Look at all this cool stuff that I found on the internet!
Welcome to my web brutalist links page, very much inspired by layouts from the 90's but also because I'm tired and there are a whole lot of other things that need to be done. I'll probably include a bunch of sites that I like that are worth a visit on a separate page later.
An article about adding film grain texture to digital photos: The rabbit hole of adding grain to digital photos is deeper than you think
Grim reading when I'm infected by Covid: What If COVID Reinfections Wear Down Our Immunity?
This blog post is about academic and career writing, but it has generally good advice: not writing as usual #AcWriMo
A manifesto on how we whould do things smaller: The small things Manifesto
A short manga by Hayao Miyazaki about a Prince setting out to find seeds. Apparently just officially released in English, but here is the horribly typeset scanlation: Shuna's Journey
A review of sorts of Phil Tippet's "Mad God" and some ruminations about obsolescence: Mad God
A snapshot of the "Gundam Project" website from the year 1998. More than the anime, this has always been my definitive version of gundam: The Gundam Project (1998)
An essay about Wendell Berry: Wendell Berry's advice for a cataclysmic age
An interview with Guillermo del Toro on cinema, art and the meaning of death. Well worth the read: Death is the curator: An interview with Guillermo del Toro
A oneshot manga about a walk at night: Midnight walk of wonders
A onshot pixel art manga about biography readers in a sci-fi setting: 3:Utakata no hibi
A good summary of the current state of AI art and how it affects artists: Deus ex art machina: AI Art and its implications on Japanese otaku art
On how my terrible sleeping habits and my pessimistic outlook of life might be related: The Human Mind Is Not Meant to Be Awake After Midnight, Scientists Warn
On debt forgiveness and its role in maintaining civilisation:Michael Hudson: From Junk Economics to a False View of History – Where Western Civilization Took a Wrong Turn
A nice comic about animals, humanity and inhumanity: Caged lives
A comic about birbs: Ecologies of Houston
On the concept of unemployment and how we can avoid it and survive the climate crisis: Cory Doctorow: Full Employment
About agency and mental health: There Is No Moral Imperative to Be Miserable
A good follow up to the "1000 true fans" theory: The Rise of the Internet’s Creative Middle Class
The sheer cruelty that we subject elephants to is insane: Jumbo's Ghost
An essay that captures the disillusionment of our time: It’s Time to Stop Living the American Scam
A fascinating history of breakfast cereals (and why they are so bland): Repast: Frosted Flakes’ Food Guilt-Laden Past
On how we are now all forced to play the influencer game to stay relevant: Influencer creep
A whimsical one-shot manga about imagination: Wavelength of imagination
An interesting interview with Fields Medal winner June Huh: He Dropped Out to Become a Poet. Now He’s Won a Fields Medal.
A one-shot manga about robots, automation and the futility of work: Me x 2
A fantastic short manga about space dog Laika and her revenge on Earth: Laika no Hoshi
An interview with one of my favourite mangaka, Masakazu Ishiguro: Q&A With Masakazu Ishiguro on Soremachi, Tengoku Daimakyou and more!
I lke the tension in this one-shot manga about a vulture man and a little girl: A feast of emergency rations
A fascinating piece about how algorithms can be affected by initialisation bias: Initialization bias
All these manga were made by animator Umishima Senbon. A really fun collection of short manga, the plots are simple but the characters shine through the art: Garden in bloom through prism
The paneling in this one-shot manga!: Those with wings
The character drawing in this manga!: Bakewell memories
The colors and expressions in this manga!: Valentine
The figure drawing in this one!: Yagate saku lamium
About Palantirs and the modern internet: Palantirnet
On alternative approaches to mental health, I'm not 100% sold on it, but it's good to look at different perspectives: Doctors Gave Her Antipsychotics. She Decided to Live With Her Voices.
An interesting book review and insights into Buddhist thought: insights from a forest monk
A fascinating page that is made of a a collection of 4chan posts. A strange cacophony of voices: 4chan Philosophy
Emoji fonts. I appreciate the simplicity and black and whiteness: What is black and white and read all over?
