These days it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking the whole internet is just whatever your doom scrolling algorithm of choice is serving up to you. But looking a bit closer you can find all sorts of interesting little hidey holes. From memory the old forum had a thread where people shared recommendations for online places of interest. I thought it could be worth getting it going again.
Here are a couple of my favourites to get started:
Language Log - This is a blog that has been going since 2003, run by professional linguists. If you have a question about language it has probably been discussed there at some point. They are also good at internally linking to older posts, so it’s easy to go down a hole, wikipedia style.
r/AskHistorians - Yes, it’s Reddit, but not like any other sub-reddit I know. It is heavily moderated to only include in-depth and referenced responses to questions about history. And it’s been going since 2011 so at this point it is like some kind of super in-depth online encyclopedia. The list of very frequently asked questions is a good place to start.
deepl.com - This is easily the best translation software I’ve used. Miles better than Google Translate. It’s particularly good with Chinese-English, which I use it for every day, but by reputation most other European languages too.
The Marginalian - This one is hard to describe. It’s a weekly blog that has been going since 2006. Each entry surfaces a piece of writing or art from history that somehow fits within the theme: “what it means to live a decent, inspired, substantive life of purpose and gladness”. Within that framework there is a huge variety in terms of writers and topics. You can check the best of 2021 to get an idea of the sorts of things that come up. And, just like Language Log, it has a heap of internal linking so getting lost for hours in it is not out of the question.
I didn’t really think about this, but now that you mention it LB is one of the positions we need to fill, and who knows how well this AI can see into the future…
nitter.net is a wrapper for Twitter that bypasses the need to have an account. Take any Twitter url (individual tweet or user profile page), replace the twitter.com with nitter.net and you get a remarkably similar interface to normal Twitter, minus the bloat and sign-up links.
is there a place for wildcatbacks in a 3 or 5 man defense?
It is unlikely that a team using a three or five-man defense would employ a wildcatback, as the wildcat formation is typically used in American football, not association football (soccer). In American football, a wildcatback is a player who lines up in the backfield and is used as a runner or passer in a wildcat formation. This type of player does not exist in association football, and the term “wildcatback” would not be used in relation to a soccer team’s formation or tactics.
