One of my favourite things about the internet are the sites that ooze with
authenticity. Ironically, my own web presence is very unauthentic – I don’t put
many things out there and the one thing I am vaguely known for (Way Cooler) was
managed more like a product than as a labour of
love.
Regardless, here’s a list of blogs/essays/sites from people that I’ve found to
be authentic. Some of these people are controversial (and are probably people I
wouldn’t get along with) but are never the less authentic.
- badspot.us - Creator of
blockland a small game that I played years ago whose
community has essentially died.
- Dan Luu - I may be the only one that actually enjoys the
lack of styling on his in-depth and high quality blog posts.
- Drew Devault - Great guy to have a beer so long as
you’re not an “enemy of open source”
- ESR - Ultra conservative programmer known best
for The Cathedral and the
Bazaar.
- Julia Evans - One of the best bloggers about “System
Programming” - usually talks about Linux or the networking stack.
- Nicky Case - Creator of :the
game:, a silly little flash
game. I remember playing it when it first came out and now it exists as a time
capsule containing society’s fears and obsessions of the late 2000s era. She
went on to make some very insightful “teaching games” that explain ideas
really well. Her two best writings IMHO are her decade in
review (which encouraged me to do the same,
though I kept mine private) and How to remember anything
forever-ish.
- Notch - Creator of Minecraft but now better known
for posting offensive transphobic tweets