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.

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• Retraction Watch (2024-12-31) : A solid website covering retraction of science and engineering papers, including coverage of the impact of use of LLMs, the depredations of paper mills, and the ongoing saga of elsevier's grim descent into outright asset stripping now that it is in the hands of MBAs. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with retractions per se, honestly produced and published papers may be retracted due to discovery of some issue with the data or analysis, which is why researchers are supposed to share their work in the first place. This was before paper mills, perverse incentives to pad publication numbers, and the pretence to artificial intelligence bubble. ★
• HAU Books (2024-12-25) : In one of those mixed blessings of the internet era, the society for ethnographic theory has set up a publishing imprint for new and reprinted ethnographic books produced and distributed by the university of chicago press. These connections make for a potentially useful and intriguing but also to be examined cautiously series of books made available in open access pdf format as well as in print paperback and ebook format. ★
• Henry George Biblioteket (2024-12-24) : A small danish private library with an excellent website including a remarkable number of historical books on land ownership, taxation, and political economy, in both english translation and danish. Being a small country, denmark has notable longterm challenges when it comes to figuring out how to manage the impacts of ongoing capitalist fundamentalism which affects every country right now regardless of its own politics. ★
• History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps (2024-12-24) : An ambitious project comprising a long-running podcast, expanding series of books, and complementary transcripts, blogposts, and timelines, founded by scholar Peter Adamson. The "no gaps" part is about not leaving out so-called "non-western" philosophers and philosophies. The podcast episodes dealing with philosophers in the islamic world are widely recommended. ★
• The Statutes Project - Putting Historic British Law Online (2024-12-23) : An important project founded and continued by John Levin to place all historic british statutes online. Levin is an avocational historian who has effectively joined a broader movement to place copies of statutes and other laws online that properly are public domain and should be available, but are difficult to access because so many libraries are throwing out their copies. ★
• Greek Language Portal (2024-12-20) : A complement to the previous site, focussed more on dictionaries for modern, mediaeval, and modern greek and linguistic information over all. This project is based at aristotle university of thessaloniki, and includes numerous bibliographies and literature guides. It does not explicitly have resources about katharevousa, so if you have by chance found yourself with some greek literature composed in this dialect, so far unfortunately the best overview source is wikipedia. ★
• Centre for the Greek Language (2024-12-20) : A greek government non-profit devoted to the study and documentation of the greek language, which explicitly rejects a politicized approach. It includes links to free learning resources, to current dictionaries, as well as links to formal training programs to acquire certification as a teacher of speaker of modern greek as an additional language. ★
• ClausewitzStudies.org (2024-12-20) : For various surreal reasons, Carl Von Clausewitz's famously incomplete but preserved and edited for posterity by his wife treatise On War is infuriatingly difficult to get in a complete printed version without a heavy overlay of politicized and unwanted "modern" commentary. This site includes the full texts in german and several translations, along with links to printable versions and e-versions of Clausewitz's complete works. ★
• Bibliotheca Augustana (2024-12-08) : A multi-lingual library of texts mainly ancient to medieval in age alongside a small and growing selection of early modern and contemporary works in latin, greek, and most contemporary major languages spoken in europe. In the style of the times when latin was the shared scholarly language, the navigation and site information are all provided in that language. Even for those who have not studied latin, it is well worth poking around. ★
• Demonax Hellenic Library (2024-12-08) : A creative commons licensed, wiki-based collection of open english translations of almost any available pre-modern greek text. There is very little information available about who is hosting and maintaining the site, but it does appear to be academically associated, therefore stably hosted and without advertising. ★
• Jim Crow Museum (2024-12-01) : People living in what is currently called canada can be a bit too glib when referring to the "jim crow era" in the united states and other similar uses. It is wonderfully easy to gain a better understanding by going through the virtual tur of this museum, based in michigan and run by ferris state university. Be ready to feel uncomfortable on learning how many racist slurs are embedded in mainstream canadian english via imitation of united states citizens who thought they were white. ★
• Verum Factum (2024-11-17) : Home page of an open access book series focussed on the relationship between "scientific labour, society, and politics." Among their planned publications are important prints of material left unpublished in the soviet union, as well as important new studies. The founding organizations include the european research council, max planck institute, and univrersità ca'foscari venezia. ★
