Make Wikipedia Your Laid-Back, Scientific Homepage
If you like the distraction when starting your browser, if you find Twitter and news sites too conspicuous, and a blank page too mundane, try Wikipedia . Yes, that’s right, we just referenced Wikipedia as if it were some obscure site that we found. Because if you only got there through Google results, you might never have noticed their elegant, soothing home page.
On the left, you’ll see today’s featured article, one of the top 0.1% of Wikipedia pages . It’s not news-related, it’s just a good article that the editors of Wikipedia think you might appreciate.
Below you will see the “Did You Know …” section, which in the same way draws your attention to some interesting little things. These are not crazy facts that will surprise your friends; they are the starting points for more good articles. You will learn that “The 2012 anthology No Straight Lines , edited by Justin Hall, is a collection of strange comics spanning a 40-year period,” or that “the antennae on the chin of the mullet are the senses used to find prey. ”(It turns out that mullet is a European type of goat meat with delicious pulp.)
On the right, you will see four news headlines. At the time of this writing, all four stories are from the past week. This section is not for breaking news, but for good Wikipedia articles on breaking news.
Below the news is a section titled “On This Day …” listing historic anniversaries such as the passage of the Civil Rights Act 1866 on April 9th. (To see any mention of the Confederate surrender on April 9, 1865, you may have to delve into today’s longer list of anniversaries .)
Below is a list of the favorites for the day. Today it was a list of Category II * Monuments in Mendip – all the buildings considered to be quite important, but not the most important, in one part of one County of England. Quite soothing. Other recent listings include the Presidents of the New York Public Library and the filmography of Charlize Theron.
Below is a picture shown daily; today it is a mole. Then there are permanent links to sections of Wikipedia and related projects. Your brief knowledge meditation is over until you click the link.
The homepage can be peaceful or pleasantly distracting. You can even, as we suggested in 2008, start with a random Wikipedia article . But since the Wikipedia home page is a carefully curated selection of the best articles, you are likely to find something moderately interesting before doing what you opened your browser to.
Wikipedia | Homepage