donutsweeper (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
donutsweeper) wrote2018-06-15 09:33 am
donutsweeper) wrote2018-06-15 09:33 am
Entry tags:
Utterly and Completely Random Remaining Links
Random skills that could be used to survive an apocalypse or commit a crime (or both):
How to land an airplane if you are not a pilot (wayback machine link)
Huge guide to knots (pdf)
Shoelace Knots "If you want to lace shoes, tie shoes or learn about shoelaces, “Ian's Shoelace Site” is the place!"
Animated Knots - "the web’s premiere site for learning how to tie knots of any kind" (boating, fishing, climbing, and surgical knots as well as how to tie a tie)
How to open a can without a can opener (video- basically rub the top of a can on a concrete surface over+over for a minute and then squeeze)
How to make a bow and arrow or this tumblr post (wayback machine link) and this huge masterpost of bow and arrow links here (multiple techniques to make them as well as using them, treating their injuries, etc)
Articles demonstrating ways to light a fire without a match: here, here or here
How to Start a Fire With Your Bare Hands in the Wilderness - two different methods (video)
How to make a Dakota Fire Hole and a video showing how hard it is to see from further away - the Dakota Fire Hole is 'an underground fire that is ideal for heat, stealth camping, and high winds'
The Hobo Hammock - how to make a hammock out of a rope and blanket (video)
How to make a oil lamp out of an orange
How to make a 19th Century Button Lamp - as written about in 'The Long Winter' (also demonstrated in this video)
What to do if you fall through the ice also an article with educational video on what to do
Surviving an earthquake information (wayback machine link)
A huge list of Survival Guide links (archive.org link)
US Army Field Manual for Survival - clickable table of contents (wayback machine link) published 2002
US Air Force Survival Manual (via archive.org)
The Survivor Library: "how to survive and prosper without modern technology" has a huge library of PDFs to download ranging in subjects from archery to shoemaking and much, much more.
Survival: Items With Multiple Uses aka some basic items to make sure you have when trying to survive an apocalypse or natural disaster and how to use them
Survive Nature guides for being stuck on a island, in the jungle, in the forest, in the ocean/open water, in the desert, and in the snow/extreme cold. (wayback machine link)
Celestial Navigation & Land Navigation – Navigation without a Compass (wayback machine link)
Telling Time Without A Clock: Scandinavian Daymarks
The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook
How to open a door with a credit card
How to pick a lock with hairpins (video)
Pick a lock with a paperclip (video)
Anything you ever wanted to know about picking various locks: LockPickingLawyer's youtube channel
How Emergency Responders break through locked doors (an response to an ask with basic info and a link to a video demonstrating it, see notes for additional information)
If the door’s locked, try the wall (excerpt from A Burglar’s Guide to the City)
How to Unlock a Car With a Shoelace
The Whole Earth Catalog "an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published 1968-1998. The magazine featured essays and articles, but was primarily focused on product reviews. The editorial focus was on self-sufficiency, ecology, alternative education, “do it yourself,” and holism, featuring the slogan “access to tools.”" (article about it)
Travel, weather and various maps:
maps (historical):
ORBIS: Interactive Map of the Roman World - from Stanford University- calculates costs and time of travel via numerous different historical routes. ("It's a little like Oregon Trail meets Civilization, only without the dysentery and with infinitely more historical and comparative data.")
David Rumsey Map Collection - over 84k historical maps and images from around the world (for example, check out the largest early world map, from 1587, here) Now with a Text-on-Maps search engine
Royal Museums Greenwich map collection
Library of Congress Map Collection has thousands of maps from different eras and places (including this 19th century Japanese wood block world map shows the countries of the world, their people, and distances from Japan or this 1602 map of Africa)
Franco Novacco Map Collection at the Newberry library (digitized collection of over 750 maps printed in Italy during the 16th and 17th centuries)
Animated gif of the states and continental territories of the US, 1790-1960 (wayback machine link) and as a rebloggable tumblr post
Soviet Military Topographic Maps of Britain and the World (and an article about it)
The History of Cartography (published by The University of Chicago Press, several volumes available online for free. Contains numerous historical maps as well as general cartographical history)
A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America by Christopher Colles, published 1789 (scanned copy via Library of Congress, 84 images)
The American military pocket atlas; being an approved collection of correct maps, both general and particular; of the British colonies; especially those which now are, or probably may be the theatre of war published 1776 (scanned copy via Library of Congress, 10 images)
The Official Automobile Blue Book 1901 (scanned copy, via HathiTrust)
maps (modern) and travel (general):
NASA's Time-lapse Global Maps - various maps showing change in a variety of factors like snow cover, land surface temperature, rainfall, ice cover etc.
Flood Map see how the world would change if sea levels rose or fell.
Find cities with similar climate - Comparison of the climate of 6k cities in the world.
Rome2Rio - "Discover how to get anywhere by plane, train, bus, ferry & car" (directions from anywhere to anywhere else)
How Far is it Between (distance between two places as a crow flies or via land transport)
Distance Calculator site provides directions and distances within countries and between countries and provides other info like Nearest Airport Search and Postal Codes
TravelTime "Unlimited travel time calculations for a life that isn’t linear"
travel (historical):
Rate of travel across the US at different times in the 1800s (wayback machine link)
A 1914 and a 2016 map for long it would take to travel from London to various parts of the world (wayback machine link)
Rail maps from several different countries, and more specifically, Mapping London
The Online Collection of Historical Transport Timetables and Maps from around the World
Guide to luxury rail travel pre-WWII
Explorion.net - collection of historical travelogues, full texts of classic books, journals of discovery and personal adventures of famous authors and historical figures (wayback machine link)
Bradshaw's Railway Manual, Shareholders' Guide and Official Directory - 1867 manual for the railways lines and telegraphs, complete guide and timetables for UK, "Continental", Africa, "Australasia", "British North America", India, Southern & Central America, US, West Indies and "Auxiliary Associations" (via google book, search there for more, random selection of other Bradshaw's are at archive.org here)
travel via ship and various ship related links:
Ship Information Post types, rigging, movement and more
Ship Information - Infographics with types of ships, parts of the ship, wind directions, and sides of boats
Beaufort wind scale table with descriptive terms for wind as well as effects observed at sea and land (the wiki has photos of sea conditions and warning flags, scan of a chart with illustrations of the effects here or here)
Ships & Travel in the 19th century
ports.com - calculate a sea voyage (alter the knots to adjust for modern or older ships)
Sea distance calculator or another sea distance calculator
The Gibson Shipwreck Collection over 500 photos taken 1870’s-1970s. (article about it)
weather:
Weather Around the World- Find travel weather, climate averages, forecasts, current conditions and normals for 41,997 cities worldwide
Ocean Temperatures Around the World- Find out the real time temperature of sea water in more than 12000 cities and resorts around the world.