• Arjen Kamphuis - Missing (2024-11-09) : Tragically, Kamphuis remains missing after mysteriously vanishing on a vacation hiking trip, after building a respected reputation as an investigative reporter. Not only was he engaged in this work, he trained other journalists in information security and wrote a well-known pamphlet on the subject, now best accessed via the wayback machine. ★
• Old Weather (2024-11-09) : A major ship's log transcription project, including military and civilian sources. The purpose of crowdsourcing all this work, which even when directly OCR-able still needs human checking and revision, is to build up the information used to extend and improve climate models. Yet it is also an indirect source of unusual human stories captured in unexpected places. ★
• Internet Speculative Fiction Database (2024-11-09) : Another of those quietly marvellous, little-vaunted crowd-sourced projects that should be in anyone who reads or writes speculative fiction's bookmarks. Founded in 1995, it apparently began as a series of usenet-posted bibliographies, and now is a solidly documented, multilingual, international, creative commons-licensed creation. It is experiencing some difficulties due to political nonsense that could at minimum jeopardize cross-referencing, but so far it looks like the scope of the difficulties is small. ★
• Ancient Chess (2024-11-09) : While hunting for information on the game shogi, this was one of the sites that percolated up in the search results. Overall the basic information pages are very good, and a very curious reader could try out the entries on their links page in the wayback machine if desired. The products are the least of the site, it is chock-a-block with histories and well illustrated explanations of how to play chess, chess variants, and related games. ★
• Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre (2024-11-09) : Another excellent project saddled with an unfortunate name. Based in yellowknife and with a uniquely diverse hands on selection of programs in and outside of the museum, the centre also has one of the most accessible websites of its kind online, including a searchable database of the museum collections and a modest and growing digital collection. ★
• Antigone (2024-11-09) : A somewhat (I admit inevitably) uneven open forum journal of essays and reprints in the field of what is now awkwardly referred to as greek and roman studies. This means you will get a sampling of views and interpretations from all over the political spectrum, so be prepared for some fascinating juxtapositions well worth thinking with. ★
• libcom.org (2024-11-09) : An interesting archive and comment project with a name referring to the contradictory term "libertarian communism." Leaving that aside, it is clear the founders and contributors are seeking to catalyze a constructive critique of capitalism and development of practical ideas to organize and improve the situation. The archive it is developing is contributing to document preservation, including some mirroring. It accepts submissions and is looking for contributors. ★
• unixdigest.com (2024-09-20) : An experienced programmer-web developer's non-nonsense website, chick full of excellent articles and tutorials. Among the author's many thoughtful posts are a consideration of whether software should be critiqued based on its politics, and an independent assessment of The Real Motivation Behind Systemd. This site is one of the few on the web where you can read about tech controversies where the author has an opinion, is forthright about it, and has no truck with name-calling. ★
• ShakespearesWords.com (2024-09-17) : Father and son team David and Ben Crystal have been involved in a longterm project of analysis and support of productions of Shakespeare's plays in original pronunciation, dictionaries, and annotated editions of the first folio, follow up quarto, and so on. While this site does have a subscription model, there is a great deal available to start from for free. ★
• First Nations Land Rights and Environmentalism in BC (2024-09-11) : Some time in the late 2010s, research fellow Karen Wonders completed a major research project illustrated with many of her own photographs delving into Indigenous matters in what is currently referred to as british columbia. Alas the website has several unfinished sections, but there are no obvious broken links or missing maps or pictures, making it an excellent non-technical introduction. ★
• Delia Derbyshire - An Audiological Chronology (2024-09-09) : An important complement to Delia Derbyshire - Electronic Music Pioneer (archive) which is offline after a seven-year update hiatus. Unfortunately Derbyshire's work is almost completely locked down by the absurdist copyright regimes in the west, the same conditions that silenced her for much of her post 1970s career. There are nevertheless a few albums available, and sites like this one delving into her process and the machinery and instruments she used. ★
• Wednesday's Women (2024-09-09) : Sandy Levins' longterm project writing and presenting biographies of mostly women in the united states and britain. A history professional specializing in food displays, Levins' challenge to the mainstream historical record is insisting on making women visible in it. More recent evidence on the larger context each women lived in that are leading to updates are not necessarily included as a result, which makes these biographies a great place to start. ★
