I’d like to know your favourite blogs – sites that entertain and inform, even outside your comfort zone – and that might prick my media bubble.
_______________
Here’s the background:
One attraction of letting myself loose on Facebook when this site crashed was discovering interesting fan groups and news sites to follow.*
But this year I realized that my FB news feed was really outside my control, somewhat random, and temporary – posts came and went and I could spend endless time scrolling for little informed enjoyment, apart from a few memes and LOLs.**
The posts I did like were the long reads – considered articles from knowledgeable posters. In search of more, I came across Feedly – a news aggregator. You select your sources, categorize them if you want, and you can create your own magazine. I’ve now found about 60, ranging from environment to politics to economics to culture to music.***
There are lots of interesting bloggers out there, plugging away at their own furrows – and not all as big as The Atlantic or London Review of Books – though both of those are good. I’d be happy to share some of the best ones I’ve found. But mainly I’m curious to learn what blogs you like.
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* It was mainly Archers-related, but that felt like a good balance to the AW (mainly middle-aged women, rather than middle-aged men).
** I’d exclude the AW posters from that criticism, obvs.
*** Even The Afterword is one feed source, I discovered yesterday.
I’m only on this one, but I do like the sound of this Feedly fangled whatsit so I’m gonna have a look at that, and please share your favourites
Feedly is pretty good as a free app which syncs across your devices – so you can catch up wherever you are.
It seems pretty intuitive, and I’m learning how best to use it. The temptation is to mark everything you see to read later and end up with a virtual bookcase as big and as unread as the real one looming in your living room/den/snug etc.
Also with the feeds – I search for them across the web, and if the general tone, style, breadth and depth of posts appeal, I subscribe. Over time, I may winnow some out, particularly is they are over prolific (The Quietus is an example of that). Having said that, it is easy enough to mark as read and move on.
One thing I hoped to do was go through bloggers’ blogrolls and subscribe to blogs rated by bloggers I have already rated. That seemed possible with some of the economics ones, but I haven’t hit many more ‘motherlodes’ since then.
I’ll post the blogs below, in the loose categories I assembled them in. They are probably easy enough to find by googling, so forgive me if I don’t give the URLs. Where I put an asterisk, the blogs appear quite often and I’ve found particularly intriguing. TBH, some bloggers don’t post very often – that’s OK, as when they do, those ones seem to make it count.
Cheers 👍
Culture:
Aeon*
The Afterword.co.uk
The Conversation*
The Libertarian Ideal
Lion & Unicorn
London Review of Books
Long Now: Seminars About Long-term Thinking
The Long Run
Longreads
Open Culture*
OUPblog
The Quietus
The Synapse
Economics & Politics:
The Atlantic
Black Cat Revolution
British Politics and Policy at LSE
Circulate
Dani Rodrik’s weblog
Danny Dorling
The Enlightened Economist
Evonomics
Flip Chart Fairy Tales
globalinequality
Growth Economics Blog
Institute for New Economic Thinking
Karl Whelan
The Law and Policy Blog
longandvariable
Mainly macro*
Mark Blyth
OffGuardian*
openDemocracy RSS
Paul Krugman
politics.co.uk*
The Real Blog
Rethinking Economics
The Rules
The Secret Barrister
SPERI
Stories by Paul Mason on Medium
Stumbling and Mumbling
UK in a changing Europe*
Who Owns England?
Random samplings from my Feedly feed;
Crime Reads: what it says. Lots of reviews, extracts and essays about that. https://crimereads.com/
New York Times books: https://www.nytimes.com/section/books
The Aviationist: planespotter fun and games https://theaviationist.com/
A London Inheritance: poking about in London back streets and history https://alondoninheritance.com/
Futility Closet: odd history https://www.futilitycloset.com/
Shorpy Photo Archive: old photos, scanned to supernaturally high res https://www.shorpy.com/
The Hollywood Walker: novelist Geog=ff Nicholson walks about. See also Psycho-Gourmet, his food blog, featuring a lot of sandwiches and cocktails. https://hollywoodwalker.blogspot.com/ https://psycho-gourmet.blogspot.com/
Zelo Street: politics (lefty). Lots of stuff about Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and the rest of the sorry crew. https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/
Song of the Week: what it says, good writing. https://www.jmeshel.com/category/song-of-the-week/
Probably enough for now. I’ll pass over the, er, music blogs.
Whoops! Sorry, @mikethep! For some reason I totally overlooked your contributions – too busy ego posting my own collections, I suppose, to see this gently slipped in between. I’ll try out all of these – and why not add the music blogs?
I’ve had a brief look, and I’m impressed by the range of your interests, Mike.
The Geoff Nicholson ones look like the modern web equivalent of the Radio 4 show ‘Down Your Way’, mixed by Iain Sinclair – idiosyncratic, individual, and indubitably English. There’s a cultural space occupied by types like Pevsner, Hislop and Jonathan Meades that are essential to making the English identity dynamically dotty in its details. I won’t be subscribing to the Nicholson blogs, but I have a feeling that it’s good that they are there.
The three I like the look of most for intermittent stirring from my torpor are the last two and Futility Closet – music, politics and puzzles – just my cup of tea.
Would I be right in thinking these are just a small selection from your full list, Mike?
@salwarpe No worries! Weirdly, my post was held for moderation for a couple of days (no idea why* – never seen that before), so only I could see it.
