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Frequent links: Blogs, etc.
My blogroll is constantly evolving. Most of the blogs on it are the really popular blogs that everybody reads, and I rarely go out looking for new ones, and there are some on here that I'm vaguely ashamed to admit I read. But my criteria are: a) it updates somewhere in the range of daily to weekly, not too often, not to little; b) it was interesting enough that after I originally found it I kept coming back to see if there was more; c) I am actually interested in more than half the posts.
This also doesn't include the blogs/journals that I have syndicated to one of my flists; these are the ones were I like to go to the actual blog site, and read several entries at a time, and only go to when I feel like it, as opposed to seeing every update when it comes through.
On my actual blogroll these are organized by how much brain they require to read (on many days I only get about halfway up the list before I run out of brain, see) but on here, I think I shall subdivide by topic, at least a little bit, and *then* order by brain.
These have substantially more commentary than the last post had, btw.
Quick, silly & largely lacking content:
I Can Has Cheezburger (of course.) This was much better before it sold out (it's now sponsored by walmart! barf.) but somehow I still can't stop reading, and hey, everyone else does. I only rarely bother with the rest of the ICHC empire, but if I really need braincandy, it's there, too.
Fuck You, Penguin - the anti-I Can Has Cheezburger. For when I want cute animal pictures but have no patience for cutesyness. (Somehow, fuck-you-speak in the comments is much more tolerable than ichc or cute overload speak. Though I admit I like this much better before I realized it was written by a guy - the defensiveness suddenly shifted tone when the genderedness shifted.)
Postsecret - also better when it was less mainstream, but still kinda worth a perusal.
Overheard in New York: Also better before it became a franchise! But the original is still good for a pick-me-up, though I don't check it often enough to keep up.
Savage Love: Yes, fine, whatever, I used to listen to Dan Savage on the radio on WHFS 99.1, late at night, under the covers, on my Walkman, okay? It's part of my childhood!
Zero Punctuation: I am not now, and have never been, a gamer: the last real "game" I played all the way through was Commander Keen. But I watch Yahtzee's video game reviews anyway, because a) he has a sexy accent and a sweet, sweet hat; b) he assures me that I'm not missing anything by not being a gamer; c) gamer culture is fun to keep up with, from a distance; d) he's hilarious, and the design & animation of the videos is witty and pretty and gay. (He was better before he sold out, too.)
Clothes, food, and other girly things:
Cake Wrecks - Cake-decorating! My family always does home-made birthday cakes; I'd never even heard of the idea of buying one until I was quite old. So it's funny to point and laugh at the professional ones and point out that I did better when I was twelve. :D (I also occasionally get good ideas here. And I'm *almost* tempted to try home-made fondant sometime, although I hold out that what is essentially marzipan sculpture doesn't actually count as cake decorating. And that a society obsessed with elaborate marzipan confections is a decadent society on the verge of collapse. :P)
What Not To Crochet - this one's on the verge of dropping off my list, and then she posts something utterly horrible, that my mom probably made at some point in the '70s, and I regain interest. Also, her contempt for knitters amuses me. I should probably find a better point-and-gawk crochet blog at some point, though.
Go Fug Yourself - the Bad Celebrity Fashion Blog. Despite what you might think by looking at what I wear, I have always loved looking at fashion plates; I used to page through Mom's "Woman's Days" and the Hecht's catalogs on Sunday afternoons in childhood, and never really lost the enjoyment: mostly because I could then be reassured that if *that's* what fashionable people are wearing, I have nothing to worry about in *my* wardrobe. This blog fulfills that need, and also help me with sci-fi costume design. (It was better before they sold out, though.)
An Affordable Wardrobe - this is about old-fashioned, conservative men's wear, New England thrift store style - flannel trousers, loafers, jackets, Brooks Brothers and silk ties; with the conviction that men should be snappy dressers, too, and Goodwill is the best store in down.. The blog is adorable, I've learned a lot about menswear from it, and I really, really wish there were a real women's wear equivalent, because I would be in love with *that* blog. (I kind of think the personal style I'm slowly wobbling toward as I get older is a feminine version of this basic style, but it's not a style that was ever actually worn popularly: what women would have worn in the first half of this century, in a world where they weren't busy being oppressed by the patriarchy.)
