Anyone wanna share interesting things?

[malymin]

I kind of miss how easy it was to see people talking about media, technology, history, etc that I'd never heard about before on Cohost... despite Cohost having some structural similarities to Tumblr, I just don't get that experience there.

I'm pretty bummed out by recent events (to put it mildly), and I imagine a lot of other people here are too. Anyone wanna share stuff that brings them joy, or at the very least positive stimulation? Books you're reading, hobbies you've gotten into, etc.

I had been reading Who Owns this Sentence by David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu, which is very good, but had to take a break because it was just making me depressed thinking about how we're going to get out of the enclosure of the cultural commons on top of... everything else. I've had a bit of fun with a short free fangame RPG on Itch.io, made by a user going by Atena. And I'd like to share an old middle-school favorite website, "Dog Coat Colour Genetics" by an artist named Jess, as well as the even bigger and older "MessyBeast" website run by Sarah Hartwell, which is an especially thorough as a resource on cat color genetics, but has many other interesting alleyways to explore.

Comments

[kossai]

kossai dive back into sky: children of the light - beautiful places to explore !

[malymin]

What's that game like?

[kossai]

well , come from developers of journey if familiar with that one . explorative , with quiet social mechanics - though more upfront than journey .

there is both base game , and seasonal event mechanic - but in comparison with other games , seasonal events not so bad . players can revisit past events at any time , which is great if ever go inactive . everything will still be there , just miss on easiest window to buy cosmetic items .

base game take through 7 different realms , to learn stories of civilisation which die out , as well as help to restore world .
seasonal events then add on and refine mechanics - like full photography mode , theatre to put on plays , more musical instruments and means of expression .

as with any live service game , of course have to wonder what will happen when inevitably dwindle and die out . but , for now , think still pretty strong . :)

[malymin]

there is both base game , and seasonal event mechanic - but in comparison with other games , seasonal events not so bad . players can revisit past events at any time , which is great if ever go inactive . everything will still be there , just miss on easiest window to buy cosmetic items .

Oh, that's extremely good. Takes the sting of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) off, which is the main thing I feel frustrated with about massive online multiplayer games.

Also, it sounds like there's definately a strong throughline between the developer's design interests in Journey and Sky - always an interesting thing to see, especially if it's something not usually prioritized by other developers.

as with any live service game , of course have to wonder what will happen when inevitably dwindle and die out . but , for now , think still pretty strong . :)

Yea... it's the kind of game that's dependent on official support to function, huh. In the meantime, I hope for many more fruitful years! It sounds really interesting and special. When the servers do shut down, I hope fans find a way to keep an unofficial server running. (I think I've heard of some MMOs doing that... not sure how it works, though.)

[kossai]

yes ! so far believe only cosmetic items which never return is collaborations - can not buy aurora concert wings or little prince scarf anymore , for example .
can be kind of frustrate for new players to realise miss out on item that would be absolute favourite , but , to miss more or less only small pool of cosmetics is pretty good as far as these kind of games go .

otherwise , spirits from past seasons can start to return 1 year after debut . this system in self can still frustrate people - have to wait in order to get what miss beyond basic expression tier - but better than never return at all .
mechanically , worst lock these spirits impose is more powerful wing ascensions , but base game offer decent amount - and can still play game regardless , will just not be able to boost as many times during flight . :P

mhm mhm . run since 2019 , and actually on moominvalley collaboration right now , so would say not in danger just yet !
when game inevitably do have to end ... would really love if could get singleplayer release , at least . some quests would need change ( season of assembly mostly ) but that would be infinitely preferable to just totally lose .

[tresfoyle]

you might get a kick out of this

[malymin]

Clipart? Fuck yes I love clipart. Something strikes me as very distinctive about the art style of some of these, especially the animals and people... like, that they're drawn in a way that was fairly popular in commercial and pop art of the 90's, but not so much the decades before or after. Am I misremembering things, or...? Like, I'm thinking about how I saw this book at my library job and immediately pegged it as being published in the 90's from the cover art alone.

Long-time Macintosh users likely remember HyperCard, Apple's strange hypermedia system that was sorta like a cross between index cards, web pages, and 90s interactive edutainment software. HyperCard left a pretty big legacy for the Web to come, influencing everything from JavaScript to wikis to the pointing finger thing for links on pages to fuckin' Myst.

Oh I desperately want to know more about this.

[tresfoyle]

you're definitely not misremembering things; this whole aesthetic sensibility was inescapable back in the day if you lived in an environment where people were printing shit out and pinning it up for public reference, I feel like.

[malymin]

if you lived in an environment where people were printing shit out and pinning it up for public reference

That's the thing - I didn't, and yet it felt like it filtered its way into mass media (cartoons, etc) I was exposed to.

