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.

• TheNewHistoria (2024-04-18) : A relatively new project focussed on women's history through the medium of biography. There is a bit of a knack to getting into the main essays, perhaps due to heavy use of javascript. The essays so far indicate a very promising project, even if it is persistently limited to women from "the west" and its few references to what are considered "worthy orientals." This gives the coverage an additional political slant probably not intended by the contributors. ★
• Electronic Intifada (2024-04-08) : An award-winning, hard-hitting independent news site focussed on palestine. There is a wide range of contributors, from early career journalists to seasoned authors and investigative reporters. Contrary to the practice of too many news sites, independent or not, the editorial team eschews lazy reports based solely on anonymous government officials or lightly rewritten press releases. ★
• Michael Hudson (2024-04-08) : The anthropologist and historian of how societies have developed and organized their economies whose work informed and inspired aspects of the late David Graeber's writings on debt. Hudson is a remarkable and truly public-oriented scholar, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, and a prolific author and speaker who strives to make his work as accessible as possible. ★
• European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter (2024-03-20) : An important body currently led by renowned historian Ilan Pappé, centre members and adjunct scholars carry out and present important historical research and analysis of occupied palestine. They actively a secular, single-state solution and develop ideas and approaches to ending settler colonialism in a constructive and longterm manner. ★
• The Mother Tree Project (2024-03-02) : Founded by the best selling author of Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard. If you had the dubious experience of watching Cameron's self-indulgent Pocahontas movie "Avatar," this site is an excellent starting point to learn about real mother trees and their mycorrhizal networks. Its resources include an excellent FAQ page and wonderful bibliographies of relevant publications to the Project and by its contributors. ★
• Spinwatch (2024-03-02) : Founded by Public Interest Investigations to present the results of their examination of a range of activities by people engaged in the so-called "public relations industry" and their involvement in propaganda and undermining of democracy. Their topics include investigation of climate and environmental coverage, conflicts of interest as politicians and activists rotate between political and corporate jobs. ★
• Darwin Online (2024-02-24) : A project that grew from a small digitization effort to what has now grown to a massive digitization, transcription, and virtual library recreation project. The most recently completed section is of Darwin's library, in part with an aim to showing he was not a recluse cut off from the sceintific community. ★
• History of Parks Canada Electronic Library & Archive (2024-02-21) : Oddly enough, this site appears to be a the brainchild and longterm digitization project of a u.s. citizen with an overarching interest in north american national parks. "Odd," because on average even most canadian citizens are not very interested in relatively obscure publications related to national parks and historical sites. The result is an often bilingual collection of resources, especially excellent for tracking down stubborn older references to archaeological reports and park brochures. ★
• Spike Lives - A Biographical Database of the Lives of Workhouse Inmates (2024-01-22) : Another site on the subject of english workhouses, this one another fine database and census analysis project used to try to throw a light on the lives of the people forced to live in one of them, in this case the former Guildford Union Workhouse. The workhouse is now a heritage museum running regular tours. ★
• Theoi Texts Library (2024-01-12) : A modest collection of translated greek and latin texts, good to start with if dipping into the Perseus Project is a bit too much to start from. It is a subsite of the Theoi Project, founded in 2000 to a trustworthy and referenced guide to greek mythology, including myth summaries, image galleries, and various catalogues of deities, beasts, and so on. ★
• Alpennia (2024-01-11) : A surprisingly rare sort of website, for author Heather Rose Jones. She writes primarily fiction, typically historical, historical fantasy, and fantasy. Jones has also been writing, narrating, and producing a longrunning podcast on lesbian historic motifs alongside a major annotated bibliography of same. For the most part she has resisted the recent transmadness and makes minimal use of the slur term "queer." ★
• ArtHerstory (2024-01-11) : A still growing site showcasing paintings by female artists, many of whose works are featuring in more shows and galleries than typical of the recent twentieth century. There is a modest and growing number of artist biographies, much emphasis on the postcard-sized reproductions on sale, and a blog averaging two to six posts per month. ★
• Stalin Digital Archive (2023-12-30) : Stalin seems to be undergoing something of a revival of late, in part due to ongoing efforts to force soviet russia into the same box as nazi germany, but probably in main because the history of the ussr and Stalin's life are still so recent that the fog of propaganda is still almost thick enough to walk on. Hence as more documents and books are declassified and released, they are more and more often being promptly digitized and added to archives like this one. Unfortunately, based on the donor list, this archive will probably not help disperse the fog for most readers. Nevertheless, it can be useful to look at the primary source documents while taking the various interpretations with plenty of caution. ★
• Fungi Perfecti (2023-12-23) : The somewhat conflicted website of Paul Stamets' business selling mushrooms, stock for growing mushrooms, educational materials, and other products. Stamets reasonably emphasizes how remarkable and important fungi are overall, with their remarkable ability to render toxic substances harmless, boost the immune system, and support ecosystem recovery after disaster. It's just that he happens to talk about this in terms of "resources" and "value" and other such capitalistic and exploitive terms at times. ★
• Smarthistory (2023-12-22) : An intriguing project focussed on developing Creative Commons-licensed, peer reviewed materials to support art history and general history related education. It has an impressive number of contributors, although still afflicted with over-representation of people based in northern north america and europe. This is slowly improving in line with their coverage of art, which is consciously multi-continental and extended deep in time. ★
• Lierre Keith (2023-12-12) : A great starting point to get an overview of the work of this storied and busy radical ecofeminist activist who is also an extraordinary writer and public speaker. Keith is perhaps most famous and controversial for her book The Vegetarian Myth, which is a careful and compassionate exploration of why neither vegetarianism nor veganism can save the world, despite the earnest determination of so many who follow those diets. ★
• Gilbert Strang (2023-12-02) : Home page of the revered mathematics professor, including links to his open course lectures and many ancillary documents to those courses. He is best known for his linear algebra courses, and today that is the area of mathematics with the most capitalist interest in it due to its use in building and calculating "language learning models" and what is often lazily marketed as "artificial intelligence." ★
• Feminist International Network Against Artificial Reproduction, Gender Ideology, and Transhumanism (2023-11-26) : In many ways a successor of FINRRAGE, with an updated descriptor to make explicit that the radical feminist activists are aware of the changes in efforts to develop and market various types of pharmaceuticals and genetic manipulations. They are deeply concerned now as FINRRAGE then, to oppose the patriarchal malestream obsession with necrotechnology and destruction of life. ★
• Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (2023-11-26) : This is primarily a historical record site of the radical feminist organization founded in 1985. It started and to this day is still an international coordinating organization for activism opposing the various so-called reproductive technologies and the accompanying forms of genetic manipulation. Its conferences rotated between countries and continents, and its members were so effective necrotech corporations and governments targeted it for interference by using bribes and police harassment. ★
• The Tower of Babel - Evolotion of Human Language Project (2023-10-28) : A wonderful tribute to its founder Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin and now an ongoing online hub for the russian-based project. It includes numerous catalogues of words, languages, and mythological motifs, among many other excellent language study tools. There is also a collection of databases and free/libre software. They have an excellent FAQ detailing who the contributors are, the structure of the website, the nature of the software and databases, etc. ★
• Proto-Indo-European (2023-10-28) : This is the resource hub for the previous site, Academia Prisca. This site provides an easy access for online reading and download of the materials created under creative commons licenses in the Academia Prisca project. The materials include multiple books and dictionaries, maps, and at least one course. ★
• Academia Prisca (2023-10-28) : A notionally international, spanish education company-funded project which is officially intended to spur the revival of the reconstructed proto-indo-european language (PIE). That sounds a bit silly. In reality they are doing an enormous service to linguists working on PIE and its derivatives by creating open access copies of important dictionaries and grammars. ★
• The Canada Files (2023-10-06) : A solid site covering canadian foreign policy and related government and military actions according to that policy. There are many longer read pieces including solid links to readings on related history and technical sources. I highly recommend these at minimum as a great source for search terms to look up detail. ★
• Grover Furr's Home Page (2023-10-01) : Historian and former part-time tech support person at montclair state university in new jersey. Furr is currently probably most well-known for his ongoing research and writing about the stalin era of the soviet union, and he provides links to html and pdf versions of many of his articles on this page. He has also provided a collection of reproduced primary sources for mediaeval studies, among other gems. ★
• It's in the Blood (2023-09-28) : A site devoted to Linus Pauling's writing and research on hemoglobin, with many scans and other relevant media files. It is full of primary sources and presents an account of this element of Pauling's work. An apparently boring and not so interesting foreword includes an utterly extraordinary suggestion about how to handle reproduction by heterozygous sickle cell anemia gene carriers. ★
• Ursula K. Le Guin's Blog (2023-09-28) : In october 2010, Ursula K. Le Guin decided to try out writing a blog, in line with her long practice of writing in a wide range of fiction and non-fiction forms. The result was and is a wonderful archive of posts extending into 2017, now still maintained online by her literary estate. ★
• Special Interest Group for Computing, information, and Society (2023-09-28) : Founded in the 1980s, this a broad-based society created to support information sharing on the history, politics, and nature of computing hardware and software. Resources include syllabi and a modest collection of thematic websites and at least one full translation of a russian history of computing. ★
• Amber (2023-09-23) : One more on the archiving to curb linkrot theme, this time to a less broadly useful but still important free software project. Amber is a plug-in for the two main blog software platforms standing, wordpress and drupal, which allows a blogger to archive copies of external links on their own server. It appears that they also have less feature-full versions for apache and nginx servers. Like PermaLink, Amber is a project under the aegis of the berman klein centre at harvard university and keeps its code on github. ★
• PermaLink (2023-09-23) : It is possible if not probable if you have been participating in post-secondary education in some way, that you have encountered a link that points to a PermaLink archive copy due to the original vanishing from the web. This is a centralized service free to non-commercial, academic, and court users, with subscription options for others and for individuals who need more elaborate services. ★
• ArchiveBox (2023-09-23) : With the web being hollowed out so badly, many of us who have websites and many who don't are concerned about archiving important pages and sites in order to curb linkrot and preserve accurate copies of material that may be deleted for political reasons. ArchiveBox is a free/libre software approach for multiple platforms that is self-hosted, therefore also highly privacy compatible. For the moment the main concern is that the project is hosted on github, a dangerous choice to maintain since microsoft bought it. They may be forced into a hurried move to an alternative git host such as gitlab. ★
• (2023-09-06) : Another fine fountain pen reference, this one founded and maintained by David Nishimura. There are a many additional resources, including for those who want to do such astonishing things as sell their fountain pens. Like the previous random site, its reference section includes well-written essays with illustrations to assist in refurbishing fountain pens, among other tasks. ★
• (2023-09-06) : A lovely site empty of javascript, full of reference information on fountain pens and their repair. Founded by Richard Binder and originally a part of his fountain pen refurbishing and repair business, the site's reference pages include extensive diagrams and photographs alongside a thorough catalogue of brands, filling mechanisms and the like. ★
• Network Time Protocol Project (2023-08-21) : Home of documentation and the free/libre software package for the critically important timekeeping and synchronization software across the internet. Its documentation is reasonably detailed, although they do have a redirect to the current version that is automatic without indicating where the redirect goes to, so do cross-check that. The current documentation series is 4.2.8. ★
• RedSails.org (2023-08-15) : A site founded by several scholars of the genuine leftist sort, concerned with the problem of how to overcome and end a viciously exploitative capitalist economy. The contributors and compilers declare themselves "pro-Stalin (against historical nihilism, anarchism, etc.), pro-China (for their chosen road of Reform and Opening Up and against 'Maoism' and Sinophobia), and pro-'identity politics' (for a broad understanding of class and against the idealization of 'patriotic white workers' as the revolutionary subject, etc.)." If nothing else, it is good to read to see what they mean by these provocative claims and browse their translations of still poorly available works. ★
• Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain (2023-08-10) : Founded remarkably late, in 1998, but quite busy since. Among the society's regular activities is their three-times yearly journal usually featuring previously unpublished work and a series of member-only and open events. They also fundraised and built a formal memorial to Virginia Woolf in tavistock square. ★
• University College of London Bloomsbury Project (2023-07-30) : Many people have heard of "Bloomsbury" in the context of the life and writing of Virginia Woolf, although like most parts of a city as old as london, Woolf's tenure there added to a lengthy history. In Bloomsbury's case specifically, it has a remarkable history of reframing and construction as an intellectual centre deliberately intended to ensure learning and literature were open to anyone of any class or sex. ★
• Michigan Feminist Studies (2023-07-30) : An open archive of the papers published from 1974 – 2010 in the four related university of michigan publications in feminist studies, occasional papers in women's studies, new occasional papers in women's studies, and papers in women's studies. Many classic articles were published in these journals, and the site itself is accessible without javascript. ★
• The Solon Law Archive (2023-07-07) : A truly old-style website in the sense of it being a passion/hobby project for a person seeking to improve a lack of accurate information online. This archive was founded and continues under the aegis of computer information specialist William F. Maton in 1994, it seems in relation to the first version of the ill-named "free trade agreement" between canada and the united states and its extension to include mexico. ★
• National Aboriginal Document Database (2023-07-07) : A remarkable survivor from circa 1999, and well worth looking through before it is finally caught up in a canadian federal server sweep and deleted or archived. The collection of documents was made, coded, and linked up by Six Nations GeoSystems with funding from the Aboriginal Digital Collections Program. ★
• Midwestern Marx (2023-06-26) : A novel and intriguing project and organization in the united states with a genuine understanding of Marx's method of historical and economic analysis combined with a genuine respect for the working class. Their accompanying blog is also reasonably active and features substantial posts rather than the frustrating overviews so common online today. ★
• Canada's History (2023-06-04) : Set aside the dubious title taken up by this "charity" (most of its money comes from corporate sponsors including founder HBC, Molson, and TD Bank) that produces this physical and digital magazine, as it is an interesting window into mainstream ideas about what "canada's" history includes and how best to present it. They favour the pseudo "two nations" model of "canada," including pushing french and english over all other languages. ★
• The Ipperwash Inquiry (2023-06-04) : An important electronic version of the records from the 2003 – 2006 inquiry into the ontario provincial police murder of Dudley George in 1995 during an attempt to drive peaceful Anishinabeg occupants from "Ipperwash Park." That provincially defined park was defined on top of lands the federal government had taken from the Anishinabeg and promised to return. ★
• [British] Archaeology Data Service (2023-06-04) : One of the more sensible approaches to adapting computer programs and databases to uses outside of the military. In this case, to gathering archaeological records that the british authorities consider properly public heritage and that should be systematically preserved. A good example to start with is the records from the excavations at spitalfields. ★
• The People and the Text (2023-05-27) : A major project of documentation and bibliography of Indigenous authors and their works. Phase one covered materials published up to 1992, and phase two materials published up to 2012. The project is not restricted to fiction or works deemed to be fiction in mainstream terms, allowing it to engage with many historical and other books and articles often otherwise ignored, especially for the pre-1950 period. ★
• National Centre for Collaboration in Indigenous Education (2023-05-27) : An intriguing site with many useful links, publications, and information to connect with others involved in Indigenous education, especially language revitalization and history. The links in the resource library are prone to going stale, but so far most items are still available in archived form. Many instructors will be especially interested in the sample lesson plans. ★
• Cat Specialist Group (2023-05-01) : A non-profit organization based in switzerland including many scientists engaged in work to conserve habitat and safe conditions for cat species around the world. Among their modest publication line up is the biannual Cat News and an free to read and regularly updated catalogue of cat species including excellent photographs and text. A basic membership costs 60 swiss francs annually. ★
• On the Woman Question (2023-04-30) : A new blog founded by feminist scholars hoping to reinvigorate the strands of feminist theory and organization informed by the theoretical methods applied by Karl Marx, especially the method of historical materialism. It is still looking for additional contributors. ★
• OpenETC - Free Range EdTech (2023-04-27) : The privacy-invading and otherwise vicious and authoritarian software imposed on students at almost all levels of education today beggars the imagination. This software is also proprietary and primarily designed to mine the victim's lives for data to sell. Principled educators want nothing to do with this, and are working on alternative free software, non-authoritarian, respectful alternatives, as in this project. ★
• Lesbian Home Movie Project (2023-04-21) : A united states-based project founded by lesbians who realized how remarkable it is that turn of the twentieth century lesbians have left both photographs and home movies to posterity. They were on the leading edge of technology adaptation. The kernel the project started from film maker and teacher Ruth Huntington Storm's (1888-1981) reels. ★
• Les faux amis (2023-04-16) : Pierre Igot's blog delving into the topic of "false friends," primarily between french and english. "False friends" are words spelled the same in both languages but that do not have the same meaning or usage. They are not exclusive to french and english, turning up among any pair of languages spoken by people who borrow words from one another and then develop word usage differently. ★
