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Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#131

Post by jjordan »

brightball wrote: post #119

The US Civil War has been mine for the last couple of years. The sheer volume of history and contributing factors, decades of build up, aftermath, affects on the US today, etc. My goodness, the economics of the whole thing are just fascinating. All the internet debates I saw when the confederate flag came down got me really interested in how so many people could know TOTALLY different things about the most historical…

What are some of your favorite "There is no way that's real" moments you came across in your studies?

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#132

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

Bartweiss wrote: post #113
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #63

TVTropes is the big one, the vortex from which all other rabbit holes stem. The SCP foundation is also excellent, and The Digital Antiquarian is my new favorite. Fallen London is a browser MMOCYOA on steroids, and it's glorious. The Jargon File (before ESR ruined it with the latest round of updates) was amazing, and still is great fun. Bash.org is another classic rabbit hole, although far from the best for that purpo…

Fallen London is dangerously brilliant - think of browser games like Kingdom of Loathing, but with a spectacular depth of storytelling and complexity. It also has an interesting rapid-feedback structure; instead of things like lengthy 'fights' everything runs on probabilistic outcomes. ...would you happen to know if Ambition: Enigma is real? No hints, but one of the devs suggested it wasn't and I'd like to at least k…

I have no idea. I'd say check the wiki, but that's spoilerific. By the way, did you see the excellent article about the Seeking The Name quest on RPS? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/06/20/seeking-mr-eaten...

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#133

Post by arglebarnacle »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #117

Browsing medical diagnosis codes... https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coding/ICD10/2016-ICD-10-CM-and... Some of the most mildly interesting: V9543XD Spacecraft collision injuring occupant, subsequent encounter W5602XD Struck by dolphin, subsequent encounter X35XXXD Volcanic eruption, subsequent encounter X52XXXD Prolonged stay in weightless environment, subsequent encounter Y0881XD Assault by crashing of aircraft, subseq…

Some more:

W2202XA Walked into lamppost, initial encounter

W34111A Accidental malfunction of paintball gun, initial encounter

W5629XA Other contact with orca, initial encounter

Y36511D War operations involving direct blast effect of nuclear weapon, civilian, subsequent encounter

V657XXA Person on outside of heavy transport vehicle injured in collision with railway train or railway vehicle in traffic accident, initial encounter

Y92331 Roller skating rink as the place of occurrence of the external cause

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#134

Post by wl »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #117

Browsing medical diagnosis codes... https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coding/ICD10/2016-ICD-10-CM-and... Some of the most mildly interesting: V9543XD Spacecraft collision injuring occupant, subsequent encounter W5602XD Struck by dolphin, subsequent encounter X35XXXD Volcanic eruption, subsequent encounter X52XXXD Prolonged stay in weightless environment, subsequent encounter Y0881XD Assault by crashing of aircraft, subseq…

There seems to be some misunderstanding what is meant by "subsequent encounter" in this context. These are codes for office visits. "Subsequent encounter" means that a patient is not seeing a physician for the first time about their injury. There are also codes for "initial encounter."

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#135

Post by melloclello »

threepipeproblm wrote: post #43
analogwzrd wrote: post #11

For me, it's definitely Ribbonfarm: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/ I stumbled into Venkat's blog about two and half years ago and I'm still trying to find my way out. The rabbit hole gets even deeper when you look at his list of recommended reading. The material on John Boyd and OODA loops in particular has been bouncing around my head for about a year. Ribbonfarm quickly turns into a choose-your-own-adventure type of ex…

I discovered ribbonfarm after being pointed to Rao's outstanding series about office politics, through the lens of the Office which is here: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/ Then I decided to read much more material from the blog, but for the most part I have been disappointed. I feel like the authors there love intellectualism to the point that they create fancy constructs even when there isn't much…

They definitely spend a lot of time throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks, I think (not everything sticks but it's interesting to see what does)

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#136

Post by rdtsc »

http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/browse/sort-by-votes

Discover new command line utilities or combinations of them to solve various things. Learned all kinds of useful stuff. Things like I know but always forget about:

   python -m SimpleHTTPServer
To server the current directory on port :8000

Then there is silly stuff like:

   dd if=/dev/dsp | ssh -c arcfour -C username@host dd of=/dev/dsp
To output your microphone to a remote computer's speaker [note: you probably shouldn't be using arcfour in general for ssh, and it might be disabled on your site].

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#138

Post by m741 »

rdtsc wrote: post #130
brightball wrote: post #119

The US Civil War has been mine for the last couple of years. The sheer volume of history and contributing factors, decades of build up, aftermath, affects on the US today, etc. My goodness, the economics of the whole thing are just fascinating. All the internet debates I saw when the confederate flag came down got me really interested in how so many people could know TOTALLY different things about the most historical…

I have been to Gettysburg multiple times. Once did a guided tour of the battlefields with a guide. It was very interesting. I wasn't born in this country (WWII is the major battle I learned about) but it was still fascinating seeing sites and learning the history, since it is my new country I want to know as much as possible about it. It is a different understand to see the place and be told, here is where attacked,…

Fort Sumter isn't really a major site (it's got a lot of name recognition, but not much happened there compared to other places).

Antietam is one - the bloodiest day in American history. Then there's a whole bunch in Virginia: The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Fredericksburg, Manassas (site of two major battles). Further south, Vicksburg, Shiloh, Chickamauga, Stones River are all major sites. You probably haven't heard about any of these (maybe Manassas), but they're among the biggest battles of the war.

The Virginia sites are all huge, historically speaking. Shiloh is a particularly beautiful battlefield. Vicksburg is the most impressive, because it's one of the few with obvious remains of battle - it was basically a trial run for WWI. Most battlefields have a low line of earthworks and some craters, but it's tough to picture what they looked like.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#139

Post by yoodenvranx »

hexane360 wrote: post #84

Things I won't work with: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2011/11/11/thi... Accident reconstruction/investigation videos. NTSB, CSB, and OSHA have some really in-depth ones: https://youtu.be/tMsjJWJFBbA https://youtu.be/gDTqrRpa_ac?list=PLUXYDid45duP-lg8Kh_hSw841... Also, +1 for TV Tropes Edit: Also, http://www.scp-wiki.net/ has some classics.

"Things I won't work with" deserves an extra highlight! I am not interested in chemistry at all but I read all the blog posts about once a year because the author is just so good with words.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#140

Post by melloclello »

yoloswagins wrote: post #122

I'm partial to everything2.com. Back in the early 00's, everything2 tried to be a Wikipeida, where people could post multiple entries on a topic. The best part is reading 16 year old, long form essays about places. The recent stuff is short stories, but the essays of the bay area from the peak of the bubble are fascinating. Highlights: * http://everything2.com/title/The+NoCal+Super+Layoff+Unemploy... * http://everyth…

I grew up reading everything2 and I dearly wish the internet was still more like that

Some links:

* http://everything2.com/title/catting+weird+things+to+%252Fde...

* http://everything2.com/title/How+to+destroy+the+Earth

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