Moon Phase Calendar
Six Millennium Catalog of Phases of the Moon
Accents, Dialects, and Pronunciation :
Howjsay a free online talking pronunciation dictionary for English (both UK and US pronunciations)
Forvo: The Pronunciation Dictionary - millions of words and phrases pronounced in their original language ("6 million words pronounced in over 390 languages – all created and maintained by native speakers.")
The Speech Accent archive
The International Dialects of English Archive
British accents and dialects From the British Library "Listen to speakers from across the UK and explore the differences and similarities between our linguistic varieties, accents and dialects with our expert commentary" (currently offline due to a cyber attack)
Random knowledge you might need:
Ifixit - a wiki-based site that teaches people how to fix almost anything via user created repair manuals.
Restart Wiki - tips and advice for mending appliances and gadgets.
This to That gives you how to glue any two surfaces together
University of Illinois Extension's Stain Solutions a searchable index of every stain known to man and stain removal solutions for each. (wayback machine link)
How to tell if someone might be lying to you
Havoscope- A database of information for criminal underworld/blackmarket stuff taken from newspapers and police reports.
InspectAPedia - "Encyclopedia of Building & Environmental Construction, Diagnosis, Maintenance & Repair"
Common House Terms - terms for describing houses, porches, roof types etc
Dimensions- a "reference database of dimensioned drawings documenting the standard measurements and sizes of the everyday objects and spaces that make up our world."
Places to search for info other than google (with a scientific(ish) focus)
WolframAlpha- the site's goal is "Making the world’s knowledge computable" and there is tons of stuff there to poke about and find on all sorts of subjects. (Like the random city generator below, WolframAlpha can be used to generate numerous things like random occupations for a character or historical eras to set a story, etc)
Sci-Hub-a website with over 67 million academic papers and articles available for direct download, bypassing publisher paywalls by allowing access through educational institution proxies. (It's sometimes forced to change domains so if link doesn't work google "sci hub" for a working link)
Cornell University's arXiv.org - open access to 1.5 million Physics, Mathematics, CompSci, Econ, Stats and more papers
Open Access Publications from the University of California - hundreds of thousands of ebooks and scholarly articles free to peruse
Yale Law School's Avalon Project - Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy (documenting from BCE-21st Century, wayback machine link)
refseek - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.
worldcat - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.
bioline.br - a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.
science.gov - an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
base-search.net - one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.
JSTOR a digital library with more 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines, currently allows access to 100 articles a month with free registration. post with info on the best way to search jstor, including some videos demonstrating it
General search engines other than just opening up google:
duckduckgo "search without being tracked"
Startpage "The world's most private search engine."
MillionShort a search engine that removes the most popular sites from its results
search.marginalia a "search engine calculates a score that aggressively favors text-heavy websites, and punishes those that have too many modern web design features."
I search from simulate using Google Search from a different location or device (choose from a list of countries, languages and devices)
Mojeek.com "Mojeek’s web search results are 100% independent. They come from our crawler (MojeekBot) and index of the web, and are ordered using our own ranking algorithms."
Wiby "The Wiby search engine is building a web of pages as it was in the earlier days of the internet" (its focus is personal webpages rather than commercial ones so its results aren't very robust. It goes have a 'surprise me' button though to take you to a random webpage)
Qwant "The search engine that doesn't know anything about you"
&udm=14 - AI-free Google search aka the"disenshittification Konami code" for Google (an article about it)
TinEye Reverse image search alternative
Where is this? "Did you ever find a picture on the internet and thought 'Where is this?' Just submit your photo and if you're lucky somebody else knows this place and pins it on Google Maps."
OpenAccessButton - If a scholarly paper is paywalled, this website/browser extension can search for an open access version. If there isn't an open access version already available online, Open Access Button will request the article from the article's authors.
Unpaywall - an extension which automatically detects when you’re looking at a paywalled journal article and will connect you to a legally available open access version if one is available.
CC Search - Search over 300 million images and other openly licensed and public domain works (eventually will have 1.4 billion CC licensed and public domain works in all media types including open texts and audio, sources are museums, APIs, science organizations and more)
r/freeEBOOKS/'s wiki Resources and links for free audiobooks and ebooks (both fiction and nonfiction)
pdfdrive - the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claims to have over 75 million ebooks
Anna’s Archive "The largest truly open library in human history. We mirror Sci-Hub and LibGen. We scrape and open-source Z-Lib, OpenLib, and more."
r/Piracy's megathread wiki
Cooking and food and drink stuff:
Recipes by Ingredients - "Enter Ingredients, Get Recipe. Find recipes based on ingredients that you have on hand." (Also try My Fridge Food or Big Oven for similar recipe/food help)
For simple and inexpensive cookbooks try: The College Student Cookbook or Leanne Brown's 'Good and Cheap: Eating Well on $4 a Day' (in English or Spanish, available with website signup or as a wayback machine pdf here) or From Scratch (wayback machine pdf)
Cooking on a Bootstrap budget recipe site
Budget Bytes "Good food doesn't have to be complicated or expensive" (another budget recipe site)
The Sad Bastard Cookbook "A completely free cookbook for the zero spoons crowd."
Cocktail Flow - The Definitive Cocktail Encyclopaedia
JustTheRecipe site that will take the URL of any recipe blog or website and remove all the clutter and unnecessary information, showing only the relevant ingredients and instructions.
Just random stuff:
The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Museum Resources, E-Learning, and Online Collections - a huge, huge list of links to dozens of museums offering virtual guides, portals to their collections, online exhibits as well as various e-learning options (some general, some gears towards kids) and digital libraries, archives and online collections.
Open access image libraries – a handy list - "a list of museums and other archives that provide unrestricted downloads of high-resolution images."