• WebODF (2023-04-16) : One of the follow on results of the recent move to open document formats with their basis in xml, is that it is possible now to produce javascript to enable these documents to be viewed in a web browser. Apparently one of the other possibilities now easy to manage via these formats is online editing in web applications, as usual by taking advantage of client computers to run the code. Part of what makes this especially interesting is its basis in open javascript. ★
• Open Document Format (2023-04-16) : One of the key places to learn about the open document formats, which are an important and necessary shift to overcome dangerous and insecure vendor lock in via the basic sorts of documents we have to use on computers every day. The pdf standard is already basically open, but regular styled text documents, spreadsheets, and slide presentations have only just reached that status. It's a bit fiddly to find the standard if you'd like to have a look, but they are kept online and up to date. ★
• EastmanReference (2023-04-12) : A hand-crafted, text-oriented site built up from pages of practical snippets too often buried in javascript- and css-overloaded pages by the various web consortia and linux players. From a pared down "just the facts" list of html5 tags to applescript key codes to dmg files under linux (this page too) and an introduction to http. ★
• 100 Rabbits (2023-04-11) : The website, blog, and general art project of Devine and Rekka, a pair of artist-programmers who live on a sail boat producing art, music, video games, and an ongoing guide to how to use computers without dependable internet or electricity. They have made a number of interesting choices and done some impressive hardware testing and documentation, including of the best day-to-day practical tools for non-computer tasks. ★
• LAVA - Lesbian Action for Visibility in Aotorea (2023-04-06) : An excellent site full of resources, from reports to relevant links, a pitch-perfect and often very funny FAQ, plus important news coverage and editorial pieces. It has been somewhat quiet recently, but the members for organization have been very busy preparing for their upcoming national census and elections. ★
• Julia Evans (2023-04-03) : A surprisingly rare bird in the world of personal blogs still remaining online, one by a programmer who has a major sideline in producing educational zines. She has been blogging for approximately ten years so far, using a static website rather than a slow-loading database front end. If the index page seems slow, that is due to the external analytics javascript it loads – the issue appears to be the externalness rather than code size. ★
• IndieWeb (2023-04-03) : An interesting project intended to support people creating and maintaining personal websites, including enabling syndication and a sort of "social media-esque" connection framework. It is a sad indication of just how much setting up a personal website has been mystified in order to channel people into corporate silos where they will be crowdmilked. The organization, such as it is, has a "code of conduct" in the current style of these documents, so read carefully before joining up. ★
• hypercard.org (2023-04-03) : A great site documenting the old hypercard format once a killer application and starter coding language on apple computers. Besides covering technical information and history, there are also options for making hypercard usable on modern macOSX systems. There are also a range of different clones to experiment with and use. ★
• Early Women Masters East & West (2023-03-24) : A non-profit site focussed on women artists and spiritual leaders around the world. The site includes many photographs, transcriptions, scans, and an impressive number of references to additional works and accessible scholarly material. Based on references to it elsewhere, the site has been in development for at least ten years. ★
• Persephone Books (2023-03-24) : Founded by Nicola Beauman in 1999 to re-publish out-of-print books, with an office and store now located in bath, england, Persephone Books is a unique business. Being both a publisher and book seller is not so unique, but there practice of in-house end paper design and extension into fabric arts is. They have a modest amount of branded merchandise (all appropriate for a change!) and a free-electronically and modestly priced hardcopy magazine, Persephone Biannually. ★
• The Lesbian Project (2023-03-16) : Initiative founded by Julie Bindel, Kathleen Stock, and Martina Navratalova in march 2023 to contribute to the restoration of lesbian political and social representation and lesbian community. Their work includes research, lobbying, and leading lesbian events. ★
• Org Mode For Emacs (2023-03-06) : An intriguing and well-appointed site detailing how to use the full features of the emacs org mode. This mode provides many features that other editors may achieve through a combination of hotkeys, local macros, and file extensions. Overall, an interesting approach and one some emacs users have successfully used to annotate electronic documents. ★
• Mothers of the Resistance 1869–1870 - Red River Métis Genealogies (2023-03-03) : Another or Norma Hall's extensive research and documentation projects. She seems to place these primarily under wordpress "free" hosting and then deactivate older versions periodicially, so it can be worth running a search on her name and that of the project to be sure to get the most recent version. ★
• Zinn Education Project - Teaching People's History (2023-02-22) : A rich site full of lesson plans and supporting materials for teaching either Howard Zinn's famous book A People's History of the United States and/or teaching united states history in the social history mode Zinn used in that book and his many other publications. ★
• Rain and Thunder - A Radical Feminist Journal of Discussion and Activism (2023-02-17) : Founded in 1998 and online since 2009, publishing articles by radical feminist women, and curating an important and extensive catalogue of resources both on and offline. They are entirely reader- and donor-supported, maintaining editorial independence. It is possible to order their back issues, which typically run around $7-10 u.s. ★
• History in the Margins (2023-02-13) : Besides her own professional site, Pamela D. Toler also posts about a wide range of historical topics as part of her commitment to sharing her research with a broader audience. It is also quite clear that she is having a ball writing and sharing what she finds. ★
• Alice E. Kober Papers at University of Texas at Austin (2023-02-13) : I must confess to not being sure how a brooklyn university classicist's papers wended their way to the university of texas, but so they have. But for her early death from cancer in 1950, Kober would have continued playing an active part in the decipherment of Linear B, in which she had already demonstrated the Linear B inscriptions represented an inflected language. She did this it should be added, via a method combining linguistic analysis with hypothesis testing via hand cut and punched cards. ★
• (women) in Parenthesis (2023-02-13) : The website portal into Drs. Clare Mac Cumhaill and Dr Rachael Wiseman's collaborative research project on the four philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch. This quartet is intriguing for more than their meeting during wwii and subsequent friendship: they actually founded an all-female philosophical school with considerable ongoing influence. ★
• Women's Declaration - USA (2023-02-12) : The place to sign up for united states-specific Women's Declaration International webinars, as well as join campaigns and access resources specific to that country. Lesbian members have recently founded a caucus and written a remarkable and inspiring Bill of Lesbian Rights. ★
• Adrienne Rich (2023-02-12) : A fine site devoted to providing basic access to Adrienne Rich's extensive bibliography, including announcements of new posthumous editions and availability of video and audio recordings of Rich's many readings and performances throughout her career. It is also where to contact Adrienne Rich's literary estate to clear permissions and the like. ★
• International Consortium for Female Sport (2023-01-31) : An excellent new organization founded by female athletes to advocate for and maintain the integrity of female-only sports. They state up front, "Female athlete refers to a competitor who is biologically female at birth and who has not experienced male puberty." ★
• bitsavers.org (2023-01-27) : An astounding archive of hand-scanned documents covering all aspects of computers and computing from materials in the site owner's collection. The scans and pdfs are of excellent quality, and both site mirroring and use of the documents in research are encouraged. ★
• Abacus - Mystery of the Bead (2023-01-27) : An intriguing and long-lived site founded and maintained with continuing updates by Totten Hefflefinger and Gary Flom, of toronto and atlanta, respectively. The site indulges in no javascript or animations while providing extensive information, references, and an excellent selection of pdf documents. The proprietors provide little information about themselves, though it seems likely that they are teachers or historians. ★
• Susanne K. Langer Circle (2023-01-16) : A central site founded in 2020 for scholars studying and working with Susanne K. Langer's philosophical works, many of which focussed on the connections between aesthetics, emotions, and thought. Her first book, Philosophy in a New Key was and is enormously influential and a bestseller. Many, but by no means all. She was an important teacher and activist contributing to projects supporting world peace. ★
• 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, The Word Hord: 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. ★
• The Heretics (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. ★
• The Cheapskate's Guide to Computers and the Internet (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. ★
• The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson (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. ★
• 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. ★
• New England Free Press Digital Archive of Radical Literature - Women's Liberation (2021-12-27) : There are not many documents available here, but the ones there are well worth a look, even the perhaps surprising essay by Isaac Asimov whose reputation for not keeping his hands to himself has survived him. Some of the best material covers early Feminist history in the united states during the so-called "first wave." ★
• The Marginalian (2021-12-25) : Out of respect for Maria Popova's decision to rename her wonderful site full of musings and annotated readings of books, here it is again, which makes this an opportunity to observe she has stuck to the simple site layout and continued to resist ads in favour of subscriber support. Her practice of engaging with older texts that don't always get their due continues. She has published three books of her own, Figuring, the edited collection of authors' letters on reading A Velocity of Being, and most recently her children's book The Snail With the Right Heart. ★
• World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (2021-12-07) : An Indigenous-founded and run organization focussed on insuring that Indigenous peoples have access to education in a manner that respects and supports them as individuals and their peoples as nations. They are a major force in language and traditional knowledge retention developments and run an annual conference and open access journal. ★
• Kristen R. Ghodsee (2021-12-05) : This site was missed earlier this year, and is the excellent overall web home of Kristen Ghodsee's research on revolutionary era russia and its neighbours. Unlike various pundits whose books tend to be more available in bookstores, she can actually read the source documents in the original. Ghodsee is a prolific writer, speaker, podcaster, academic, and blogger with a very down to earth approach. ★
• LatinNow (2021-12-03) : One of those tell-tale, yet nevertheless interesting and useful projects, this one is an eu-funded multidisciplinary group research project on linguistic change in what today we refer to as the northwestern roman empire. Basically think roman empire, but leave out present-day italy and most countries east of germany and austria. There are many free publications, including an excellent pair of guides to roman cursive handwriting. ★
• History of the BBC (2021-12-02) : A solid source of information on the british broadcasting corporation for the most part, bearing in mind of course that it began and continues to be a central propaganda outlet for the english elites. They have an excellent range of photographs and further research links for the more interested reader. ★
• World Radio History (2021-11-17) : A wonderful website in the old style, not fancy and absolutely chockfull of wonderful photographs, articles, and high quality scanned pdfs. This site is a tremendous labour of love generously shared, which covers early radio and television broadcasting, primarily in anglophone countries (u.k., canada, u.s.) and some european materials. It even includes a selection of hand-curated links. ★
• Reveal Digital LGB Publications at JSTOR (2021-11-11) : As of the date mentioned here, the "LGBT" label is not accurate, it was an actual "LGB" collection. Mouse and hover over this sentence to see the list at this time. This presentation of the selected archive items has the benefit of JSTOR's excellent layout and presentation code and well worth the time spent browsing. Then don't miss the many open access items on JSTOR, it's an amazing project. ★
• Framework (2021-10-31) : An impressive project to provide modular, repairable laptops with hardware switches to turn off camera and microphone, including both preassembled and DYI kits. People interested in running linux and not having the latest microsoft OS should purchase a kit. They have three levels of basic set up from least to most expensive. Their prices are comparable to Purism's offerings although without Purism's security chain. ★
• Online Etymology Dictionary (2021-10-29) : A project and website active for just over a decade, providing excellent, documented etymologies of an idiosyncratic and remarkably extensive number of english words. It's free to use and has associated apple and android apps and even a chrome extension. Nevertheless, visitors are able to support the site on patreon or by purchasing some merch at the website's store. ★
• Anne Innis Dagg Foundation (2021-10-21) : If you have not yet had the chance to read any of this amazing feminist zoologist polymath, you are in for a real treat. In her zoological work her focus is on giraffes, and she has also written important works critiquing evolutionary psychology, ecology documenting Canadian women's history, and a lovely biography of her mother, economist Mary Quayle Innis. ★
• Women In Archaeology (2021-10-19) : Founded in early to late 2016, this is a multimedia project celebrating women's contributions to archaeology including a blog, podcasts, and podcast transcriptions as they are completed. They are eager to add contributors and collaborative works, and might be especially interested in a few more volunteers on their copyediting team. ★
• Writings by Carol Hanisch (2021-10-13) : This founding member of new york radical women continues her vigorous activist practise to this day, including writing, organizing, and editing. Some of her work is also in print and hard to find, so don't miss out on picking copies up should they turn up in the course of a visit to your local used bookstore. ★
• Lacus Curtius (2021-10-11) : Bill Thayer's grand project that began as his gazeteer of the ancient roman world, that he has continued to add ancillary resources to. Materials already available include over 50 latin and greek works in the original language and translation, and a range of secondary source materials in english and several romance languages. ★
• The Olive Schreiner Letter Archive (2021-10-10) : An important corrective to the travesty Schreiner's ex-husband created via his publication of edited and manipulated letters she had written. This project digitizes and brings together as many of the proper letters as possible, with new items still occasionally being found. ★
• Donald E. Knuth (2021-10-08) : Those who have had the fortune to learn and use LaTeX – I think that is a a good fortune but have enough sense to realize that opinions vary on the point – or have studied Knuth's ongoing massive series The Art of Computer Programming and even those who haven't are in for a treat visiting this site. It's a practical set of pages and includes some excellent source code, preprints, and a funny and charming section of photographs of diamond-shaped road signs. ★
• Reisman Institute (2021-10-02) : The organization founded by Reisman to continue her research and work against the intense media pressure sexualizing children and normalizing violent pornography – and let's face it, "pornography" should be called sexual abuse of women imagery. There is early and powerful complementary research to Reisman's published in 1984 by Jeffrey Mousaieff Masson, The Assault on Truth, Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. ★
• Dr. Judith Reisman (2021-10-02) : The important and still all too little known debunker of zoologist Kinsey's research, which he used to pretend that children were "sexual" and that paedophiles are not rapists. He is also a key early figure insisting on conflating homosexuality between mature adults and thoroughly inappropriate and criminal rape of children and women. ★
• Denise Thompson, Feminist Theorist (2021-09-29) : One of the best sources of radical feminist writing from theory to history on the web by a longtime activist and scholar whose books are not nearly available enough. See her excellent dissertation Against the Dismantling of Feminism: A Study of the Politics of Meaning for a classic analysis that is as relevant today as ever. ★
• Global University of Sustainability (2021-09-28) : An intriguing project that is multicultural, multilingual and multimedia. Most videos have subtitles, and there is a growing library of open access books and articles. Regular relatively big name participants familiar in the anglosphere include Michael Hudson, David Harvey, and Walter Mignolo. Try starting out with a few intriguing articles, such as Aleida Guevara March's Che's Struggle, Chan Shun Hing's Sustainable Peace and Knowledge Production: The Case of Shanxi Peacewomen or Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem's Philippine Technocracy and Class Politics in Policy Making. ★
• Alexandra Kollontai (2021-09-27) : An intriguing multimedia project seeking to bring together a range of documents and references on the life, work, and theory of prominent socialist feminist Alexandra Kollontai. It includes a podcast and appears to be a project of scholar of russian and east european studies Kristen R. Ghodsee. The marxist internet archive's page on Kollontai is a good complement to this project, and includes a recording of her giving a speech. ★
• Chicago Women's Liberation Union (2021-09-04) : The CWLU, active from 1969 to 1976, was a socialist feminist women's union. Its members worked together for women's liberation, opposing sexism, racism, capitalism, and anti-homosexual prejudice via actions, publications, and recordkeeping. This site makes many materials available in digital form and maintains memory of the union. ★
• Monthly Review (2021-09-04) : Originally a hardcopy magazine, now online, founded in 1949 as an independent socialist publication by Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman. They seek to make all their material available on a rotating basis so that interested readers who cannot afford to purchase a subscription may still read and cite their coverage. They have important alternate coverage of china and russia. ★
• On the Wampum Trail (2021-09-01) : A project led by Margaret Bruchac to relocate and thoroughly document wampum belts and collars stolen and dispersed by anthropologist Frank G. Speck. The wampum was taken from Haudenosaunee and Algonkian communities in northeastern north america mainly in the early twentieth century. ★
• Southwest Ontario Digital Archive (2021-08-30) : A university of windsor project focussed on improving accessibility to digital copies of their primary source collections. There are many images, and a fine collection of newspapers, directories, and year books. An intriguing and diverse collection to start from is windsor and region publications, which ranges from personal diaries to hilariously execrable tour guides. To the developers' credit, the site works well with javascript off. ★
• Annette Carson (2021-08-28) : One more on the theme of Richard III and medieval england, in this case the website of author Annette Carson. A busy author of biographies before joining the Looking for Richard Project, she has added a selection of Richard III related books and translations to her resume. Her blog is full of excellent articles including source notes and cross-references. ★
• Looking For Richard Project (2021-08-28) : The online home and information source created and maintained by the team led by Philippa Langley who actually relocated and oversaw the excavation of the remains of Richard III. They have been badly treated by the university of leicester and the town, which is busy flogging the site of bosworth field and where Richard III was found as a tourist trap. ★
• The Richard III Society (2021-08-28) : An organization whose members are devoted to facilitating a more balanced and accurate reconstruction of the life and times of Richard III, and arguably a better account of the waning years of the infamous english war of the roses. The concern is that the historical accounts be made as truthful as possible, and also I suspect, express a deep (and understandable) revulsion against propaganda. ★