• PalestineRemembered (2024-08-28) : A brilliant online resource and community building on an initial oral history project documenting the 1948 Nakba imposed upon Palestine. The materials available include recordings, scans, researched articles and FAQs (including references), and maps. The site has both arabic and english versions. ★
• Mapping Land Theft (2024-08-25) : A project visualizing the impact of colonial officials in what is currently called canada abusing treaty agreements to steal Indigenous land. It is based on the widely known to be incomplete but still an absolutely critical source, the 3 volumes that the department of indian and northern affairs calls "Indian Treaties and Surrenders." ★
• Black Class Action Secretariat (2024-08-21) : There is an ongoing lawsuit affecting the entire federal government of canada in which the complainants are striving to hold it to account for and put an end to systemic racism in the canadian public service. Their site provides important information from the process of discovery, including documents acquired via access to information requests. There is a great deal of important and instructive material provided to the public via their site. ★
• Canadian Women's Movements Portal (2024-08-21) : A major project run out of the university of ottawa library. For specifically canadian materials lacking easy to find descriptions or coverage in other feminist projects, usually because those projects have a narrower scope of work, since this project is national, those items will often show up in its records. The catalogue is searchable without javascript. Some material is included for unclear reasons, such as the occasional gay men's publication, but it is possible such results are due to fonds cross-references. ★
• VintageApple.org (2024-08-14) : An important site cross-referenced by Dave and Steve's blog. It may be of special interest to those hunting for working old macintosh hardware and not necessarily working macintosh hardware that is useful for parts. There are many scans of the original macworld magazines and similar publications, as well as specific issues from other magazines focussed on apple hardware or software. ★
• David and Steve's Blog (2024-08-14) : An excellent blog full of well-researched posts and downloadable resources on vintage apple hardware (as in pre macOSX). The scans of the various Inside Macintosh volumes is an outstanding and generously shared set of files, especially for those who would like to see the now sadly ignored original human interface guidelines. Watch out for the many excellent cross-references to of course, apple itself, but also such great projects as Macintosh Garden. ★
• Debates in the Digital Humanities (2024-08-08) : Ready access point for the ongoing series of rangy anthologies of formal papers and blogposts under the site's title, as well as complementary books. Technically these books are supposed to be open access, but so far electronic library catalogues only allow them to be accessed after signing in. No sign in is required for reading the html versions. ★
• Programming Language DataBase (2024-08-05) : A rather intriguing and massive source of links to documentation, podcasts, research, interviews, and articles. It is fabulously retro looking, focussed on information and helping people find it over bells and whistles. It began with one person and now includes contributions from a growing number of volunteers, and it actively seeks to link to other sites with well-researched, relevant posts. ★
• GNUstep (2024-08-05) : I don't know if this intriguing free (GLPL) software, cocoa-compatible development environment is used by the helloOS project, although it would make sense if it did. It is cocoa-compatible but not restricted from other *NIXes, though it appears to have most affinity to the BSD-derivatives, as should be mostly expected. The example applications look dated, perhaps because they are using X11. ★
• AppleScript Reference Library (2024-08-05) : From the look of things, this wordpress site has not been updated in nearly five years, so it is best not to wait to have a look around if any of the documents are of special interest. If you are at all curious about the history and underpinnings of the earlier macintosh system software, don't miss the Inside Macintosh volumes under the miscellaneous heading. ★
• The Atlas of Beauty (2024-07-28) : A remarkable project by rumanian photographer Mihaela Noroc, who has been travelling the world to capture images of women representing some of the many forms of women's beauty in the world. Her online gallery centres a selection of her series of photographs to date, each captioned with a brief account of the woman featured and how Noroc came to meet and interact with her. Noroc's book was "Published in 2017, The Atlas of Beauty Book features portraits of 500 women from more than 50 countries, accompanied by revelatory captions that capture their personal stories." ★
• Society of Bead Researchers (2024-07-28) : Founded in 1981 in part under the impetus of an english language teacher turned archaeologist named Peter Francis Jr., this society is just what it says. Today its membership fees continue to support publication of an annual journal, student travel award, the society's website and a generous selection of pdf copies of out of print early monographs and newsletters. ★
• Picard Trade Bead Museum (2024-07-28) : One of the stalwart 1990s-style websites still online, full of useful photographs and basic information related primarily to glass trade beads. Its archives are free to view, including thirteen exhibits. The site is also a modest storefront for a imported beads and a handfull of catalogues. The sales aspect is low key, leaving the well-lit photographs of samples to speak for themselves. ★