The Smithsonian Institution's open access online platform (data and material from all 19 Smithsonian museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives and the National Zoo, etc to peruse and DL as desired)
Sun and Moon data sunrise/sunset times, lunar phases, etc for any year between 1700 and 2100.
Computing Sunrise and Sunset in One Step
Determining Time between Two Events in One Step
Converting Addresses to/from Latitude/Longitude/Altitude in One Step
Lexicity, "the first and only comprehensive index for ancient language resources on the internet" (wayback machine link)
Historical Currency Conversions (US and British currencies, past and present)
Tutorial for using the wayback machine (tumblr rebloggable version)
Online HTML editor and a second one
The Quote Investigator "Exploring the Origins of Quotations" - great for checking to see if someone really said the thing or not.
Print Friendly enter a URL to make it printer-friendly or a PDF
Cornell Labs' Macaulay Wildlife Media Collection - a scientific archive of natural history audio, video, and photographs. (Audio and sometimes video clips of over 10k species of birds and another 2k of amphibians, fishes, mammals and more)
FeatherBase over 14k photographs of feathers from more than 1.7k species of birds
University of Puget Sound's Wing and Tail Image Collection (over 3k images)
Avibase - The World Bird Database "Avibase is an extensive database information system about all birds of the world, containing over 50 million records about 10,000 species and 22,000 subspecies of birds, including distribution information for 20,000 regions, taxonomy, synonyms in several languages and more."
Birds of North America "Field Guide for all the Birds of North America"
USDA's Plants Database "provides standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the U.S. and its territories." (US only, but great for checking to see what grows where)
Plants of the World Online
Types of Forests Around the World (three informative blog posts: 1, 2 and 3)
Curious what animals and plants exists in a specific place? Google "{place name} inaturalist" for a detailed lists of everything that lives there. (this seems to work better than just going to inaturalist for some reason)
Counterfeit money detection: know how - Provides the latest information about the major world currencies and methods for detection of counterfeits
Festisite - create fake documents for your characters like NY driver's licenses, marriage certificates, event tickets and more
Radio Around the World:
Radio Garden is the radio equivalent to google earth, just zoom into a place and give a listen.
Radiooooo "The Musical Time Machine" (similar to Radio Garden but offers music from different decades as well, note- recently began requiring account creation to use)
Worldradiomap "the radio map of the world. Now you can listen to the live broadcast of all FM and AM radio stations from major cities around the world. Just select a city on the map, review the full frequency list and click on the station name to listen online."
Need a random destination to send characters to? Click here
Need it to be a city people will have actually heard of? Try here instead
Want to look out a random window somewhere in the world? Try WindowSwap
OpenStreetMap.org open source map data about roads, trails, cafés, railway stations, and much more, all over the world.
Need specific info about a US or Canadian city (population, photos, median income, schools, crime rates, weather, etc)? Try City-Data
Ghost Town Gallery a "collection of more than 2000 pictures from 180 Ghost Towns, mining camps and historic places in the United States."
AbandonedPorn subreddit
abandonedography tumblr
Midwest Gothic tumblr
FYeahGhostTowns tumblr (no longer updated)
![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
evilbuildingsblog (sinisterish rather than abandoned places/ghost towns)
Need some free stock photos? Try pixabay or unsplash or pexels or morguefile or StockSnap or Burst.Shopify.
There is also Nappy whose mission is "to provide beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people to startups, brands, agencies, and everyone else."
Viintage- public domain vintage photos.
Gratisography a free stock photo website offering "the quirkiest, weirdest, and funniest stock photos on the internet."
Names and Surnames searchable by popularity, timeframe, race and more (data provided by the US Census Bureau)
Time Magazine's tool "Find Out What Your Name Would Be if You Were Born Today" - uses data provided by the US Social Security Administration to chart the popularity of first names from the 1890s to today. Very useful for trying to find popular or unusual names in different times. Or go to the US SSA itself and check out popular names by birth year or how the popularity of a name has changed over time.
Baby Names Popularity Graph NameVoyager: Baby Name Wizard Graph of Most Popular Baby Names (US)
The Cleverest Names for Your Boat from A to Z Some of these would work great for fic titles as well
(see also numerous name lists from various eras posted in the generators and lists post)
Height Comparison Images (provide the height and sex for two figures to see how they compare or use this one to compare up to six figures)
Photographic Height and Weight Chart
Body Visualizers one and two - Creates a visualization (male or female, 3d and can be moved for viewing from different angles) of a body based off measurements etc
My Body Gallery "What real women look like: Changing the way women see themselves one photograph at a time." (user submitted photos, searchable by height, weight, age, etc)
Things to consider regarding sex and writing sex scenes (NSFW):
Gay Sex is All Wrong in Fanfic (what it says on the tin, via wayback machine) and a tumblr post's commentary on it.
Minotaur's Sex Tips for Slash Writers An internet classic since 1999
ficsex - run by a certified sex educator, has expanded to contain much more than just sex in fanfiction but there is a fic sex tag for easy searching (as well as a lube and many more)
Leviathan: The Bare Bones of Smut and how to write it (tumblr post)
Prompts & Pointers: Smut Guide (tumblr post via the wayback machine)
Lascivity's Kink Guides
Writing lesbian sex in fanfic (tumblr post via the wayback machine)
How to Write a Sex Scene (also on AO3 here) by Resonant. Four tips for creating better sex scenes in erotic romance.
Gay Sex Positions Guide - "Learn gay sex positions through photographs, a visual Kama Sutra. Cum and enjoy! (NSFW 18+)" (categories include anal, oral, and group sex positions and sexual behaviors)
Brazen 2.0 - "sexual health and safer sex information for trans women and their partners" (PDF)
Primed - "A Sex Guide for Trans Men Into Men" (PDF)
Wheelchair Sex After Spinal Cord Injury
The Best Sexual Positions for People with Limited Mobility
12 Best Sex Positions for People Who Have Limited Mobility
(see also links posted in Action/Sex scene descriptive words section of the words post)
Things a writers might need to know about/ "a writer's guide" type links:
Building/Architectural Terms for Writers (links to three useful sites)
Writer's Guide: Writing about Alcoholic Drinks and Cocktails Terminology, equipment, common drinks and more.
10 Things Writers Don’t Know About The Woods a lot of good things to consider if writing a scene that takes place in the woods.