A discussion on whether we are spending too much time creating art: A Meandering Discussion About How Much Art is Too Much Art, With No Clear Answer
An artist interview by Tachyon Art. It would be interesting to see more of these conversations between artists: Paul Enami Interview
About the value of formatting in plain text: Write plain text files
A bit of a reality check about climate change, stopping it is not going to be easy: This Eminent Scientist Says Climate Activists Need to Get Real
This one volume manga captures the struggles of young artists, and the aimlessness of youth in general, so well: Nemurubaka
A really balanced view on AI art and the recent release of DALL-E 2: "AI will replace artists" is a smokescreen
About how modern politics aligns purely to affiliation and not principles: The Politics of Pure Affiliation Has Driven Everyone Absolutely Insane
Zeta Gundam has some of the best mecha designs ever, this documents all the revisions and the various designers that came together to make it happen: Production History: Mobile Suit Z Gundam
A cool collection of printable insect zines: The small science collective: Insect Zines
About the harm of our obsession with staying on track: The Obsession with “Getting Ahead” in Your Twenties Is Failing Young People
This explains why the modern internet is almost unreadable: The Future of the Web Is Marketing Copy Generated by Algorithms
And this discusses "Dead Internet Theory", the theory that the internet is now just run by bots as a government psy-op: Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet ‘Died’ Five Years Ago
About writing for middle graders and the concept of "Elsewhere": To Write for Middle-Grade Readers is to Write About Elsewhere
About a tribe that doesn't have access to salt and the solution they came up with: Without a Source for Salt, This Tribe Created a Delicious Substitute
A comic about homepages and internet nostalgia, how could I not recommend it: Home sweet homepage
About the current state of American teen mental health: Why American Teens Are So Sad
A zine on making art and how it relates to the internet: What do you think you are doing
A one shot by Tatsuki Fujimoto. The narrative and comic craft is incredibly experimental. I haven't seen a 4-koma format used to this effect before. It'll probably be taken down after a while, so read it now:Goodbye, Eri
About two girls in an art club. Fuyumushi Kaiko writes stories that capture the realistic angst of teenaged girls, a far cry from how they are usually depicted in media: Bijutsubu no futari
A short manga by Fuyumushi Kaiko. I really like how she depicts eyes. You can read so much into those empty pupils and blank stares. My mother and older sister
An all-star collab manga between One, Murata Yuusuke, Kinu Nishimura:Monster of Earth
A one shot manga about a bum by a river:By the Tama River
Worth a read about the commodification of mental health under capitalism: The BuzzFeedification of Mental Health
For some reason I binged on a lot of one shot manga, here are ones that I liked:
About grief and accepting the death of a loved one: My sister's funeral
A post apocalyptic story about Shoujo manga: Shoujo manga
A fluffy teenage romance with a dark set up: Last one
A slow burn horror story: Jinjori barai
Aliens investigate a post-apocalyptic planet: Wakusei-X
A cute and comfy story of a witch, the paneling and shot angles are just excellent: Majo no complex
A bittersweet coming of age story about belief and modern religion: Kingdom of stars
I really like short manga that are almost purely atmosphere: Pre-spring
I like this author's work on Hirayasumi, here he reveals how he came up with it and his battle with cancer: About the time I was hospitalized for malignant lymphoma
Another zine that I stumbled upon: JR's bad art zine
I can tell if a website was made by a someone younger than 20. This article is about style trends in the revival of the retro web. Retro web
A youtube video about Public resources. It's also a beer ad for Open Access Ninja: Open Access Ninja: The Brew of Law
The song that plays in the credits is available on Archive.org. It's a really catchy public domain theme: Do (Make your bread)
Some online zines that I liked: Art-ist-art-isnt Plant eaters Plant eaters (printable color version)
About how China's leapfrog to mobile internet affects how knowledge and relationships are made: The Unintended Consequences of China Leapfrogging to Mobile Internet
A one shot manga about a troubled youth and a bird in amber, it's dark but very engaging: Dream of the amber bird
About Leiji Matsumoto, Japanese science fiction and the concept of "Roman": Voyage through Outer Space #01 – Leiji Matsumoto’s Roman
About how FOSS is Socialism: Why FOSS is Socialism
A one shot manga on difficult family relationships: Stilettos in summer
This is about transitions and detransitions and is a bit TERFy, but it's interesting to read between the lines about the influence of tumblr on the psychology of a generation of girls: By Any Other Name: The story of my transition and detransition.