[bootjack]

oh man i've been a huge fan of messybeast for a long time and didn't know there was a similar site for dog coat genetics, thank you for posting about that!!

as for interesting things to share, hmm... if you like watching big machines doing their thing, there's all sorts of railcams, airport cams, and harbor cams on youtube. with the harbor cams you can often see which ships are coming and going by cross-checking with marinetraffic or vesselfinder, although some like duluth harbor cam has a bespoke website for ship arrival and departure schedules. some of the harbor cams will have time tables for the expected arrivals of ships coming in so you know when to tune in (this is a bit harder for the railcams since there's no train tracking websites for freight, only passenger rail gets tracked). my favorite harbor cams are duluth harbor cam and stream time live for their extensive collection of ship streams (STL also has a couple airport cams), as well as virtual railfan for train stuff.

[malymin]

It's nowhere near as big as Messybeast, but very few things are. XD The site-runner used to be incredibly involved in a virtual pet game I played as a kid, that's how I found out about it - it used to be linked from their fansite! (That fansite is now long gone, I'm pretty sure...)

I'm probably more of an animal-cam person than a machine-cam person, but it's cool to know that this exists!

~~I love your boat icon and your writups about boat drama, btw~~

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm reading a graphic novel on the history of food. I love fact-based graphic novels.

>> resource on cat color genetics <<

Have you seen the salmiakki cats?

Re: Yes ...

[dismallyoriented]

Book rec if you're a fan of print nonfiction: Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson. A history of cookware and kitchen technologies, from bowls and fire all the way to refrigeration. She does a very good job at digging into the different cooking technologies that were available at different periods of time, and how those things shaped how cooking was done (i.e. cooking on a gas stove is much different from roasting over an open fire, beating eggs to stiff peaks is a different prospect with a motorized handwhisk rather than 3-4 very tired kitchen staff using a stick-whisk). She even does a pretty good job with describing cultural differences, though there are a handful of details she gets wrong about Chinese cooking (don't know enough about any others to catch any errors). Highly recommend it as a read.

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

*laugh* Did she include the part about picking out the eyeballs of armored knights?

Re: Yes ...

[dismallyoriented]

I'm sorry the what

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

It came up in one of my fun history classes. Forks were a late-arriving type of silverware, so not everyone caught on to how they were used immediately. Some peasants decided that forks were tools for picking out the eyes of armored knights. At the time, a knight was like a human tank. Even if you got him down off his battlesteed, he remained a tough nut to crack. But if you could knock him down, he was somewhat more vulnerable. Then if you had a fork, you could stab through the narrow slits of his visor and, if not kill him outright, at least render him useless as a combantant.

In some places, the nobility responded by banning forks. LOL history LOL

Re: Yes ...

[malymin]

I'm reading a graphic novel on the history of food. I love fact-based graphic novels.

Oh, that looks good. Speaking of graphic novels... have you ever read Scott Mccloud's Understanding/Reinventing/Making Comics trilogy?

Have you seen the salmiakki cats?

Messybeast has a page on them! ^_^

http://messybeast.com/roan-finnish-mutation.htm

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Scott McCloud's Six Layers is what explained why so much of everything is crap. Most people try to build from the surface in. I build from the core out. Though admittedly I consider the first two layers (Idea and Form) to be interchangeable; start with either, then do the other, then work out.

[onlyknownothing]

The Eye is a public archive whose works are available in an only-somewhat-categorized directory "data dump." There's all SORTS of stuff in there if you'd like to take a look, from old RPGs to vintage radio plays to (on their new "beta" site) digitized VHS recordings of broadcast television.

Peelopaalu is a Neocities web directory of sites which contain interesting things. Not 100% up to date, probably 50% not of interest to you in particular, but worth digging through to find the stuff you'd find cool.

Radio Garden lets you listen to radio from all over the world via web-radio broadcasts of the various stations. A great way to explore what cultures around the globe are experiencing in this moment and share in their art and creativity.

Petit Tube is a random selection from the vast number of YouTube videos with 10 or less views. See someone's home movie. See a video someone took of their dog being sweet. See something shared with the world that few people have ever seen.

[malymin]

Oh, this is exactly the kind of stuff I wanna hear about! I need to bookmark all of these...

NGL, Peelopaalu is giving me huge nostalgia for the early 00's web in ways I don't know how to put into words. I feel like this kind of list of "cool unrelated websites" used to be far more normal, long ago. I even noticed a few websites I'd already heard about on the front page. (I'm fascinated by altered states of consciousness, so in absence of first-person observation... Erowid is one of my go-to places to research psychedelic experiences.)