• Josephine Tey - A Very Private Person (2021-08-28) : The person who built and maintains this site remains quite mysterious in their own right while bringing together as much publicly available information as possible about the novelist and playwright Elizabeth Mackintosh. The most famous of her novels, The Daughter of Time, delves into the life and times of Richard III, and whether he was guilty of the infamous murders attributed to him. ★
• Stairway to Heaven Memorial (2021-08-27) : Site that contributes to efforts to honour the memory of the victims of the 1943 Bethnal Green Tube disaster, including telling the truth about what happened and reiterating investigative findings that the victims were not responsible for their fate, nor was the mayor of the time, Margaret Bridger, derelict in her duty. ★
• Mago Books (2021-08-20) : The place to order electronic or hard copy versions of the books written and compiled as part of Helen Hye-Sook Hwang's Mago Academy project and to support academic coursework focussed on Goddesses around the world. Max Dashu has contributed to the 2018 publication Goddesses in Myth, History, and Culture. Hwang is engaged in important translation work both to and from the main languages spoken in eastern asia. ★
• Noam Chomsky Website (2021-08-19) : Originally an intellectual fan site that has since developed into his actual official web presence. It gathers numerous media links to interviews and speeches as well as to some articles and books. There is also an excellent bibliography with ongoing updates of Chomsky's works. ★
• The Anti-Empire Project (2021-08-09) : A site that began as scholar, journalist, and activist Justin Podur's place to present his research and writing online. Since this start he has expanded his work and the site itself into an important host of anti-imperialist articles, podcasts, and links. ★
• Dame Ethel Smyth (2021-08-01) : The indomitable Ethel Smyth has bobbed back up into musical consciousness in spite of the usual attempts in the mainstream to ignore women composers and musicians. Defiant lesbian, feminist, suffragette, and composer, her music is now being recorded. This site provides a solid overview of her life and a fairly complete discography and manuscript list. ★
• Elinor Ostrom (2021-07-30) : Late economist who is also the first woman to have won the Nobel branded economics prize in 2009. Her research focussed on institutions and governance, most famously, the governance of commons, or in her more specific terms common pool resources. She is a unique example of an economist who did both extensive field work and laboratory work, and used the results to update her theory. ★
• Stephanie Kelton (2021-07-29) : One of the recent cadre of economists challenging the economic models and logics and wide use with an alternative approach generally referred to as modern monetary theory or MMT. If nothing else, MMT looks to be better based on and able to respond to reality, as opposed to trying to armtwist reality into matching the theory. Like it or not, reality doesn't actually have an arm to twist. ★
• Hyperbolic Crochet (2021-06-24) : Having just reread Caroline Criado-Perez' wonderful and properly infuriating book Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, I bumped again into her reference to now retired mathematics professor and artist Dr. Daina Taimina, who worked out how to represent hyperbolic space in three dimensions. Her individual works and co-productions are simply amazing. This is her main blog, and she also maintains a photo blog at her Fibre Sculptures blog. ★
• The Institute for Figuring (2021-06-24) : Founded by Margaret and Christine Wertheim, this foundation is meant to support increased public understanding of scientific and mathematic themes through hands on activities and art. Included in its offerings besides exhibitions and classes, is a selection of publications including several dealing with hyperbolic geometry and how it can be represented through crocheting. ★
• FemSpec (2021-06-24) : A biannual, peer-reviewed journal that focuses on feminist, non-realist, sex stereotype challenging writing. The genres covered include magic realism, science fiction, and fantasy. The site includes a blog and cross-references to relevant podcasts. Check out their recent call for papers and their submission guidelines. ★
• The Black Sash (2021-06-17) : The Black Sash was originally founded in the 1950s in south africa, when white, middle class women began working together to oppose the disenfranchisement of "coloureds" and advocate for universal adult suffrage and an end to apartheid in their country. Their organization has never stopped, and over the decades has developed into a far more socially diverse non-governmental body running a range of social programs and still working to build an egalitarian country. ★
• Matrix Open Feminist Architecture Archive (2021-05-27) : If you have read Caroline Criado-Perez's Invisible Women on how data bias negatively affects women, you will have noticed more than one architectural element at play in her different examples. The Matrix Feminist Architectural practice made a point of directly studying women and children's needs in buildings and structures, methods applicable of course to others. Today it is less accepted that a "great architect" knows better and will enforce rightness through their designs, thanks to practitioners like the women in this architectural practice. ★
• Belili Productions (2021-05-22) : Starhawk and Donna Read have been working together since at least 2000, producing documentaries to support their work to bring forth more just and sustainable human societies. They have recently released a film on permaculture, but Belili Productions may be best known to this day for the 2003 documentary Signs Out of Time on famed archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. ★
• DistroWatch.com (2021-05-22) : A colleague recommended this site due to its reputation as a thorough tracker and collator of informed reviews of the range of linux and BSD kernel-based distributions. The site is multilingual, links numerous useful resources, and provides excellent quick descriptions of the various distributions all in one place. ★
• Mary Sidney Did - A Woman Write Shakespeare? (2021-04-20) : Another intriguing addition to the discussion of the Shakespeare authorship question, which notes that it is not only men who can be found with a plausible range of education, interest and translation experience. While the site founder Robin P. Williams does not claim to prove Mary Sidney's authorship, her work begins a further reconstruction of an intriguing literary world in england in the sixteenth century. ★
• Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth (2021-04-10) : A philosopher and historian, Goettner-Abendroth's research and writing focusses on what she calls Modern Matriarchal Studies, I suspect in contrast to earlier publications attempting to reconstruct alternative ways of living evident in the record of folklore and archaeology by scholars in nineteenth century germany. Well worth a thoughtful look, including several earlier publications that can be downloaded as free, but drm'd pdfs. Worth complementing it with the careful contextualizing and skeptical assessment of Goettner-Abendroth's work at The Invisible Male of Matripatriarchy: A Radical Lesbian Reading of Heide Göttner-Abendroth, Am Anfang die Mütter, Matriarchale Gesellschaft und Politik als Alternative (Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2011). ★
• Louvre - Rechercher dans les collections (2021-03-31) : The Louvre has just released an extensive digital image and text database to the web at large. Many people will hurry off to have a look at the paintings and sculpture of course, but have a look at the textiles. ★
• The Eye (2021-03-23) : An intriguing non-profit project intended to contribute to archiving efforts focussed on online and electronic resources. It has some philosophical and content overlaps with the internet archive in principle, but started in 2017 with a community-based basis. ★
• Common Lisp (2021-03-22) : Anyone who has played a text-based adventure game has indirectly interacted with the lisp programming language, which takes the list as its fundamental structure. Solid beginner's tutorials and a selection of mostly free to read online books on the language are available on this site, together with links to discussion fora and several social media tie ins. ★
• Rosetta Code (2021-03-22) : A crowdsourced collection of code snippets to help with learning computer languages. According to the site summary, it includes information for 822 languages, although not all have entries laid out under every example, as is actually to be expected. An intriguing page to start with is the one laying out how to comment code in different languages. ★
• Octavia E. Butler (2021-03-11) : Widely recognized as one of the founding authors of afrofuturism, Octavia Butler's amazing novels have finally begun to get wider recognition and made onto bestseller lists in the past five years. Sadly, this has all come after her death in early 2006. Not all of her books are in print at the moment, but that is changing rapidly. ★
• Mary Anning Rocks (2021-03-09) : A wonderful project working on erecting a statue of Mary Anning in her home town of lyme regis in england. She was a self-taught, working class geologist whose work was flagrantly stolen by multiple rich men since women were not permitted to join or publish with the scientific societies of her time, the early nineteenth century. Anning has had something of a renaissance of late, as she is the central character of the recent film Ammonite. ★
• peertube.org (2021-03-07) : Here is a more specific example of the sorts of things you can find in the fediverse by way of alternatives to google, amazon, and facebook as video hosts. Peertube is a federated videosharing platform with far better language coverage and all the advantages, and yes, disadvantages, of the federated model. ★
• LibreTexts Project (2021-03-07) : A u.s.-based open textbooks project providing nearly 400 free textbooks that are constantly updated and a wide range of ancillary resources. Coverage of subjects other than mathematics and sciences is solid, although still sparse in comparison. Great places to start include the materials for Research and Information Literacy and Sedimentology. ★
• Searx (2021-03-02) : A meta search engine program that can be used to aggregate the results of multiple search engines without being tracked or profiled. It may be used via a hosted instance on an external server, or run from your own server, or better yet your own smart router, as in the case of the FreedomBox. ★
• Join the Fediverse (2021-02-28) : Like it or not, these are dark times, and the extreme level of censorship and groupthink among advertising companies and the majority utterly coopted mainstream media which is leading to more and more people being censored and banned on top of the struggle to engage in constructive discussion and truthfinding. One means of countering these problems is the Fediverse, a growing decentralized network of servers providing social media and other services. This page provides a brief introduction to the network and its purpose. ★
• FreeBSD (2021-02-26) : As its name suggests, this is a descendant of the BSD version of unix developed at UCLA-Berkeley, for older computer users often the first version of unix they encountered, as well as the basis of the modern MacOS. FreeBSD is like linux in its distribution, but it is a whole system and has a different license. Studying how it compares and contrasts with linux is a useful exercise, and a great page to use to get started is Educba's overview. ★
• Plato Journal (2021-02-26) : The International Plato Society's now open access journal of articles delving into the details of Plato's writing and philosophy. The areas covered include reception, grammatical cruxes, and continuing debate about the meaning and complications of Plato's choices with respect to characterization and structure. True to the international nature of its society, the journal is multilingual. ★
• Sino-Platonic Papers (2021-02-26) : Founded in 1986 by editor-in-chief Victor H. Mair to publish studies of intercultural relationships between China and other peoples. It is open to risky and interdisciplinary studies, such as the persistent questions about possible relationships between cultures in the Americas and those in China before the European invasion. Today it is fully free to read and print though not to sell since 2006. It is still possible to purchase hard copy issues of earlier issues where copies remain. ★
• Lesbian and Gay News (2021-02-26) : A short-lived news publication focussed on just who the title says, unapologetically critical of the new homophobia and conversion therapy, running from february 2021 to march 2022, and now its archives are only available on the internet archive. The founders and contributors are advocating civil discussion of the complex political and social issues now in play with respect to sexual orientation, freedom of association and speech, and gender stereotypes. Unfortunately the editors ended the publication's run with a flounce and an attempt to blame the still very new and embattled LGB Alliance for their inability to keep publishing. ★
• Feminism and Religion (2021-02-26) : A volunteer project founded in june 2011 for collaborators to explore and discuss feminist perspectives on and relationships with patriarchal religion and other forms of spiritual practice. Their work includes short blog posts, long form essays, videos, and newsletters. As they state on their about page, the purpose of the site is "to further feminist dialogue while nurturing one another's work, even across our differences." ★
• PirateBox (2021-02-24) : This is the actual project is a central inspiration for the LibraryBox, and like its offspring is based on free software. Due to name similarity and a bit of confusion, the FreedomBox project was originally misidentified as the parent project. Unfortunately the project site will close down soon, though the internet archive has it imaged. The basic purpose of the project is to provide private file sharing and messaging over a local mesh network independent of massive corporations which are propaganda and censorship machines. ★
• Time and Tide Magazine (2021-02-18) : A project website commemorating the originally feminist journal Time and Tide, which had its heyday from its founding in 1920 until 1945. In this time it represented feminist politics in all its diversity and creativity and published a range of important women authors, from Virginia Woolf to Rebecca West. A great place to start is the timeline. ★
• Plasma Universe (2021-02-18) : A great place to learn more about plasmas, charged gases made of free ions, protons, and electrons. Plasmas also make up the vast majority of the universe and generate many of the most beautiful – and most dangerous – phenomena we observe, from solar fusion to the aurora borealis. ★
• Stella Illustrator (2021-02-10) : A great place to keep up with illustrator and political cartoonist Stella Perrett's work, including her experiences of censorship over the past two to three years. Those familiar with small press sci-fi and feminist publications may already have seen her distinctive, finely lined work that if shown in colour is often tinted using pencil crayon. ★
• Freedom of Mind Resource Centre (2021-02-06) : Founded by Steven Hassan to share what he has learned about mind control and the resources he has developed to help people recognize it and how to resist it. His BITE model (also see his dissertation) is not as well known as it should be, especially in this period of social disruption and heavy prevalence of cults and manipulation via social media. For those who have wondered just what they can practically do to recognize and counter the new and frightening sources of influence available today. ★
• Project Gemini (2021-02-02) : An interesting approach to recreating a primarily text-based internet protocol meant for speed and simplicity and resisting privacy violations of all types, while integrating with the existing web. It is quite small and unfortunately based in the united states at this time, but nevertheless is well worth keeping an eye on. ★
• Mathematics (2021-01-30) : It's a bit unfortunate that the title of this page and website is not more forthcoming, because it is about specific areas of mathematics. The selection of items on this starting page is focussed on several functions dealing with the prime and composite numbers, especially the properties and formulae for generating the former. ★
• NoDictionaries (2021-01-18) : Further to reading latin, many students soon find themselves frustrated trying to read while juggling dictionaries and being told they shouldn't need dictionaries except they are still vocabulary building. This site provides texts with adjustable interlinear vocabularies, or students can cut and paste in text to be marked up, all without javascript, with fast and stable results. Viewing options include on-screen, for projection, and print outs. ★
• The Unofficial Lingua Latina Site (2021-01-11) : Hans Ørberg's pair of latin textbooks, Lingua Latina, have their own great following, especially among instructors who emphasize composition and speech in latin as learning modes. The first volume brings diligent students rapidly up to speed on the language, the second sets them loose on Livy's history. ★
• Wheelock's Latin (2021-01-11) : Very few students studying latin in north america haven't encountered the textbook originally written by Frederic M. Wheelock, then updated and expanded by Richard A. LaFleur. This website is an excellent complement, and now all the sound files are available as mp3s – a key changeover since flash went completely out of support on 12 january 2021. ★
• The Sojourner Truth Project (2021-01-05) : A remarkable site setting forth the two transcriptions of Sojourner Truth's most famous speech, one by her friend Marcus Robinson that she checked, and the other more commonly reproduced but far less accurate by Frances Gage. From the text, head right on to listen and watch the readings of the speech by six Afro-Dutch women whose accents likely give a better sense of Truth's own accent and performance cadences. ★
• Said It - Feminist News, Culture, and Politics (2021-01-04) : Founded and edited by Adriene Sere in 1999 and publishing monthly until 2017, Said It was a seattle-based online feminist free speech venue. Sere established it specifically for woman-identified women and girl-identified girls, covering politics, activism, spirituality, and a women's events calendar. Now viewable via the internet archive, it includes classic articles such as Sere's In Remembrance of Mary Daly: Lessons for the Movement. ★
• BC's Black Pioneers - Their Industry and Character Influenced the Vision of Canada (2021-01-02) : First published in late december 2019, this site covers the stories of a selection of 800 Black immigrants who came to british columbia at the invitation of then governor James Douglas in 1858. Their experiences were varied, with many influential community members returning to the western states that many of them had emigrated from, taking up municipal and judicial positions. ★
• Agatha Christie (2021-01-01) : This is a fun addition, being the official online home of Christie's works, from novels, short stories and plays to radio plays. It includes of course the obligatory store with tie in merchandise, hard copy books, and audio files. For free visitors can download reading lists and browse a range of articles and puzzles. Don't look here for copies of Christie's works that have come out of copyright, though. ★
• 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 informatin for women. New material relevant to women's health, information on adaptations and a vigorous commenter community feature on the site. ★
• The Gender Dissidents Survey (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. ★
• The Radical Notion (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. ★
• The Métis Architect (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. ★
• The Gordon Lab (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. ★
• The 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. ★
• The Literature Network (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 late last year. 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. ★
• 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. ★
• The Radical Democracy Project (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. ★
• The Tricontinental (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. ★
• The Register (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. ★
• The Beatles (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. ★
• The Ormsby Review (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. ★
• The Astrolabe Project (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. ★
• Four Directions Teachings (2019-12-25) : Looking for a solid, respectful, properly researched and laid out study of Indigenous teachings shared in an appropriate way, designed with the full participation of Elders from representatives of five Indigenous nations spanning northern Turtle Island? Well, this is just the site you're looking for. Alas the videos are only available in flash format, but the html, pdfs, and mp3s are all there. ★
• Melissa Derby (2019-12-24) : An impressive scholar already making important contributions on the question of free speech, and notions that have become common sense but lack an actual basis in research like inherited Indigenous trauma. She publishes primarily in open access journals and engages in rigorous debate on and off social media. ★
• bibliomania.com (2019-12-17) : It is only fair to give a shout out for this site, which the former employees of the currently dormant company are keeping alive in hopes of renewing their funding. Their whole collection is still available, and it appears that their bulletin boards and related apparatus are still working as well, which is remarkable. The only trick is to delete "frameset.html" from the web address of any page you visit, which will drop you onto the actual page listing the links to the books. ★
