Comments on: Are There Any Good General-Topic Blogs?

Question: Are There Any Good General-Topic Blogs?

toomuchkatherine — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:08:26 -0800

I've been doing some thinking lately about blogs. It seems that most of the really popular, successful blogs stick to one topic or another, pretty well defined (food, books, politics, celebrities, etc.). Are there any really popular or successful (in the sense of widely-read, or just good to read) blogs that are about a variety of topics, or that take the 'one person's views on a whole bunch of things' model?

By: lia

lia — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:15:58 -0800

uh, have you heard of kottke.org or boingboing?

By: Tomorrowful

Tomorrowful — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:16:08 -0800

Eye-rolling "It's all steampunk!" snarkery aside, boingboing is definitely not about any specific thing (though it certainly has topics that it reliably returns to, like copyleft and steampunk and transhumanism and nerdy crafts.)

By: Tomorrowful

Tomorrowful — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:17:10 -0800

Oh, and there's this group thing that calls itself a "community weblog."

By: twiki

twiki — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:18:40 -0800

ThePioneerWoman.com covers all kinds of things - photography, cooking, ranch life, etc.

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:20:02 -0800

What about blogs where people write about their lives, like dooce.com?

By: toomuchkatherine

toomuchkatherine — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:30:58 -0800

Yes, I'm interested in successful blogs where people write about their lives, or where people write opinion about a bunch of different topics.

I consider BoingBoing to be more or less about one thing, because the vast majority of stories are similar (short 'oh wow! that's so cool/weird!' tidbits), but I see your point.

By: 2oh1

2oh1 — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:45:07 -0800

Two of my favorites for a variety of topics:

What I Learned Today
...and...
Damn Interesting

By: agatha_magatha

agatha_magatha — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:03:41 -0800

My favorite blog in that vein (that I learned about here) is Miss Doxie. She had a fairly long hiatus recently but is back in superb Doxie form.

By: proj

proj — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:23:23 -0800

It's biased heavily towards economics, but Marginal Revolution covers a surprisingly broad range of topics.

By: proj

proj — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:24:02 -0800

.... And my link doesn't work unless you put 'www.' in front of it. Annoying.

By: Lemurrhea

Lemurrhea — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:27:37 -0800

Although it doesn't update as much as I would like (aka: continuously), Defective Yeti is all kinds of awesome.

Well, maybe not all kinds, but at least 7

By: xbonesgt

xbonesgt — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:01:59 -0800

I don't know how 'successful' it is, but Dark Roasted Blend is definitely fun to read and covers a wide range of topics.

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:07:14 -0800

James Lileks. "The Bleat" is very wide-ranging, and extremely popular.

By: iguanapolitico

iguanapolitico — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:17:56 -0800

I read a whole bunch of blogs where the owner just writes a post every day or so about his/her life, something in the media, or whatever is on their mind. They are very unlike BoingBoing or MeFi. I don't know if that's what you're looking for.

Probably the most popular one I read is Dad Gone Mad which, despite its title and despite my filing it in a category called "Parent Blogs", it really isn't much about parenting. Sometimes his kids and family come up. But mainly he's just funny as hell about whatever.

Well, that's the only "really popular" one I can identify.

By: tractorfeed

tractorfeed — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:15:04 -0800

GirlHacker's Random Log is a good one. Short, varied, interesting, and long-lived (since '99!).

By: billtron

billtron — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:47:46 -0800

Immanent Discursivity only posts youtube videos but they are pretty diverse. Jane Dark's Sugarhigh! is also good.

By: toomuchkatherine

toomuchkatherine — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 08:30:40 -0800

Thanks, everybody.