What's in your Google Reader/RSS?
March 14, 2013 11:44 AM   Subscribe

Another internet rut question/on the eve of Google Reader's destruction: What's in your RSS?

I know that some people have 600 different feeds, so I want to narrow down the question slightly. I saw the answers to this recent question, but I don't need to hear about big company-run sites like Lifehacker, NYT Blogs, or other standard stops. I miss the weird and idiosyncratic side of the net. I want blogs run by talented individuals talking about their professions or hobbies or niche local interest. I love "inside baseball", but preferably not about baseball! It's okay if a site has several writers, but I want it to be specialist, not generalist. Sites don't have to be updated super regularly, just smart as hell. Bonus points for blogs about the arts, sciences, or humanities.
posted by decathexis to Computers & Internet (21 answers total) 75 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: I use GReader to organize my Tumblr feeds, since Tumblr has virtually no way to do so and likely never will.
posted by KokuRyu at 11:49 AM on March 14, 2013 [2 favorites]


Best answer: The Real Estalker
posted by primethyme at 12:04 PM on March 14, 2013


Best answer: I have a ton of local blogs relevant to my city (SFist, 7x7, MUNI diaries). Plus I have the local versions of the medium-sized blog networks (Eater SF, Curbed SF, Streetsblog SF).

Another recommendation is Brand New, which reviews new logos/rebrandings.
posted by 2bucksplus at 12:06 PM on March 14, 2013


Best answer: These are all from my "general blogs" folder:

Sociological Images is intended to be an image resource for sociology professors, but it's pretty great as a general sociology resource

Motivated Grammar primarily focuses on debunking popular grammar myths.

Recto|Verso is the gorgeous and infrequently-updated blog for rare bookseller F. A. Bernett Books.

Strange Maps is a blog about... strange maps.

The Little Professor is thomas j wise's blog. She teaches literature at a small liberal arts university. Primarily her blog is in no particular order about teaching, catholic/protestant evangelical novels, and neo-victorian fiction.

I also have hundreds of webcomics, fashion blogs, feminist- and skeptic-oriented blogs, knitting blogs, and dog-training blogs.
posted by muddgirl at 12:08 PM on March 14, 2013


Best answer: Cooking Comically - Simple and basic recipe walkthroughs, narriated by a stick man.
posted by royalsong at 12:13 PM on March 14, 2013


Best answer: Idle Words - (mostly) travel
adamcadre.ac - Literature, film, history, politics, original fiction, etc. [feed link is on the "calendar" page]
Luxirare - Fancy food and fashion
Joel on Software - self-evident, I hope
posted by phoenixy at 12:15 PM on March 14, 2013


Best answer: Quite a few film and arts blogs:
  • Self Styled Siren - film writing with emphasis on Hollywood classics)
  • CriticWire (sort of FilmCriticFilter)
  • Glenn Kenny - former film critic for Premiere, now writes for MSN Movies and blogs about film, film critics' discontents, and music
  • Sheila O'Malley - great writing on acting, theater, film, books, and modern life
  • MUBI's The Daily Notebook
  • Arts Journal's About Last Night (WSJ theater critic Terry Teachout and friends).
  • The KlezmerShack and its sister site KlezCalendar - klezmer music events (mostly on the East Coast) and music reviews
  • Dave Kehr, who reviews DVDs for the New York Times and is a great resource for film history
and many, many more. RSS has become the foundation of my Web experience. I'm not on any social media (other than the blue and green) so I get most of my news these days from Google Reader.