• Oxford Text Archive (2019-12-17) : Further to the previous entry, this archive is indeed excellent, with excellent formatting, unambiguous marking of whether a file is available for public or scholarly use, and no demands to create a profile and submit personal information just to download publicly accessible files. Some of their starting texts are from bibliomania.com, which still includes its own selection of unique items. ★
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online (2019-12-17) : For anyone hunting for public domain texts to load up their e-readers or accessible copies of eighteenth century texts, this project of the Text Creation Partnership is a major resource. The works available in html right on this site, with reasonable formatting. For ebook versions, this site recommends the oxford text archive. ★
• (Canadian) Oral History Forum (2019-12-14) : Unfortunately this journal is no longer accepting new articles, but its archives remain available for reading and citation, all under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. As an exemplar article to start with, try out Oral History Research across Cultures and Languages: Reflections from the Study of 'Japanese Orphans' in China and Japan. ★
• eBooksAdelaide (2019-12-05) : UPDATE: Defunct as of 2020-01-07, though still accessible in the internet archive. Alas this is now an archive rather than a growing repository of ebooks, it is a wonderful monument founded and built up by Steve Thomas with the generous technical assistance and ongoing hosting support of the university of adelaide library in australia. Thomas' simple and practical purpose was to provide public domain ebooks in a properly formatted and legible form to eager readers, and the collection includes his own short ebook summarizing what he learned. ★
• Virginia Woolf Blog (2019-12-02) : Founded sometime in 2016 by its primary contributor, Rebecca Beatrice Brooks, writing periodic posts on Woolf's life, books, and sometimes political views. The result is an anodyne introduction that avoids most controversial topics, except those that are arguably titillating to a heterosexual audience, and therefore sharable without necessarily causing unplanned political rows. ★
• Caitlin Johnstone (2019-11-28) : It took me awhile to find this journalist online, in part because I needed to look at her work, observe where she was coming from and the way she supports her arguments, a practice we all need to apply, though yes, I agree, it is work and it is too bad we need to do it. Johnstone is an excellent reporter who shows her sources and doesn't let herself off the hook. Start with her excellent post explaining ad hominem attacks in respectful plain language. ★
• ArchivesCanada (2019-11-25) : This portal website, established by the canadian council of archives, the provincial and territorial archival networks, and library and archives canada is intended to support primarily amateur researchers engaged in archival research. Apart from its bombastic claims that anyone engaged in such research is looking for "evidence on what it means to be a canadian," it is well worth a look in order to learn more about archiving as a process. ★
• Hilary McCollum, Writer, Activist, Playwright (2019-10-30) : McCollum is building a unique body of work exploring lesbian history and experience, including a memoir, two novels, and several plays. She is currently pursuing graduate research work on the recreation and documentation of lesbian history by means of novel writing. ★
• Storm Force Feminists (2019-10-18) : An irish Radical Feminist site with a growing number of articles, including wonderful historical pieces and trenchant political critique. For the moment they are hosted on wordpress.com, so it is likely that they will switch to new hosting soon in light of the growing censorship of Feminists generally online. ★
• New Zealand Texts Collection (2019-10-16) : The texts are all associated with new zealand in some way, and include works by Maori-Pakeha anthropologist Te Rangi Hiroa. It's a remarkable collection, well formatted for online reading, creative commons licensed, with additional formats available for download, including epub and TEI standard mark up files. ★
• Métis Nation Constitutional Reform Portal (2019-10-16) : One of the subportals of the previously featured Métis Nation Gateway, given a specific bump here because it is something quite unique in this day and age. Métis scholars and political thinkers are explicitly documenting the development of a constitution in real time. ★
• Urbane Adventurer - Amiskwacî (2019-10-09) : One of the best blendings of Indigenous knowledge, art, and truth to power in one place you will ever read, listen to, and look at on the web. This site is the indomitable Zoe Todd's ongoing creation, urban Métis scholar who has survived graduate school in anthropology in england itself and is kicking butt as we read. ★
• Erica Michelle Lagalisse (2019-10-06) : If you would like to read Lagalisse's research on "anarchoindigenism" then this is your place to start. More importantly, Lagalisse is now working on a respectful consideration and reconstruction of the history and present use of what are called "conspiracy theories." See both her PhD dissertation and her recently published essay, "Occult Features of Anarchism." ★
• Richard Stallman's Personal Site (2019-10-02) : Felled from leading the Free Software Foundation by the backlash to his comments on details of a growing sex scandal implicating mit funders and faculty, Stallman has long been a controversial figure for founding the Free Software movement and his penchant for highly inappropriate jokes. I include his site here because again, it is important to read the original when we are being told we should banish someone from speaking in public or expressing a divergent opinion. ★
• Cygnus-x1.net (2019-09-27) : An impressive Star Trek tribute site full of blueprints, screen grabs, and references and such. A great complement to memory alpha and memory beta for anyone looking to spend some time happily geeking out on the various television series, movies, and a range of tie-ins. ★
• Ladyslipper Music (2019-09-24) : The premiere catalogue of women's music, crossing genres and including some international material, plus an online music store with both physical media and downloadable tracks. The organization is a non-profit intended to raise the profile of women's music via promotion and contributions to archiving at various libraries in part by means of their remarkable and growing annotated catalogue. ★
• Alix Dobkin (2019-09-24) : If you haven't had an opportunity to hear Dobkin's music and you enjoy folk music, then you are in for a treat. Her recording career began in 1973, and she has continued recording and touring ever since, alongside a rigorous schedule of activist and music business development work. She also has a new memoir coming out soon. ★
• LilyMaynard.com (2019-09-21) : Undaunted by the ongoing campaign of censorship of Feminists and gender critical women on wordpress.com that led to the deletion of her website without warning, Maynard has moved to her own domain name and besides setting up her site again continues to write excellent long form posts. If you are looking for respectful, compassionate, non-technical, no bullshit discussions of "gender identity" and its ancillaries, her site is a wonderful place to start. ★
• BC Open Education (2019-09-05) : A broad consensus is growing among instructors that "open textbooks" and ancillary materials are key to post-secondary education. First and second year university texts are expensive and change quickly, making them a barrier to both instructors and students with tight budgets. These Creative Commons licensed materials are meant to provide a reasonable work around for both issues. They provide a ready access to the text collection, although unfortunately it needs javascript enabled to view items beyond the firts six or so. ★
• Legit Indigenous Lit (2019-09-05) : Founded by two instructors at the university of saskatchewan, the site identifies works by actual Indigenous authors that may be taught and referenced in english and history classes. This means that most of the books were published post 1990 or reprinted post 1990, so many older gems are not featured yet. ★
• N.K. Jemisin (2019-06-12) : I am ever so slowly catching up with SF/F writing and writers again, and so am of course hilariously late to the ranks of fans and followers of N.K. Jemisin. Not for lack of effort by the wonderful editors of Octavia's Brood to be sure. If you want to see cutting edge SF/F, Jemisin is emphatically one of the first authors to check. ★
• Women's International News Gathering Service (2019-05-31) : A remarkable project that has been going for twenty five years strong, put together by women building a regular news program made available online and broadcast on a range of radio stations throughout the world. Led by Frieda Werden, the collective produces six newscasts a year and maintains important physical and online archives. It can seem a bit of a puzzle to listen to the programs online, but luckily WINGS is also a member of archive.org, where so far the completed programs back to 2008 are posted. ★
• Gift Economy (2019-05-28) : The current capitalist economy is dying one way or the other, and if we want something different and better, preferably before industrialization destroys the conditions the majority of beings on Earth need to live, people need to have new practical ideas in progress yesterday. Many contributors to Genevieve Vaughan's site are busy with just that, building on a whole range of earlier material from numerous "non-western" sources. ★
• Sekhmet Temple (2019-05-28) : It can be tricky to find serious work on developing alternate approaches to spirituality rather than the unending pile of new age nonsense and theft that is so rampant in much of the world, especially the united states. Nevertheless, there are people hard at work out there, including the priestesses of the Sekhmet temple in nevada, who continue the work in a foundation made by Feminist economist Genevieve Vaughan. ★
• Emily Dickinson Archive (2019-05-27) : One among a whole range of websites designed to provide access to high quality scans of original manuscripts by authors considered more or less enigmatic. The stories swirling around Dickinson, portrayed by turns as a recluse unable to cope with the world and as a poet incapable of coping with publication have pretty much nothing to do with her or her poetry. This site is an intriguing companion to Cristanne Miller's Emily Dickinson's Poems: As She Preserved Them. ★
• Jake Thomas Learning Centre (2019-05-24) : Jake Thomas was a major Haudenosaunee historian, whose document and book collection is still undergoing digitization. Before his passing he oversaw the creation and printing of an ongoing series of books, pamphlets, and videos. Yvonne Thomas, his partner, continues to run the centre including overseeing its offerings of workshops on beading and weaving. ★
• Sister Outrider (2019-05-24) : Claire Heuchan's blog, currently precariously hosted by wordpress.com. As her site's subtitle notes, it is all about "A Black Radical Feminism." Heuchan has bounced back after a writing hiatus enforced by depression and a need for a digital detox, which she discusses frankly in one of her most searing posts. She also contributes to AfterEllen, and is not to be missed. ★
• Colossus, The Secrets of Bletchley Park's Codebreaking Computers (2019-05-24) : This site has been around for awhile, and is an excellent introduction to the book. It provides a range of additional resources, including audio and an extended description of the original Colossus with welcome signal boosting of its primary engineer Thomas Flowers, who all too often gets left out and never did get adequate recognition for his role in the creation of Colossus in his lifetime. ★
• MeetingGround Online (2019-05-21) : A remarkable and gently growing site working through the interconnections between capitalism, identity, politics, labour, racism, theory, Feminism, women's liberation, and work, to quote their own byline. Writers have been contributing excellent posts since early 2014, with a strong tie to practical organizing via its origin as a paper magazine in 1977. So far it looks like they are independently hosted, so don't let the references to wordpress.org alarm you. ★
• TimMurphy.org (2019-05-21) : An excellent place to look for LaTeX tips with alternative and sometimes much clearer explanations than standard package documentation. Murphy also writes extensively on a range of computer languages, several different flavours of gnu/linux, and a few other topics. Based on the "most popular" posts list though, it is his LaTeX documentation and examples that are most used. ★
• Frode Weierud's CryptoCellar - Cryptology and Its History (2019-05-20) : A solid website established approximately twenty years ago. It is full of useful links and copies of declassified documents, as well as reports of new projects to rebuild older versions of coding machines. Quick eyed readers will recognize the basic principles at issue today, including concerns about privacy, adequacy of random number generators, and the application of prime and relatively prime numbers. ★
• Sally Roesch Wagner (2019-04-02) : A key builder and restorer of women's history, from challenging attempts to erase the brilliant Radical Feminist activist and scholar Matilda Joslyn Gage to honouring the Haudenosaunee women's influence on the early Feminist movement in the united states. Arguably Roesch Wagner has taken Gage as a role model, considering she is an activist, historian, and leading scholar herself. ★
• The Institute of Feminist Thought (2019-03-24) : A new project from Jane Clare Jones, in which she is providing online courses, including readings and discussions. The first offering is scheduled for april, and it sounds like interested women are already asking for additional courses such as one on the vexed subject of "french feminism" – a label which does not necessarily correspond to people from france engaged in Feminism, astonishingly enough. ★
• Rise Up! A Digital Archive of Feminist Activism (2019-03-02) : An ongoing project focussing on canadian Feminist activist materials dating from the 1970s to the 1990s. It is another key part of the effort to document the range of documents and items produced and used during these critical decades, from newsletters and buttons to t-shirts and flyers, and includes an option to contribute by scanning and uploading documents. ★
• south africa truth and reconciliation website (2019-02-11) : For awhile this site was in frames, so older links to transcripts, the overall report, articles and so on generated and put online by the south african truth and reconciliation commission are now broken. This link looks to be stable and all resources remain available. ★
• South African History Online (2019-02-04) : One of the premiere sources for researchers brand new to learning about south africa in general, as well as about apartheid specifically. Besides excellent general articles suitable for older highschool and undergraduate students, it links to numerous primary documents and the major cousin project Digital Innovation South Africa. This specific link is to a page with the search box for the overall archive, which can sometimes be tricky to find. ★
• South African Democracy Education Trust (2019-02-04) : This trust works on writing and making available historical materials describing the process of change from apartheid south africa to the increasingly democratic and multi-racial country today. Besides sample chapters of the 7 volume and still growing history, the site indexes interviews, letters, and links. ★
• "I Saw a Nightmare..." Doing Violence to Memory (2019-02-04) : The online version of Helena Pohlandt-McCormick's book on the 1976 Soweto Uprising in south africa. It is a gripping work including multiple lines of narrative in an effort to give the reader a chance to think through the varying stories of the uprising, and which accounts they find plausible. It is part of columbia university press' gutenberg-e site, which is now open-access. If you are experiencing difficulties with the home page, the best place to start reading from instead is the site map. ★
• medievalbooks (2019-07-11) : With regular posts on medieval books, their construction, how they were written, and cutting edge research, Erik Kwakkel's lavishly illustrated blog is well worth a visit. Note especially his articles on page structure, bookmarks, and how people added notes to their books, all relevant today and a welcome perspective on how people use the affordances of physical books. ★
• Reading Marx's Capital With David Harvey (2019-07-04) : So, you've decided that you're going to read Marx's Capital for yourself and make up your own mind about what he sets out and argues. There's no need to do this alone, because you can take advantage of David Harvey's lectures that move along with you all the way into volume 3, without any need to go through itunes or google unless you really want to. Harvey is of course a well-known expert on the text, which he has been teaching for over forty years. The videos of the lectures are hosted on this site, youtube, and the internet archive. ★
• jofreeman.com (2019-06-27) : Radical Feminist political scientist Jo Freeman is the author of many germinal works, including the BITCH manifesto and the still standard starter textbook in many women's studies departments that have survived, Women: A Feminist Perspective. She is also well worth reading on the realities of "meritocracy" and academic precarity. ★
• Convict Voyages (2019-06-20) : Drawing together numerous essays, maps, blog posts, and analyses of the use of "transportation" of convicts as a means of at minimum "removing excess population" and at maximum exploiting convicts for their labour overseas. In other words, a growing study of the results on one hand of criminalizing poverty, and on the other treating other peoples' homes and lands as dumps for people deemed "surplus." ★
• Dibaajimowin (2019-06-13) : An amazing storytelling project involving mainly Métis and Anishinaabeg participants at the moment. Their purpose is to provide yet another means to record and share the stories that have and will continue to help Indigenous nations and communities survive into the future. ★
• Standing For Women (2019-06-06) : Pushback is growing against the latest misogynistic backlash technique, which involves pretending that forcing people to embody sex-based stereotypes is somehow liberatory. This site and organization was founded by Posie Parker, famed and brilliant "accidental activist" to contribute to that important pushback and generally stand up for women's rights. ★
• Websters' First New INTERGALACTIC Wickedary of the English Language, Conjured by Mary Daly in Cahoots with Jane Caputi, hacked by Madrid Tenant (2019-05-30) : An intriguing early hypertext project now held in the internet archive, produced as a chapter in a master's thesis project by Madrid Tenant. Besides the intriguing radical lesbian Feminist aspects, the way this site applies a database and script access approach to the manipulation of hypertext data is prescient. It is in fact early enough in time that in order to create the bread crumbs for each exploration of the Wickedary scripting is required because cookies were not implemented. The starred link is to an archived version. ★
• thecorporation.com (2019-05-23) : This site is still going strong, and the relevance of the award-winning documentary and Joel Bakan's original book is greater than ever. It is possible to view and/or download both parts of the documentary from the internet archive, and most public libraries hold copies as well. Apparently a sequel is in the works that will look at the changes since 2003. ★
• Phyllis Chesler (2019-05-16) : Home on the web of brilliant, fierce, and still working everyday Feminist activist and theorist Phyllis Chesler. She has been hard at work since the 1970s, including controversial examinations of the part of the Feminist movement she is part of. Her writing and speeches include a deeply encouraging and helpful exploration of how unreasonable it is to expect to agree with one another about everything and the absolute necessity to be brave and refuse to engage in trashing. ★
• Chicago Women's Liberation Union Herstory Project (2019-05-09) : Women documenting their own movement and curating it online for themselves, now from their own domain name. Alas they are using square space and so have a temperamental menu system, but it can generally be worked around with little trouble via a search engine or simply viewing page source to pick out the links. ★
• Feminist Theory Reading Group (2019-05-02) : I will be pleasantly surprised if this site continues to survive automattic's ongoing attempts to censor Feminist and gender critical discussion wholly from its platform, which is now too big to be treated as an ordinary private business like a bookstore. Contributors read excerpts of classic Feminist works and other relevant works for themselves and comment on and discuss them. Of course this means that they don't necessarily agree with the arguments made in the excerpts or even completely among themselves, in an excellent example of civil discussion and making an effort to read the original fairly and critically. ★
• Jane Clare Jones (2019-04-26) : Blog of Feminist philosopher, teacher and activist Jane Clare Jones. Brilliantly funny and constructively thought-provoking, including wonderful footnotes and clear references. She has also done some intriguing work on Prince and how he was represented by the mainstream media versus how he represented himself. The posts categorized under Feminism are of course a great starting point. ★