A bit about "Morning pages", a practice of writing in te morning: Morning pages
About how to be a good ally; by being an accomplice and not an ally: Accomplices not allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex
Beautifully written piece about life in the pandemic and academic dreams: Fuck the bread, the bread is over
This article is an even further back time capsule about what zine culture used to look like 20 years ago, it's interesting how many of the roles of zines have since been taken over by websites, forums, podcasts and social media:Zoning in on zines
About unemployed Thai tourism elephants returning to rural areas: Thai tourism elephants are far better off in forests
A one shot manga about a decapitator and a prostitute. Reminds me of classic samurai tragedies: The Tale of a Streetwalker's Lovers' Suicide
This article feels a bit like a time capsule about what zine and internet culture used to look like 15(!) years ago: Why zines won't die
Fanart from the 1940s: Fanart
A tribute to Terry Pratchett: GNU Terry Pratchett
This is a really interesting manga anthology that was targeted at the west, it's really Japanese but at the same time has very western comic conventions (Like horizontal word baloons and text boxes): Manga
About websites as a space for therapy and introspection: Envisioning my homepage as an online therapeutic space
A comic about the predatory behaviour of MLMs: You Could Be the 0.01%!
A cool zine about ghosts. The culture is so different from the ghosts that I'm used to. Fantômes Issue 1
A history of seaweed albums. I still have some pressed seaweed that I made more than a decade ago: Love and Longing in the Seaweed Album
HTML table tags, I remember table tags: Death of a hero: The html table tag (1997-2020)
A thought provoking account by a closeted transwoman: I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out.
About animism and our relationships with material objects: Animism: A Love Story for Longevity
Tapau paper. I regularly use it and never gave it much thought. But it is a very practical design: An ode to the tapow paper
A fascinating history of the idli. I need to find some nice hot idlis: The evolution of the idli
A one shot manga about turning 35: 35 no hi
A one shot manga about food and going home. A simple concept wonderfully executed: Kaerimichi
About TED talks and how we are shaking off their spell: What was the TED talk?
About integrating websites and book publishing, as well as how to archive websites in book form: The Unbearable Lightness of Web Pages
link-in-bio sites, like homepages but parasitically linked to social media: The New Personal Website Isn’t Really a Website at All
A one shot manga about two friends reenacting a strange dream: A naked dream and fulfilling Ryne
The Cherokee creation story, in which the diving beetle finds the mud that becomes the earth: The Cherokee creation story
A one shot manga by Hagio Moto, a pioneer in Shoujo manga and Japanese Sci-Fi. This one is rather grounded even though it has a fantastical premise: Iguana Girl
A vividly visceral vignette: We Hunt them for their Flesh
A short story about celebrity and treats: Treat tube
A bit of a morbid theme today, with an article about the death of websites: How Websites Die
And this rather tragic oneshot manga. I like how it captures the emotions in the facial expressions: My wife whom I loved dearly
Pigeon breeding makes me ask "Have we gone too far?": Unnatural Selection: Emil Schachtzabel’s Pigeon Prachtwerk (1906)
I can listen to this on a loop for hours: This is the anti-NFT anthem
An essay on the "poor image", it's interesting to reflect on how it has changed since 2009: In defense of the poor image
A nice oneshot manga that is both grounded and dreamy: In the pocket
On the growth and eventual failure of platforms: That broken tech/content culture cycle
An old school style zine about the pressure of social media: I 💔 Social Media
I hate this about Linux. But I'm surprised that nobody has actually fixed it yet: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker (and my toilets are blocked)
This comic makes me want to go and reconnect with internet people that I haven't talked to in a while: The Place We Once Called Home
A comic about grief, regrets and ghosts: The Ghost That Sits on Your Chest
A comic about civilisation and collapse: When We Were Whole: A Comic About Us
I really like this comic about how tiring it is to have to play the PoC: I do not want to write today
An American ukiyo-e inspired drawing manual: Arthur Wesley Dow’s Floating World: Composition (1905 edition)
On the last days of Myspace and how it mirrors the current state of Facebook: What Does A Platform Look Like When It’s Dying?