A writer's guide to hurricanes
Writing a Blind or Visually Impaired Character - A Multi-Step Guide Written by a Visually Impaired Writer and Blogger; who also wrote "A Guide to Canes, Dogs, O&A"
Resources For Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters (huge resource post)
Info post on writing about horses, a general one on horses, a guide to horses and more on horses and Horse Body Language for Writers
Your Fictional Farm is Wrong - Or, How To Write Life on a Farm
Archery Information for Writers (wayback machine link)
Child Development - a guide to writing realistic small people
A Guide to Manual Transmission Cars for People Who Have Never Driven One
ghostflowerdreams has numerous advice, research and reference posts (check out tags here, here, and here) subjects range from historical eras, survival guides, weapons information, writing tips and much, much more.
A general cane guide for writers and artists (from a cane user, writer, and artist!)
Are there blacksmiths in your story? I'm a hobbyist blacksmith and I'm here to help! (tumblr post with advice on writing blacksmiths)
A guide to writing fics set in museums / with a museum worker character "insight and tips to writing museum-related fics"
Artist resources:
Numerous reference posing posts for artists or for looking at to describe poses (SenshiStock recently changed their name to Adorkastock but most links appear to be the same)
AdorkaStock newly made (April 2024) gallery for all Adorkastock's poses and photos
jademacalla Another person providing poses, these are mostly action/with weapons
jookpubstock which offers poses, some action, some not, with and without weapons and other props. They also have a tumblr
Freephotomuscle (google translate version of a Japanese stock photo pose site with lots of buff guys)
Posemaniacs - 3d poses for artists
theposearchives "We are Hamish and Izzy, and we are The Pose Archives! We create awesome pose reference for artists!"
Creating Animated Cartoons with Character A Guide to Developing and Producing Your Own Series for TV, Web or Film (epub offered for free by author, Joe Murray)
So you want to learn pixel art? "Part 1 of ??? - The Basics!" (tumblr post, lots of resources for how to learn pixel art and what programs to use)
guide to art & art tutorials - Huge resource list and guide compiled for learning about art including suggestions on apps, tools, tutorials and more.
A master post of Thomas Romain’s art tutorials (designing interiors digitally, techniques for drawing detailed buildings and streets and more)
Line of Action posing refs, community discussions from other artists, figure study, anatomy, and more.
Sketch Daily search by pose, clothing options, body type, perspective, etc.
sketchfab - a 3D viewer where you can rotate pre-made models to see them from any angle
Creazilla open-source graphic design resources for artists and designers (vectors, silhouettes, clipart and 3D models)
Figure Drawing Practice Tool - provides models (choice of clothed/nude, male/female, and different ages) for specific time intervals for practice sketching purposes
Setpose.com "Create free 3D reference models. Pick a preset pose, combine them with different props, or create your own"
Human Anatomy for Artist Unofficial Search Helper
Unofficial Search Helper of Poses for Artists (it also has numerous animal skulls for reference as well)
Drawing East Asian Faces a guide
How to Draw Hands tutorial
Hands Tutorials For Those Who Hate Drawing Hands
Things to think about when drawing necks
Things to consider when drawing shoulders
Human Anatomy Fundamentals: Basic Body Proportions
Cartoon Fundamentals: How to Draw the Female Form
The NSFW Illustrator's Guide Volume I (of 6, follow links for more)
'pointers on drawing dingle dongles' (male anatomy)
Three tutorials on how to draw women's body parts: lady butts, boobs and waists
Wheelchair Drawing Tutorial by Goldfvsh (wayback machine link) and a Manual Wheelchair Tutorial by fancyfade
A general cane guide for writers and artists (from a cane user, writer, and artist!)
Blumineck's reference photos and gif of holding a bow at the ready while pirouetting (his tumblr and youtube channel are filled with various archery feats and demonstrations)
So you want to draw some archery- an archery guide in art
How to draw tack on horses - a guide
Wolves vs Dogs A tutorial for beginners
How to Draw Animals: Dogs and Wolves, and Their Anatomy
How to Draw a Wolf Step by Step
How to Draw Animals: Cats and Their Anatomy
Pouncing, a tutorial
Learn to Draw Birds with David Sibley (includes video tutorials)
Shrub Sparrow's Bird Tutorial
How to Draw a Stick Figure: a Complex Guide
How to draw water surfaces (tumblr post, excerpt from Jack Hamm’s Drawing Scenery)
My Color Space "Never waste hours finding the perfect color palate again!" (generates color palates based off your original color choice)
Where Do I Host My Webcomic? - part one: A webcomic website hosting masterpost and part two: A webcomic platform hosting masterpost
Utterly random but interesting:
Purrli, the online cat purr generator
More noise generators here (nyNoise Generator- generators ranging from coffee shop or rain, to gregorian chants and signing bowls, etc)
NASA's Image and Video Library (over 140k images and other resources, searchable and completely free)
NASA's Exoplanet Archive "an online astronomical exoplanet and stellar catalog and data service that collates and cross-correlates astronomical data and information on exoplanets and their host stars, and provides tools to work with these data."
California Herps "A Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of California" (and around the world)
World Spider Catalog
Tree- listen to various forests from around the world.
The Dinosaur Database "The internet's largest dinosaur database... This site is built with PaleoDB, a scientific database assembled by hundreds of paleontologists over the past two decades."
Exotic Animal Photo Reference Repository a repository of image references for accurately identified animal species, hundreds of photos taken at various zoos and animal sanctuaries already uploaded with more to come
interactive globe of ancient Earth (see how the Earth looked at various points from 750 million years ago to today, including the ability to see where a modern city would have existed, if it existed)
Occupational Folklife Project at the US Library of Congress a collection of more than 1800 audio and audiovisual oral history interviews with workers in scores of trades, industries, crafts, and professions (huge range of professions from bookbinders to circus workers to park rangers to professional wrestlers)
The Deep Sea scroll down to see what resides at different levels of the ocean's depths
Probably not useful, but you never know:
The Official Evil Overlord Handbook
How to disappear completely
Just Delete Me - "A directory of direct links to delete your account from web services."
Simple trick to avoid being caught on CCTV/video cameras (also interesting reading is the possibility of a more complicated method that makes you look like someone else to the camera)
Instead of using your real phone number for websites that require one get one at textfree (US)
Disposable emails can be found at: 10 minute mail.net, 10 minute mail.com, putsbox or temp-mail.