A Dress A Day: What women actually did where in the first half of this century. This is one of my newer additions, and the occasional Stepford fetishism would annoy me, except for the focus on making your own vintage dresses using old patterns, and the fondness she has for the personality-filled art on old pattern packets. I love old patterns and old sewing supplies in general, and solving the lack of good clothing in the stories by making your own.
Mix That Drink: How to make and serve old-fashioned cocktails the right way, a few drinks at a time. This one is *totally* Rachel Maddow's fault, but at least the next time my sister drags me to a bar, I'll be able to make myself properly obnoxious. (It's also settling and organizing the vast but patchy knowledge of mixed drinks that reading a lot books written in the last century will provide you - most cocktail guides are padded with trendy, or even made-up, drinks that have no staying power and never, never show up in spy novels from the '60s. This blog only has the ones that've got actual cultural relevance, *and* gives the history.)
Fandoms of All Varieties
Chris's Invincible Super-Blog: Last man standing from my excursions into the mainstream comics blogosphere. But he's entertaining (when he's not plugging his own stuff), is only offensive when it's intentional, understands the point of the genre, covers a wide variety of print comics (including the Archies!) and lets me stay broadly up-to-date on what's going on without having to actually read any comic books, bonus.
The Comics Curmudgeon - blogs newspaper comics, the first comics I was ever fannish about! He's managed (largely single-handedly, and partly by accident) to grow the newspaper funnies an online fandom, which makes me happy, and he points out just how dumb most of them are without actually killing the joy. Plus, he's from my hometown, so he grew up on the same funny pages I did; I can follow the serials I've been reading for 25 years without having to read the actual paper! Or the interminable filler strips!
The LibraryThing site blog - keeps me up to date on LibraryThing the website; I make sure to follow this even when I'm not spending a lot of time on the site, just in case they, I dunno, PUSH COLLECTIONS or something while I'm not paying attention.
Sarah Tells Tales - I've been reading Sarah Rees Brennan's stuff since back when she was writing an epic fanfic about how Draco Malfoy got turned into a rat and became Ron's new pet and save the world. She's since given up fanfic, and has now got an actual YA fantasy novel of her own coming out (which will *probably* be better than Cassie Claire's, though probably equally id-tastic), but I still read the journal mostly for the script-style anecdotes about her hapless adventures, which are utterly inimitable.
Making Light - yes, I know, the NH wonder twins are still being cockbibs all over the internets. But I *like* Jim MacDonald! And Avi and Abi! And the "sidelight" links down the side are always fun! And I've been reading the damn blog since their Katrina coverage. I'd started skipping most of the actual N-H posts a while before RaceFail, though, the other posters tend to be substantially more engaging and have better comment threads.
Nina Paley - Nina Paley is an NYC graphic artist who kind of accidentally became a leading voice of remix culture. I started following her blog because it's a good non-fannish perspective on "real artists" side of the transformative culture/freedom of information fight, she posts good links to what's going on on that end, and it's entertaining to watch her rediscover arguments that fandom's been using for years. The saga of her movie is interesting, too, even though I know it's gotten some flac on the cultural appropriation end.
The Way The Future Blogs - Frederick Pohl's blog! I got to hear Pohl speak in person once, and I'm glad I did. He was there at the beginning of SF fandom, he was central to its very first major wank, and he's still around now. Posting about his long lifetime as a fan and a pro, about current politics, about aspiration, about Caturday. Granted, I have a weakness for old folks telling stories in general, but whenever current events make me start to lose my affection for old-school SF, I go check his blog and get warm fuzzies again.
Feminist SF, the blog - I want to like this blog more than I do. I like that it exists, it talks about the books I read, and it really thoughtful ways. But for some reason, I can't leave comments there, and right now I can't get there because it trips my virus checker, and in general, despite the fact that I ought to feel at home there, there's always something to give me the impression I'm not welcome. But I still read it anyway.
EMG-Zine - a fantasy-art zine. Ursula Vernon has a column, which is why I read it, because one can never have too much Ursula Vernon.
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books - I'm probably going to either syndicate this, or drop it entirely, just because I can't *stand* their current site design. Probably drop it, because the read-to-skim ration has been dropping anyway (not enough man-titty anymore!)
Hodgman's Blog, Scalzi's Whatever, io9 pop-SF, Henry Jenkins, Neil Gaiman - these used to be on blogroll, until I realized I was skimming more than I was reading, but they stay on the list because I drop back in once in awhile.