Most of the music blogs involve what Burt calls ‘going behind the Eel Market’, so…my favourite is The Rockin’ Bandit, which uploads insane compilations like the entire output of the Parlophone label 1955-1965. But it seems to have packed up – guy got his collar felt, maybe.
And yes, lots of others, though only a few get visited more than once in a blue moon. As you’ve probably discovered, they could take up your whole life…
*too many links?
PS spot on about Geoff Nicholson and his ilk. Love the idea of an eccentric Englishman immersing himself in LA and surrounds. Bit like Sir Cedric Hardwicke & co playing cricket in 1930s Hollywood.
Academic:
CCCB LAB*
Jason Collins blog
There’s Research on That
Environment:
The Campaign for Real Farming
Carbon Brief
Deep Agroecology
George Monbiot
G-FEED
Kate Raworth
The Permaculture Research Institute
World Resources Institute
Bloody hell, sal!
I spend hours dicking about on here. How do you find the time?
Tig, I regard it as leveraging. A few hours of intense researching, ordering and reviewing – and then the motor is greased and revving for action.
Once that heavy lifting is done, I can just open the app, press a few buttons and intelligent articles are there to be read. There are islands of wisdom out there, waiting to be discovered among the oceans of cant, post-truth, clickbait and vanity publishing.
You have my utmost admiration. I’m simply too distracted by dicking about to read anyth… Oooh look, there’s a video of a dog talking!
hmm…used a feed aggregator in the past. Will try again, cheers
And a brilliant aggregator from magazines of in-depth stuffery from all genres (read for example the superb recent piece on the origins of the alt-right website 8chan) https://longform.org/ – can be quite US focused.
I thought I had this, but it’s long reads I was thinking of. I’ve had a quick look, and the titles and short intros seem to have the knack of letting you into the articles, promising interesting reveals. So I’ll give it a go.
Thanks!
One rather good blog that comes to me via Feedly is the Afterword.
I must remember not to make my posts so longwinded and speckled with footnotes.
http://www.covermesongs.com AKA Cover Me, devoted to cover songs, as the name suggests.
http://www.sixsongs.blogspot.com AKA Starmaker Machine, theme based musings, changing theme every fortnight.
Yup, both blatant self-promotion, but, especially the latter, a bit short on willing scribes. If anyone wants a try, apply. Both have given me both great fun and indulgence.
Thanks, retro. I enjoyed browsing through the second one. Though our tastes only coincide on a few artists, where they did – New Order/Peter Hook & Carmel (love that song and The Drum is Everything isn’t a bad album, from what I recall) – I can say I had an enjoyable read.
I did a music blog for a year, but they was enough for me. I admire your stamina, and creativity in finding new themes.
Thanks, chum. The themes are chosen by another, which means constantly having to try to be inventive. Sadly Starmaker Machine seems down to a hard core of 3 writers, one of whom is on sabbatical, hence the plea for new blood. Anyone who posts here would be up to it, IMHO, and many way better than I.
Thankfully Cover Me is on it’s uppers and there is a team of young guns that make me feel both the resident oldie as well as the only one based this side of the pond. At least I remember the originals. And, since the site joined Patreon, a crowd fund for blogs, I have received my first payment, a princely £18. Beat that, Spotify!!
Seriously, anyone who wants the challenge of polishing their scribbling chops, look at either site: clearly directed is how to submit.
Always willing to try and bore readers with aimless musings and daft theories, I have sent a contact email to Starmaker Machine
Good man! This month it seems to be me and me alone, what with holidays and the like which is a bit sad. The moderator is out of his country, Turkey, until the end of the month, which explains some of the dearth, as there are a couple of others waiting in the wings.
We did bump into each other on the Archers FB group, didn’t we Sal, but despite your presence I had to quietly unfollow the online Ambridge brigade as there’s only so much analysis of Will Grundy a chap can cope with in a day.
Was that ‘Archers Appreciation’, @slotbadger? There are more Archers fan groups than left wing splinter factions – catering for the polite, the asleep, the political and in that case, the scurrilous. I don’t go there as often as I used to, but I do like posting an amusing picture every now and then – the most recent was Adam and Ian wrestling energetically in the mud to promote Soil Academy. A particular favourite with the group was Shula naked in the kitchen, (in response to Alastair saying ‘you don’t seem to have anything on this evening’).
And then there’s this…which has reached me via the proverbial private communication:
https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/
You might recognise the voice…
Understatement of the week, Mike! Inimitable!
Hmmm, smells a bit saucy to me; is it @bricameron?
Fat Man on a Keyboard. He’s a mate, but I can honestly say I’d read it anyway.
Thanks, @Moose-the-Mooche! Not that I want to denigrate the other kind contributors to my search for good blogs, but this is my favourite. Not only because of the intelligent writing on topics in interested in (Brexit, basically – I do like his assessment that we hadn’t lost any of our sovereignty to the EU, but rather had leant some of our power to the institution – and that that was a good thing).
No, I also like it because he’s got a hefty blog roll to dive into – good blog writers seem to connect to other good blog writers. I’m looking forward to seeing where they lead.
And if you or any others have further suggestions – I am keeping an eye on this post in case there are late contributions.
Top man.
Adding that to my feed too – top stuff. Give him a hat tip when you see him, Moose.