I will definitely be using the instructions on this site to export my Reader feeds somewhere else.
posted by Currer Belfry at 12:16 PM on March 14, 2013


Best answer: I have a bunch of word-related feeds, of which my favorites are A Lackadaisical Lexicon for Laggard Logophiles and Six Degrees of Sir Thomas Urquhart. Unsurprisingly, the latter was a Metafilter find.
posted by immlass at 12:39 PM on March 14, 2013


Best answer: - BLDG BLOG hasn't really interested me much lately, but its sister sites Pruned (landscape architecture) and Edible Geography regularly post neat stuff.
- deconcrete is a really cool architecture/geography blog. I don't know what to really call it other than "Gibsonian"
- You probably know about Language Log - it's a collaboration between about a dozen linguists who write about all kinds of things (Chinese-English mistranslations, novelties in English, etc), and I particularly like how it's accessible to non-linguists but not really dumbed down at all. Metafilter's Own languagehat also runs a great blog, although since I can't read Russian I skip about half the posts.
-Biliodyssey posts very high-res scans of gorgeous books on an infrequent basis, generally with some fascinating background information.
posted by theodolite at 2:23 PM on March 14, 2013


Best answer: 50 Watts is a art tumblr.
THE GUN is CJ Chiver's blog where he writes about "conflict, tactics, insurgency and counterinsurgency, the arms trade and human rights. "
bitches gotta eat is Sam Irby's blog. It is great and I've made two posts from her stuff.
Contrary Brin is acclaimed SF author David Brin's blog.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:23 PM on March 14, 2013


Best answer: Lenny's Blog is one guy making all kinds of odd little crafts.

Motivated Grammar (tagline: Prescriptivism Must Die!) is a blog that examines why grammatical conventions exist, and how they change.

Putting Weird Things in Coffee is exactly what it sounds like.

Kevin Kelly has a bunch of these. True Films sounds especially like what you're looking for.

The folks who run the Ig Nobel award have a blog called Improbable Research.
posted by kagredon at 6:17 PM on March 14, 2013


Best answer: The Pinocchio Theory -- Steven Shaviro's blog
Lost Garden and Raph Koster -- video game developer blogs
Three Percent -- blog on translated fiction from an international fiction publisher
The Jealous Curator and Colossal -- art blogs
Conversational Reading -- another literature blog
posted by Monsieur Caution at 6:20 PM on March 14, 2013


Best answer: decathexis: "I love "inside baseball""

Oh boy!

decathexis: "but preferably not about baseball!"

Awww nuts.

Anyway, non-baseball niche

March MODOK Madness: Only pictures of MODOK. Only in March.

Fine Books Blog: A blog with a focus on the business of rare book selling. It runs a continuing series of interviews with young booksellers. Good stuff.

Joe Blogs: Sorry, couldn't resist. Mr. Posnanski is a high level sabermetric writer. Baseball and math, together at last!
posted by Gin and Comics at 8:16 PM on March 14, 2013


Best answer: Ministry of Type is an infrequently updated blog focused on typography and design. British, if that matters, and very infrequently updated these days.

Awful Library Books is extremely niche, focusing on books which are outdated/outrageous/otherwise unsuitable but remain in collections of libraries. There's probably no better blog in the world that will help you to understand the term 'collection development.'

Threaded is a historical fashion blog coming out of the Smithsonian (so with a big platform but it doesn't seem that well known). The current most-recent-post is titled "The Aughts: When People Wore Their Causes on Their Sleeves, Literally."

I also adore both Past Imperfect and Paleofuture from the Smithsonian but I think those two are better known.

Just Bento is also pretty niche, focusing on the culture and practice of putting together bento lunches in Western and Japanese contexts. I particularly like that Maki includes the Japanese cultural context and the Western translational approach. She's been very ill, so updates been spotty over the past year though it's picked up in the last few months.
posted by librarylis at 9:38 PM on March 14, 2013


Best answer: For idiosyncratic, I recommend Clonehenge.
posted by jeri at 5:01 AM on March 15, 2013


Best answer: I've got a comics folder I keep collapsed, great for keeping up with the disparate occasional updates. The currently updating feeds:
Amazing Superpowers, Buttersafe, Cyanide & Happiness, Dinosaur Comics, Fanboys, Gun Show, Hark! A Vagrant!, indexed, Lackadaisy, Penny Arcade, Sinfest, The Abominable Charles Christopher, xkcd
There's also a Twitter folder for reading Twitter feeds. I've pared it down since Twitter is disabling RSS later this year, but for the record I follow @fivethirtyeight and @ppppolls (for political news), @mathowie, @joshmillard, and @jessamyn (for Mefi-related stuff), and @ActualPerson084 and @gregerskine (for bizarre comedy).

