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I think page design standards need drastic changes, but to be honest I thought this page was broken the first couple of times I visited. I'm still not convinced there isn't some broken elements involved in its appearance.

That being said, I'm all for distributed systems so I hope for the best with this (without meaning to imply anything about it one way or another relative to other similar things that have been developed).

I didn't like it at first, but it's grown on me since. It makes a bold statement and feels unique.

way offtopic, but can you point to a couple examples of websites that "have a soul" according to your personal criterion?

Not OP, but I feel Wikipedia “has a soul”. The design doesn’t get in the way, is consistent and the information density is just right.