• Framasoft (2019-04-19) : A nonprofit french organization working to implement non-corporate controlled web-based tools. Their projects include mirroring repositories of free software, music, and books, as well as providing alternate privacy respecting alternatives to many online collaboration and development tools. Also check out their tiny but promising publishing wing. ★
• Harriet Taylor Mill (2019-04-12) : A focussed resource bringing together a brief biography of Taylor Mill, contextualizing her philosophical brilliance and activism. Other materials include a bibliography, chronology, a separate bibliography of her writings, and related links. Unusually, but telltale because Taylor Mill was of course, a woman, there is a page of photographs as well. ★
• Musica Femina (2019-04-05) : Not the austrian museum exhibit, but the duo of Janna MacAuslan and Kristen Aspen who write classical music and recover and reperform classical music by women. They began working together in 1981 and have released at least three albums as well as pursuing an ongoing extensive tour schedule. The bibliography on their site is an important resource. ★
• Lesbian History Group (2019-03-28) : Online home of the resurgent group of organizers and researchers who helped prevent the erasure of lesbian history and lesbians from history. Today their efforts are desperately needed, especially in light of recent attempts to claim lesbians and any other women who did not perform according to sex role stereotypes were in fact men. Check out the resources page for access to pdfs of classic and controversial articles. It has also managed to survive the censorship regime at automattic to date, but don't be surprised if they end up finding a new online home soon. ★
• Women's Liberation Music Archive (2019-03-21) : An unpleasant but also unsurprising phenomenon is the widespread attempt to delete the Women's Liberation Movement right out of the history of the 1970s and 1980s, complemented by mockery of the creativity that accompanied and accompanies Feminist activism. This website counters such nonsense and provides biographies, descriptions, and access to a vast catalogue of samples. ★
• Métis Nation Gateway (2019-03-14) : A portal site designed to bring together links to historical and cultural resources and websites. Material generally dates post 2005, and so generally this a solid research starting point, and includes forms and information for visitors to contribute relevant information thet may have found in the course of their own research. ★
• Big M Musings (2019-03-07) : Momentarily quiet blog of Métis sociologist Chris Andersen due to his extensive leadership responsibilities, well worth reading older posts on matters related to his research on the settler efforts to control and manipulate the term "Métis" and the consequences of those attempts and Métis resistance to it. If the few blogposts here are not enough, your next port of call is his excellent book, titled simply Métis. ★
• json.org (2019-02-28) : There is almost an embarrassment of mark up languages for the purpose of easing data exchange where that makes sense. JSON is another one, with an acronym expanded as "javascript object notation" which apparently refers to it using an object-oriented representation style from that scripting language. This is the site to see the grammar and download the specification document for it, if desired. ★
• Joy Harjo (2019-02-21) : Poet, musician, and scholar only begin to touch on the wide range of work and practice of this Mvskoke powerhouse. Her books include the edited anthology Reinventing the Enemy's Language, featuring a wide range of Indigenous women writers and her blog is far more than a shingle to hang upcoming tour dates on. ★
• The Phrasefinder (2019-02-14) : A long-time resource on the web, founded in 1998, this is a site full of brief articles describing the meaning and origins of idioms, expressions, and sayings in english. A go to source when an american friend stops you short with the startled question, "what does that expression you just used mean anyway?" ★
• GNU Grep 3.0 (2019-02-07) : If you use grep at all, and have made it through the first few weeks of teeth-gnashing frustration that getting used to its syntax invokes, then you have had the happy experience of discovering how much work it saves you and how many other programs you use include pattern matching facilities. It is available in many *office forks, and even micro$oft has added them to word. This manual is a short introduction and memory refresher. ★
• Grote's Notes to Wheelock's Latin (2019-01-31) : If you are preparing to take latin and have not studied ancient greek or plan to study it concurrently, and your first language is english, you may find these notes of considerable help. Dale Grote wrote these notes to fill in the overt grammar knowledge that many english-speaking students no longer bring to latin or ancient greek classes, and which therefore slows them down and makes the learning experience quite frustrating. All made available for free. ★
• Cree Literacy Network (2019-01-24) : Founded in 2010, this is the website of a determined group of Cree speakers and scholars who are bringing together a detailed index of Cree language resources and complementary blog posts. If you aren't subscribed to the most popular social media outlets, you can still see republished posts from them by network members, including Neal McLeod's 100 Days of Cree in the original. ★
• MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive (2019-01-17) : Founded and still mainatained by John O'Connor and Edmund Robertson of the school of mathematics and statistics at the university of saint andrews in scotland. "History" is in the broad sense here, including not just the development of mathematics over time and capsule biographies of thousands of mathematicians, but also curve data and cross-references into astronomy. ★
• literarydevices.net (2019-01-10) : Reasonably solid glossary of terms and techniques used in lyric poetry and rhetoric. A considerable amount of work has gone into it, including examples and related blog posts, yet it is difficult to find any sign of the people who run it even in the Nicolas Bourbaki sense. The blog posts are not overtly dated, so it is hard to say how often the site changes, but at minimum it is consistently available and can be cited. ★
• Citations féministes (2019-01-03) : A growing archive of citations of radical Feminist thinkers in both french and english, including a range of translations and excellent scanned texts and photographs. It is a project of the blog Sexisme et Sciences humaines – Féminisme, which works to reveal sexist mechanisms that maintain women's oppression so that they can be destroyed. I suspect that it will move off of wordpress.com soon, if it hasn't already. ★
• Language Creation Society (2018-12-27) : A serious ongoing non-profit society intended to promote and support the construction of languages. It is evident that it has expanded into a somewhat wider remit than this, with strong ties to linguistic research and study of language change. There is an excellent resource listing including links to some useful books and materials, and best of all link to the adjunct blog fiat lingua, an archive of longform conlang articles. ★
• Through the Flower (2018-12-20) : The Feminist organization founded by Judy Chicago "to educate a broad public about the importance of art and its power in countering the erasure of women's achievements." It started as a way to fundraise for the monumental Dinner Party project, which to this day is lauded and pilloried by turns, yet is one of the greatest works of Feminist multi and interdisciplinary history ever realized. ★
• Rogue Classicism (2018-12-13) : Another great and idiosyncratic resource online, this one written and curated by David Meadows. The site is full of good links, posts about greek and roman literature turning up in surprising places and adapted by people who might not be who you would expect. He updates fairly regularly, and has been building up listings of useful podcasts as well. ★
• Get the L Out (2018-12-06) : It is a sad fact that the only people looking out for lesbians is lesbians, and this is a key source for information on new developments as lesbians leave the so-called "LGBTQT+ good for anyone but women" movement. Great links and important information on recent protests that doesn't repeat misogynist talking points provided by people claiming to that stating the facts about being a lesbian is "transphobic." ★
• Memory Alpha (2018-11-29) : The prime fan-built and fan-maintained site for star trek fans. They are entirely ecumenical, covering the latest movies as well as the short-lived cartoons and various comic book and tie-in novel series. To date it shows no sign of the unfortunate editing wars and problems that wikipedia has to deal with, and I find it generally more navigable than memory beta which positions itself as focussed on non-canon works. ★
• Warrior Publications (2018-11-22) : A site serving many purposes, to "promote warrior culture, fighting spirit, and resistance movements" in Indigenous Nations, to provide analysis and news coverage of anti-colonial struggles, and a historical archive of relevant articles and documents. Well worth reading for an Indigenous perspective on current important anti-colonial developments. ★
• Derrick Jensen (2018-11-15) : Prolific author and environmental activist. He is among the very few non-Indigenous people who looks directly at mainstream culture and states bluntly that "civilization" not only has to end, it is ending, and the question now is how humans are going to cope with that. I have encountered strange claims that he is misanthropic, but this term can only be applied to him if the only way we can imagine humans being is as valuing money above all other things and ways of being right down to the basics of life itself. ★
• Julie Bindel (2018-11-08) : A major Feminist activist who works to end violence against women and children, co-founder of Justice for Women, and prolific author of books, articles, and papers. Her work is well worth reading and thinking through, regardless of whether or not you agree with her because she is an excellent writer who sets out her arguments in a clear fashion, which is all too rare in this strange age of "queer theory." ★
• Prickly Paradigm Press (2018-11-11) : One of several attempts to reestablish critical pamphlet literature in the relatively mainstream press, this one a reincarnation of a small press founded by anthropologists Keith Hart and Anna Grimshaw in 1993 in england. This version is based in chicago and run by a small team of scholars supported by university of chicago press. The range of topics is wide, and more of the pamphlets are being made available as free pdfs over time. See David Graeber's on Anarchist Anthropology. ★
• Spinifex Press (2018-11-04) : A Feminist press founded in 1991 by Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein with over 200 books in print in multiple formats. Among the first presses to have a website and online ordering, Spinifex takes a firm Feminist position and has taken a leading role in organizing in Feminist publishing, helping bring it through the 1990s backlash. They have recently established a pamphlet series, "Spinifex shorts" to provide solid introductions with references to a range of topics from publishing to surrogacy. ★
• Exploring European Folkdance History (2018-10-27) : Elizabeth Wayland Barber is an archaeologist, philologist, choreographer, and dancer whose remarkable corpus of work includes books exploring the deep history and development of textiles, how knowledge is encoded and handed down in oral tradition, and the ways we can cautiously reconstruct aspects of the most ancient cultures via careful linguistic analysis. She has a dry sense of humour and no mercy for nonsense, which makes all of her books, including the formidable Prehistoric Textiles wonderful and absorbing reads. Her website is an excellent introduction to her work. ★
• Shekon Neechie (2018-10-20) : An absolutely brilliant Indigenous history website built and contributed to by Indigenous historians using multiple media, Indigenous scholarship, and where constructive, mainstream sources and approaches. It debuted in june of this year, and contributors needn't be academically affiliated, quality of work is what counts, and that includes work that may use non-mainstream presentation approaches. ★
• Sheila Jeffreys (2018-10-13) : As you would expect, Jeffreys' official homepage, featuring her books and a range of articles. It includes video and audio recordings well worth the time spent with them. She has been an active lesbian Feminist for many years, and continues to serve as a key gender critical speaker and writer since her retirement from academia. The current most recent update is from 2014, but there should be new postings soon because Jeffreys has a new book coming out in august 2018. ★
• Lesbian Herstory Archive (2018-10-06) : An american, grassroots lesbian archive founded in the 1970s by a feminist collective and supported to this day primarily by thousands of hours of volunteer work and dollars of donations. This amazing work of lesbian herstory recording and archiving is more important everyday, and especially now in a time of resurgent attempts to delete any acknowledgement whatsoever of lesbian existence. ★
• First Nations Periodical Index (2018-09-29) : An index of journals dealing mainly with Indigenous scholarship by people working in Turtle Island between 1999 and 2006. In effect, it was updated as part of a Saskatchewan Indian Federated College project as the college transition into the First Nations University of Canada. It does not appear to be updated, although it remains freely available for use. ★
• ProjectEuclid (2018-09-22) : Founded as an affordable platform for small scholarly publishers to make work electronically available in mathematics and statistics by cornell university library in the early 2000s. Since then, it has developed a significant open-access component, according to its documentation more than 70% of the journal articles are available for any interested person to read online. ★
• jasonhickel.org (2018-09-08) : Blog of london-based anthropologist and author Jason Hickel, who may now be most famous for working hard against the manic insistence that the only way to stave off the collapse of the environment we humans find easiest to live in is to double down on extractive economics, especially late stage capitalism. He is well worth reading because he provides citations and actual arguments rather than hand waving and faith statements. ★
• LowImpact.org (2018-09-01) : A more regularly updated complement if not alternative to lowtech and notech magazines, both of which are not as critical of the absurd perpetual motion machine model of economics so rampant currently. Includes extensive useful blogposts and links to free, used, and new books that help share information. The blog is the online face of an ongoing on-profit organization and cooperative community in england. ★
• Database of canada's[sic] Early Women Writers (2018-08-25) : An excellent project, slightly problematic title aside, that will take the curious browser well past the usual tiny number of women writers held up as examples in english classes, in many cases including women who were certainly writers but would contest any attempt to characterize them as "canadian." Carole Gerson of SFU recently wrote an excellent brief introduction to this database and its origins. I can't believe there isn't a parallel project for women writers in french within canada at least in the developmental stages. ★
• Provisional Government of Assiniboia (2018-08-18) : Another website by Norma Jean Hall, though I am not quite sure why it is a whole separate site. Regardless, her purpose, which is "Acknowledging the Contribution of Original North American Peoples to the Creation of Manitoba" is a striking one. Besides articles and analyses that the reader may of course have many questions about, she has scanned and uploaded primary sources plus transcriptions. At the moment this is one of the best places to find additional parish and area maps from the period of the northwest resistance. ★
• doing canadian history n.0 (2018-08-11) : The web archive of documents, papers, and various related materials developed by scholar and visual artist Norma Jean Hall. Her area has a typical focus on the hudson's bay company, specifically its shipping. The few articles are long and fully referenced, and Hall has included several extensive bibliographies. She does not appear to update regularly, although she does keep an eye on the comments.. ★
• Hypotaxis (2018-08-04) : A much quieter corner of the blogosphere these days since Hypotaxis has already completed an important series of posts about the new misogyny and the ongoing and increasing violence it is licensing against lesbians, especially young lesbians struggling to deal with puberty and coming out. It is well worth reading somebody who points out that puberty is difficult and even more so in a misogynistic, capitalist society. ★
• Fair Play For Women (2018-07-28) : A group of volunteer women in britain who are deeply concerned about the proposed changes to the "gender recognition act" that would effectively redefine women and femaleness out of existence for the purposes of the law, eviscerating sex-based protections that are helping end patriarchy. Their research projects alone are remarkable, achieved when even their government claims the information involved is "too expensive" to collate from their own records. ★
• Daniel Heath Justice (2018-07-21) : Cherokee literary theorist, author, and historian, Justice is a key player in Indigenous speculative fiction, also known as Indigenous futurism. One of this major focii is how to revision the well-worn Tolkienesque fantasy novel with characters present and active who are ordinarily relegated the background or simply absent. Like Indigenous people and women, for starters. ★
• Kim Tallbear (2018-07-14) : Tallbear is as associate professor at the university of alberta who specializes in Indigenous peoples, their science, societies, and technologies. She has a certain advantage in this area, being Indigenous herself, and is already well known for her brilliant criticism of the uses and abuses of DNA testing in settler moves to innocence by attempting to claim indigeneity without being claimed by any Indigenous community. ★
• native-land.ca (2018-07-07) : A new project founded by Victor G. Temprano to help settlers learn about whose traditional lands they are uninvited guests on. It is based on a GIS approach, which means representation of traditional lands is a bit problematic at the moment due to inappropriately solid looking boundary lines, an issue he is working on now. Current coverage includes Turtle Island, Aotorea, Nunanagat, and "australia." ★
• Canadian Studies (2018-06-30) : Canadian historian Andrew Nurse's blog, which focusses mainly on politics, canadian history, and questions of education and the role of politics and facing challenging ideas in the classroom. His ongoing series of posts on "political correctness" is well worth the read as a starting point, drawing together issues of education, free speech, and the meaning of freedom among others. ★
• Michael Geist (2018-06-23) : Law professor and specialist in copyright law especially as it pertains to digital media, Geist also writes prolifically on "intellectual property" law and related matters. His blog is a treasure trove of quality pieces exploring canadian examples, coverage which is all too rare at present, alongside important critical examinations of the latest copyright and surveillance extension proposals. ★
• Purism Security Focussed Laptops (2018-06-16) : An intriguing and encouraging project to make something more like a secure laptop available to everyone, including eschewing tracking software for free and open software, careful hardware sourcing, and use of hardware switches to manage the microphone, camera, wireless signal, and bluetooth. Their hardware prices are improving all the time, but these are certainly not your bog standard $200 netbook, and they are explicitly designed to last. ★
• Elizabeth LaPensée (2018-06-09) : Site of brilliant Anishinabe multimedia developer and artist whose work is part of the growing explosion of works in Indigenous futurism, also known as Indigenous science fiction. LaPensée challenges preconceptions and makes settlers who don't want to have their racist ideas challenged deeply uncomfortable, and pushes videogames into doing deeper work than reskinning space invaders or doom. ★
• The Public Medievalist (2018-06-02) : Take the concept of public history, history when people learn about it outside of an academic context, and focus in on "the middle ages" and among other results you may encounter this site overseen by Paul B. Sturtevant at the smithsonian institution. It appears to be at least two to three years old, and already hosts a fine crop of articles combining research and critical political analysis. Well, mostly critical political analysis. There are a couple of interesting areas where things seem to have gotten a bit tangled, and therefore are even more reason to have a look to see how those tangled questions can be handled in a civil way. ★
• Ellen Lupton - Thinking With Type (2018-05-26) : Companion site to the book of the same name, with many useful hand outs, illustrations, and a curated collection of helpful extras. Unfortunately Lupton provides very little information about what the site is for so it can be a bit disconcerting at first glance. Nevertheless, spend some time enjoying the graphics and typographic information, then check your library for Indie Publishing: How to Design and and Produce Your Own Book which is a fun read in itself with many practical points, although no companion website. ★