Next up is a politics folder:
Charlie Pierce, outstanding political columnist for Esquire (previously)

FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver's political analysis

PolitiFact, for fact-checking of political claims

Wonkette, for snarky political comedy blogging
There's a small Reddit folder with a main Reddit front page feed and two sub-feeds for the Minecraft and iOS Jailbreaking subreddits.

Next is news:
Ars Technica, for technology reporting and review

Geekosystem, for web news, comedy, and meme-ery

AV Club, for movie/music/TV reviews and media analysis

Lifehacker, for tech tips and recommendations

The Onion, for, uh, The Onion
Then there's a content folder for less newsy stuff:
Sporcle, for various interesting quizzes, good for early morning wake-up routine

Now I Know!, for a daily interesting anecdote (the author, Dan Lewis, also created the "Save Google Reader!" petition that just cracked 100,000 signatures)

Futility Closet, for thrice-a-day puzzles, stories, and nuggets of historical curiosities

The Featured Creature, a Tumblr log of beautiful and exotic animals

The Big Picture, the Boston Globe's high-res photography gallery feature

In Focus, a competing photo feature from The Atlantic

What If?, xkcd's offbeat scientific Q&A column
I've also got a few junk feeds at the bottom that update infrequently if at all, like Hyperbole and a Half and the dev blog for The Witness.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:40 AM on March 15, 2013 [2 favorites]


AskMefi
Metafilter
Slashdot
True Reddit
Reddit (my city)
Reddit frontpage
3 blogs of friends
XKCD
BoingBoing
Lifehacker
Gizmodo
Among the Truthers
AskMeFi threads I wanted to follow
FiveThirtyEight
NotABlog (George RR Martin)
The Onion
A bunch of Twitter feeds I like to follow
Woot


As you can probably tell, I'm very dependent on it and very upset to lose this product. Please sign this petition in the hopes that it might change their minds.
posted by Raichle at 12:59 PM on March 15, 2013


I've got a lot of things, but here's a selection:
- Google Operating System, an unofficial Google blog
- Haiku project, the announcements blog for the BeOS reimplementation
- Boing Boing and Laughing Squid (perhaps predictably)
- ASCII by (MeFi's own) Jason Scott
- longform.org often finds a lot of interesting reads.
- slacktivist
- Dwarf Fortress Development Log
- auntie pixelante
- Select Button
- Siliconera (it's very JRPG-focused and sometimes feels a little sleazy, like when it devotes a post to new DLC costumes for female fighting game characters, but once in a while something really interesting shows up there, this is part of the outer edge of my personal gaming radar screen)
- TIGsource
- EarthBound Central (run by tomato, the translator of the Mother 3 fan hack from a few years back)
- 1UP RSS feed (will probably be moving to my defunct folder eventually)
- N-Sider.com
- xkcd (hey I like it)
- Cat and Girl
- let's anime (doesn't update often, but when it does it's hyper-informative about the history of Japanese animation)
- Rock, Paper, Shotgun (a lot of posts there I'm not too interested in, but a great thing about Google Reader is I can usually tell which are interesting from a glance at the titles)
- Satellite News (MST3K's official fan site)
- TPMmuckraker
- Lifehacker (the noise-to-signal here has been growing, but it often still finds interesting and useful software and how-to articles)
- itty bitty kitty committee (KITTY!)
- Everything Is Terrible
- Hardcore Gaming 101 (probably my favorite gaming blog)
- Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin
- PARANOIA (3rd ed designer Allen Varney's blog)
- Arcade Heroes (another outer-edge-of-radar thing)
- Chrontendo
- Dream and Friends
- Homestar Runner (in case it revives someday)
- Judge John Hodgman (although I'm way behind on episodes)
- Satellablog (about an obscure Super Famicom peripheral and fan efforts to rescue exceedingly transitory, download-only software from 15 years ago)
- Ascii Dreams (blog of a friend, but he's the developer of Unangband and Unbrogue and cares a lot about roguelikes)
- Cthulhu Chick and The Lovecraftsman, although they haven't updated often lately
- PONY-related sites Equestria Daily, Ask Surprise! and Slice of Life (well, you *asked*)
- Delta's D&D Hotspot, Grognardia, and a variety of other classic RPG blogs
- The CRPG Addict
- cul de sac (the wonderful comic sadly ended, but its creator keeps up his blog)
- Dinosaur Dracula! (what the X-Entertainment guy is working on now)
- Ectoplamosis (went dark a couple of years ago and is reviving, still isn't firing on all cylinders yet but I keep an eye on it)
- Do Go On (one of griphus blogs, about old video game magazine ads)
- FiveThirtyEight
- GameSetWatch (because I can't bear to throw it out or move it to defunct)
- Gaslamp Games (they made Dungeons of Dredmor, although it's mostly moved on to a new project now that's not as interesting to me)
- Liz Prince Power (wonderful web cartoonist, doesn't update often though)
- PUBLICK NUISANCE (updates like twice a year, but when it does it's usually info on upcoming Venture Bros. stuff)
- SEGAbits
- Svengoolie.com
- THAT IS ALL (another John Hodgman outlet)
- The Dreamcast Junkyard
- The Gameological Society
- VGJUNK
- The Dungeon Dozen

