In the year 2022 the Institute will be 25 years old. I am hesitant to admit that, since it means there should be a lot more things here.
What is it, exactly? In the beginning of lileks.com, when the various areas of the site were coalescing into their eventual shape and finding their proper orbit, it was the place where I put “vintage” things and had sport with the outmoded images and attitudes. Over the years, lileks.com grew to absurd proportions, and new sites arose, pulling away content from this page. Can you tell I recently watched a TV documentary on the planets? I did. Point is, a lot of what was here ended up in the various sites devoted to the decades of the 20th century, and the very, very large Miscellany site, which functions as a parallel version of the Institute where not everything is intended to be humorous.
This sidebar copy has been revised over the years to note that the Stagland feature is in need of an overhaul, and a new version has been promised since 2014. I’m happy to say it’s done, and it’s in the upload queue for the end of 2021. I’m also revising and resizing Interior Desecrations, as well as adding new content.
Most of these sites are frozen, though. They attained perfection and no updates are possible. At best I tinker with the design, impose some new standard or paradigm I think is brilliant, only to regret the next time I look at it.
So: if you’ve gotten this far, I thank you for your visit. This might be one of the more famous areas of lileks.com, but it’s less than 10% of the entire site. Go HERE to the top menu, where you’ll find all manner of things. But bookmark if you like: the Gallery of Regrettable Food, the original site that gave the Institute its moment in the sun - or at least its Yahoo Cool Site of the Day - will be updated weekly through most of 2021.
Updated weekly, after nearly a quarter of a century. Not a bad run, eh? Here’s to more, and another year of fond japery at the expense of a defenseless past.
Lileks
01.01.2021