12ft circumvent paywalls by entering the url here or try searching for the url at archive.ph or archive.is
cobalt "cobalt helps you save anything from your favorite websites: video, audio, photos or gifs. just paste the link and you’re ready to rock! no ads, trackers, paywalls, or other nonsense. just a convenient web app that works anywhere, whenever you need it."
Research and Resource Collected Links Masterpost
How to land an airplane if you are not a pilot (wayback machine link)
Huge guide to knots (pdf)
Shoelace Knots "If you want to lace shoes, tie shoes or learn about shoelaces, “Ian's Shoelace Site” is the place!"
Animated Knots - "the web’s premiere site for learning how to tie knots of any kind" (boating, fishing, climbing, and surgical knots as well as how to tie a tie)
How to open a can without a can opener (video- basically rub the top of a can on a concrete surface over+over for a minute and then squeeze)
How to make a bow and arrow or this tumblr post (wayback machine link) and this huge masterpost of bow and arrow links here (multiple techniques to make them as well as using them, treating their injuries, etc)
Articles demonstrating ways to light a fire without a match: here, here or here
How to Start a Fire With Your Bare Hands in the Wilderness - two different methods (video)
How to make a Dakota Fire Hole and a video showing how hard it is to see from further away - the Dakota Fire Hole is 'an underground fire that is ideal for heat, stealth camping, and high winds'
The Hobo Hammock - how to make a hammock out of a rope and blanket (video)
How to make a oil lamp out of an orange
How to make a 19th Century Button Lamp - as written about in 'The Long Winter' (also demonstrated in this video)
What to do if you fall through the ice also an article with educational video on what to do
Surviving an earthquake information (wayback machine link)
A huge list of Survival Guide links (archive.org link)
US Army Field Manual for Survival - clickable table of contents (wayback machine link) published 2002
US Air Force Survival Manual (via archive.org)
The Survivor Library: "how to survive and prosper without modern technology" has a huge library of PDFs to download ranging in subjects from archery to shoemaking and much, much more.
Survival: Items With Multiple Uses aka some basic items to make sure you have when trying to survive an apocalypse or natural disaster and how to use them
Survive Nature guides for being stuck on a island, in the jungle, in the forest, in the ocean/open water, in the desert, and in the snow/extreme cold. (wayback machine link)
Celestial Navigation & Land Navigation – Navigation without a Compass (wayback machine link)
Telling Time Without A Clock: Scandinavian Daymarks
The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook
How to open a door with a credit card
How to pick a lock with hairpins (video)
Pick a lock with a paperclip (video)
Anything you ever wanted to know about picking various locks: LockPickingLawyer's youtube channel
How Emergency Responders break through locked doors (an response to an ask with basic info and a link to a video demonstrating it, see notes for additional information)
If the door’s locked, try the wall (excerpt from A Burglar’s Guide to the City)
How to Unlock a Car With a Shoelace
The Whole Earth Catalog "an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published 1968-1998. The magazine featured essays and articles, but was primarily focused on product reviews. The editorial focus was on self-sufficiency, ecology, alternative education, “do it yourself,” and holism, featuring the slogan “access to tools.”" (article about it)
Travel, weather and various maps:
maps (historical):
ORBIS: Interactive Map of the Roman World - from Stanford University- calculates costs and time of travel via numerous different historical routes. ("It's a little like Oregon Trail meets Civilization, only without the dysentery and with infinitely more historical and comparative data.")
David Rumsey Map Collection - over 84k historical maps and images from around the world (for example, check out the largest early world map, from 1587, here) Now with a Text-on-Maps search engine
Royal Museums Greenwich map collection
Library of Congress Map Collection has thousands of maps from different eras and places (including this 19th century Japanese wood block world map shows the countries of the world, their people, and distances from Japan or this 1602 map of Africa)
Franco Novacco Map Collection at the Newberry library (digitized collection of over 750 maps printed in Italy during the 16th and 17th centuries)
Animated gif of the states and continental territories of the US, 1790-1960 (wayback machine link) and as a rebloggable tumblr post
Soviet Military Topographic Maps of Britain and the World (and an article about it)
The History of Cartography (published by The University of Chicago Press, several volumes available online for free. Contains numerous historical maps as well as general cartographical history)
A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America by Christopher Colles, published 1789 (scanned copy via Library of Congress, 84 images)
The American military pocket atlas; being an approved collection of correct maps, both general and particular; of the British colonies; especially those which now are, or probably may be the theatre of war published 1776 (scanned copy via Library of Congress, 10 images)
The Official Automobile Blue Book 1901 (scanned copy, via HathiTrust)
maps (modern) and travel (general):
NASA's Time-lapse Global Maps - various maps showing change in a variety of factors like snow cover, land surface temperature, rainfall, ice cover etc.
Flood Map see how the world would change if sea levels rose or fell.
Find cities with similar climate - Comparison of the climate of 6k cities in the world.
Rome2Rio - "Discover how to get anywhere by plane, train, bus, ferry & car" (directions from anywhere to anywhere else)
How Far is it Between (distance between two places as a crow flies or via land transport)
Distance Calculator site provides directions and distances within countries and between countries and provides other info like Nearest Airport Search and Postal Codes
TravelTime "Unlimited travel time calculations for a life that isn’t linear"
travel (historical):
Rate of travel across the US at different times in the 1800s (wayback machine link)
A 1914 and a 2016 map for long it would take to travel from London to various parts of the world (wayback machine link)
Rail maps from several different countries, and more specifically, Mapping London
The Online Collection of Historical Transport Timetables and Maps from around the World
Guide to luxury rail travel pre-WWII
Explorion.net - collection of historical travelogues, full texts of classic books, journals of discovery and personal adventures of famous authors and historical figures (wayback machine link)
Bradshaw's Railway Manual, Shareholders' Guide and Official Directory - 1867 manual for the railways lines and telegraphs, complete guide and timetables for UK, "Continental", Africa, "Australasia", "British North America", India, Southern & Central America, US, West Indies and "Auxiliary Associations" (via google book, search there for more, random selection of other Bradshaw's are at archive.org here)
travel via ship and various ship related links:
Ship Information Post types, rigging, movement and more
Ship Information - Infographics with types of ships, parts of the ship, wind directions, and sides of boats
Beaufort wind scale table with descriptive terms for wind as well as effects observed at sea and land (the wiki has photos of sea conditions and warning flags, scan of a chart with illustrations of the effects here or here)
Ships & Travel in the 19th century
ports.com - calculate a sea voyage (alter the knots to adjust for modern or older ships)
Sea distance calculator or another sea distance calculator
The Gibson Shipwreck Collection over 500 photos taken 1870’s-1970s. (article about it)
weather:
Weather Around the World- Find travel weather, climate averages, forecasts, current conditions and normals for 41,997 cities worldwide
Ocean Temperatures Around the World- Find out the real time temperature of sea water in more than 12000 cities and resorts around the world.