On the strange lack of sexuality in modern action movies: Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny
About the nocturnal pollinators that secretly help us to produce food: Nightcrawlers:Shedding light on the world of nocturnal pollinators
On the Marxist Astronomer Anton Pannekoek and alternatives to our models of mechanical vision: Marxist Astronomy: The Milky Way According to Anton Pannekoek
On the absurdities of modern philanthropy: Winners Take All: Modern philanthropy means that giving some away is more important than how you got it
On grief, queerness and making a dollhouse: Grieving my father and my book by building a dollhouse
I doubt anybody reading this needs any convincing, but some good points on keeping a personal site: why you might want a personal site
Negro comics! (Don't cancel me, this is literally the title of this comic) Romance comics from the 1950's targeted at African American people. Very melodramatic: Negro comics
I like this concept better than the web0 movement, it seems to have a better elaboration of the concepts at hand: Pluriverse
Food with morphing shapes: Morphing Matter
On how the concept of eternal progress in the moral and political sphere should be questioned: Going nowhere: Laurie Taylor interviews John Gray
The concept of Bullshit jobs: Bullshit jobs
A very strange and surreal short manga about penises. This is rather NSFW: Sore wa tada no senpai no chinko
I've never had much interest in watching Votoms, but this is an interesting piece of early American anime fandom: The Votoms viewers guide
A whole stack of contemporary Southeast Asian literary writing: Anaksastra
On how design enables harassment on social media: It's Not Your Fault You're a Jerk on Twitter
A brief history of the ballpoint pen. I don't really agree with the thesis, I love ballpoint pens: How the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive
Some thoughts on the dead on the internet: Cyber Mauseoleums
A history of JAUP: The story of JAUP
About how European colonialism is at the roots of our current crises: Amitav Ghosh: European colonialism helped create a planet in crisis
An article from 2008(?) that thinks hipsters are the end of Western civilisation. (Although until today I still don't know what exactly a hipster is): Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization
A long essay about the history of 4chan and how it lead to Trump: 4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump
Food for thought about writing for low literacy readers: The Audience You Didn’t Know You Had
Cyberpunk illustrations from a game book from the 90's: Chromebook 1992
Some advice on how to survive as an artist in the internet age: Molly Crabapple's 15 rules for creative success in the Internet age
The link between 19th century animal illustrations and programming books: A short history of the O'Reilly animals
About hypertext and the possible forms that it can take: No Longer No Sense of an Ending
As someone that has only recently gotten into webdesign, this article on how hard it is to make websites fascinates me: Everything Easy is Hard Again
A talk about how we view time and how we fit it into timeframes: 10 timeframes
Amazon suddenly closed down an Indian publisher that it owns for no reason. This author reacts to how marginalised voices can be shut down by imperial capitalists: Author’s lament: Why Amazon closing down Westland feels like we’re living in a Mohsin Hamid novel
I've been going down the rabbit hole that is LinkedIn's culture. It's really fascinating how the lack of an ad driven model incentivises people to perform differently from other social media. LinkedIn’s Alternate Universe
A good companion piece to the previous article, which explains how the algorithm rewards and creates certain strange behaviour. Why is LinkedIn so cringe?
This kind of annoys me too, but I thought it was too obvious to write a long article about it: Please enough dead butterflies
More Southeast Asian climate speculative microfiction: Last will and testament of the last elder
Biodynamic farming, it's like horoscopes for farmers, but likely there is something useful in these practices: In service of the moon
Southeast Asian climate speculative microfiction: Flipside
The haunting look of 'Killed' photographs: The kept and the killed
I really like Mizukami Satoshi's manga short stories. This is one of the best: Walking the void
Another one shot manga by the same author about a middle aged man getting his childhood wish: Too late for fantasy
A oneshot manga about artists in the post-apocalypse: Pen pal at the end of the world
Someone uploaded Farid Ud-Din Attar's The Conference of the Birds as a pdf, this version is a good English-translation-of-Persian-Sufi-Poetry: The Conference of the Birds
An article about the desire tht we have lost in the past couple of years: Rediscovering desire in a panopticon of virtual pleasures
A profile of the herbalist Hildegard of Bingen: Hildegard of Bingen
Four translations of 雨ニモマケズ by Kenji Miyazawa:
Someone who is unfazed by the rain
Hot. Water. Bottles. (Not much use for me since I live in the tropics): The revenge of the hot water bottle
I try not to link to social media, but I liked this Sci-fi story and the creative use of text messages as a format: Unknown Number
A discussion on how advantages of being technical. A very interesting format as well. The future will be technical
About farming algae and how future foods aren't necessarily new: The future isn't new
Some discussion about servers and the will to simplify the process of hosting things: Servers and desire
A virtual frog vending machine: Frogpon
About the naming conventions of science fiction vs. real life: Science fiction vs. real names
Bikobatanari's take on using Neocities as a main art site: A Reflection on Neocities as an Artist/Individual
On how programming can be like cooking: Programming, cooking, and making what you want to use
A one-shot manga that uses a lot of "Show, don't tell": Hamelin's Window
On how html is really punk and folk: Basic HTML Competency Is the New Punk Folk Explosion!
