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What websites do you visit for your niche interests?
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
I'm a bit of a wordsmith when I'm writing, so finding something like this is like a goldmine of sorts. It's a website that has super specific and rare words. English language only.
https://phrontistery.info/
You seem like someone who might like Brewster's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable if you're not already familiar. It's a great reference book even just to just flip through. There's an older version on the Internet Archive.
Supposedly, the newest version of Brewster's is Ed. 20 or so. It looks super comprehensive and reminds me a bit of the "ethos" of "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows". Thanks for mentioning this. I'll have to take a short trip to the bookstore and see if they have an up-to-date copy.
You have done me a great service. Thank you kindly.
https://vgmrips.net - rips of video game soundtracks in a logged format, for theoretically perfect reproduction.
https://battleofthebits.com/ - a website that hosts music competitions, mainly though not entirely chiptunes.
https://www.digitalmzx.com/ - a very tiny community built around Megazeux, a video game engine from 1994 that works entirely in text mode. Worth checking out because it's a group of people who are creative basically just for the sake of their own creativity, and they have done really impressive things that probably won't actually look impressive to most people.
https://hackaday.com/ - I don't do much electronics works these days, but it's neat to read about what hacky projects people are doing. At times it feels like a 2600 Magazine for the internet age.
https://www.printables.com/ - Fun things to 3D print, and a place to upload the random things I make for others to use.
https://tildes.net - a bunch of losers I talk to. :P
Wiktionary is generally okay but needs to be taken with a grain of salt sometimes (much like Wikipedia does). By contrast, Etymology Online is genuinely really comprehensive and curates relevant academic sources. Absolutely the best easily-searchable resource out there for English word etymologies.
More than wikipedia, because wiktionary is much worse about sourcing claims
Thanks for the Naver recommendation! I was trying to learn Korean towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year but work got in the way. That grammar checker sounds super useful!
I actually have more Korean resources I use. Main things are Duolingo, AnkiDroid, and Wiktionary, but I double check the Naver dictionary too if Wikt's entry seems too spartan.
http://speller.cs.pusan.ac.kr/ is a slightly better grammar checker. Almost everything I enter into the Naver checker comes back as not having issues, so I'm beginning to suspect it's just really basic or something. Also Sapling.
I also double check myself with a translator. I like DeepL because it provides multiple alternatives for the same input, so you can get a better sense of the meanings of the words.
Finally, I've found AI quite helpful. You ask it to explain grammar or whatever, and it understands your question with mixed languages, and gives some great answers a lot of the time. You just have to be wary that you might be being told something wrong, and double check against another source if you can. ChatGPT is of course very good, but Kagi's FastGPT provides sources for its answers. The downside is that Kagi's is probably not as good as ChatGPT.
If you're into physical texts, I've found Korean: A Comprehensive Grammar (J. Yeon and L. Brown) to be very, very good. It really is comprehesive (at least from an intermediate learner's pespective), and goes in depth into many, many grammatical structures, with several examples for each one.
Good luck with the Korean learning. Maybe we can practice with one another some time? Like over DMs.
Wow, thanks for all the resources! I used Duolingo for a while actually before visiting Seoul last year and it really helped. Learned enough to be able to ask basic questions and understand some responses (if people weren't talking too fast haha). The Pusan National University grammar checker and Sapling.ai also look super helpful.
For translations, I've used DeepL before but have also used Naver's Papago. I like the Papago app as it also translates formality and respect in your text so if you're talking to someone elder to you, it can translate text to be more appropriate. I like that it lets you choose how formal/respectful you want your speech to be and it's helped me learn the basics of how/when to be more formal and respectful.
Finally, thanks for the textbook recommendation! Since my learning has been hit or miss with the apps and whatnot, I've been wanting to try out an actual textbook so I'll definitely look into the one you've recommended.
I'm also definitely interested in practicing with you in the future! I'm definitely not confident enough at the moment but I will definitely send you a PM through Tildes in the near future.
Just a note, though: K:CG is a reference rather than a course which introduces concepts in order and increasing difficulty. Just something to look up a specific grammar construction or particle, and then put it back down again.