Science, politics, and other serious business
Genderfork - another fairly recent addition, this is about gender ambiguity, with a focus on photos and personal testimony. It's not the most penetrating genderqueer blog out there, but it's nice, and is good at keeping hold of the "ambiguity" part and focusing on individual experiences rather than theory or politics, which is more my speed right now, alas.
Shapely Prose - The premier fat acceptance blog, and really good at what it does. As an effortlessly skinny chick I sometimes feel like I'm just using fat-acceptance spaces to pat myself on the back, but Shapely Prose is also, honestly, the least wrongheaded feminist blog I've found in *general*, so I have it on the blogroll for feminist rage, too.
Thingology - the LibraryThing ideas blog, for general info-sciences and social-networking geekery.
Slacktivist - If you have somehow not yet met the Slacktivist, he's an evangelical Christian and a liberal political activist, deeply eloquent about both, and deeply passionate about the fact that those two things should always go together. (He's also engaging in an epic, scene-by-scene sporking of the Left Behind novels - and eggs on people writing fanfic of resistance about them - though honestly I got too disgusted to keep following along about half a book ago.)
Five-thirty-eight.com - We all know fivethirtyeight, right? American (and sometimes world) politics, in-depth and by the numbers.
John Hawks weblog - evolutionary biology and paleoanthropology. I started reading this to follow the Hobbit saga, but kept it up because he covers his topics really well, and they're topics I'm generally interested in: he keeps my biogeography and population science skills from going completely rusty, too.
Language Log - because linguistics is fun.
Deadline Hollywood Daily - the one exception to my skim rule: I started reading this blog for writers' strike news, and stayed for general media-industry commentary. I skip a lot of the stuff, but I like being up to date on what's going on with the people who craft my culture.
There's some pretty gaping holes in that list - particularly on the serious business end - but I've found that when I go looking for blogs, I never find any that grab hold of me; the only way to find them is to stumble on them quite accidentally. Though if you know of a really good blog in the science-math-politics-activism-diversity range, that's regularly updated but not too high-volume, that's engagingly written, and that's more than a link aggregator - I'd be willing to give it a look.
Not that I need more blogs. At all.
This also doesn't include the blogs/journals that I have syndicated to one of my flists; these are the ones were I like to go to the actual blog site, and read several entries at a time, and only go to when I feel like it, as opposed to seeing every update when it comes through.
On my actual blogroll these are organized by how much brain they require to read (on many days I only get about halfway up the list before I run out of brain, see) but on here, I think I shall subdivide by topic, at least a little bit, and *then* order by brain.
These have substantially more commentary than the last post had, btw.
Quick, silly & largely lacking content:
I Can Has Cheezburger (of course.) This was much better before it sold out (it's now sponsored by walmart! barf.) but somehow I still can't stop reading, and hey, everyone else does. I only rarely bother with the rest of the ICHC empire, but if I really need braincandy, it's there, too.
Fuck You, Penguin - the anti-I Can Has Cheezburger. For when I want cute animal pictures but have no patience for cutesyness. (Somehow, fuck-you-speak in the comments is much more tolerable than ichc or cute overload speak. Though I admit I like this much better before I realized it was written by a guy - the defensiveness suddenly shifted tone when the genderedness shifted.)
Postsecret - also better when it was less mainstream, but still kinda worth a perusal.
Overheard in New York: Also better before it became a franchise! But the original is still good for a pick-me-up, though I don't check it often enough to keep up.
Savage Love: Yes, fine, whatever, I used to listen to Dan Savage on the radio on WHFS 99.1, late at night, under the covers, on my Walkman, okay? It's part of my childhood!
Zero Punctuation: I am not now, and have never been, a gamer: the last real "game" I played all the way through was Commander Keen. But I watch Yahtzee's video game reviews anyway, because a) he has a sexy accent and a sweet, sweet hat; b) he assures me that I'm not missing anything by not being a gamer; c) gamer culture is fun to keep up with, from a distance; d) he's hilarious, and the design & animation of the videos is witty and pretty and gay. (He was better before he sold out, too.)