There are many others, what I include here is just those that seem important to me right now. I have a lot of cruft entries too that I need to edit down or move to defunct.
posted by JHarris at 1:43 PM on March 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


Nicholas Felton's tumblr and Flowing data both are good blogs when it comes to infographics, with not just interesting chart like things, but some more in-depth thoughts too.

Schneier on Security is about security. Additionally a post about squids each friday.

Do you enjoy (computer) games? Then Rock, Paper, Shotgun is a must. And if you want more then perhaps Venus Patrol and The Gameological Society.

Carryology and The Bag Collector if you enjoy bags (mainly backpacks & messengers).
posted by bjrn at 3:11 AM on March 16, 2013


If you like the aforementioned Colossal:
The Fox Is Black
Today and Tomorrow
This Isn't Happiness
You + Eye
Plenty of Colour
Tubbypaws and Tubbypaws Tumblr
RRRRRRRROLL_gif

Great GIFs:
mr. div
Scorpion Dagger

Food:
Bon Appétempt
Homesick Texan
What Katie Ate

If you like BLDGBLOG: mammoth

If you grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Fashion It So is a must.
posted by neushoorn at 11:51 AM on March 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


So, let's try some " I want blogs run by talented individuals talking about their professions," but not the damn warbloggers.
Arms Control Wonk: "leading blogs on arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation"
Information Dissemination: "the intersection of maritime strategy and strategic communications"
Informed Comment: "where I [Juan Cole] do my best to provide an independent and informed perspective on Middle Eastern and American politics."
Abu Muqawama: "a blog that focuses on small wars and insurgencies in addition to regional issues in the Middle East"
The Small Wars Journal: "publishes contributed work from across the spectrum of stakeholders in small wars. We look for articles from serious, authentic voices that add richness, breadth and depth to the dialog that too often occurs in cloistered venues. We do not screen articles for conformance with a house view; our only position is that small wars are wicked problems warranting consideration of myriad views before action, to inform what will no doubt be imperfect decisions with significant unintended consequences."
CDR Salamander: "PROACTIVELY “FROM THE SEA”; LEVERAGING THE LITTORAL BEST PRACTICES FOR A PARADIGM BREAKING SIX-SIGMA BEST BUSINESS CASE TO SYNERGIZE A CONSISTENT DESIGN IN THE GLOBAL COMMONS, RIGHTSIZING THE CORE VALUES SUPPORTING OUR MISSION STATEMENT VIA THE 5-VECTOR MODEL THROUGH CULTURAL DIVERSITY." Not entirely serious...
Kings of War: "a blog by various faculty and research students of the Department of War Studies, King's College London."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:02 PM on April 3, 2013


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