A touch of indiegestion.

Vol. 6, No. 3

The “indieweb” (define as you like) is having a bit of a “moment” (also define as you like) as many of us are suddenly nostalgic for the internet of 2005 (back when we were all a bunch of delightfully connected strangers and not this morass of addicted TMI-addled assholes with OPINION!S) and have found that there are still people just doing things on the web. Like, for fun and stuff.

Previously there was Ye Olde Blogroll (does what it says on the tin) and Ooh.Directory (like a Yahoo before search) and IndieBlog (a new StumbleUpon). But my new favourite homepage is Bubbles.town, which is a sorta Technorati meets Digg, but also RSS with Fediverse. Simple category filtering and custom follows are nice. I don’t love “Upvoting” as a mechanic, but the user base right now is small and dedicated, so it works in the short term. (Long term, maybe only seeing upvotes from Fediverse follows or similar solves that. Human-curated lists would also be cool.) Blogs are back, baby! Not unrelated: RIP, Jeeves. Hilariously very related: The new new new version of Digg actually bills itself as “What AI Twitter is paying attention to,” which is funny for at least six distinct reasons.

Pool of Silence, Margaret Macdonald, 1913

Confusions.

☠️ The shame of Rotten.com: ❝It felt like discovering an older sibling’s porn stash, except more raw, more despicable, less human. It felt illegal. Like the childhood certainty, fed by the inevitability of horror lurking at the edge of fairy-tale pages, that you’d be struck by lightning or get bitten by a shark or end up in jail. Who knew? Maybe in life I could end up killing a man or stealing a car. Rotten was a key you turned that locked a door behind you.❞ / 🎭 Shakespeare ranked. I remain a Hamlet guy. I know, I’m very basic. / 🕵️ In search of Banksy. (Spoiler: Do not read if you prefer to keep kayfabe where Banksy is concerned.) / ⚱️ Roger Sweet, creator of the OG He-Man toys. / 🍕 Used to be a Pizza Hut: the movie. / 📺 The banal horror of Jimmy Fallon. / 📕 On gray literature: ❝Gray literature isn’t made with libraries or bookshops in mind. It strides out into the world to do an honest day’s work. None of this hanging around on hushed shelves waiting to impart knowledge in the abstract. It’s got sperm to tout, babies to birth, aircraft to maintain, a policed public to mollify.❞

Extensions.

🗄️ Usenet Archives. / Japanese Woodblock Print Search. / 👀 Milwaukee bus tickets from the 1950’s, when everything looked cooler. / 👾 noclip, a digital museum of video game levels. / Title Scream. / Gaming Couch, local multiplayer party games. / ♟️ Ed’s Stratego Site. / 1D-Chess. / Chess Peace. / 🛰️ Live satellite map.

Explorations.

📚 I’m Thinking Of Ending Things by Iain Reid. / 🍿 Speed Racer.