Quick Links & Other Personal Sites

Security

  • “Brakeing Down Security Podcast” - A podcast all about the world of Cybersecurity, Privacy, Compliance, and Regulatory issues that arise in today’s workplace.
  • “Risky Business” - Risky Business is a weekly information security podcast featuring news and in-depth interviews with industry luminaries.

Good Software

  • Manjaro Linux - It’s mostly Arch minus most of the pain. I wouldn’t suggest it for a person without some Linux experience, but for anybody hacking around and doing dev stuff that still wants a reasonably functional Linux desktop environment I would highly recommend it. Fair warning though, reasonably functional is defined by a person who used to run with Slackware, LFS, and Gentoo stage 1 installs.
  • Obsidian - It wasn’t for me for a while, and I used Zettlr for a long time, but at this point it’s hard not to recommend it over any other Zettelkasten style note taking application. The base software is good, but the plugin ecosystem makes it awesome. Think Visual Studio Code style command palette mixed with a best in breed note taking application/markdown editor designed to be your vendor agnostic second brain via the Zettelkasten methodology It’s a little nerdy, but if that’s Greek to you, hit the links and upgrade your brain. It’s worth it.

Thought Provoking & Hard to Classify

  • “Your Undivided Attention” - In this podcast from the Center for Humane Technology, co-hosts Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin confront catastrophic risk with existential hope. How is technology both a symptom and a driver of broader social, political, and economic forces?
  • “Stuff Mom Never Told You” - Join hosts Anney and Samantha to listen to Stuff Mom Never Told You, continuing the conversation of what it is to identify as female through research-based discussion around feminism and how it impacts everyday life.
  • “Stuff You Missed in History Class” - Join Holly and Tracy as they bring you the greatest and strangest Stuff You Missed In History Class in this podcast by iHeartRadio.
  • “You’re Wrong About” - Mike and Sarah are journalists obsessed with the past. Every week they reconsider a person or event that’s been miscast in the public imagination.

Myths, Legends, Folklore & Stories

  • “Fireside” - Fireside is the Irish Storytelling Podcast. Kevin C. Olohan is your host and Fireside Bard. Every Wednesday, Kevin takes a story from Folklore or Mythology, gives it a fresh retelling, and discusses the story itself and the craft, culture and history of Storytelling.
  • “The Folktale Project” - Folklore, fairytales and legends from around the world the way they were meant to be. Brought to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Who says you’re too old for a good story?
  • “The Folklore Podcast” - Folklore: Beliefs, traditions & culture of the people. Traditional folklore themes from around the world. One episode each month features a special guest from the field of folklore. Recalling our forgotten history, recording the new. The Folklore Podcast

LGBTQIA+

  • “Erin In The Morning” - Erin Reed is the leading researcher and reporter on U.S.A. based anti-transgender legislation, the transgender refugee crisis, and the ongoing state lead transgender genocide happening in over half of the United States of America. She keeps an up to date state by state map that ranks states via legislative and executive persecution or protection and helps transgender people that have the privilege to flee to another state make an informed decision. Unfortunately, the “transgender question” is currently discussed as a culture war issue, and not the humanitarian crisis it is. Even oft trusted sources, such as The New York Times, have repeatedly demonstrated deep prejudice and exterminationist sympathies. If you want to get the real news that transgender people rely on to survive get it here.
  • “LGBT Bar NY Podcast” - Featuring lively discussion of the latest legal news affecting the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community here and abroad. Interviews with LGBTQ lawyers, policy wonks and activists.
  • “LGBTQ Nation” - Decent site for queer news. U.S.A. centric. This site tends to lag behind other queer news sources by a few days.
  • “Pink News” - U.K. centric queer news, with decent U.S.A. coverage. Anti-transgender specifically and to a lesser degree anti-LGBTQIA+ efforts are highly coordinated on a global level, with the highest level of collaboration between U.S.A and U.K. In particular following U.K. happenings typically gives some insight into anti-transgender strategies that will be deployed in the U.S.A within months.
  • “them.us” - U.S.A. centric site with mostly culture and LGBTQIA+ joy sorts of pieces, and some news. Far less gloom and doom, but slow updates.
  • “INTO” - Mostly cultural, initially branded as a “magazine” for millennials, then re-branded for Gen Z, but has some good editorials as well.

