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December 29, 2003
'Round the Blogroll Redux
Early start on resolutions this year by cleaning out my NewzCrawler and NetNewsWire lists and adding a few links to the sidebar.
New on the blogroll:
Gretchin Lair, whom I met through Sven (whose link I've changed to reflect his personal blog). Gretchin and I come in contact most through stuff to do with Sven's assorted projects on the puddingbowl server. Good people. I read her personal blog frequently, and she falls under the "people who blog whom I've met" rule for my blogroll. Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo is the token political blog. Polytropos covers stuff that interests me, and he's a friend of a friend.
I've added buttons to the side for links to the OPML and HTML versions of my personal reading list, which has also undergone some heavy revising, mostly to purge it of political blogs and feeds, which have managed to make a normally exciting time of the political cycle an aggravating experience. "People reacting to a reaction to Howard Dean reacting to some news" makes for stultifying and boring reading, especially when, at the end of chasing down the root of the entire flapdoodle concerned, there's nothing there and I realize I've just spent ten minutes reading a TCP-enabled game of telephone.
So the political short list is now:
- Josh Marshall, because I think he's reasonable. Plenty reactive, but thoughtful about it. Generally one link away from the source article to which he's reacting.
- Reason's Hit and Run, because I like keeping up with libertarians and they've got a good cross-section. Jim Henley for an outlook that's less the hard-eyed "toss 'em off my lifeboat and let god sort 'em out" libertarianism of some unseasoned reptiles I knew in college. He seems more informed by a genuine belief in the utility of libertarian leanings.
- TalkLeft because Jeralyn Merritt's heart is in the right place and she's also a primary source linker.
- Whiskey Bar and Electrolite for being generally thoughtful and occasionally breaking out something that feels like back story.
These folks, I should point out, are not all-season political friends. My patience with the crew at Hit and Run, for instance, would probably be exhausted much more quickly if it weren't for the war in Iraq: I'm not particularly thrilled with the stupid "massive concentrations of arbitrary authority and power are fine as long as they aren't originating with devil gubmint" reductionism I pick up in its discussion area. I think a lot of liberal bloggers are becoming far too glib in their quest to out-soundbite the right.
So I guess I'm in the market for good political blogs: Source-linking, thoughtful, and informed all score big. Reactive links to Ann Coulter's latest outrage are automatic disqualifiers. Snippy attempts to ding Instapundit for his typical gutless innuendo and "heh"-ing are also disqualifiers. Pages that link to mirrors of Andrew Sullivan's barebacking ad are also unwelcome.
Outside the political arena, the rest of the list is much skinnier than it was a week ago, when I had 75 or 80 sites. I took a few out I wish I hadn't, so they'll be going back in as I miss them over the next few days. New are Language Log and Snappy the Clam (who isn't new to me, and who continues to provide about the right amount of snappage at some of the more self-satisfied prats roaming the blogosphere).
Dropping in currency to the point I think they'll be going away are Slashdot, which isn't keeping up with much of anything these days; and MetaFilter, because its political stuff is almost invariably lame and distracting.
Sites that don't bother to syndicate aren't on the list, either. I've got a few of them bookmarked and I'll see about a way of including them in a list somehow.
Posted by mph at December 29, 2003 01:11 PM