Duolingo's pretty good, but it has its flaws. I would not recommend anyone use it alone to learn Korean. I'm pleased with the results I'm getting by using multiple tools and resources, of which Duolingo is just one.
Finally, I forgot to mention that I get a lot of learning value from watching Korean shows and movies. Of course, for a beginner or early intermediate learner, a lot of it is beyond one's level, but, as you progress in your learning, you begin to recognize more and more of what the characters say. It's also a good place to learn new vocabulary. There are some words in my vocabulary that I remember the exact scene where I first heard that word. It helps reinforce the meaning, seeing and hearing things in some context. It's a good substitute if you can't have actual immersion and speaking with people in real life.
https://ocremix.org/
Because I like video game music!
Oh man this is a forgotten memory! I love video game music as well (it's one of the main reasons why I use YouTube Music) and used to listen to stuff on OCRemix. As YouTube grew, I shifted to that and basically forgot about OCRemix. Definitely need to hop back in.
Now, that's a name I haven't heard in a decade or so. Used to browse the site all the time in my formative years when I learned what the internet was.
Haven't found anything that truly replaced reddit so I poke my head in there (staying logged out though) every once in a while.
Mainly /r/ModernMagic for the specific format of Magic: the Gathering I used to play. Funnily enough, almost every time I go back there's a thread of someone doomposting about the format, and people in the comments who say they've quit. I think there's a really big slice of players who have held on to their cards and are hoping against hope that things will go back to the way they were. I still play with my old decks casually (i.e. with friends or relatives for fun, not in sanctioned events). I also occasionally watch YouTube videos of some content creators playing with the new cards - aspiringspike, d00mwake, Andrea Mengucci, control4daze.
I kinda feel the doomposters. I got a bit into Modern right before Modern Horizons, but the way Wizards started to look at legacy formats as the place where the whales will buy up shit to stay relevant, and the way they threaten us with a good time on B&R day but never deliver to let the tension linger... Legacy formats ironically feel less stable than Standard now with the 3-year change, and it made me much less interested in constructed as a whole. Even Pauper is getting corporate attention.
And Kamigawa 2?? KBPTL is in shambles!I got into it when Modern Masters 2 came out (also around the time of Khans of Tarkir fetchlands reprint), and left after Modern Horizons 2 came out (which to be fair reprinted the other fetchlands, but also introduced the free Evoke Elementals, Ragavan, Urza's Saga, etc.).
I only play TrueKBPTL, we made a discord for it and attracted some players with really interesting political opinionsFunny, I was just talking about the absolute state of Modern with an entrenched Yugioh player today. Luckily I never got into the format just due to the upfront cost which, as a returning player, I can't really justify. Maybe if/when Nadu is banned and maybe The One Ring gets either banned or limited it might become more accessible, but as is I can't blame anyone for dipping out of the format. It'll be interesting to see what happens when the B&R window finally arrives.
Yeah...the reason I was able to justify the upfront cost was that decks had long-term viability, which meant over time the investment was less than playing Standard. Well, not anymore; Modern is basically Standard Premium now.
I totally get that. I got into Standard recently and built a deck on a pretty spare budget that has held up well at my LGS. Of course I have trouble sometimes if I run into a high power deck with all of the most expensive cards, but it feels like the format is really varied right now. I personally think people put a bit too much stock in butting the highest power versions of things, like Sheoldred or what have you. Standard at least feels like there's a really complex game of Rock, Paper, Scissors going on with a ton of viable decks. It's a shame Wizards thought they could rotate Modern though, but it's not like Tarmagoyf and Siege Rhino were going to be viable forever even if they didn't target the format. The increasing power of cards would have affected Modern whether they were printed for the format or not, IMO.
Agreed. I absolutely loved Modern circa 2014-2019. Every archetype has viable decks. Yeah decks were expensive but I could spend $1k on a modern deck that would beat the standard cost over a couple years of play.
I tried to return to the format last year and looked at the best ways to upgrade my deck lists. The cost of cards recently printed in standard was obscene. I bought Liliana's and Goyfs because they had proven to be staples, they were pricey, but they've tanked and now it's $400 for a playset of "required" cards.