Feminism & Gender

  • “There Are No Girls on the Internet” - Marginalized voices have always been at the forefront of the internet, yet our stories often go overlooked. Bridget Todd chronicles our experiences online, and the ways marginalized voices have shaped the internet from the very beginning. We need monuments to all of the identities that make being online what it is. So let’s build them.
  • “Unladylike” - Find out what happens when women break the rules - those unwritten but all too real bullsh*t expectations of how we should live our lives.

Racial Justice

  • “Code Switch” - What’s CODE SWITCH? It’s the fearless conversations about race that you’ve been waiting for. Hosted by journalists of color, our podcast tackles the subject of race with empathy and humor. We explore how race affects every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, food and everything in between.
  • “The United States of Anxiety” - The United States of Anxiety is a show about the unfinished business of our history, and its grip on our future.

Health, Wellness & Therapy

  • “This Week in Virology” - TWiV is a weekly netcast about viruses - the kind that make you sick. Professors Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Rich Condit, Kathy Spindler and science writer Alan Dove and guests deconstruct viruses, how they cause illness, and dissect the latest research.
  • “IFS Talks” - IFS Talks is an audio series to deepen connections with the Internal Family Systems Model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users.
  • “The One Inside: An Internal Family Systems (IFS) podcast” - The One Inside: An Internal Family Systems podcast is for anyone looking to find balance and harmony.

Politics & Power

  • “Citations Needed” - Citations Needed is a podcast about the intersection of media, PR, and power, hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson.
  • “How To Citizen with Baratunde” - How To Citizen with Baratunde reimagines the word “citizen” as a verb and reminds us how to wield our collective power.
  • “Know Your Enemy” - A leftist’s guide to the conservative movement, one podcast episode at a time, with co-hosts Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell.
  • “Movement Memos” - An ongoing call to action for movement work and mutual aid efforts around the country. Kelly Hayes connects with activists, journalists and others on the front lines to break down what’s happening in various struggles and what listeners can do to help.

Democrat/Liberal Party Wonkery

  • “Pod Save America” - Four former aides to President Obama—Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor—are joined by journalists, politicians, activists, and more for a no-b**t conversation about politics.
  • “Pod Save the World” - “Pod Save America” cohost Tommy Vietor thought foreign policy was boring and complicated until he got the education of a lifetime working for President Obama’s National Security Council.

Doom & Dark Humor

  • “It Could Happen Here” - A jaunty walk through the burning ruins of the old world, the one we all live in now, and a guide to avoiding the worst pitfalls along the road to a better world. It Could Happen Here season 1 ended with the possibility of a second civil war. It Could Happen Here Daily with Robert Evans, accepts collapse as a given, and tries to provide a roadmap to survival.
  • “Live Like the World is Dying” - How do we live in a world that might be ending? By preparing to survive that end and by working to prevent it.

eBooks and Audiobooks

  • Your library is a good place to check, and will likely have a huge selection, but may be encumbered with various app, DRM, and privacy concerns that make the experience less than enjoyable. Keep in mind some libraries let people borrow against their collections even for people who are not within their typical physical service area, although that’s becoming less of a thing with time.
  • Project Gutenberg - One of the great ones. No registration.
  • Manybooks - Lots of eBooks, not just classics, registration required.
  • FreeComputerBooks - self explanatory. Legitimate link site.
  • LibriVox - Public domain, volunteer recorded audio books. Pretty good.
  • Archive.org - The Internet Archive has a huge collection, and you can probably find what you’re looking for. That being said, a lot of copyrighted stuff ends up on this site via user uploads and scraping and they leave the respecting copyrights part to you for the most part. If you don’t want to make that discernment yourself, borrowing can be done a lot like your local library’s online catalog via “OpenLibrary”. If you’re searching for immediately downloadable content the breadth of the site can be bewildering, messy, and uncensored, so I suggest drilling down with the filters into various collections as a start if you don’t want random Internet content included. The audio book collection, and various library collections are solid entry points.
  • WikiBooks - Wiki based textbooks, downloadable in reasonable formats.
  • The Folklore Library - a pretty tight curation of mostly English folklore. The main library is on their libbib account if you want to browse it. It is a proper little library, although they do lend things electronically when available, so this one isn’t exactly free, but sort of.
  • SacredTexts - smaller collection with a religious/mysticism focus.