The user @trim posted an interesting question in ~Tech and it made me wonder: what are my forgivable sins? What kinds of misdeeds on the part of companies that are suppliers of goods or services do I tacitly concience or to which I will turn a blind eye?

Whenever there is a scandal, the easy answer is, "I don't know, but definitely not that." This, however, is just an ad hoc definition that can be applied to any unsavory revelation on the part of a service or product provider. What would I be left with? I couldn't retreat from society if I wanted to and the cost of commercial puritanism would be prohibitively high.

What I realized in that topic was that (1) I will not sanction providers merely for doing business with others to whom I am opposed and (2) I will not sanction providers merely for issuing words or statements that I disagree with.

That said, I'm curious about others. What are your criteria for bad behavior in a service or product provider that you would judge to be nonetheless admissible?

Given the current state of things, I have been trying to avoid internet sites that could trigger anxiety. This is harder to do that I thought it would be. So I'm reaching out to the fine and resourceful Tildes collective for links to sites that are less known, and may provide, if not joy, at least interest, uniqueness maybe, fun, or education? Stuff that may be comforting, engrossing, or diverting to give some respite to those of us who are feeling pretty crushed.

Here are two sites I can offer, but I don't want to limit anyone's idea of what might be a good suggestion.

Futility Closet "is a collection of entertaining curiosities in history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and mathematics, designed to help you waste time as enjoyably as possible." (description from their about page)

Strange Company bills itself as "a Walk of the Weird Side of History"

(edited to add links)

I remember seeing a fun website somewhere which was basically an isometric animation of a space station or something like that. It had a lot of tiles with a lot of fun stuff happening on it, it kinda had a "Where's Waldo" vibe. I think it had a number in it's name, like station42 or something like that. I can't find the website now. Does anyone remember what it is?

These could be blogs, forums, any online space where you visit semi-frequently at least.

Here are some based off my interests:

A Year in the Country - Blog on folk horror music

Gwern.net - blog about AI, statistics and psychology

Articles on the work of Lacan

Petit Tube - Random brief YouTube videos with few views

As the title says, looking for recommendations of fun and interesting websites that don't involve current events/news. Sites where you can spend hours diving down rabbit holes, browsing fun and interesting content, or just otherwise detach from reality for a bit.

This isn't a request for just myself, but just in general. I feel like all the biggest websites just have a bit too much influence from current events and news, which can make browsing pretty stressful. And given how centralized the internet has become, finding sites outside those has become a bit trickier. It'd be fun to see some more focused sites for various topics and niches. Can be an educational site with cool articles, could be entertainment, could be a forum or a blog. Just, what sites could you spend hours on?

Hey all! I've been thinking about buying a domain and building a personal website for myself -- at this point just a personal website with links to my socials, my CV, maybe any interesting projects I want to publicize. Maybe someday I'll decide I want to add a blog or build a webapp or something, but for now it'll be something simple and static.

My programming experience is very much not in the frontend side of things (I'm a data scientist and mostly use python day-to-day). I played around with HTML messing with my Tumblr theme enough back in the day that I'm reasonably sure I can build something solidly web 1.0, and I've toyed with stuff like Jekyll in the past. But I was wondering if I could use this as an opportunity to build up some basic skills that I could put on my resume for the future. But I have no idea what's out there that would be useful and quick to learn but wouldn't be massive overkill for a project like this.

I also have no idea how web-hosting works and who to go with if I want to build a personal website myself rather than relying on something like Wix or Wordpress. Most of the easily-Google-able advice is for different use-cases. Advice is either people who want something user-friendly with minimal coding like Wordpress or it's for something properly big and commercial, neither of which is me.

Anyway, I know we've got a lot of suitably tech-y people here on Tildes, so I'm hoping people here have good advice for this sort of use case. Thanks!