• Liberated Texts (2024-07-18) : Another project devoted to out of print and/or misinterpreted or otherwise ignored books dealing with anti-colonial, anti-imperial, and revolutionary topics. This site focuses specifically on providing meaty book reviews and has produced at least one anthology to date. The editors of the site are also involved in translating and republishing the subject books when they have no english translation, have gone out of print, or both. ★
• User Agents (2024-07-06) : A useful and regularly updated site listing and documenting user agents. It also provides some useful tools, although they are not always accessible due to server overloading. It is well worth checking out the list of browsers as well, as it turns out there are many more of these than it may seem. The parser page functions appear to be overwhelmed or broken. ★
• OpenWebSearch (2024-07-06) : An interesting project apparently intended to generate open access website index logs. Overall their bot is well-behaved, and the project is intended to run only from august 2022 to august 2025. The focus is on creating a proto-index for european use, due to belated concern about european sovereignty. So it seems like a project with half of the right idea at least (open indexing), but it is hard to say what specifically will come of this project, since "european-only" and "open access" are somewhat at odds, to put it mildly. ★
• Web Robots Pages, The (2024-07-06) : Due to recent abuse by a variety of bot proprietors, including the more than execrable openai, it is necessary to update how websites and server software to counter it. Today it is more effective to adjust firewall and .htaccess file settings, but it doesn't hurt to set up a robots.txt file. If nothing else, it is a good way to see which bots are set up to be rule abiding. ★
• Iskra Books (2024-06-18) : A worker-owned small scholarly press originally founded in 2017 as the Center for Communist Studies. They republish important historical works, new translations, and a modest selection of original books. They are strongly committed to making their books as widely available as possible, producing free high quality pdfs as well as low-priced soft cover hard copies. While it is probable they will have to increase the price of the hard copies a bit, they seem to be making a solid go of it and are worth checking out. ★
• Classical Continuum (2024-06-01) : Harvard is a fading institution these days as its fundamental role as credential mill for the hyper-rich is overwhelming its more constructive possibilities due to united states politics. Meanwhile, there are disciplines in which the practitioners are striving to make their research more accessible all the same, which is probably the only way to preserve the original upper class twit credential, the classics degree. This site features a significant number of actual papers rather than slim blogposts, and can easily be read without javascript by turning off the site's stylesheet. ★
• SuperGlue.it (2024-05-05) : This project seems to be dead, but the pages and software are still up. The idea behind it is to support a return to self-hosted webpages and websites written by actual people without forcing them to use rigid templates or software along the lines of wordpress. It is too bad this project seems to have vanished, although it may have been absorbed by other projects such as the small web and indie web. ★
• Ken Shirriff's blog (2024-05-03) : Shirriff is a vintage computer restorer and hardware history enthusiast. The result is a blog chock-full of longform, well-annotated (including endnotes) posts and a quality source of technical and historical information. For visitors who visit with javascript off, this index page is the better starting point, but the main page does have archive links and similar, just at the very bottom instead of the right side or top. ★
• Unix Programmer's Manual, 3 November 1971 (2024-05-02) : A full scan of a first edition copy of the very first Unix programming manual, scanned and posted by none other than Dennis M. Ritchie. He passed away in 2011, and in one of those quiet, utterly appropriate and generous memorials, his personal page remains online on the Bell Labs website. ★
• Multicians (2024-05-02) : A history of the MULTICS operating system compiled and written by many people who worked on and with the system through its research and commercial existence from 1969 to 2000. MULTICS is the (in)famous inspiration of the original UNIX operating system. An unusual but instructive place to start exploring the site is with the Multicians page proper. ★
• Palestine Poster Project Archives (2024-04-28) : Dan Walsh's remarkable and ongoing collection of Palestinian poster art, for which he has created a gallery of excellent scans. He also provides a brief history of the genre and the artists, annotations of the posters, related readings and videos, and information on how to provide additions. ★
• Linux Documentation Project, The (2024-04-25) : An important, ongoing effort to provide well-written, thorough, manuals, books, and pages on many utility programs and other elements of linux systems. Materials range in level from beginner to medium-high level kernel programming. The contributors and maintainers are all volunteers. ★
• 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. ★
• Mother Tree Project, The (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. ★