Moon Phase Calendar
Six Millennium Catalog of Phases of the Moon
Accents, Dialects, and Pronunciation :
Howjsay a free online talking pronunciation dictionary for English (both UK and US pronunciations)
Forvo: The Pronunciation Dictionary - millions of words and phrases pronounced in their original language ("6 million words pronounced in over 390 languages – all created and maintained by native speakers.")
The Speech Accent archive
The International Dialects of English Archive
British accents and dialects From the British Library "Listen to speakers from across the UK and explore the differences and similarities between our linguistic varieties, accents and dialects with our expert commentary" (currently offline due to a cyber attack)
Random knowledge you might need:
Ifixit - a wiki-based site that teaches people how to fix almost anything via user created repair manuals.
Restart Wiki - tips and advice for mending appliances and gadgets.
This to That gives you how to glue any two surfaces together
University of Illinois Extension's Stain Solutions a searchable index of every stain known to man and stain removal solutions for each. (wayback machine link)
How to tell if someone might be lying to you
Havoscope- A database of information for criminal underworld/blackmarket stuff taken from newspapers and police reports.
InspectAPedia - "Encyclopedia of Building & Environmental Construction, Diagnosis, Maintenance & Repair"
Common House Terms - terms for describing houses, porches, roof types etc
Dimensions- a "reference database of dimensioned drawings documenting the standard measurements and sizes of the everyday objects and spaces that make up our world."
Places to search for info other than google (with a scientific(ish) focus)
WolframAlpha- the site's goal is "Making the world’s knowledge computable" and there is tons of stuff there to poke about and find on all sorts of subjects. (Like the random city generator below, WolframAlpha can be used to generate numerous things like random occupations for a character or historical eras to set a story, etc)
Sci-Hub-a website with over 67 million academic papers and articles available for direct download, bypassing publisher paywalls by allowing access through educational institution proxies. (It's sometimes forced to change domains so if link doesn't work google "sci hub" for a working link)
Cornell University's arXiv.org - open access to 1.5 million Physics, Mathematics, CompSci, Econ, Stats and more papers
Open Access Publications from the University of California - hundreds of thousands of ebooks and scholarly articles free to peruse
Yale Law School's Avalon Project - Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy (documenting from BCE-21st Century, wayback machine link)
refseek - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.
worldcat - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.
bioline.br - a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.
science.gov - an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
base-search.net - one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.
JSTOR a digital library with more 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines, currently allows access to 100 articles a month with free registration. post with info on the best way to search jstor, including some videos demonstrating it
General search engines other than just opening up google:
duckduckgo "search without being tracked"
Startpage "The world's most private search engine."
MillionShort a search engine that removes the most popular sites from its results
search.marginalia a "search engine calculates a score that aggressively favors text-heavy websites, and punishes those that have too many modern web design features."
I search from simulate using Google Search from a different location or device (choose from a list of countries, languages and devices)
Mojeek.com "Mojeek’s web search results are 100% independent. They come from our crawler (MojeekBot) and index of the web, and are ordered using our own ranking algorithms."
Wiby "The Wiby search engine is building a web of pages as it was in the earlier days of the internet" (its focus is personal webpages rather than commercial ones so its results aren't very robust. It goes have a 'surprise me' button though to take you to a random webpage)
Qwant "The search engine that doesn't know anything about you"
&udm=14 - AI-free Google search aka the"disenshittification Konami code" for Google (an article about it)
TinEye Reverse image search alternative
Where is this? "Did you ever find a picture on the internet and thought 'Where is this?' Just submit your photo and if you're lucky somebody else knows this place and pins it on Google Maps."
OpenAccessButton - If a scholarly paper is paywalled, this website/browser extension can search for an open access version. If there isn't an open access version already available online, Open Access Button will request the article from the article's authors.
Unpaywall - an extension which automatically detects when you’re looking at a paywalled journal article and will connect you to a legally available open access version if one is available.
CC Search - Search over 300 million images and other openly licensed and public domain works (eventually will have 1.4 billion CC licensed and public domain works in all media types including open texts and audio, sources are museums, APIs, science organizations and more)
r/freeEBOOKS/'s wiki Resources and links for free audiobooks and ebooks (both fiction and nonfiction)
pdfdrive - the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claims to have over 75 million ebooks
Anna’s Archive "The largest truly open library in human history. We mirror Sci-Hub and LibGen. We scrape and open-source Z-Lib, OpenLib, and more."
r/Piracy's megathread wiki
Cooking and food and drink stuff:
Recipes by Ingredients - "Enter Ingredients, Get Recipe. Find recipes based on ingredients that you have on hand." (Also try My Fridge Food or Big Oven for similar recipe/food help)
For simple and inexpensive cookbooks try: The College Student Cookbook or Leanne Brown's 'Good and Cheap: Eating Well on $4 a Day' (in English or Spanish, available with website signup or as a wayback machine pdf here) or From Scratch (wayback machine pdf)
Cooking on a Bootstrap budget recipe site
Budget Bytes "Good food doesn't have to be complicated or expensive" (another budget recipe site)
The Sad Bastard Cookbook "A completely free cookbook for the zero spoons crowd."
Cocktail Flow - The Definitive Cocktail Encyclopaedia
JustTheRecipe site that will take the URL of any recipe blog or website and remove all the clutter and unnecessary information, showing only the relevant ingredients and instructions.
Just random stuff:
The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Museum Resources, E-Learning, and Online Collections - a huge, huge list of links to dozens of museums offering virtual guides, portals to their collections, online exhibits as well as various e-learning options (some general, some gears towards kids) and digital libraries, archives and online collections.
Open access image libraries – a handy list - "a list of museums and other archives that provide unrestricted downloads of high-resolution images."