It feels like they realized that could print real power in standard at mythic quality and squeeze the modern players.
https://philpapers.org
This is a fantastic resource if you are interested in anything philosophy. Tons of papers available for free; you can follow specific interests or specific philosophers. If you have a passion for some niche thing in philosophy and want to keep up with what's going on, PhilPapers is the way to go.
https://www.mailleartisans.org
It's been semi-dead (read-only state) for like 6 years now but it remains the single best resource for chainmaille weaves & tutorials
Ha, let's put in a couple slightly controversial ones.
RPG Codex forums
People sometimes joke that the RPG codex is a political forum with an offtopic interest in role playing games. It's full of people who either dislike or straight up hate western performative hyperprogressivism, or in other words "wokeness", and while the off-topic section (that contains politics) is gated behind either supporting the site financially or waiting a year from account creation, the discussions still sometimes overflow a bit. Some of those people are truly insufferable, others merely slightly annoying.
But for some reason they seem to universally have excellent taste in videogames. I've read more interesting and novel insights into various aspects of gaming there in a month than I did in some of the better gaming subreddits that have higher than average user age and aren't just about memes, like /r/patientgamers, in a year. Made me realize that specifically on anonymous internet forums that I can disengage from at any point by simply closing the browser tab I much prefer smart assholes to people who are mostly polite but boring.
Astral Codex Ten
Scott Alexander's blog feeds my hunger for smart people who write about interesting ideas, books or current events without too much emotion, fear of controversial topics or a need to overtly reassure the reader that they're on the correct ideological side, things that I feel are way too prevalent on American internet. Which is understandable to some degree, but I'm not an American and I'm just so tired of everything being red camp vs blue camp, or even worse: not being blue or red enough. I don't agree with everything he writes, but it's almost always interesting.
Re: RPGCodex forum
That might be because a lot of young men play video games, and coincidentally, we are also losing a lot of engagement in politics from young men.
politics
Source: Guardian article -
these are not misogynistic young men. They're just really checked out and don't feel as invested in politics or the discourse on rights that they think will just further vilify them and leave them further behind other groups. The patriarchy hurts all of us.
I don't know if any polls have been made, but based on various indirect indicators I believe that RPG Codex (like many other oldschool phpBB-like forums) is majority millenial or even older and there are not that many gen Z and younger. Some of those anti-woke people are just eastern European (we're not that invested in those topics and until gen Z, which grew up havily influenced by anglosphere internet, being kind of anti-woke was the mainstream default), others are even conservative catholics, it's an interesting mix.
Your data is pretty interesting nonetheless.
For plants, I split between the forums on garden.org and Terraforums (sadly pretty inactive these days) for my carnivorous plants. Reddit is still the best place I've found for video game discussion so I stick to each game's specific subreddit. I also prefer reddit for my yoyoing hobby (/r/throwers), but I know there are some fairly active forums on yoyoexpert that I just haven't gotten into yet. Instagram used to be the best place for yoyo news and content if you followed the right hashtags (#trickcircle for example), but it's gone aggressively downhill the last couple of years. I still poke my head in from time to time because the short video format works great for trick clips
I love Vintage Dancer for a good catalog of historical clothing from the last century when I'm looking at vintage/vintage-inspired outfits.
As a writer, this is going in my bookmarks! Thanks for sharing!
Kanzenshuu is THE Dragon Ball fansite. Once their long-promised wiki opens completely, my status as a productive member of society will be in real jeopardy.
Aww nice. I'm not a super Dragon Ball fan, but I liked reading about the Super Gallery tribute art from other Mangaka :D
https://www.kanzenshuu.com/2022/06/16/40th-anniversary-tribute-dragon-ball-super-gallery-11-yusei-matsui/
I knew that Masakatsu Katsura sensei contributed to the 30th anniversary project, but I cant now find it :( hopefully he'll be drawing one for the 40th as well (only a few more unrevealed)
The 'Hub, The 'Hampster...
Oh, you mean real hobbies with niche sites? I realised the other day that I actually no longer visit any since I do not have any niche hobbies, they're all mainstream and everyone is doing them. Mostly IT. However, 25 years ago they were niche.
I ran my own blog for a bit with some of my weird ways of achieving things, such as font deployment en masse which got some great feedback, and a few fixes and clever ways to backup Avid Projects. However, IT is now just every day so I'm boring.