• Butterick's Practical Typography (2018-05-19) : The online version of Matthew Butterick's opus on typography, which is as much an experiment in publishing without paywalls as in how to present a book legibly on the web. Personally I find the default font size ridiculously huge and the navigation design is a serious effort to drive a person through the text linearly, or else. Those quibbles aside, the content is top notch, gets updated with blog posts and responses to new research, and includes a tasteful and reasonable selection of suggested options for paying for the book and otherwise supporting Butterick's work. ★
• perl.org (2018-05-12) : And of course here is the main site for perl, the language that some people love and others love to hate, though I'm not sure why, that sounds like so much work. Anyway, this is a central place to pick up perl distributions, which is not too necessary since it is preinstalled on most OSes, thousands of extensions, and perl's generally excellent documentation. ★
• xiph.org (2018-05-05) : It is more important than ever to support initiatives that work to keep web and internet standards open and out of private control. xiph.org is a non-profit corporation that is most associated with work on visual and audio media standards, although they are also working hard on wider questions such as the right balance between copyright and private enclosure. A quirk of the site is that its "about" page has not been updated much over the past twenty years, which is surprisingly useful. ★
• python.org (2018-04-28) : Home site for python language development, python shares with perl an idiosyncratic founding creator with a wry sense of humour and distinct programming philosophy. It's well worth experimenting with, especially since most computers come with a python distribution already installed. This website will complain if you have javascript turned off, but is quite accessible without it. ★
• A Socialist in Canada (2018-04-21) : Roger Annis' writing home on the web, where he blogs on political, social and environmental issues. He is a socialist, trade union activist, and retired aerospace worker whose commentaries on recent high profile news articles are well worth reading in their own right. So also are his curated links added to the commentaries, which include links to writers at their original publishing points who both agree and disagree with him. This is a far too uncommon practice on a current affairs oriented site or blog. ★
• texample.net (2018-04-14) : Admittedly not wholly for the fainthearted, this site is maintained and contributed to by the TeX and LaTeX communities. Even if you have no interest in using either typesetting language, do spend some time paging through the TikZ and PGF examples, of which there are thousands of gorgeous ones in which the authors have pressed beyond just working out how to generate complex graphics and illustrations to real works of art. ★
• Herbert Marcuse Official Homepage (2018-04-27) : Marcuse is perhaps best known as a philosopher of the "new left" marxists of the 1960s and his sharp critique of consumer society and attendant new forms of social control. This site is wide ranging, including numerous transcriptions, pdfs, a selection of scanned photographs, and a series of indices of related multimedia, all maintained by his grandson. ★
• Wonders and Marvels (2018-04-20) : One of many solidly established and quirky history blogs, this one sprouting from an undergraduate course that grew into a larger project with many contributors. The earliest articles are in medical history, but since then it has expanded wildly into areas from cryptography to phrenology. The staff of regular contributors includes Adrienne Mayor and Jack El Hai. ★
• Steampunk Magazine (2018-04-13) : A now defunct publication originally available both online and off, although how long its archives will remain available is unclear, Steampunk Magazine did not focus solely on fiction, since steampunk has also developed into an aesthetic and maker movement, among other things. Its run from 2007 to 2016 was based on the dual premises of steampunk's diversity and political significance. Argument continues as always, as to whether steampunk is/was merely a fad. ★
• Banned By Trans (2018-04-06) : An important central summary of the ongoing efforts to silent gender critical or even just gender questioning people who are not active partisans of the current "transactivism" also known as "sexology 2.0" stream in what is still billed as progressive politics. What makes this site especially important regardless of whether you agree with it or not, is that it provides links to evidence and original sources so that you can read and make up your own mind. ★
• Partisan Review Online (2018-03-30) : A free to use archive of all articles from a major american literary magazine for its time, provided by the Howard Gottlieb archival research centre in boston. Its contributors included Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Franz Kafka, Doris Lessing, and Marge Piercy, among other now quite famous writers. Some may find its earlier issues from its start in 1934 to 1950 most useful to start with. ★
• Cora Buhlert Writer, Teacher, Translator (2018-03-23) : Another excellent blog by an active science fiction writer who also writes a remarkable number of lengthy posts on the state of science fiction, the world, and politics. A couple of great posts to start with include her most recent The Other Star Trek Show: Some Thoughts on The Orville, and her reflections on conformity versus free-thinking, Michael Burnham, Poe Dameron and the Decline of the Maverick Hero. ★
• Forgotten Books (2018-03-16) : As the site description notes, this is an english publisher based in london that specializes in bringing older books back to life on a print on demand basis. This is an excellent place to check for unusual and obscure items that may not already be included in the repositories at the internet archive. Their approach bears some similarity to the dover publications reprints series, but unlike dover, forgotten books also provides free to download pdf versions. ★
• Writing by Renee (2018-03-09) : Another excellent blogger who writes about women's rights, Feminism, education, militarism, and the literacy gap. Renee Gerlich is part of the growing numbers of women writing great long form pieces with excellent cross references and source links on controversial issues. In other words, contributing to the better and more useful parts of the internet. Gerlich has also established Dragon Cloud Press. ★
• University of Calgary (U of C) Press (2018-03-02) : The U of C has also joined the open access party, with an increasing back catalogue newly available in pdf format and an impressive subject range in its own right. For the more history and environment study inclined, check out especially the publications associated with the Network in Canadian History and Environment, which include early collections of HGIS papers. ★
• Athabasca University (AU) Press (2018-02-23) : Billed as canada's first open access scholarly press, AU press provides access to an impressive roster of monographs, collections, and pamphlets for free viewing and download under Creative Commons licensing. As we should expect, cover art is rarely part of the pdf version, and it is generally possible to order paperback copies if desired (hardcover availability may vary). ★
• The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (2018-02-16) : One of several projects providing bibliographic databases and access to abstracts and full texts of science papers and articles, in this case of course, specifically astrophysical ones. It also tracks citations and provides access to related external resources. ★
• Orcinus - Spyhopping the Right (2018-02-09) : Longtime blog of David Neiwert, and investigative journalist based in seattle. He and contributing writers provide critical overviews and opinion pieces examining the rise of fascism, authoritarianism, and racism in america. Don't miss the historical articles that trace connections between business and extreme right wing organizations that may surprise you. ★
• 4thWaveNow (2018-02-07) : An excellent, sensitive site developed and contributed to by parents and friends who are "skeptical of the 'transgender child/teen' trend" and including more and more contributions by the young people impacted by this trend. Resources and relevant links are a key part of the articles, and the comments are well-moderated and constructive. These features are all too uncommon on sites discussing "transactivism" and the current "transtrend." ★
• Women's Liberation Radio News (2018-01-31) : Brilliant Radical Feminist news site founded in 2016, home of the WLRN podcast and music hours. The news, commentaries, and music hours are all volunteer-written, -created, and/or -curated by women. New volunteers are always welcome, and WLRN staff are open to women looking to build their skills in areas called for by WLRN's work. Among many great resources within the podcast notes and the overall WLRN site is the numerous references and titles of relevant books, articles, music, and films. ★
• The FOSS Post (2018-01-24) : It can be difficult to find solid sources of information on "free and open source software" that are updated and maintained over time, and are not embedded within increasingly dubious fora like stackoverflow, redit, and even the message boards maintained by software companies like canonical. FOSS Post is a promising initiative, and so far is managing to keep tutorials, reviews, and opinions mostly separated from the articles, a huge plus. ★
• Let's Encrypt (2018-01-17) : A now firmly established effort to provide free TLS certificates to websites in order to help encrypt the entire web. This is an important effort to improve the security of the web at large, including not only encryption, but also breaking the exclusive control of private companies over certificate provision and verification. ★
• Digital Studies Journal (2018-01-10) : A refereed, open access academic journal focussed on examining how digital methods have been and are being integrated within the "humanities," meaning areas of study that deal with human cultures. Not all of the papers are equally legible, but it is well worth having a look at the many ways computers can be used for highly creative and challenging purposes. ★
• FreedomBox (2018-01-03) : This project is a free software project built on a debian linux core. Its purpose is to make free, secure, and safe communication available to people on-line independent of corporations and smaller companies seeking to become corporations. "Communication" here includes publishing web sites as well as encrypted email and social networking. It can be applied to similar purposes in principle to that of the PirateBox and LibraryBox, but its build does not include a portable router to self-host and self-broadcast. ★
• CitizenLab (2017-12-27) : the respected multi-disciplinary research laboratory focussed on communication technologies, human rights, and global security. It is based in toronto at the munk school of global affairs, university of toronto. Their research articles and blog updates are a key information source for anyone concerned about their privacy and security. ★
• Kontinónhstats Mohawk Language Custodian Association Mohawk Language Lessons (2015-12-20) : A set of 37 web based lessons in the Mohawk language in parallel english and french segments. The learner will "after learning these lessons, have a good base vocabulary, should you decide to learn more you will know where the vocabulary is coming from, so when the grammar rules are applied you will be able to follow changes to the vocabulary." ★
• Ada Lovelace Day (2017-12-13) : A website pulling together documentation and other resources pertaining to the funding of Ada Lovelace day and an ongoing effort to raise the profile of women science, engineering, technology and mathematics fields. Cleverly, the corporate supporters, who remain as hypocritical on the subject of women in these fields in terms of their cultures and hiring practices as ever, are placed in the footer of the site pages. ★
• The Decolonial Atlas (2017-12-06) : A volunteer-run project engaged in producing maps and digitizing maps that work to counter the colonizing methodologies and motivations involved in the most current common types of mapping, which were all developed and applied within the context of european empire building. It's an intriguing site, with a somewhat troubling and internally contradictory Decolonial Media License 0.1. Love the concept, concerned about the current implementation. ★
• QGIS (2017-11-29) : I originally stumbled on a reference to this free software based geographical information system while reading about something quite different, and of course had a look around the web for it. The software is mature and available for the usual suspects, MacOSX, Linux, and Windows, and the not so usual suspects such as BSD and Android. ★
• privacytools.io (2017-11-22) : Another addition to the set of sites that deal with how to improve the security of your computer and browser set up. It is technically a bit of a stretch to call this a site since it is basically one extremely long page at the moment, a set up that I am observing more and more often these days. This does make page navigation a bit fiddly, so be ready to use the spacebar and arrow buttons a bit. ★
• ibiblio.org (2017-11-15) : Not quite "the public's library and digital archive" but a real contribution to that goal, among the more or less famous items on the site are the first two webpages from the advent of the world wide web, and a remarkable archive of linux kernel projects. In fact, this site is probably best known for its software repositories since they make up the bulk of its materials. Nevertheless, keep an eye out for the diverse and growing range of other projects, such as Mutopia, "similar in spirit to Project Gutenberg – but consists of a growing collection of free sheet music." ★
• Atlas of the Underworld (2017-11-08) : A remarkable ongoing project by three geophysicists, D.G. Van der Meer, D.J.J. van Hinsbergen, and W. Spakman which maps the positions inside the Earth of ancient continents that have been subducted in the course of plate tectonics. For those wondering how this is done, it is based on the data collected from earthquakes with deeper source points in the Earth. ★
• Centre for Studies in Oral Tradition (2017-11-01) : An open access journal founded by John Miles Foley, with most papers including links to sound files and other auxiliary materials including recordings and videos. It is also an access point for digitized portions of a range of materials collected during ethnographic fieldwork intended to reveal more about oral tradition and its workings. ★
• The Orlando Project (2017-10-25) : An online history of women's writing in the british isles, initiated by Patricia Clements, Isobel Grundy, and Susan Brown in the early 1990s, and under development and continuous revision, as all good websites should be, ever since. It is far from just texts, including a variety of resources in other electronic media and is fully searchable. It is not a text archive, although it is possible to access many of the texts considered in it via subscription or of course the various online archives of now public domain materials. ★
• The Digital Classicist (2017-10-18) : An independent website providing a venue for discussion and development of computerized approaches to working with data from the "ancient world." Despite the strong ancient greek and latin predominance, there does not appear to be anything denying a place for say, ancient hebrew or akkadian materials and discussions. A few parts of the site have been translated into multiple modern languages on a volunteer basis. ★
• Pleiades (2017-10-11) : A scholarly crowd-sourced "gazetteer and graph of ancient places" using open source software and providing data freely in comma-separated and JSON formats. It is a relatively well established "digital humanities" project in the category of tools and resources that make information available and easy to search. ★
• The Euler Archive (2017-10-04) : For the happy math geeks out there, this is a treasure trove of digitized papers and other original documents, references, research, and transcripts. It went live in 2011, and is supported by the Euler Society (which oddly enough, is based in the u.s.) among other organizations that support ongoing digitization and translation work. Euler was extremely prolific, so there is plenty to see. ★
• Passion In Practice (2017-09-27) : Ben Crystal, David Crystal's son's theatre company that works on a range of quirky projects, not the least being new performances of Shakespeare and other plays and poetry from the same period in the original pronunciation. There are numerous sound and video clips well worth listening to, as well as descriptions of the original performance conditions for many of the plays that are clear and succinct. ★
• Original Pronunciation (2017-09-20) : A central place founded and managed by David Crystal to find information on how to perform Shakespeare's plays and works from the same period in something far closer to its actual pronunciation. The english accent of "OP" has a distinct and surprisingly approachable tone to it that has already been a hit in several full performances of Shakespeares plays in it. Even if your interest in the Shakespeare and related works aspect is low, the detective work used to recreate the accent is well worth reading. ★
• Internet Sacred Texts Archive (2017-09-20) : Another long-time archive of public domain texts, though it is not nearly as old as project Gutenberg which began in 1971, digitization and posting effort has been steady for nearly twenty years. The central focus is on non-mainstream materials, with a notable effort to include works of non-european origin, which makes it quite complementary to project Gutenberg. ★
• Alpheios (2017-09-13) : A set of firefox extensions intended to support reading of ancient greek and latin texts (among others) right in the web browser, with the ability to handle texts that you code up yourself, always a pleasing option to have available. An updated version of the suite of extensions is in development, and is now available for all major browsers. ★
• Diogenes Text Viewer (2017-09-06) : Ancient greek and latin language instructors are divided about how good or bad it is for students to use offline viewers like Diogenes or online projects like the Perseus Project to help them as they learn to read and compose in those languages. Personally, I have little sympathy for the naysayers, because it is not possible to read effectively just from a viewer that allows you to quickly and easily look up vocabulary, but the viewer won't hold you back either. In any case, Peter Heslin's free to download program is a great service to anyone reading those languages, even if they only use its dictionaries. ★
• Hudson's Bay Company Archives (2017-08-30) : Few countries are as overshadowed by a single company as canada is by the hudson's bay company, now owned by americans and undergoing an eery to watch downward spiral. Most of the materials currently available online are indices and guides to working for specific types of documents. A subset of documents is available electronically, and there is a microfiche (?!) service. It is hard to say when or if a greater digitizing effort is likely, and it would not be surprising if the city where the archives are located, winnipeg, had mixed feelings about the idea. ★
• Book and Sword (2017-08-23) : Sean Manning's corner of the web, where he writes posts dealing with ancient warfare and weapons, table top gaming, and speculative fiction. Like many excellent bloggers, his lengthy posts are well researched and often include many relevant photographs and full references. The commenters and discussions are generally constructive and well worth the time spent reading them. ★
• Hummingbird Music Notation (2017-08-16) : An alternate take on music notation that attempts to render it more consistent and easier both to read and to write, even when not printed in the best conditions. The emphasis on how "soft and bubbly" it looks is a rather silly argument, but it is a genuinely interesting new system, with exemplar music provided for free download – many of the pieces should be immediately familiar from music appreciation class selections. ★
• Women Composers (2017-08-09) : One of the many projects of the Kapralova Society, itself named for composer Vitezslava Kapralova. The project is an ongoing database of basic information about at least a portion of the 6 000 or so known women composers in predominantly europe and north america. Well worth perusing to find some other composers than the usual 20-30 that can be found most easily on CD and other lists of classical music. ★
• Unwritten Histories (2017-08-02) : Founded by Andrea Eideinger to share knowledge of the highways and biways of canadian history "as a field, discipline, and profession." She draws extensively on social media discussions by historians specializing in canadian history and the many related areas, as well as providing a range of major features, most regularly best new articles each month, upcoming books being released roughly monthly, and "history round ups" of a range of news articles and blog posts each week. ★
• ActiveHistory.ca (2017-07-26) : Part of the burgeoning "digital humanities" movement, in this case a website intended as a platform for historians to share their work beyond journals and conferences to a greater part of the general public via multiple formats. It is explicitly intended not only to insist that history is important and responsive, but that historians have a responsibility to act on what they know and contribute to current debates. ActiveHistory also has a french language counterpart (it is not a translation), HistoireEngagée.ca. ★
• The Métis Treaties Project (2017-07-19) : A legal-historical research project looking into the treaty relationships between canada and the Métis Nation. Some communities within the Métis Nation became signatories to specific treaties, including the famed Métis adhesion to treaty 3, but there are many questions to consider including whether other agreements were in fact treaties, and how treaty relations interact with Métis rights. ★
