Every morning, I used to get out of bed and think, “How can I improve the results on the 9th page of Google?” So I built an organic, unpromoted website that Googlebot would duly downrank, and populated it with completely original, ad-free articles that Google wouldn’t know what to make of.
Aside from demonstrating the catch-22 that large search engines pose to small publishers, this site also provides occasional writing practice to a frustrated scientist who developed a habit of seeing beauty and curiosity in the ordinary and the overlooked, and sharing it with virtually no one.
So yes, dear reader, your arrival here was as improbable as the maple seed that managed to become a tree, or the gametes that met to form a living person; it is almost as if these articles were written especially for you!
So do enjoy your visit, and if there’s anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable, just ring up the manager at the address below.
“There’s a lot of potential in being undiscovered.”
— Anonymous
Why the weird name? Because weird was a verb, before it was an adjective.
Then said the heads one to another:
“What shall we weird for this damsel who has used us so kindly?”
— from English Fairy Tales, collected by Joseph Jacobs (1892)
In the quote above, taken from the tale The Three Heads of the Well, three enchanted spirits are about to weird good fortune to a lost maiden, in reward for her kindness to them.
This sense of the word is derived from the old English wyrd, which meant, according to an uncited Wikipedia entry, “to preordain by decree of fate.” Collins English Dictionary supports this claim with a similar definition, “to destine or ordain by fate; predict.” We also see this in a name that was once used for the Fates — The Weird Sisters — which was not chosen to suggest that they are weird, but to suggest that they can weird one’s fate or destiny.
Most of the articles here convey examples of unexpected curiosities or unrecognized beauty, lurking in the commonplace things around us. The forgotten verb sense of weird is one of those things, and is as suitable an archetype as any for much of what is found here. And, because I am a design theorist, I find that this concept echoes my views on technological design and how it influences our society in unrecognized ways – another theme of the content on this site. Thanks for visiting, and somehow defying Google’s stranglehold on unmonetized content.
— Mike
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