Clothes, food, and other girly things:
Cake Wrecks - Cake-decorating! My family always does home-made birthday cakes; I'd never even heard of the idea of buying one until I was quite old. So it's funny to point and laugh at the professional ones and point out that I did better when I was twelve. :D (I also occasionally get good ideas here. And I'm *almost* tempted to try home-made fondant sometime, although I hold out that what is essentially marzipan sculpture doesn't actually count as cake decorating. And that a society obsessed with elaborate marzipan confections is a decadent society on the verge of collapse. :P)
What Not To Crochet - this one's on the verge of dropping off my list, and then she posts something utterly horrible, that my mom probably made at some point in the '70s, and I regain interest. Also, her contempt for knitters amuses me. I should probably find a better point-and-gawk crochet blog at some point, though.
Go Fug Yourself - the Bad Celebrity Fashion Blog. Despite what you might think by looking at what I wear, I have always loved looking at fashion plates; I used to page through Mom's "Woman's Days" and the Hecht's catalogs on Sunday afternoons in childhood, and never really lost the enjoyment: mostly because I could then be reassured that if *that's* what fashionable people are wearing, I have nothing to worry about in *my* wardrobe. This blog fulfills that need, and also help me with sci-fi costume design. (It was better before they sold out, though.)
An Affordable Wardrobe - this is about old-fashioned, conservative men's wear, New England thrift store style - flannel trousers, loafers, jackets, Brooks Brothers and silk ties; with the conviction that men should be snappy dressers, too, and Goodwill is the best store in down.. The blog is adorable, I've learned a lot about menswear from it, and I really, really wish there were a real women's wear equivalent, because I would be in love with *that* blog. (I kind of think the personal style I'm slowly wobbling toward as I get older is a feminine version of this basic style, but it's not a style that was ever actually worn popularly: what women would have worn in the first half of this century, in a world where they weren't busy being oppressed by the patriarchy.)
A Dress A Day: What women actually did where in the first half of this century. This is one of my newer additions, and the occasional Stepford fetishism would annoy me, except for the focus on making your own vintage dresses using old patterns, and the fondness she has for the personality-filled art on old pattern packets. I love old patterns and old sewing supplies in general, and solving the lack of good clothing in the stories by making your own.
Mix That Drink: How to make and serve old-fashioned cocktails the right way, a few drinks at a time. This one is *totally* Rachel Maddow's fault, but at least the next time my sister drags me to a bar, I'll be able to make myself properly obnoxious. (It's also settling and organizing the vast but patchy knowledge of mixed drinks that reading a lot books written in the last century will provide you - most cocktail guides are padded with trendy, or even made-up, drinks that have no staying power and never, never show up in spy novels from the '60s. This blog only has the ones that've got actual cultural relevance, *and* gives the history.)
Fandoms of All Varieties
Chris's Invincible Super-Blog: Last man standing from my excursions into the mainstream comics blogosphere. But he's entertaining (when he's not plugging his own stuff), is only offensive when it's intentional, understands the point of the genre, covers a wide variety of print comics (including the Archies!) and lets me stay broadly up-to-date on what's going on without having to actually read any comic books, bonus.
The Comics Curmudgeon - blogs newspaper comics, the first comics I was ever fannish about! He's managed (largely single-handedly, and partly by accident) to grow the newspaper funnies an online fandom, which makes me happy, and he points out just how dumb most of them are without actually killing the joy. Plus, he's from my hometown, so he grew up on the same funny pages I did; I can follow the serials I've been reading for 25 years without having to read the actual paper! Or the interminable filler strips!
The LibraryThing site blog - keeps me up to date on LibraryThing the website; I make sure to follow this even when I'm not spending a lot of time on the site, just in case they, I dunno, PUSH COLLECTIONS or something while I'm not paying attention.
Sarah Tells Tales - I've been reading Sarah Rees Brennan's stuff since back when she was writing an epic fanfic about how Draco Malfoy got turned into a rat and became Ron's new pet and save the world. She's since given up fanfic, and has now got an actual YA fantasy novel of her own coming out (which will *probably* be better than Cassie Claire's, though probably equally id-tastic), but I still read the journal mostly for the script-style anecdotes about her hapless adventures, which are utterly inimitable.
Making Light - yes, I know, the NH wonder twins are still being cockbibs all over the internets. But I *like* Jim MacDonald! And Avi and Abi! And the "sidelight" links down the side are always fun! And I've been reading the damn blog since their Katrina coverage. I'd started skipping most of the actual N-H posts a while before RaceFail, though, the other posters tend to be substantially more engaging and have better comment threads.
