Good on a phone

Which of the world's volcanoes are erupting today, each with webcams, seismic charts and a running diary of what the mountain has been doing.

Home of a long list of absurd browser games and quizzes, several of which have quietly consumed entire office afternoons.

New York Magazine's pop-culture desk, where the recaps and power rankings are better written than the shows deserve.

Swap letters around a waffle-shaped grid to fix six words at once, with only fifteen swaps and stars for every one you save.

Very long illustrated essays on artificial intelligence, procrastination and the Fermi paradox, drawn in deliberately bad stick figures.

Four-panel strips whose punchline usually involves death, drawn by two Germans with impeccable comic timing.

Risk against real people across hundreds of maps, played in one sitting or over weeks of daily turns. Formerly Warzone and WarLight.

A live room of service-dog puppies in training, which is the single most reliable meeting-break on the internet.

Wildfire incidents across the western United States, mapped and annotated in near real time by volunteers who sit listening to fire radio.

Irish satire with no interest in restraint, regularly mistaken for real reporting by people who should know better.

Guess where a teammate placed a concept on a spectrum between two extremes. The most reliable argument-starter on this list.

Climate averages for any city as gorgeous year-round charts: sunshine hours, muggy days, wind, and precisely when the good weather ends.

Forecasts built on a network of tens of thousands of amateur weather stations, so the reading is often from somebody on your actual street.

Screenshots of thousands of websites from 1991 onward, arranged so you can watch entire interface conventions appear and die.

Full-resolution images from the James Webb telescope, with the explanations of what you are actually looking at.

Live webcams sorted by country and theme, from Alpine passes to Caribbean beach bars, with a great many pointed at completely empty roads.

Drag through a full-screen fluid that swirls and bleeds colour behind the cursor, at full frame rate even on a phone.

The long-running forum where amateur investigators pick apart cold cases, for better and occasionally much worse.

Genuinely baffling real product listings pulled from the big marketplaces and presented with almost no commentary.

The account that rates every dog above ten out of ten and has defended that scale in public for over a decade.

The planet chopped into three-metre squares, each given a three-word name, which is either brilliant or a licensing trap depending who you ask.

The space station's position, ground track and next passes over you, with an orbital countdown that is oddly hard to stop watching.

Two portraits, one of them generated. Built by University of Washington researchers to show how badly people score at telling the difference.

A relationship graph of everybody famous, cross-referenced far past the point of reason and updated constantly.

Which record a sample came from, who covered whom and where that drum break originally lived, with the two tracks played side by side.

Search engine that indexes hand-made pages only, surfacing the small quiet web the big engines stopped showing you years ago.

Instructions for very nearly anything, illustrated in that unmistakable cartoon style. The artwork alone justifies the visit.

One click, one random Wikipedia article, repeated until the afternoon has quietly gone somewhere else.

Wikipedia's own catalogue of the pettiest disputes in its history, including years of war over a hyphen.

The editors' own curated list of the encyclopedia's strangest entries, and the best rabbit hole entrance there is.

The free library of source texts — treaties, speeches and out-of-copyright novels, transcribed and proofread by hand.

Wikipedia articles served as a vertical swipe feed, which is either a public service or the end of civilisation.

Drag Wikipedia cards onto a timeline in the right order. Three lives, and you will lose one to the invention of the fork.

Wikipedia with a readable layout, a proper contents sidebar and images that stop fighting the text.

A dictionary of every word in every language, including etymologies, declension tables and regional slang.

Live safari drives broadcast twice a day from South African reserves, with guides answering viewer questions over the radio as they go.

A dilemma, a tempting benefit, a horrible catch, and the percentage of everybody else who pressed it regardless.

Ten minutes out of somebody else's window somewhere in the world, filmed by them and left quietly running.

The forecast as an animated map, with wind, waves, temperature and a dozen models to argue between, free and without an account.

Answers computed rather than retrieved: integrals, unit conversions, orbital mechanics and the nutritional content of a Mars bar.

Victorian engravings cut apart and given modern dialogue, producing jokes no other format could quite deliver.

Six goes at one five-letter word, the same word for everybody, once a day. The puzzle that spawned an entire genre in three months.

A dictionary showing real usage, related words and examples pulled from the wild rather than agreed by committee.

Readings from thousands of air monitoring stations worldwide on one map, colour-coded from a calm green to a genuinely alarming maroon.

Free indicators for every country going back decades, with charts, maps and bulk downloads on each series.

Plain map and flag quizzes covering every continent, aimed at classrooms and quietly excellent for adults as well.

Over a hundred solitaire variants with proper undo, statistics and card backs from 2007. Still the most complete one going.

The free, open-source answer to GeoGuessr, with unlimited rounds, a daily challenge and multiplayer that costs nothing.