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Where some ideas are stranger than others...

RANDOM SITE ARCHIVE at the Moonspeaker

PREVIOUS RANDOM SITES OF THE WEEK

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

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

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

  • 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. ★
  • Tower of Babel, The - Evolution 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. ★
  • Canada Files, The (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. ★
  • 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. ★
  • Vintage Pens (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. ★
  • Richard's Pens (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. ★
  • Solon Law Archive, The (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. ★
  • Ipperwash Inquiry, The (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. ★
  • People and the Text, The (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. ★
  • Lesbian Project, The (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. ★
Copyright © C. Osborne 2026
Last Modified: Friday, January 02, 2026 21:04:06