I do feel... sad, looking at the most recent update on the site:

The End (For real, this time) | 20/JULY/2024

This project has officially ran out of steam, and I am no longer interested in maintaining it - I thought I could rekindle my desire to do this, but alas, I cannot. I just do not find it fun anymore. I have been on the Internet for over 25 years at this point, and even since 2019 when I first created this website, the Internet has changed a Hell of a lot in that short period of time, and I feel as though a website of this type has no real place in the modern Internet landscape. To be quite blunt: I do not enjoy recreationally browsing the Internet at all anymore for a wide variety of reasons that I will not be going into here. Those of you who know me personally might understand what these reasons are, but in short: The Internet these days is just fucking wack and I do not care about it. Nothing specific has triggered this, I just spend very little of my personal time having fun online like I did 10, 15, or 20 years ago. It's just not the same for me anymore, and it's time to move on.

Thank you for supporting the site and I hope it has brought any visitors to it joy these last few years. I've greatly appreciated all of your emails in my time running this site, and I have a great deal of pride in the fact that so many people have told me it has inspired them to create their own websites and make their own mark on the Internet. I will not be maintaining the directory at all going forward, so please do not email me link suggestions, and please exercise caution when browsing the list should any of the current URL's expire and be acquired by bad actors.

Other than that, I have nothing else to say. If you're disappointed by this news at all, I completely understand, but it is what it is. My email Inbox is still always open and monitored if anyone feels the need to reach out for whatever reason.

I totally understand why they feel this way. I can't stop them. But...

[onlyknownothing]

The Internet (and especially the early Internet) is ephemeral. Entire sites just vanished back then. The whole thing about "if it's on the Internet, it's forever" is really only applicable to shit like the Streisand Effect where there is some group or cadre interested in preserving the information. Some random hobby page is entirely likely to randomly disappear and take content with it for exactly this sort of reason. The creator loses interest, or can't afford hosting, or whatever... and it's gone.

That's not a bad thing, honestly. It just causes dissonance because people are used to the Internet being some sort of permanent space outside of active efforts to scrub something - and oftentimes (as seen in that sentiment I mentioned above) it's expected that some things might still survive even that. That's only really been the case recently, however, as huge centralized social media sites have built the sort of system to preserve the things posted on them due to that content being the reason for anybody to use the thing. Back in the old web, where everybody had their own files hosted on their own sites for their own use - or were forced to use hosting services like Photobucket? Things vanished with the server or the service.

Truth is, change was kind of one of the key elements of the "Web 1.0" period. Sites popped into and out of existence all the time, and as such there was an explorational element to it all. Some site you used to use to find or do a certain thing stopped existing, so you went onto forums and talked about how cool it was and asked if anybody knew any other site that did something similar. Heck, that's what these grand website masterlist directories were for - a way to share the cool new things you found with others so they could experience them too before they disappeared. That's also part of what prompted so much of the collectivist bent to the early Internet's culture; you saved copies of things you found particularly cool, and "mirrored" them on your own site in case the original source went offline. Maybe you added some bits of your own to it. And then somebody else might mirror your own additions, and make their own alterations.

Nothing's stopping anyone from picking up where Snooper left off with Peelopaalu and continuing to update and refine the link-list. That's very much the spirit of the thing. The early web certainly felt "alive" in a very real sense, for exactly that sort of reason... but so much of that life came as a direct result of the fragile, chaotic, and constantly-reinventing nature of the thing. The reason why the Internet feels so "dead" right now is actually because there's so little "site-death" right now, generating the necessary impetus and providing the necessary space for new things to be born. Look at how many sites sprang out of Cohost's shutdown. It was sad to lose the place there, but it brought all these new and independent creative spaces into being.

[malymin]

Makes sense. I distinctly remember a lot of websites I browsed going offline as a kid because the siterunner couldn't pay for hosting anymore, or just lost interest... need to remember that that's what the ecosystem originally looked like, and that we just need to be able to get used to and adapt to it again.

[onlyknownothing]

As a crazily-apropos circumstance, Petit Tube went down since I linked you to it - I was intending to mention it on my own post about ways to escape the YouTube algorithm and found out it was gone. As mentioned, however, there are alternatives: ytstalker is basically the same thing, albeit with sliders to adjust for upload date and number of "likes."

[wobblegong]

I was introduced to the Dreamwidth community Little Details just the other day, and while the focus isn't exactly on supplying a steady diet of curiosities it sure does seem like an interesting place to lurk/browse. (Or you know, actually ask highly specific, factual research questions like you're meant to, but I'm the wrong kind of writer for that!)

[malymin]

Oooooo! That looks very neat. Maybe I'll ask a question there myself sometime...