In TCL’s case it’s a fun play on Tcl/Tk, which is how it is often referred to when including its famous GUI toolkit.

To be perfectly fair, the list of DNSSEC cock-ups is staggering. .nz ccTLD was taken down, IIRC, for 4 days after a bad KSK rollover just last year. I’ve seen prominent registrars with ‘automated’ DNSSEC fail to upload correct NSEC and RRSIGs. It’s not uncommon to see .gov domains go down because of DNSSEC. You’d think all these entities should get it right, but they don’t. Probably why many major tech domains such as google.com don’t use DNSSEC.

But to your point, using a ‘off-brand’ can really hurt sometimes. `.af` might be a cute marketing tactic, but it’s actually Afghanistan, and the Taliban play by a different rulebook. I believe it was `gay.af` that found that out the hard way. Tons of other stories.

I think .so is an even whackier choice and people are rushing to it. Why notion.com redirects to notion.so is beyond me. Probably couldn't buy it and pay only for a redirect?

That random world governments, many with judiciaries you can't access, control TLDs is a good reason not to use wacky ones. But DNSSEC isn't really part of that argument. Nobody trusts DNSSEC (the root keys could land on Pastebin and virtually nobody would even need to be paged), and the trust issue is the same before-and-after.

Because all .com are already taken and available only after you pay ransom money.

Then use descriptive product names, not cute single words that are being used by 47 other products.

Remnant of a time when the Internet was new and geeks would buy all kind of fun domains with odd TLDs.

"new"? I don't remember seeing many of the "odd TLDs" for sale until the web had been around 10-15 years.

Not the TLDs themselves the creative use of them.

I started on the Internet in the (mid) 90s. Back then, it was already common among security conscious folks. A bit later, end 90s, you could buy a shell account for a couple of USD per month. You could run a BNC on it, or IRC client. It had various IPv4 with reverse DNS, this was called vhost. For example, you could end up with I.pwned.the.whole.eu.org and plays where TLD was part of word. Goatse.cx for example reads 'goatsex', Slashdot.org reads 'slashdotdotorg' or 'httpcolonslashslashslashdotdotorg', the founder of first Dutch consumer ISP Xs4all Rop Gonggrijp had gonggri.jp for ages (guess his email address). There are countless of examples.

Who do you trust?

Any of the OG TLD's, I wouldn't tie my domain to anything political at all outside of the US.

You already have to implicitly trust the US government when it comes to anything internet-related as all of the critical infrastructure is, whether you like it or not, American, so you might as well set up shop within US control.

.moe, as it's clearly the classiest and most professional TLD out there

Not a bunch of pro Russia mafia