A curated selection of unique, niche, and fascinating websites in both Polish and English.
Welcome to the Cogimator.net Web Directory – a curated space for exploring unique and often overlooked websites. This is not just another list of popular platforms, but a hand-picked collection of projects that stand out through originality, design, storytelling, or unexpected utility.
This web directory features experimental interactions, visual gems, educational treasures, and cultural initiatives from around the world – all documented with descriptions, tags, and direct links. The directory is bilingual, offering separate sections for Polish and English language content.
Check back often – new discoveries are added regularly.
arXiv – open repository of scientific publications
🔗 arXiv.org is one of the most important open scientific repositories in the world. Founded in 1991 by physicist Paul Ginsparg, it has become a key platform for scientific preprints – early versions of research papers shared before formal peer review in journals.
arXiv covers a wide range of fields: physics, mathematics, computer science, natural sciences, economics, statistics, and even social sciences. Hundreds of new papers are added every day, making it one of the most dynamic sources of scientific knowledge online.
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Hackaday – DIY projects and engineering experiments
🔗 Hackaday.com is one of the most fascinating and longest-running online communities dedicated to DIY projects, electronics, hardware hacking, and experimental inventions. Every day, new articles showcase projects from around the world – from simple home device modifications to advanced robots and unique musical instruments.
Hackaday serves as a hub where engineers, hardware hackers, makers, and electronics enthusiasts share their ideas, schematics, and source code. The platform attracts both professionals and amateurs, inspiring them to create and experiment.
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Monoskop – encyclopedia of media art and digital culture
🔗 Monoskop.org is a unique project that blends the qualities of an encyclopedia, a digital library, and a knowledge repository. Developed for more than a decade by a community of researchers, artists, and enthusiasts, it focuses on media art, digital culture, philosophy, aesthetics, and critical theory, offering materials rarely found in conventional sources.
What makes Monoskop stand out is its vast archives – hundreds of scanned books, essays, and publications, often otherwise hard to access. The wiki structure allows seamless expansion of entries and cross-linking between related topics, while the project’s openness fosters collaboration and continuous updates.
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99% Invisible – hidden stories of design, architecture, and material culture
🔗 99% Invisible is a project that, since 2010, has explored the unseen aspects of design, architecture, engineering, and material culture. Originally launched as a podcast by Roman Mars, it has since grown into a full-fledged website featuring articles, photographs, audio recordings, and videos.
Each episode and article tells the story of seemingly ordinary elements of our surroundings – from the shape of road signs, to the construction of bridges and buildings, to the hidden meanings behind patterns and urban systems. These are narratives about the subtle forces that shape our lives, often unnoticed, yet profoundly impactful.
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Atlas Obscura – a guide to extraordinary places and cultures
🔗 Atlas Obscura is a unique guide to extraordinary places, cultures, and phenomena from around the globe. Founded in 2009 by travel enthusiasts, it was created to build a knowledge base of places and stories overlooked by traditional travel guides. Today, the site contains thousands of entries contributed by travelers, historians, researchers, and enthusiasts.
The platform features an interactive map that allows users to explore geographical and cultural curiosities anywhere in the world. Descriptions cover natural phenomena – such as unique geological formations and rare plant species – as well as man-made wonders, including forgotten buildings, abandoned sites, quirky museums, and unusual art installations.
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Colossal – art, photography, and creativity from around the world
🔗 Colossal is an independent portal that has been operating since 2010, publishing carefully curated content from the worlds of art, photography, design, and creative projects every day. The editorial team focuses on presenting creators – both established artists and niche authors – while avoiding sensationalism or excessive commercialization.
The site offers a diverse range of topics: from photo reports on exhibitions and art installations, through projects combining technology with traditional craftsmanship, to macro photographs of nature and biological structures. It also features unique handmade works, illustrations, and videos documenting the creative process.
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The Public Domain Review – an archive of culture in the public domain
🔗 The Public Domain Review is an online archive and magazine dedicated to works that have entered the public domain – from rare illustrations and maps, to forgotten literary texts, films, photographs, and audio recordings. Founded in 2011, the project is run by a non-profit organization with the mission of preserving, digitizing, and promoting cultural resources free from copyright restrictions.
The site combines the role of an archive with that of a content curator. The featured works are carefully described, often enriched with historical, artistic, and cultural context. Visitors will find both classic pieces by renowned artists and entirely forgotten works by anonymous creators.
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Hundred Rabbits – Creating and Living Outside the Mainstream
🔗 100r.co
Hundred Rabbits (100r) is a radically unique digital project – an independent studio run by Rekka Bellum and Devine Lu Linvega, who live and work aboard a sailboat on the Pacific Ocean. Powered by solar panels and fueled by curiosity, they build tools, write essays, and publish reflections outside the gravitational pull of the tech industry.
Their website is a living archive of life off the grid – equal parts travelogue, laboratory, sketchbook, and philosophy zine. Highlights include:
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Matt DesLauriers – Code as Material, Art as Algorithm
🔗 mattdesl.com
Matt DesLauriers’ website is a unique fusion of generative art, computer graphics, and low-level programming. Based in London, DesLauriers is both an artist and a developer, exploring the beauty of code through visual, interactive compositions powered by WebGL, GLSL, and JavaScript.
His site offers a rich gallery of browser-based visual experiments, showcasing real-time rendering techniques and shader-driven artworks. Each piece strikes a balance between mathematical abstraction and aesthetic intuition – whether it’s particle simulations, dynamic light effects, or procedurally drawn forms.
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Robin Sloan – A Writer Who Codes, a Coder Who Tells Stories
🔗 robinsloan.com
Robin Sloan is a writer who codes – and a coder who tells stories. Known for novels like Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore and The Future Library, he runs his website as a digital storytelling laboratory.
This is not a standard blog or author page – it’s a living archive of ideas, short essays, fictional experiments, literary musings, and software prototypes. Some entries are tiny daily notes, others are full-length short stories, technical deep dives, or conceptual frameworks for new modes of storytelling.
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