Nina Paley - Nina Paley is an NYC graphic artist who kind of accidentally became a leading voice of remix culture. I started following her blog because it's a good non-fannish perspective on "real artists" side of the transformative culture/freedom of information fight, she posts good links to what's going on on that end, and it's entertaining to watch her rediscover arguments that fandom's been using for years. The saga of her movie is interesting, too, even though I know it's gotten some flac on the cultural appropriation end.
The Way The Future Blogs - Frederick Pohl's blog! I got to hear Pohl speak in person once, and I'm glad I did. He was there at the beginning of SF fandom, he was central to its very first major wank, and he's still around now. Posting about his long lifetime as a fan and a pro, about current politics, about aspiration, about Caturday. Granted, I have a weakness for old folks telling stories in general, but whenever current events make me start to lose my affection for old-school SF, I go check his blog and get warm fuzzies again.
Feminist SF, the blog - I want to like this blog more than I do. I like that it exists, it talks about the books I read, and it really thoughtful ways. But for some reason, I can't leave comments there, and right now I can't get there because it trips my virus checker, and in general, despite the fact that I ought to feel at home there, there's always something to give me the impression I'm not welcome. But I still read it anyway.
EMG-Zine - a fantasy-art zine. Ursula Vernon has a column, which is why I read it, because one can never have too much Ursula Vernon.
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books - I'm probably going to either syndicate this, or drop it entirely, just because I can't *stand* their current site design. Probably drop it, because the read-to-skim ration has been dropping anyway (not enough man-titty anymore!)
Hodgman's Blog, Scalzi's Whatever, io9 pop-SF, Henry Jenkins, Neil Gaiman - these used to be on blogroll, until I realized I was skimming more than I was reading, but they stay on the list because I drop back in once in awhile.
Science, politics, and other serious business
Genderfork - another fairly recent addition, this is about gender ambiguity, with a focus on photos and personal testimony. It's not the most penetrating genderqueer blog out there, but it's nice, and is good at keeping hold of the "ambiguity" part and focusing on individual experiences rather than theory or politics, which is more my speed right now, alas.
Shapely Prose - The premier fat acceptance blog, and really good at what it does. As an effortlessly skinny chick I sometimes feel like I'm just using fat-acceptance spaces to pat myself on the back, but Shapely Prose is also, honestly, the least wrongheaded feminist blog I've found in *general*, so I have it on the blogroll for feminist rage, too.
Thingology - the LibraryThing ideas blog, for general info-sciences and social-networking geekery.
Slacktivist - If you have somehow not yet met the Slacktivist, he's an evangelical Christian and a liberal political activist, deeply eloquent about both, and deeply passionate about the fact that those two things should always go together. (He's also engaging in an epic, scene-by-scene sporking of the Left Behind novels - and eggs on people writing fanfic of resistance about them - though honestly I got too disgusted to keep following along about half a book ago.)
Five-thirty-eight.com - We all know fivethirtyeight, right? American (and sometimes world) politics, in-depth and by the numbers.
John Hawks weblog - evolutionary biology and paleoanthropology. I started reading this to follow the Hobbit saga, but kept it up because he covers his topics really well, and they're topics I'm generally interested in: he keeps my biogeography and population science skills from going completely rusty, too.
Language Log - because linguistics is fun.
Deadline Hollywood Daily - the one exception to my skim rule: I started reading this blog for writers' strike news, and stayed for general media-industry commentary. I skip a lot of the stuff, but I like being up to date on what's going on with the people who craft my culture.
There's some pretty gaping holes in that list - particularly on the serious business end - but I've found that when I go looking for blogs, I never find any that grab hold of me; the only way to find them is to stumble on them quite accidentally. Though if you know of a really good blog in the science-math-politics-activism-diversity range, that's regularly updated but not too high-volume, that's engagingly written, and that's more than a link aggregator - I'd be willing to give it a look.
Not that I need more blogs. At all.
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Do you know Kung Fu Monkey? Media, politics, occasional guitar.
I read Andrew Sullivan for a mix of politics, gay rights, and various other subjects, but it's probably more link-oriented than you're looking for, as well as being extremely high-volume.
I wish Scienceblogs really did what it said on the tin, but I can only read so many posts there before the smug atheism posts overwhelm the ones about actual science.
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