Intriguing Internet Content

Great suggestions from Ed Brazee!

Doesn’t it seem like the reporting about internet use is all or nothing? That is, people are all in about using the internet or they are ready to turn it off completely. It seems as if every other tech-related article is about some aspect of AI. But underneath the heavy focus on AI, social media, and doom scrolling, the internet is a goldmine of stimulating, compelling, and captivating content. Sometimes the problem is moving away from our usual internet haunts to look elsewhere.

At BoomerTECH Adventures we like to find the best of the internet. Unique places to visit and explore, unexpected experiences, and fascinating new content. With that in mind, here are three resources that are definitely a reset from the same old internet stuff. So, give yourself a 20 minute break and dial in to one of these sites.

The Pudding

“The Pudding explains ideas debated in culture with visual essays. We’re not chasing current events or clickbait. We choose topics where visuals inform and entertain. We’re been in the business of bringing you stories you didn’t know you needed since 2017.”

This is a digital publication that takes fascinating subjects — music, language, culture, sport — and explores them through stunning interactive graphics and charts instead of traditional prose. One of the most popular stories is “teens into adults” where you can watch hundreds of teenagers grow up into adults – and see how their lives turn out. Fascinating and sobering!

Or, how about listening to 138 National Anthem performances from artists throughout the years? Or, read the “happy map’ where 100,000 moments of human happiness are mapped. I just read “walkachusetts” a “visually-aided journal of a very long walk across Massachusetts. A great story told with some photos and fun sketches.

Radio Garden

This website is a real kick. An interactive globe where every green dot is a live radio station you click to tune in—from the Arctic Circle to the Caribbean. From a jazz station in New Orleans to a community broadcaster in rural Mongolia. Perfect for anyone curious about the world.

Yesterday I listened to AM 1270, Arctic Outpost in Longyearbyen, Norway. Here you can expect to hear big band, jazz, swing, vintage country, and blues from one of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas!

This site allows you to “spin” the globe to select a radio station anywhere in the world. I’m now listening to a French language station in Sherbrooke, Quebec.

Another spin and I’m listening to Hip Hop from a station on the Marshall Islands, located in the central Pacific. Then to some country from a Guam station.

Radio Garden is easy to navigate. In addition to moving the globe around with your cursor until you land on another green dot, signifying another radio station, there are settings to explore stations anywhere, favorites to keep track of your favorite stations, locations, and playlists. The browse setting gives you examples of playlists like—Independent Sounds, Energetic Rhythms, Time Travel, Island Life, and several more. All ways to find unique radio stations around the globe. You must give this a try!

52 Places to Go in 2026 

This is a yearly special feature of the New York Times travel, section, a list of cities and countries around the world that are deemed “relevant and vacation worthy.”

Each of the 52 Places to Go yearly features have gorgeous photos (and sometimes videos) of the cities, countries, or regions, well-written text about the destination with many links for further reading and research, maps, and supplementary articles. It balances well-known destinations with lesser-known gems around the world. This resource has become a bit of an event in the travel world to see what places are included.

You will find these beautiful resources and learn so much about the world. The voluminous comments are worthwhile in themselves so take a look at what people say about the featured cities and countries as well as the locales themselves.

Two of the spots on this year’s list that were especially interesting are Iceland and the suggestion to “savor a total eclipse” on August 12, 2026. In Iceland, parts of the far-western peninsulas will go dark for two minutes or more. Or, how about the Traena Islands in Norway? “Every summer, thousands of visitors make the roughly 30-mile ferry crossing from the mainland to the Traena Islands, a remote Norwegian archipelago bisected by the Arctic Circle.”

A related article, 20 Years of ‘Places to Go’, gives a fascinating look at the now 21 years of articles and the history behind it. The NY Times “Places to Go” lists made its debut in 2005. “A traveler consulting our 2005 list had no smartphone, no Instagram, no Google Maps. Most of them saw the list in the printed paper. They may well have been carrying traveler’s checks. ‘Overtourism’and ‘sustainability’ were not part of the conversation. Airbnb was not yet a company, let alone a verb.”

Before you scroll away to something else drawing your attention, open up one of these sites and actually take a look. Better yet, take it for a drive. Listen to one of the radio stations on Radio Garden. Read one of the compelling stories on Pudding or choose a location in the 52 Places site to learn about. Which of these is most intriguing to you?