Same Energy Lives On (And It's Better Than Pinterest)
MAY 18TH, 2026
Editor's Note: This is the first journal entry for the Public Domain Art Portal. The mood boards pictured here are my own work, built on Same Energy using public domain images.
While digging through my archived files in Obsidian this weekend, hoping to locate some references I wanted to use for the Public Domain Art Portal, I stumbled upon some links to a bunch of mood boards I made back in 2021 using a visual search engine called Same Energy. (Side note: have I mentioned lately how much I appreciate Obsidian?!?)
I clicked on one of the links, fully expecting that all the boards I once made there (more than 30 of them) would be gone, or non-functional at best. The dev, Jacob Jackson, stopped maintaining the project a few years ago, to my great dismay.
I recall discovering Same Energy in 2021 and reading about it on Charley Parker's Lines and Colors blog, where it was described as "image similarity search with Deep Learning." Parker wrote:
"The combination of the quick, densely displayed returns and the level of quality makes searching for similar images more engaging with Same Energy than with Bing or Google. I found myself fascinated, dragging images of widely varied styles into the interface, and often tracking down images that came up that were new to me, and bookmarking often."
That matches my experience of discovery and fascination. I love Same Energy. It's so much better and more user-friendly for my purposes than Pinterest (where I'd built 80+ boards). No AI slop, no ads, no enshittification. Just art, beauty, and general ease-of-use. And curators can generate individual links to share one or two boards at a time with the public without revealing full collections.
I knew there was a risk that my boards could disappear without warning, but I found the creative process of making boards there so enjoyable that I just couldn't resist.
I spent so much time making boards on Same Energy that I sometimes had to cut myself off from the "honeytrap" lest I neglect the client work piling up on my plate.
In 2024 I wrote that I "was so sad to see it fall into disrepair that I even emailed the dev to ask about it." I mentioned in that email that I'd pony up for a paid subscription without hesitation if he ever started maintaining it again, but I got no response.
So it was a lovely surprise to discover (just before DFOS opens to the public) that all my boards are intact once again, exactly as they looked before the dev let the project fall into disrepair.
Even better: the tools work again! I can save new images to my boards! I can create new boards! It's baaaack! Aaaahhh.
So now I'm making more themed mood boards. Some may be turned into larger works and stashed into folders in our DFOS as bonuses for keyholders; others may be shared with all our Dark Forest members as I've done here.
The two boards in the screenshots here are part of a series with a "colors" theme. For a closer look:
In any case, I highly recommend checking out Same Energy, especially if you enjoy Pinterest.
