Reference

• Wikipedia

  One of the best sites on the internet - the famous yet infamous free encyclopedia. If you've good at following arcane rules and parsing wiki syntax, you should join - it always needs more editors.

• Wiktionary

  A surprisingly accurate and comprehensive dictionary for any conceivable language. The Wikimedia Foundation also hosts a bunch of other great projects: Wikisource, Wikivoyage, Wikiquote, Wikimedia Commons...

• Internet Archive

  See how thousands of sites looked at any point in history, and browse hundreds of public domain games and books.

• Project Gutenberg

  Another great site for public-domain books.

• The Cutting Room Floor

  Collates all the unused, cut, and otherwise unplayable content in videogaming.

• Digital Transgender Archive

  Trans people have been around a lot longer than most people think.

• The Medieval Bestiary

  A guide to animals that is rather outdated.

Technology

• Ars Technica

  The one tech site that I still read on a regular basis.

• Folklore

  Some amusing stories from then-employees of Apple during its early years, before Jobs left the company for the first time (not that I endorse the man's abusive behaviour).

• The Useless Web

  A button that takes you to a random site with no reason for existing. Not everything needs to have a purpose.

• The History of the Web

  A gargantuan work-in-progress telling of the whole story of the World Wide Web.

• If you've of a more technical bent, I also have programming stuff

Typography

• Fonts In Use

  Shows fonts applied to packaging, posters, and other graphic material - from the 1800s to the present day.

• Typewolf

  Trending website fonts, pairing guides, recommendations, and lookbooks. Has a cool resource list as well, but is currently on hold.

• Typeset in the Future

  Analyses the typographical choices behind popular films such as Alien and Blade Runner.

• Son of Typecasting

  A fascinating blog series by type designer Mark Simonson which discusses usage of type in historical films.

• OHNO Type School

  A series showing how each letter in the alphabet is crafted from a font designer's perspective.

• On snot and fonts

  Computer scientist Luc Devroye's guide to the typographic world. I don't agree with everything, but it's very useful.

• OpenType Feature Database

  A guide to the various OpenType features that exist.

• UniView

  Inspect Unicode text in detail. Also see the similar official Character Properties tool.

• Shady Characters

  How various characters came to exist.

• Wakamai Fondue

  Analyse various aspects of a font file, such as OpenType features and character sets.

Videos

• Living Room Candidate

  Presidential ads from the US from 1952 to 2020.

• Dan Olson

  In-depth analysis of films, video games, and the wider world through the "mechanisms of storytelling".

• Noclip

  Crowdfunded video game documentaries, including interviews with famous creators.

• Big Joel

  Video essays about movies and games.

• Ahoy

  In-depth documentaries about video gaming and computing history.

• My Name Is Andong

  Food from around the world.

• Atrocity Guide

  Coverage of "the anomalies of the internet and beyond".

• Strange Aeons

  Internet stories and history.

• Individual videos

  Monospace Tumblr witch bone thief Puparia Soviet synth

Visual Arts

• Moebius Gives 18 Tips to Artists

  Tips by one of the comic greats, Jean Giraud (alias Moebius). There's also an annotated version by artist William Stout.

• Public Domain Review

  Stories about art which, as the title suggests, is largely in the public domain.

• 100 Photographs

  TIME magazine's collection of the "100 most influential photographs ever taken".

• Play

  A JavaScript playground with a shading API that makes some neat patterns.

• art-exlibris.net

  A "digital ex libris museum" with thousands of bookplates in varying styles.

• The Eclectic Light Co.

  A blog covering two completely separate subjects, both which I like - Mac software workings and fine art.

• Rotating Sandwiches

  Photogrammetry is cool.

• Doodad.dev

  Tools for generating creative and efficient web graphical elements.

• Glaze Project

  Experimental anti-neural network cloaking for images.

Wikipedia

• Project A119

  "The aim of the project was to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon." As you might guess, conspiracy theorists like it.

• Analog hole

  You wouldn't steal this website...

• Barnum effect

  Why astrology seems so effective despite being not scientifically proven. Also known as the Forer effect.

• Black swan theory

  Oh yeah, there were clues that it was going to happen all along. Totally.

• List of common misconceptions

  You most likely believe one of these.

• Computer humour

  Some of the stuff is funny, others not so much.

• Cognitive dissonance

  When a person is able to hold conflicting beliefs simultaneously.

• Defence mechanism

  No, my website isn't bad! It's really good actually! Also see List of cognitive biases.

• Demon Sheep

  The best political ad ever.

• List of eponymous laws

  There's literally one for every letter of the alphabet excepting Q.

• Lamest edit wars

  Is it the Liancourt Rocks or Dokdo? Derry or Londonderry?

• List of really stupid article ideas

  Wow, yes, it is totally time to create an article about my pet cat.

• Malana, Himachal Pradesh

  The oldest democracy in the world.

• Map–territory relation

  The differences between a thing and its representation. Related to the concept of reification.

• Merism

  High and low. Heaven and earth. Greater and lesser.

• Operation Vegetarian

  A WW2 plan to kill millions of Germans by... feeding cows anthrax. Testing contaminated a Scottish island.

• Unusual articles

  Breast. Shaped. Hill.

• List of unusual deaths

  Death comes for all of us. But not necessarily like it does for these people.