and honest way. Do take advantage of the rss feed! ★ Glottolog (2022-02-20) : A creative commons licensed online reference and database of information on world languages, including extensive bibliographic material by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Like many similar projects today, the project is maintained in a github repository and is styled using a wordpress template. ★ Senate ParlVu (2022-02-19) : The parallel online channel for watching canadian senate proceedings. In this case the types of proceedings broadcast include senate debates, standing, special, and joint committee meetings, and legislative committees. The last are often the most important day to day to canadians, even though they may be perceived as the most boring. ★ House of Commons ParlVu (2022-02-19) : This is the online channel for watching canadian house of commons proceedings. The proceedings include house debates, standing, special, and joint committee meetings. The previous streams are available as recordings as well, in both official languages – which is actually an excellent resource for learners of both, especially those who would like to improve their recognition of idioms and practice comprehension of faster speech. ★ Senate of Canada (2022-02-19) : Complementary to the previous link, here is the site of the upper house in canada, which is the senate, also known colloquially as the red chamber. Senators are appointed by the government of the day to serve for the rest of their lives, analogous in principle to the house of lords in england. It has recently had many adjournments due to the pandemic, but like the house its proceedings may be viewed online. ★ House of Commons of Canada (2022-02-19) : It seems more important than ever for canadians to actually learn about how their government works – or doesn't – it is not a united states system of government. Even though many of us are able to rattle off that it is a derivative from the british parliamentary system, quite a few of us have gotten confused and refer to united states constitutional amendments when trying to comment on our own constitution for instance. It is worth getting unconfused! ★ openparliament.ca (2022-02-19) : This is an excellent volunteer founded and run site by a programmer named Michael. It is an excellent alternate access point to documents and information that when he started were extremely difficult to access. The materials he is able to provide access to include the hansard back to 1994. For before that, most people must resort to the closed access u.s. website HeinOnline via a public library. ★ Contributions of Twentieth Century Women in Physics (2022-02-03) : Only eighty-three women are covered on this site, but unlike many others intended to improve knowledge of women in all fields of scientific endeavour, their work is the focus. Besides an overview of that work, each entry includes a selection of references from their research and therefore a means to begin learning about what they did directly. ★ Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, The (2022-02-02) : A fine website developed and maintained by Carson biographer Linda Lear to assist instructors including herself and others who wish to improve general knowledge about Carson's work and the important issues she worked on through her writing and speeches. The site is unique in many ways, including an uncompromising description of Lear's point of view as biographer. ★ WWW Virtual Library Women's History (2022-02-02) : An extensive set of pages of links to websites, pages, and electronic materials dealing with women's history and culture hosted by the amsterdam-based international institute of social history. So far the site has not been captured by trans interests and includes an impressive range of materials. ★ Peter Higginbotham's Workhouses Documentation Project (2022-02-02) : A website building on Higginbotham's books, articles, and photographs documenting the history, development, and eventual replacement of the british workhouse and related facilities. He does some important mythbusting, as well as drawing together many testimonies from people who lived in workhouses for varying periods. ★ Site.js Small Web Construction Set (2022-01-06) : Hat tip to Sean Manning at Book and Sword for this one, the base site for the software at the centre of the Small Web Project proposed by Aral Balkan and his colleagues, one of several intended to support decentralization the web by actually making it simple for each person to run their own server and host their own website. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much content still as of 2023. (Alas for his obsessive "cutesy" names and artwork everywhere.) ★ Marge Piercy (2022-01-02) : One of Piercy's most famous novels is Woman on the Edge of Time, but if that is the only thing you have read of hers you are letting yourself down. She has many other books, novels, poetry, and a range of essay collections let alone her blog and other projects. This website provides a great peek at her most recent projects. ★	How Random Is The Selection, Really? Mathematically speaking, not random at all. I bump into websites or webpages that strike me as cool, interesting, useful, or daft enough to have lots of fun with, and feature them. Being as I have eclectic interests, there will always be some thematic randomness, at least until there are enough sites picked out to be in obvious categories, which won't happen for awhile. I suppose you could consider this a hybrid of the blog roll that often resides on one side or the other of the screen on most wordpress blogs that I have read or touched on, and the old time "Links" page that used to be the backbone of the "web" part of the internet. Nowadays I am not sure whether webmasters and contributors spend much time anymore on thinking about how to add to the interconnections between websites online versus waiting for search engines to do much of the work, on top of rss feed subscriptions and the dreaded "social media." UPDATE 2018-07-16: Well, based on the sites I have been pulling together here, I think it is fair to say there are a few categories now. Science, math, and computer applications for a start. I have been adding more and more links to sources that in my view people should be able to read for themselves and decide whether or not they share the usual way the writer or group in question is depicted in the mainstream media. Publishing, Indigenous rights, history, and a smattering of linguistics, anthropology and archaeology. What Happens to Very Old Random Site Listings? If the site is still going strong, nothing really. Blogs and similar sites that have been switched into archives and no longer receive new posts or comments are marked as such once confirmed in their new state. A few sites and blogs now vanished from the internet are replaced by their archived versions at the internet archive. There were two links to pages rather than websites which at long last were rooted out. One was to a profile of Douglas Hofstadter formerly on the stanford university website, now only accessible via the internet archive. Protip, the profile gives far too much prominence to a book Hofstadter cobbled together while grieving for his wife who had died of a fast-moving cancer. The book is not very good and does not compare well to his most famous text, Gödel, Escher, Bach. Alas, Hofstadter has no real affinity for the web and the vagaries of united statesian copyright seem to have stymied most potential responding or homaging works in the vein of the online Library of Babel, which is too bad. The other link is to one of comedian Aamer Rahman's sketches, Fear of a Brown Planet – On Reverse Racism (alt source). This is a link to youtube from before it was served with https, and so does not properly redirect. Interested readers will be best served by searching for Rahman's channel instead. UPDATE: In a blur of unusual search engine success, I have tracked down Rahman's channel. I had no idea he had been on hiatus for seven years, and he has some great new material up.
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