Cool websites to visit right now

Cool is a hard word to pin down, so here is what we mean by it: a website that makes you say "wait, this is just a webpage?" Cool websites tend to be beautiful, a little surprising, and generous, in that they give you something without asking for anything back.

earth is a gorgeous live globe of winds, weather and ocean currents. Radio Garden lets you spin a globe and tune into live radio from any city. WindowSwap shows you the view out of a stranger's window somewhere in the world. The Deep Sea takes you from the surface to the Challenger Deep one scroll at a time, and Silk turns a mouse into glowing, mirrored ribbons.

Some are cool because of how they are built. Bruno Simon's Portfolio is a job-hunting page you drive a small car through. Others are cool because of their ambition: Histography puts events from the Big Bang to today on one dot-filled timeline.

Use "Surprise me from this list" if you want to be picked for, or read down: the first eight are the ones that work for nearly everyone.

All links are checked daily, and every card shows how long it will take, whether it works on mobile and whether it carries a content note. That last one matters: some cool sites are loud, some are flashy, and some are heavy to load.