• Peel's Prairie Provinces (2017-07-12) : A portal and index of documents and related materials on the history of western canada. It apparently began as a paper project collated and documented by Bruce Peel at the university of alberta, and reflects the excellent records available at that university and its counterpart in saskatchewan among others. ★
• Akropolis World News (2017-07-05) : In the ongoing search for interesting online sources of additional ancient greek texts to read, here is another that I have known about for some time but have not featured yet. Juan Coderch writes several articles in ancient greek each week, covering various events without a strong theme or viewpoint other than the desire to provide some additional reading material for the practice-hungry student. Unfortunately the site submenus seem to be broken, but the news articles remain accessible. ★
• Suppressed Histories Archives (2017-06-26) : For some reason I was sure I had already added Max Dashu's amazing site to the Random Sites list, but on checking to be sure I see that I have been remiss. Dashu is an incredible, dedicated historian who has written multiple books, made dvds, and curated a huge archive of potent imagery that she has fundraised to digitize and make more widely available. She teaches courses, gives talks, and is an all round historian powerhouse. Her site is not to be missed. ★
• Donella Meadows Project (2017-06-19) : The online face of a major effort to preserve, make available and keep available Donella Meadows' visionary work on social systems that contribute to complex problems in human society and where to work to change those systems to achieve positive and persistent change. She passed away unexpectedly in 2001, just as she was finishing Thinking in Systems: A Primer, which was published in 2008 and appears to have just had a second printing. ★
• Feminist Current (2017-06-12) : Founded and edited by the brilliant, brave, and unfailingly determined Meghan Murphy, Feminist Current provides a truly unique, Radical Feminist perspective on news affecting women that is hard to find anywhere else on the internet with as much profile. The site reader numbers have been leaping upwards over the past several months. Comments are moderated, so trolls are not permitted to overrun the boards, while diverse opinions remain firmly in evidence, based on longterm observation. ★
• Listening2Lesbians (2017-06-05) : This site can be a difficult read, because it is a news service covering "women's experiences of being abused or silenced as lesbians and of being subjected to misogyny and lesbophobia within and outside the community." This is tough work that absolutely needs to be done, and includes important investigative work from stuff that might seem less important (frackbook and its latest misogynistic attacks on lesbian speech and participation) and the viscerally critical (recent murders of lesbians). ★
• I Blame the Patriarchy (2017-05-29) : At turns hilarious, infuriating, and invigorating, Twisty Faster skewers more than a few nonsensical claims about Feminism and the supposed wide openness of everyone's choices in this day and age. Alas, Twisty has not been posting much for the past several years, probably because like so many women she is responsible not only for herself but other people and other than human animals in her life. Any post is a great place to start, though a non-traditional way to get introduced is via Twisty's description of her blog. ★
• Open Book Publishers (2017-05-22) : A scholar-run social enterprise that publishes a range of academic textbooks and monographs that are creative-common licensed, free to download, and available as print-on-demand items. It's an intriguing approach to "bespoke" publishing, with an impressive range of texts. Some authors are also adding more information about the different price ranges for photo licensing and calling out archives and universities with pricing so excessive their collections are effectively closed, a bit of transparency commercial publishers are not known for. ★
• Beaker Browser (2017-05-15) : An intriguing addition to the ongoing project of reimagining the web as something other than a massive surveillance and advertising apparatus. Its approach is based on peer-to-peer sharing, which cuts out web hosting services, and includes its own apis to support applications. Sharing can be completely private, and it is possible to fork any given site, which has intriguing possibilities, especially since this approach is not indexed, making vandalism difficult to propagate. ★
• A DIY Guide to Feminist Cybersecurity (2017-05-08) : Unfortunately a much needed resource nowadays, this guide is thorough. It is well-written and provides information at both basic and intermediate levels alongside recommendations of mainly free tools to help Feminists keep safe on the internet via a judicious selection of web plug ins and other options. This isn't the only option for information on the topic either; alternatively you can check DIY Online Security Guide For Every Woman, though it is a bit more fiddly to page through. ★
• Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (2017-05-01) : As long as the reader bears in mind that many of the entries haven't had much added since the 1967 edition, this is a fun romp through the range of terms in multiple Indigenous languages as well as english, french, and probably a range of other european languages in current use at one time or another in one or more regions of "canada." Some of the most interesting entries are for what seem to be ordinary english terms that have mutated in interesting ways and probably cause a great deal of confusion when talking with americans. ★
• ifixit.com (2017-04-23) : The premiere site on the web for helping you enact your right to understand and repair the many devices, and not just computers. The ifixit team provides over 26 000 free manuals covering the details of nearly 8 000 devices as well as selling a wide range of repair kits, tools, and parts. Even if you don't want to try to repair your own cracked screen, it is well worth finding out just what the repair would consist of before paying somebody else to do it, as it will help you determine whether you're paying a reasonable price for the parts and labour. ★
• Liberation Collective (2017-04-16) : Collective blog of six Radical Feminist thinkers who, "hope to provide an online space for radical feminist commentary around issues of interest to our community." Besides the six principle writers, who hold and express diverse views, they welcome guest writers. Posts are generally lengthy and carefully written with good footnotes, and the comment moderation is judicious. ★
• Judy Grahn (2017-04-09) : Judy Grahn is a well-known poet and activist, this site effectively serves as a lightly annotated catalogue of Grahn's books and recordings, and occasionally purchasing information. There are some curious omissions, such as The Highest Apple, a valuable though flawed study of lesbian poetry, so it is worth checking the online catalogues of second hand bookstores as well as your local library for more of her work. ★
• Language - A Feminist Guide (2017-04-02) : The personal blog of linguist Deborah Cameron, whose published books include Feminism and Linguistic Theory, which is not nearly so dry to read as its title may suggest. Her blog is accessible to general readers, and deals mostly with english from multiple angles, including movie reviews, deconstructions of various types of linguistic pedantry, and reflections on current events. ★
• Women's Health in Women's Hands (2017-03-27) : Central website of the ongoing work of the women's health specialists led by Carol Downer. Currently the women taking part in the project are located in northern california. The site itself provides basic information on the female reproductive system, including clear diagrams and descriptions and a list of books visitors may purchase. There is a great deal more to women's health than taking care of their reproductive organs of course, but in this time of resurgent hostility to women managing their own fertility and reproductive health, its relevance is critical. ★
• Tradfem Collective de traduction de textes féministes radicaux (2017-03-20) : A collective of translators working to make Radical Feminist essays and books available in languages besides english. So far the majority of works have been translated into french and german, starting with a selection of articles by Andrea Dworkin. New translations are posted each week. ★
• Open Access Directory (2017-03-13) : The site description declares that the OAD is "a compendium of simple factual lists about OA to science and scholarship, maintained by the OA community at large." This is true, but it is also an excellent place to start if you are looking for a clear explanation of what "open access" means and some examples of different approaches to implementing it. Start here for some great mythbusting about how many approaches to OA there are for example. The Directory of Open Access Journals and the Directory of Open Access Books are independent projects from this one. ★
• Le Blog de Christine Delphy (2017-03-06) : Distinguished Feminist theorist and scholar Christine Delphy posts articles in both french and english, taking a firmly intersectional perspective. She is often most cited for her work on the journal "Nouvelles Questions Féministes," and her 1982 book Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women's Oppression, but she has many more recent works, from Familiar Exploitation: A New Analysis of Marriage in Contemporary Western Societies to Separate and Dominate: Feminism and Racism After the War On Terror. ★
• Middle English Dictionary (2017-02-26) : A useful online source provided by the University of Michigan, comprising 15 000 pages of entries digitized into a database that can be searched by word or quotation. The site is not as visually busy as other electronic dictionaries, and it is impressively fast. A small drawback of using it is that it does not provide links to related resources at UMichigan or elsewhere. ★
• Working Class Movement Library (2017-02-19) : A major archive of over 200 years of records of organizing and campaigning by working class women and men primarily in england. It started out, as many archives that don't follow a mainstream topic do, as a personal collection collected and maintained by Ruth and Edmond Frow. They have a range of ongoing projects, including oral histories, a lecture series, and linking together otherwise hard to access collections. It has few digitally available materials, but a helpful photocopying and scanning service. ★
• Indian and Cowboy Podcast Network (2017-02-19) : A listener-supported Indigenous podcast network founded by Ryan McMahon in October 2014. All of the podcasts are excellent, and as unafraid of taking up difficult political and social questions as they are of making the listener laugh. Among them is the already featured here Métis in Space, Red Man Laughing, and The Henceforward. ★
• The Victorian Web (2017-02-12) : A remarkable site that precedes the world wide web, organized with an emphasis on links rather than searching. So this means that the huge collection of images, papers, and books is extensively cross-referenced. Articles are not written from the faux neutral standpoint endemic to encyclopedias, so it is possible to find multiple viewpoints on the same item with full evidence and original research. ★
• TheOneRing.net (2017-02-05) : Still going after its original founding in 1999 not long after Peter Jackson revealed there would be movie versions of Lord of the Rings at long last, TheOneRing.net also remains a fairly busy place. There are many original essays and an astonishing archive of original art, and often the best place to start is not the main page due to the many (inevitable) product announcements, but the Library. ★
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2017-01-29) : Founded in 1995, this open access "dynamic reference work" is a distant cousin of wikipedia in that it is continuously being added to and edited. Unlike Wikipedia, this work is carried out by recognized experts in the field under the guidance of an editorial team. The effort to expand beyond european and american male philosophers is ongoing. ★
• Marxist Internet Archive (2017-01-22) : A non-profit, volunteer-run website providing access to a major collection of marxist and marxist-relevant works. The materials are provided mainly in pdf format, although the number of doc, epub, and audio versions is growing all the time. The combination of primarily pdf versions and a clear citation policy makes this archive especially scholar friendly. ★
• Fordham University Internet History Sourcebooks Project (2017-01-15) : A well-organized and formatted archive of public domain and what the webmasters refer to as "copy permitted" historical texts. The team has been making a concerted effort to go beyond europe and the usual suspects, including themed sections for women's and science history, as well as a start on including materials from the rest of the world. ★
• OpenCulture.com (2017-01-08) : Founded in 2006 to catalogue and describe the burgeoning range of free educational materials on-line, OpenCulture may have started by cataloguing massive on-line courses, but has gone on to index podcasts, free textbooks, and annotated links to numerous library and museum collections. ★
• Jedisabre.com eBooks Tutorial (2017-01-01) : One thing that is coming soon to the Moonspeaker is ebooks, because I think they're cool and think this is a far more sensible way to make things available offline than a shitty app. They are actually quite simple to make, and this is the tutorial that tells you everything you need to know to make your own. ★
• RadFemArchive (2016-11-26) : One of the great frustrations for Radical Feminists and those who would like to learn more about their theory and politics whether or not they agree with them, is the difficulty of keeping Feminist works generally in print. The RadFemArchive makes electronic copies of out of print texts available for free and beyond the confines of university libraries, an important service. ★
• Roads Were Not Built For Cars (2016-11-19) : Companion website of an early crowd-funded book by Carlton Reid, which goes through the actual history of the paved roads so many drivers treat as solely their own entitlement. An excellent companion paper to read with the site or book is Whose Roads? by Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute. ★
• OpenMedia (2016-11-12) : A respected Canadian non-profit organization founded in 2008 that works on preventing the internet from becoming a mass censorship and surveillance service controlled by corporate interests. It has an excellent blog and carries out important research as well. ★
• idlewords.com (2016-10-19) : Maciej Cegłowski, proprietor of Pinboard's writing home online. Its tagline is "brevity is for the weak" and he lives up to the letter by providing excellent long read pieces on topics ranging from travel to technology issues. He also maintains an archive of his talks, which for some reason is not linked to directly on the main page, possibly because his current tag cloud has lost track of it. Nevertheless, don't miss them, they are as erudite, accessible, and often hilarious as his long blog posts. ★
• LibraryBox (2016-10-08) : A low powered web server that can be used to provide remote access to files where access to the internet is for some reason difficult, as well as to set up a local mesh net of interconnected boxen for a small area. This is a free software project, so you can buy one or build your own because the software and recommended hardware specs are provided right from the LibraryBox website. UPDATE: Alas this project is now quietly moribund. For those able to acquire supported hardware, the software must be downloaded from the site snapshot at the internet archive. ★
• Quintillian's Institutes of Oratory (2016-09-18) : This is an excellent on-line edition of Quintillian's famous text for teachers of rich roman boys with political aspirations. It is in fact still relevant today, not least because the basic oration structure he describes is still how we are taught to write essays. ★
• Schneier on Security (2016-09-07) : If you'd like to read a mainly level-headed, practical perspective on security for your computer, on-line, and more widely in life, Bruce Schneier's site is a great place to start. I highly recommend reading his post on Choosing Secure Passwords to start. ★
• Moonhawk's Pages (2016-09-01) : Linguist Dan Moonhawk Alford's website kept online after his passing by his good friend Don Watson. More than worth the to read his discussion of the Whorf hypothesis and the key twin papers God is Not a Noun in Native America and God is a Verb. The former was cited by John Mohawk, Seneca philosopher and late editor of Akwesasne Notes, which is no small endorsement. ★
• RAFT Alliance (2016-08-25) : Prior to europeans arriving in the americas, the level of diversity in plant and animal species was far greater. A fundamental purpose behind all the effort Indigenous people put into developing so many varieties and diverse relationships with the land was to avoid starving, whatever happened with the weather. The RAFT Alliance is an organization endeavouring to restore those systems, with an ever greater urgency in this, so far one of the hottest years on record ever seen. ★
• Hyperbole User Manual (2016-08-17) : If you are not a fan of emacs you may not find yourself using this program, but it follows through on interesting premise by effectively allowing an emacs user to treat their computer as if it were a part of the internet, navigating it via links in the form of buttons and performing other tasks. If nothing else, it is a nice demonstration of another approach to creating an interface for a person to make use of their comupter. ★
• Bev Jo - Radical Feminist Writing (2016-08-10) : This blog is just what it says, and includes the wonderful on-line, updated edition of "Dykes-Loving-Dykes: Separatist Politics" which she and her coauthors originally published in 1990. ★
• Redstockings (2016-07-31) : A Volunteer-run and curated archive of documents, photos, and other historical materials from the Women's Liberation Movement, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. This is another contribution to the critical necessity for women to create and maintain their own historical documents. ★
• Guide to DRM-Free Living (2016-07-05) : Whatever your position on DRM, if you are on a budget or looking for convenient links to free ebooks, music, video, and a range of tools to make your own, this guide is an excellent starting point. If you've never looked into these sources before, you're going to be pleasantly surprised. ★
• Métis in Space (2016-06-26) : I briefly mentioned this podcast awhile back. It is the ever awesome place you can hear Molly and Chelsea "hilariously deconstruct the science fiction genre through a decolonial lens." They're not kidding, and they check out everything from the obscure and B-Movie to the familiar standards. ★
• Bret Victor, Beast of Burden (2016-06-07) : Victor's sense of humour is quirky, and his area of expertise is interface design, that is how tools are made usable by humans and useful for their purpose. His ideas are challenging and reflect a fundamental and responsible belief in a better future, especially by "Reforming our infantilized society." ★
• The Anarchist Library (2016-05-27) : Recently I was tracking down a reference in Fields, Factories, and Workshops by Petr Kropotkin, which led me to this site. It includes a growing collection of works in a range of open formats, from XeLaTeX to ePub, and to my knowledge is the only place on-line so far outside of possibly the Wayback Machine that includes all of Kropotkin's works. ★
• âpihtawikosisân (2016-05-20) : As she says herself, this is the blog of a Plains Cree speaking, Métis woman from alberta currently working on a masters degree at the university of alberta, writing acutely on Indigenous history, the white problem, Indigenous legal developments, and potential futures. Chelsea is also one half of the awesome team behind the podcast Métis in Space. ★
• Savage Minds (2016-05-09) : A reasonably busy blog dealing with anthropology-related topics, often responding to current events. It was founded in 2005 and is another part fo the ongoing effort to get scholars more engaged with people beyond their immediate colleagues. Contributors include graduate students, anthropologists working "outside of the academy" and of course, many professors. ★
• The Programming Historian (2016-03-31) : Central repository of tutorials for humanities majors in how to perform automated document and database analysis, as well as mapping and digital presentation of research results. Everything is open source and peer reviewed, although the project team appears to be struggling to find a balance between a desire to review and edit to perfection and posting new materials. ★
• Starship Reckless (2016-03-24) : Molecular biologist and SF writer Athena Andreadis' blog. Compulsively readable, chockablock with science, literature, and a complete lack of genre snobbery that is all too rare. If you don't want to start at most recent, I recommend the Andreadis Unibrow Theory of Art. ★
• Public Library of Science (2016-02-29) : One of several key projects to ensure publicly funded research is made freely available, PLOS includes a range of peer-reviewed journals with all papers released under a Creative Commons Attribution license. It happens to be mainly biologically oriented, but there are other important philosophically related projects including arXiv.org. ★
• 2D Goggles - Dangerous Experiments in Comics (2016-02-22) : This subsite is updated intermittently because Syndey Padua is an extremely busy animator and now semi-globetrotting graphic novel author. Her work is well worth perusing, and if you can't wait for updates to this site, pop over to her main site to see some of her other projects. She is also an impressive amateur historian, have a look at her suggested readings. ★
