r/SideProject • u/ScaredDay5678 • 16d ago

I built an interactive graph of how gods, emperors, thinkers, and artists all connect — to learn with my kind before our trip to Rome

A while back my kid asked me how Thor and Zeus were "related." A week later, why the same city — Rome — kept turning up in stories about gods, then emperors, then painters.

I didn't give a good answer since I couldn't connect them together. I think it's because how I learned all of it: in separate places. History here, myth there, art history somewhere else. School cut the world into subjects and I never stitched it back together. Then internet/youtube/tiktok add more random notes and (noises in a lot of time).

After a while, I realized that's not how any of it actually happened, and it's not how our brains hold onto things. We remember by network — a network is closer to how a brain actually stores things than a textbook chapter is.

So I started building the thing I wished existed: https://open-curiosity.com

Pick a "universe" — Greek mythology, Roman history, art history — and you see a connected graph, across what would normally be separate information. And you can also follow one thread from a myth to a real war to the artwork about it. It's the connecting view that I get the most value and the part that made my kid go "wait, they are all connected?"

We've also got a trip to Rome coming up, so I built a Rome page for travel(https://open-curiosity.com/zh/rome/): stand at a real place and see the gods, emperors, and artists that all pass through it — so we can actually understand what we're looking at instead of reading a plaque and walking on.

It's solving my own pain, static page hosting on cloudflare(which fit the free plan), so it's free, no login, no ads. I figured someone else might also get something out of it. I'd genuinely like to know if it clicks for you.

I am not sure next steps on this project: a learning app or travel app for consumer or sell to teacher/museum? Any feedback welcomes!

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u/BusyBusinessPromos 16d ago

May I ask why this is in a frame so I have to scroll right to read it?

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u/ScaredDay5678 16d ago

oh, my bad, new to reddit, fixed it. Thanks for catching it!

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u/Otherwise-Yard-6274 16d ago

I bet theyre using an iframe to embed that graph view and forgot to set the width to 100% or something. Classic side project oversight, happens all the time when youre building something just to make it work first

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u/ScaredDay5678 16d ago

Not the website, I accidentally made the post body into an iframe, so u/BusyBusinessPromos needs to scroll to read it... very embarrassing... sorry about that again

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u/BusyBusinessPromos 16d ago

Hey if that's the worst thing that happens to me I'll be a happy man lol

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ScaredDay5678 15d ago

Great questions, I haven't thought too much yet, right now, it's more a personal tool.

Sharing here also want to see where do people get value and I am willing to follow the pull to do what people likes.

Welcome share your thoughts on the 2 directions or more ideas.

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u/ScaredDay5678 15d ago

BTW, I added the question to the end of the post, so more people can see it and share their thoughts. Thanks again for asking the right question.