The Smithsonian Institution's open access online platform (data and material from all 19 Smithsonian museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives and the National Zoo, etc to peruse and DL as desired)
Sun and Moon data sunrise/sunset times, lunar phases, etc for any year between 1700 and 2100.
Computing Sunrise and Sunset in One Step
Determining Time between Two Events in One Step
Converting Addresses to/from Latitude/Longitude/Altitude in One Step
Lexicity, "the first and only comprehensive index for ancient language resources on the internet" (wayback machine link)
Historical Currency Conversions (US and British currencies, past and present)
Tutorial for using the wayback machine (tumblr rebloggable version)
Online HTML editor and a second one
The Quote Investigator "Exploring the Origins of Quotations" - great for checking to see if someone really said the thing or not.
Print Friendly enter a URL to make it printer-friendly or a PDF
Cornell Labs' Macaulay Wildlife Media Collection - a scientific archive of natural history audio, video, and photographs. (Audio and sometimes video clips of over 10k species of birds and another 2k of amphibians, fishes, mammals and more)
FeatherBase over 14k photographs of feathers from more than 1.7k species of birds
University of Puget Sound's Wing and Tail Image Collection (over 3k images)
Avibase - The World Bird Database "Avibase is an extensive database information system about all birds of the world, containing over 50 million records about 10,000 species and 22,000 subspecies of birds, including distribution information for 20,000 regions, taxonomy, synonyms in several languages and more."
Birds of North America "Field Guide for all the Birds of North America"
USDA's Plants Database "provides standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the U.S. and its territories." (US only, but great for checking to see what grows where)
Plants of the World Online
Types of Forests Around the World (three informative blog posts: 1, 2 and 3)
Curious what animals and plants exists in a specific place? Google "{place name} inaturalist" for a detailed lists of everything that lives there. (this seems to work better than just going to inaturalist for some reason)
Counterfeit money detection: know how - Provides the latest information about the major world currencies and methods for detection of counterfeits
Festisite - create fake documents for your characters like NY driver's licenses, marriage certificates, event tickets and more
Radio Around the World:
Radio Garden is the radio equivalent to google earth, just zoom into a place and give a listen.
Radiooooo "The Musical Time Machine" (similar to Radio Garden but offers music from different decades as well, note- recently began requiring account creation to use)
Worldradiomap "the radio map of the world. Now you can listen to the live broadcast of all FM and AM radio stations from major cities around the world. Just select a city on the map, review the full frequency list and click on the station name to listen online."
Need a random destination to send characters to? Click here
Need it to be a city people will have actually heard of? Try here instead
Want to look out a random window somewhere in the world? Try WindowSwap
OpenStreetMap.org open source map data about roads, trails, cafés, railway stations, and much more, all over the world.
Need specific info about a US or Canadian city (population, photos, median income, schools, crime rates, weather, etc)? Try City-Data
Ghost Town Gallery a "collection of more than 2000 pictures from 180 Ghost Towns, mining camps and historic places in the United States."
AbandonedPorn subreddit
abandonedography tumblr
Midwest Gothic tumblr
FYeahGhostTowns tumblr (no longer updated)
Need some free stock photos? Try pixabay or unsplash or pexels or morguefile or StockSnap or Burst.Shopify.
There is also Nappy whose mission is "to provide beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people to startups, brands, agencies, and everyone else."
Viintage- public domain vintage photos.
Gratisography a free stock photo website offering "the quirkiest, weirdest, and funniest stock photos on the internet."
Names and Surnames searchable by popularity, timeframe, race and more (data provided by the US Census Bureau)
Time Magazine's tool "Find Out What Your Name Would Be if You Were Born Today" - uses data provided by the US Social Security Administration to chart the popularity of first names from the 1890s to today. Very useful for trying to find popular or unusual names in different times. Or go to the US SSA itself and check out popular names by birth year or how the popularity of a name has changed over time.
Baby Names Popularity Graph NameVoyager: Baby Name Wizard Graph of Most Popular Baby Names (US)
The Cleverest Names for Your Boat from A to Z Some of these would work great for fic titles as well
(see also numerous name lists from various eras posted in the generators and lists post)
Height Comparison Images (provide the height and sex for two figures to see how they compare or use this one to compare up to six figures)
Photographic Height and Weight Chart
Body Visualizers one and two - Creates a visualization (male or female, 3d and can be moved for viewing from different angles) of a body based off measurements etc
My Body Gallery "What real women look like: Changing the way women see themselves one photograph at a time." (user submitted photos, searchable by height, weight, age, etc)
Things to consider regarding sex and writing sex scenes (NSFW):
Gay Sex is All Wrong in Fanfic (what it says on the tin, via wayback machine) and a tumblr post's commentary on it.
Minotaur's Sex Tips for Slash Writers An internet classic since 1999
Leviathan: The Bare Bones of Smut and how to write it (tumblr post)
Prompts & Pointers: Smut Guide (tumblr post via the wayback machine)
Lascivity's Kink Guides
Writing lesbian sex in fanfic (tumblr post via the wayback machine)
How to Write a Sex Scene (also on AO3 here) by Resonant. Four tips for creating better sex scenes in erotic romance.
Gay Sex Positions Guide - "Learn gay sex positions through photographs, a visual Kama Sutra. Cum and enjoy! (NSFW 18+)" (categories include anal, oral, and group sex positions and sexual behaviors)
Brazen 2.0 - "sexual health and safer sex information for trans women and their partners" (PDF)
Primed - "A Sex Guide for Trans Men Into Men" (PDF)
Wheelchair Sex After Spinal Cord Injury
The Best Sexual Positions for People with Limited Mobility
12 Best Sex Positions for People Who Have Limited Mobility
(see also links posted in Action/Sex scene descriptive words section of the words post)
Things a writers might need to know about/ "a writer's guide" type links:
Building/Architectural Terms for Writers (links to three useful sites)
Writer's Guide: Writing about Alcoholic Drinks and Cocktails Terminology, equipment, common drinks and more.
10 Things Writers Don’t Know About The Woods a lot of good things to consider if writing a scene that takes place in the woods.
