One of my favorite sites: https://www.windows93.net/

This blog is incredible:

https://ciechanow.ski/archives/

There aren't many articles, but the ones that exist have been crafted with EXTREME attention to detail and DELIGHTFULLY interactive animations. I would recommend the mechanical watch and internal combustion engine posts specifically to start. If you like knowing how things work, this guys blog scratches that itch better than like, anything else I have found for the specific things he makes posts about. Have fun, be prepared to kill a few hours.

https://www.zombo.com/

https://cari.institute/aesthetics

Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute, it's a neat website showing design trends in advertising, packaging, print, etc throughout the years.

https://cat-bounce.com/

I might be boring here, but outside of Lemmy, none of the websites I frequent are niche.

YouTube, Wikipedia, Fanfiction.net, Archive of Our Own, MAL, sci-hub, eBay, TV Tropes, Reddit (though I only read now, I don't participate in the discussions since July).

It's German but this guy has been blogging since the beginning of time http://blog.fefe.de/

https://gurushots.com/ photography challenges, quite fun.

https://flickr.com/ photography community

Someone posted a link to this site the other day and now I'm hooked https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/

free-mp3-download.net for stealing FLACs from Deezer.

frogfind.com - search engine (or rather proxy) for vintage computers

gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1/world is a cool directory of gopher links. There's also Veronica-2 search engine. You'll need a browser that supports gopher protocol, from the top of my head I can name bombadillo, lynx and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or lower.

WWW Images starter packs:
https://www.tau.ac.il/images/Images.html
http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/images/Images.html
http://www.it.uu.se/pics/

Meteor M-N2-3 satellite LRPT operational status

rtl-sdr.com - RTL-SDR blog. I just found they released RTL-SDRv4 😲 and it's even cheaper than previous model!

telnet telehack.com - There's eliza, an early AI chatbot made in 1966. AI chatbots aren't such a new thing.

I still use Reddit, just not on my phone since their app suck and is full of ads.

Hackaday.com is my favourite blog on the Internet and I've been reading it for over a decade, it never gets boring.

Every mon/wed/fri I open tabs of some webcomics I follow:

• https://www.egscomics.com/
• http://freefall.purrsia.com/
• https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/

I've followed a lot of other comics, but these have been updated VERY damn reliably for a long time.

Simon Tatham's Puzzle Collection. Just a bunch of cool puzzles for wasting time. No ads or bells and whistles.

You can download them or just play in the browser. Someone also made the collection into an Android app, which I usually use.

There used to be this plugin and site called something like "Stumble Upon". You click on the big Stumble button and it takes you to a random place on the WWW based on your interests. It was awesome. I miss it. Anyone know something similar that still works?

Tagpro.gg - fun lil browser game

sovietsteeds.com It's a really niche forum that was made in the distant past and then stubbornly refused to change, much like the motorcycles they ride.

http://mynoise.net

Amazing library of customizable ambient noises and soundscapes, pretty much all recorded and developed by one guy. I think “Rain on a Tent” is the best rain track available on the internet.

http://falstad.com/mathphysics.html

I love blogs, specially from people with niche interests and experiences. I follow them via RSS. So that's what I read outside of Lemmy / Reddit / Mastodon.

Recently I've been following the blog written by an IT guy working in a research station in Antarctica (also has a great domain name).

https://brr.fyi/

I love the orange and black website!!!!!

https://www.theautopian.com/

I love the games and experiments at neal.fun (you probably heard about the password game recently)

Mostly random forums, like this one: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/

Horny answer incoming:

If you're into ERP at all, f-list.net is unparalleled in catering to just about anything you can think of that isn't outright illegal. There's a lot of trash as you can imagine, but you can build out a fairly intensive kink list and scroll through an absurd number of character profiles and channels for just about anything.

nyaa.si and 1337x

There are no limits. I’ve brought up before I hold the world record for the most websites having signed up for. I can’t think of a single website out of thousands I’m not on, otherwise I’d sign up.

I always go back to https://www.zombo.com/

https://novelai.net
It's an AI writing tool for stories. I got about half a dozen stories in progress and switch between them whenever one is starting to get stale.

It's nothing fancy, and I'm not a great writer. But I love exploring new worlds this way, building the lore as I go along.