• Ancient Lives Project (2016-02-15) : Where to go to contribute to the crowd sourced transcription of the Oxyrhynchus papyri. You can identify letters (no need to be able to read greek) or even just measure the scanned papyri fragments. So far at least 100 texts have been published from this project, including fragments of ancient plays, gospels, and philosophical texts. ★
• The Paypom Treaty (2016-02-09) : The Grand Council of Treaty 3 has posted a pdf of the notes made for Chief Powasson in 1873, when the Lake of the Woods Ojibway were signing a treaty with the crown in right of canada. There are notes of this type for many treaties in canada, all remarkable for the differences recorded between what was said and what was written. ★
• Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture (2016-02-04) : A remarkable archive of publications, oral history transcripts, photographs, language resources, and much more. It is provided by the Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and Applied Research, which has been pursuing a long term digitization and cataloguing project that also notes other important Métis resources across the web. ★
• Project Vox (2016-01-13) : Home of a project working to bring the writings of early modern women philosophers back into print or even into print for the first time digitally and in hard copy. Some of these women have other works that have remained fairly available, usually because they were deemed "gender appropriate," but in the main these works have been ignored purely because of the sex of the writer. ★
• Intersex Roadshow (2015-12-31) : Thanks to Bitch Media, I stumbled on this all too infrequently updated blog, in particular the Intersex Genitalia Illustrated and Explained post. Cary Costello's explanations and illustrations are excellent and respectful, a combination that can be all too hard to find as soon as the topic of genitalia and their not so binary-ness comes up. The comments are actually useful, simply skip over the inevitable pile of recent spam. ★
• The Original Hacker's Dictionary (2015-12-27) : The Hacker's Dictionary, better known to some of us by its earlier name the Jargon File, is a subject of continuing low level religious wars, in the computer programmer sense. This page reproduces a 1988 era version, and it is well worth having a look, especially by comparison with the controversial branch still maintained by Eric Raymond, but be ready for distracting html code errors when you consult the latter. ★
• Christi Belcourt (2015-12-22) : One of the Métis Nation's great artists, from Manitou Sakhigan, Alberta. Her works range from paintings to stained glass, prints, birch bark canoes, and her part in the amazing Onaman Collective. I can't possibly do justice to her art with words, the best thing is to see it for yourself. ★
• The Missing CDs (2015-12-18) : The "missing manual" series published by O'Reilley has become something of a juggernaut, successfully displacing practically every other series directed to the same audience with "idiot" or "dummies" in their titles. This companion site is where the various code snippets and sample files from the books can be downloaded from, as well as the occasional program. The site includes a significant amount of material from earlier editions, a great help to anyone who must use an older version of the given missing manual's subject. ★
• Indigenous Knowledge Commons (2015-12-07) : An excellent source of on-line courses, bibliographical information, and digital publications of all kinds. There are tools and digital publication options for scholars and students, including readers in specific topics. It also has a clear and easily accessible protocols and permissions page. ★
• Suzette Haden Elgin's Verbal Self Defense Home Page (2015-10-30) : Unfortunately I have no idea how long this site will stay up, because Suzette Haden Elgin passed away after a long illness in January of this year. An alternative link I have found is at adrr.com. She was a true and wonderful Feminist pioneer, who believed firmly that we all have the capacity to manage the power of language to better our lives. To see her sci-fi works – and honestly, you should – have a look at her homepage at Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. ★
• Strange Horizons (2015-10-10) : A decent on-line magazine of "speculative fiction" – a term which I think has settled down into being an umbrella monicker for fantasy and sci-fi works, even though there is plenty of disagreement about that since there is less a boundary than a gradient between the two. The magazine includes a fine body of work including both original stories and non-fiction articles, and it is a volunteer-run effort well worth supporting. ★
• The Work of Edward Tufte and Graphics Press (2015-09-30) : If you have read Robert Bringhurst on typographic style or gotten entangled with LaTeX, it is likely you have encountered references to the excellent work of Edward Tufte. In a nutshell, his books and his website are all about how to present information visually in an honest, effective, and beautiful way. ★
• The Library of Babel (2015-06-10) : A fascinating realisation of Jorge Borges' famous story. It is accessible both with and without javascript, and if you wish you can even download the books. The ancillary essays are an excellent read in their own right, don't miss them! In a way, this may be the closest to an internet one-time pad cipher, though of course it really isn't anything of the sort. ★
• The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web (2015-05-30) : For all the folks out there who are interested in typography in general, Robert Bringhurst's book on the subject is an incredible read. He did not consider web typography though, and so Richard Rutter began the project of translating Bringhurst's principles to the on-line medium. The project isn't quite done, and is open to other contributors. ★
• The De Vere Society (2015-05-23) : Whether or not you have ever had a strong opinion about who the author of the works of Shakespeare is, this site is well worth browsing. The articles are clear and respectfully written, always a refreshing thing to see when it comes to controversial topics, with excellent, non-ecumenical bibliographies. For information on the Shakespeare oeuvre itself, my go to source these days is Open Source Shakespeare. ★
• The Turing Digital Archive (2015-05-16) : A partial collection of scanned documents from Alan Turing's papers including articles (both published and unpublished), letters, and photographs. Unfortunately the image viewer is flash-dependent, a peculiar decision likely related to the attempt to prevent the downloading and reuse of the materials. ★
• An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments (2015-05-09) : A wonderful and hilarious little book that is well worth purchasing for regular rereading. Ali Almossawi's combination of illustrations and just enough text is still rarely applied to trickier topics like sorting out solid reasoning from what is at best only a facsimile of it. ★
• The Big Bang Never Happened.org (2015-04-03)  Eric J. Lerner's site covering additional information related to his 1991 book of the same name. Well worth a read, as is the book itself, regardless of your position, if any on the question of whether the big bang theory is a valid description of the origins of the universe. Lerner's argument is not mainstream, nor is it on the extreme edges of physics, and he may simply have been ahead of the curve. ★
• The Long Way Home (2015-03-22)  An excellent blog providing thoughtful explorations of racism, sexism and homophobia in speculative fiction including many helpful links. Alas Ardhra has not been posting much lately, but she is keeping her blog up, which is a wonderful service. To start, have a read of What is Cultural Appropriation? which honestly I can't recommend highly enough for clarity and completeness. ★
• Iain McGilchrist's Website (2015-03-06) : If you have not read McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary or at least watched his animated RSA talk, then do watch the latter right away, and then at least read the introduction to the book on his website. To my mind, his book is the true follow up to Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach and even provides insight into why Hofstatder himself has never been able to follow up on it. ★
• Internet Archive (2015-02-16) : Long overdue for a moment in the Random Sites spotlight, older denizens of the internet will know this site by its older name, the Wayback Machine. It has developed from a webpage archiving project into a non-profit organization archiving books, video games, sounds and much, much more, often under creative commons licenses or out of copyright. But do watch out, these folks are not immune to politically driven but not legally required censorship. ★
• Feminist Reprise Library (2015-02-09) : A site providing access to hard to get papers and excerpts from various feminist authors, especially lesbian feminists whose works are all too often out of print. The person who created and maintains the site provides very little information apart from the articles themselves, and it is mercifully devoid of the social media tags that proliferate like a bad rash on so many sites these days. ★
• AOIDOI.org (2015-02-02) : This site may be officially on hiatus, but that doesn't change the value of the Annis' carefully curated series of ancient greek dialect descriptions and an excellent introduction to ancient greek metre. He also provides several annotated texts and a number of articles of his own on various greek poetry related topics. ★
• Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (2015-01-26) : There are many programs out there to carry out page layout and typesetting. For speed, ease of set up and quality of results though, one of the best free packages out there is TeX. It is cross-platform, based on a document mark up approach analogous to html, it's free, and so good more presses and journals are adopting it all the time. ★
• A Celebration of Women Writers (2015-01-19) : A wonderful site built and maintained by Mary Mark Ockerbloom that brings together at least hundreds of out of copyright or reproduced by permission books written by women. The range of authors and topics is spectacular, and the formatting minimal and careful. The result is highly readable texts on almost any screen. ★
• Perseus Project at UChicago (2015-01-12) : It has come to my attention that the main Perseus Project site at Tufts is having some difficulties with its parser at the moment. An excellent alternative until the folks at Tufts have that sorted out is Perseus at Chicago. The only tweak you may need is to tell your web browser to override the site's font choices if you are working with Greek for ease of reading. ★
• The Marginalian (2015-01-05) : Maria Popova's wonderful site full of musings and annotated readings of books, mostly older texts that don't always get their due, and wondrous out-of-print gems that might never be seen but for her work, like the one linked here, The Green Beads. ★
• London Review of Books - Translating Lorem Ipsum (2014-03-27) : Admittedly this isn't so much a random site as an addition to the "lorem ipsum" thread on this site. This article also appears, barely rewritten at the Guardian. In this original version, skip down to the second indented block if you are already familiar with lorem ipsum text. ★
• Satimage - Smile (2014-02-05) : If you are on MacOSX, despite Apple's recent development of an allergy to its own scripting language, Applescript is still a premiere tool for automating tasks. Satimage is a French company, and they have a nice collection of osaxen and the like for download which are quite useful. ★
• Paper For Fountain Pens (2014-01-26) : I have been on a quest for a notebook with paper reminiscent of a "blank bible" for some years, and while I have found something close but small at Manufactum (13cm x 10cm), these guys may actually have it. In addition, Inkophile confirms that the paper is fountain pen friendly. ★
• CSS Tutorials at YourHTMLSource (2014-01-20) : This has been one of my standard reference sites for up-to-date CSS basics for literally years. Ross Shannon's explanations are clear, concise, and full of code snippets for trying out. ★
• Ubuntu Manual Project (2014-01-12) : My *NIX chops have gotten a bit rusty despite the fact MacOSX is part of that family now, so I set up a dual boot into Ubuntu to get back up to speed. Then I found myself needing a decent introduction to the Unity interface (let's just say my feelings about it are mixed) and the best one I've found is provided by this open source manual project. ★
• Latinitas Viva (2014-01-10) : Following on the Graeco-Roman theme of the previous featured site, let's move on to a more multi-media oriented approach. On Latinitas Viva you can listen to newscasts and various samples of ancient Latin text, a huge help for picking up where the accents go without literally checking syllable lengths. ★
• The Perseus Project (2013-12-29) : If you work with ancient languages, are learning ancient languages, or are just plain curious, Perseus is the site you want. Graeco-Roman texts are at its core, but there are also many searchable texts in english including translations and ancillary works. ★
• Open Source Shakespeare (2013-12-09) : One of the best websites for all your Shakespeare needs on the web. All the plays, all the sonnets, and looks like all the long form poems skinned with a thorough search engine and glossary of terms. The developer even has a concordance in there, which is pretty impressive. ★
• International Standard Paper Sizes (2013-11-26) : Yes, this link is pure geek. However, it is becoming relevant to more than just grad students and academics in general. More and more north american businesses are running into issues because of the retrograde paper sizes here that make it sheer shrieking misery to enlarge or reduce drawings, among other things. ★
• ViHart.com (2013-11-18) : Here is a snazzy site; Vi Hart makes fascinating videos, usually on mathematical topics. Her explanation of logarithms is brilliant, making a far better analogy than I have ever seen before to make them more transparent. UPDATE: After learning more about weebly, this quick update needs a correction, Hart's site on weebly is still online by chance, as she has not retained her web domain. Weebly itself is in a process of steady dissolution since its acquisition by another webhosting company called square, so the weebly link will likely go dead in the next 6 to 12 months.★
• DoctorWhoScarf.com (2013-11-12) : There are few Doctor Who costume items quite as iconic as the various scarves worn by the 4th Doctor, played by Tom Baker. If you'd like to know more about them, right down to how to knit one or more of them, this site is just what the Doctor ordered. ★
• The Frankenstein Notebooks at the Shelley-Godwin Archive (2013-11-04) : Tell-tale as it is that this archive is named only for the men associated with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, it remains well worth having a look at the earlier drafts of her famous novel. Her writing style is tighter and less florid than her husband's. ★
• British Library Digitized Manuscripts (2013-10-29) : In a decision that should warm any scholar's heart, the British Library has been digitising its manuscript collection, a collection including materials from the ninth century. One of the easiest starting points for non-scholars is Arundel MS 263, one of Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks. The scans are excellent, well-lit with high dpi, allowing lots of zoom to examine details. ★
• Beyond Victoriana (2013-10-23) : Continuing on the Steampunk theme, now let's consider a more literary and political side of the genre. I really can't describe the site better than Ay-Leen the Peacemaker herself, "[a] blog about multicultural steampunk and retro-futurism – that is, steampunk outside of a Western-dominant, Eurocentric framework." UPDATE: Caveat lector, this site is now an archive. ★
• The Steampunk Workshop (2013-10-15) : Suppose you have a love of the steampunk aesthetic and the maker philosophy that is tied to it, let alone the genre of stories subsumed under the label. And let's suppose that somehow you haven't yet found your way to Jake Von Slatt's website of awesome projects ranging from mods to complete builds – well now you've got the link to rectify that situation! ★
• Creative Commons (2013-10-11) : If you've seen one of the variants on the logo at the right, then chances are you've just encountered a CC-licensed work. Creative Commons is a non-profit organization working for better copyright law. The website includes a form to help with selecting the correct license and associated wording for works. The licenses are generally plain language rather than intensive legalese. ★
• No Tech Magazine (2013-10-07) : like Low Tech Magazine a site that covers the sorts of technology that really, we are encouraged to overlook. "No Tech" is a tongue-in-cheek sort of name too, because the articles posted to the blog are all about technology, the kind that begins from coming up with an efficient way to solve a problem as opposed to coming up with something clever and trying to find a problem for it to solve. ★
• WolframMathWorld (2013-10-03) : an impressive on-line mathematical encyclopedia that is updated daily. It is an interesting example of an alterante model of internet encyclopedia creation from a wiki; this site has a primary curator with one assistant who vets and prepares the entries. ★
• The Book Arts Web (2013-09-17) : A great site for anyone interested in bookbinding and book art, it may also be referred to as "Philobiblon" from their domain name. Among the great resources they provide is access to issues of The Bonefolder and a central place for book-binding and reuse projects. ★
• AlanTuring.net (2013-09-12) : The go to site for information on Alan Turing's contributions to modern computing, as well as introductions to the corrected history of computers, codebreaking, and artificial intelligence. It is maintained by Jack Copeland, who also contributed to the excellent anthology Colossus: The Secrets Of Bletchley Park's Codebreaking Computers. A great place to start is reading Alan Turing's own description of the enigma machine. ★
• The Edward Gorey House (2013-09-01) : Edward Gorey is one of my favourite authors, whom I originally discovered because of his unforgettable illustrations in a book by John Bellairs, The House With A Clock In Its Walls. ★
• Contemporary Home Computing (2013-08-15) : Olia Lialina's extended essays on computing, web graphics, and neat conceptualizations like the Turing complete user. I can't quite decide if Lialina's penchant for animated gifs is charming or obnoxious, though. ★
• Mark Rosenfelder's Metaverse (2013-08-13) : This is the home of the Language Construction Kit (LCK), an awesome resource for scifi/fantasy authors that is also available in an expanded paper or ebook edition. There is considerably more to Rosenfelder's site than this, including original fiction and essays. ★
• Lorem Ipsum (2012-08-15) : For anyone who has needed dummy text to fill in a web or text layout for testing and presentation, this is your go to site. Besides the dummy text generator, it describes the origins of the dummy text itself in a treatise by Cicero. ★
• The Official M.C. Escher Website (2012-03-01) : A fabulous place to have a good look at an incredible amount of Escher's ouvre, especially if you need to find the name of a familiar piece. The scans are typically of a sensible size both in terms of loading time and detail. ★
• Inquiries By Herodotus (2012-02-14) : A new on-line translation of Herodotus, including up to date photographs, photographic tours, and maps. The creating group is "Lost Trails", made up of photographers and several translators collaborating on archaeology-themed projects. ★
• Boston Globe: Russia In Color (2011-12-31) : I don't spend time on mainstream sites often, but here is a happy exception. This page presents colour photographs from 1909-12 Russia. How is that possible? Have a look! (If the site seems to keep loading even after the photos are all visible, you can safely hit the "stop" button.) ★
• Archimedes Palimpsest (2010-10-23) : a place to learn all about two formerly lost books written by the ancient Greek scientist Archimedes, The Method and The Stomachion. You can read transcriptions of the text or read from photographs of the original palimpsest filtered to make the older text visible. ★
• Cool Tools (2009-04-21) : there are few places where you can find information on useful products, ideas, or tools with trustworthy reviews by people who have used them. Cool Tools is one of those rare sites, featuring items ranging from bluntly practical (wheelbarrow handle extensions for the very tall) to quirky and unusual (Little Nemo in Slumberland). 2016-06-26 UPDATE: Cool Tools has been through some unfortunate changes resulting in one of the ugliest layouts I've ever seen and a tragic drop in real content and attendant rise in advertising. It may take awhile for me to find a good alternative. ★
• Apple Pro Tips Archive (2009-01-11) : once upon a time, it was possible to get MacWorld Mac Secrets Mac Bibles books. They were huge, experienced-users-oriented tomes that were acutely useful. Alas, they have vanished at least for the moment, due to the many people switching to Macintosh computers. The books labelled "Mac-bibles" right now have an unfortunate tendency to insist that readers need a lecture on how to use the mouse and drop down menus. Until the real thing is back, this site is a decent stand-in. ★
• Hyperphysics (2008-11-16) : one of the many marvelous educational websites that began as a hypercard stack. It is in effect a non-linear physics textbook, including extensive examples and calculations. As a physics graduate, I have a favourite problem; check out how to calculate whether you could fall through the Earth if a hole were drilled straight through it. ★