A writer's guide to hurricanes
Writing a Blind or Visually Impaired Character - A Multi-Step Guide Written by a Visually Impaired Writer and Blogger; who also wrote "A Guide to Canes, Dogs, O&A"
Resources For Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters (huge resource post)
Info post on writing about horses, a general one on horses, a guide to horses and more on horses and Horse Body Language for Writers
Your Fictional Farm is Wrong - Or, How To Write Life on a Farm
Archery Information for Writers (wayback machine link)
Child Development - a guide to writing realistic small people
A Guide to Manual Transmission Cars for People Who Have Never Driven One
A general cane guide for writers and artists (from a cane user, writer, and artist!)
Are there blacksmiths in your story? I'm a hobbyist blacksmith and I'm here to help! (tumblr post with advice on writing blacksmiths)
A guide to writing fics set in museums / with a museum worker character "insight and tips to writing museum-related fics"
Artist resources:
Numerous reference posing posts for artists or for looking at to describe poses (SenshiStock recently changed their name to Adorkastock but most links appear to be the same)
AdorkaStock newly made (April 2024) gallery for all Adorkastock's poses and photos
jademacalla Another person providing poses, these are mostly action/with weapons
jookpubstock which offers poses, some action, some not, with and without weapons and other props. They also have a tumblr
Freephotomuscle (google translate version of a Japanese stock photo pose site with lots of buff guys)
Posemaniacs - 3d poses for artists
theposearchives "We are Hamish and Izzy, and we are The Pose Archives! We create awesome pose reference for artists!"
Creating Animated Cartoons with Character A Guide to Developing and Producing Your Own Series for TV, Web or Film (epub offered for free by author, Joe Murray)
So you want to learn pixel art? "Part 1 of ??? - The Basics!" (tumblr post, lots of resources for how to learn pixel art and what programs to use)
guide to art & art tutorials - Huge resource list and guide compiled for learning about art including suggestions on apps, tools, tutorials and more.
A master post of Thomas Romain’s art tutorials (designing interiors digitally, techniques for drawing detailed buildings and streets and more)
Line of Action posing refs, community discussions from other artists, figure study, anatomy, and more.
Sketch Daily search by pose, clothing options, body type, perspective, etc.
sketchfab - a 3D viewer where you can rotate pre-made models to see them from any angle
Creazilla open-source graphic design resources for artists and designers (vectors, silhouettes, clipart and 3D models)
Figure Drawing Practice Tool - provides models (choice of clothed/nude, male/female, and different ages) for specific time intervals for practice sketching purposes
Setpose.com "Create free 3D reference models. Pick a preset pose, combine them with different props, or create your own"
Human Anatomy for Artist Unofficial Search Helper
Unofficial Search Helper of Poses for Artists (it also has numerous animal skulls for reference as well)
Drawing East Asian Faces a guide
How to Draw Hands tutorial
Hands Tutorials For Those Who Hate Drawing Hands
Things to think about when drawing necks
Things to consider when drawing shoulders
Human Anatomy Fundamentals: Basic Body Proportions
Cartoon Fundamentals: How to Draw the Female Form
The NSFW Illustrator's Guide Volume I (of 6, follow links for more)
'pointers on drawing dingle dongles' (male anatomy)
Three tutorials on how to draw women's body parts: lady butts, boobs and waists
Wheelchair Drawing Tutorial by Goldfvsh (wayback machine link) and a Manual Wheelchair Tutorial by fancyfade
A general cane guide for writers and artists (from a cane user, writer, and artist!)
Blumineck's reference photos and gif of holding a bow at the ready while pirouetting (his tumblr and youtube channel are filled with various archery feats and demonstrations)
So you want to draw some archery- an archery guide in art
How to draw tack on horses - a guide
Wolves vs Dogs A tutorial for beginners
How to Draw Animals: Dogs and Wolves, and Their Anatomy
How to Draw a Wolf Step by Step
How to Draw Animals: Cats and Their Anatomy
Pouncing, a tutorial
Learn to Draw Birds with David Sibley (includes video tutorials)
Shrub Sparrow's Bird Tutorial
How to Draw a Stick Figure: a Complex Guide
How to draw water surfaces (tumblr post, excerpt from Jack Hamm’s Drawing Scenery)
My Color Space "Never waste hours finding the perfect color palate again!" (generates color palates based off your original color choice)
Where Do I Host My Webcomic? - part one: A webcomic website hosting masterpost and part two: A webcomic platform hosting masterpost
Utterly random but interesting:
Purrli, the online cat purr generator
More noise generators here (nyNoise Generator- generators ranging from coffee shop or rain, to gregorian chants and signing bowls, etc)
NASA's Image and Video Library (over 140k images and other resources, searchable and completely free)
NASA's Exoplanet Archive "an online astronomical exoplanet and stellar catalog and data service that collates and cross-correlates astronomical data and information on exoplanets and their host stars, and provides tools to work with these data."
California Herps "A Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of California" (and around the world)
World Spider Catalog
Tree- listen to various forests from around the world.
The Dinosaur Database "The internet's largest dinosaur database... This site is built with PaleoDB, a scientific database assembled by hundreds of paleontologists over the past two decades."
Exotic Animal Photo Reference Repository a repository of image references for accurately identified animal species, hundreds of photos taken at various zoos and animal sanctuaries already uploaded with more to come
interactive globe of ancient Earth (see how the Earth looked at various points from 750 million years ago to today, including the ability to see where a modern city would have existed, if it existed)
Occupational Folklife Project at the US Library of Congress a collection of more than 1800 audio and audiovisual oral history interviews with workers in scores of trades, industries, crafts, and professions (huge range of professions from bookbinders to circus workers to park rangers to professional wrestlers)
The Deep Sea scroll down to see what resides at different levels of the ocean's depths
Probably not useful, but you never know:
The Official Evil Overlord Handbook
How to disappear completely
Just Delete Me - "A directory of direct links to delete your account from web services."
Simple trick to avoid being caught on CCTV/video cameras (also interesting reading is the possibility of a more complicated method that makes you look like someone else to the camera)
Instead of using your real phone number for websites that require one get one at textfree (US)
Disposable emails can be found at: 10 minute mail.net, 10 minute mail.com, putsbox or temp-mail.
12ft circumvent paywalls by entering the url here or try searching for the url at archive.ph or archive.is
cobalt "cobalt helps you save anything from your favorite websites: video, audio, photos or gifs. just paste the link and you’re ready to rock! no ads, trackers, paywalls, or other nonsense. just a convenient web app that works anywhere, whenever you need it."
Research and Resource Collected Links Masterpost