An in-depth story about how hard it is to escape taxes in a cruise ship: The disastrous voyage of Satoshi, the world’s first cryptocurrency cruise ship
Computing history and the contributions of Fred Fish: So long and thanks for all the disks! Fred Fish and floppies filled with freedom
Murder mystery LARPing in China: Chaoyang Trap: Assassin’s Screed
This is kind of cheesy, but I read it anyway: The Terribly, Tragically Sad Man
I like the idea of a fantasy self that you must reject: Who is my Fantasy Self and How Do I Shut Her Up?
Free anatomy book, I haven't tried it out, but it looks decent: Morpho: Anatomy for artists
A whole stack of old computer game magazines, there's something distinct about the writing in 90's computer game journalism: Computer Gaming World Archive
Sutras made with pictograms for illiterate Japanese readers: Buddhist texts for the illiterate
Some history and about the genetics of the Spanish Habsburgs: The Habsburg Jaw And The Cost Of Royal Inbreeding In Europe
This feels a bit sad, but times change: I don't know how to waste time on the internet anymore
I don't 100% buy his economic take on the debt in ancient societies, but he has some good points: On debt parasites
On why web3 will not result in decentralisation: My first impressions of web3
I've been reading up on homepages for a piece that I'm writing, this one is pretty good: Reviving Ye Olde Personal Home Page
Revisiting this article by Jason Pargin aka David Wong. It's 12 years old and it is a bit dated, but I feel it has some clues to the roots of our current state of affairs: How the Karate Kid ruined the modern world
A summary of our internet overlords: Explaining the Internet in 2020
One of the best essays that I read last year, which was a delight to revisit while I was feeling guilty for not being productive while sick: Statements Towards the Establishment of a Proof-of-Rest Protocol
A guide to digital cameras from 2006. We've really come a long way in terms of technology. Digital Cameras
An 23 year old essay that captures some of the debate surrounding the y2k bug. If I had the choice between the cautious anticipation and intervention of the y2k bug vs. the sensationalised insanity of our current crisis management, I would pick the former. Why Do We Buy The Myth Of Y2k?
Engravings featuring Kurds: Kurd engravings
The end of world according to the Lakota tribe: The End of the World
Super HD insect photos and the effort it took to make them: These Bug Macros Required 8,000 151MP Photos and 86 Hours of Editing
I really like these virtual spaces that you can click through to explore. Warning, this one's a bit NSFW: The future museum of sex games
A reexamination of luddites: Science fiction is a Luddite literature
On the tragedy of disposable technology: Airpods are a tragedy
Pringles cans are surprisingly useful for photography: How to make a telephoto camera lens out of an empty pringles can
There is a shift lately in the way we think about work: The Current Labor Movement
A cute story about robopets and the 00s internet: Robo-pets, the World Wide Web, and My Childhood Inability to Understand Parody
I had a similar thoughts about the web, but Noa-S puts it into better words: Fucking hypertext
A short comic about the costs of Covid in the Global South: The long road home
Happy belated Public domain day: Public domain day 2022
An indie web manifesto from the dark ages of 1997: The Indie Web Manifesto
A patchwork 'autobiography' from Dostoevsky: Reborn into new form
Some special effects history on how they did the bullet time effect in the Matrix: How They Shot the “Bullet-Time” Effect in ‘The Matrix’
An essay about making physical notes on Moleskines in the internet age: Analog anchors for the online adrift
The history of Circassian beauties: Circassian beauties
On why cryptocurrency is inherently unsustainable: The case against crypto
A parallel between Neolithic cities and the current state of the internet: The internet as we know it is doomed
About the relationship between our attention and the world around us: Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen
A really comfy manga that is a series of loosely related stories: Hana Bolo
An interesting article about thinking in much longer time frames than we do now: Long time
Charles Darwin's microscope, it looks really similar in design to the 3D printed version that I previously found: Charles Darwin's first microscope
Cheap Chinese electric vehicles that use old technology from Ford Model T's and washing machine motors, it's interesting how old technology can be used for new applications: Chang Li electric cars
A review of carnivorous moths and butterflies (Warning: It's a bit technical): Predatory and Parasitic Lepidoptera
A nice translated oneshot manga that features nasi goreng: 1LDK Blues
About how terrible trackers really are at predicting our behaviour: Forget privacy: you're terrible at targeting anyway
Something to do with disposable camera lenses, build a 3D printed microscope: 3D printed microscope
Poking around recycled disposable camera lenses, I discovered a cheap pancake lens that uses recycled Fujifilm Quicksnap lenses (Tempted to buy one, but it might be fun to try to DIY one myself): Utulens
