I still love reading blogs. At this point in internet history, that’s like grinding one’s own wheat, but still. They’re so reliably idiosyncratic. 

I first started reading blogs in the mid 2000s, back when lit-blogging was in its hey day. Most of those blogs are long gone, which is fine. Nothing gold can stay, etc. As blogs went out of fashion, that same impulse-to-post migrated to other modes. Every now and then someone writes an article saying “Blogs are back!” but these strike me like the occasional articles saying “Short stories are back!” It’s probably not going to pan out, and that’s okay. It’s still worthwhile even if it’s not a pillar in the media-social-entertainment-streaming mega church. 

“Knitting is back!”

I liked Medium when it came out. Its writing interface was so pleasantly smooth it felt like the Ferrari of web applications. But reading on Medium has only gotten worse. Sometimes I am allowed to read articles, but sometimes the machine wants me to sign in, and I lost those credentials long ago. Sometimes the articles are part of magazines-within-Medium, which is confusing because on Medium everything looks the same. Somehow Medium gave users a template via design deprivation, and the result is even more seamless and generic than all those old blogs that used the default, blue banner WordPress theme. (This is coming from a person who is using yet another WordPress theme, so I’m all for design decisions that call for the least amount of motion.) It all looks nice but it feels a part of the same big box store. This claustrophobia is only exacerbated by the articles, which read like self help. Seven things you need to do every morning to win your career and beat depression. It’s LinkedIn with better taste. 

A kind of blogging manifests itself on Twitter, but it’s disjointed and comes with all the problems of Twitter, previously whined about here. I feel like no one admits how tweet threads are a terrible reading experience. It’s the writing equivalent of temporary housing, put up after a natural disaster, and people go on living in them for decades. Twitter seems best for jokes thrown into the stream, but because the stream is endless and unknowable, it’s the worst place for jokes. Perhaps one day Twitter will simply be press releases and anger. 

I subscribe to some newsletters, the most blog-like blog substitute. It’s handy having them delivered to your in-box, but they feel like work. They’ve already posted again? For some reason, having posts line up like a To Do list in an RSS feed reader is a pleasant accumulation, but a list of unread emails is a job. I don’t know what this means. It probably says more about my ability to manage time and tasks than it does about delivery mechanisms. 

After all this time and all this reading, what even is blogging? I used to know. Like so many topics, I used to have strong feelings about it, and now I shrug and make a sandwich. It’s simply public writing. Anything more categorically detailed than that is up to the individual author. These blogs interest me for the same reason why any writing interests me. Part of it is the communicated information, the nutritional content. Part of it is the range of topics covered. But more often than not I just like the sound of that person’s voice.

So here are some blogs I like: 

Kottke. My First, My Last, My Everything. Consistently the best part of my internet. If there is ever an Academy Award-like award for internet writing, they should name it the Kottke. 

Scripting News. Dave Winer, developer, outliner, opinion haver. Your smarter uncle, who knows much more about the internet than you do and is not going to put up with your BS. An indefatigable blogger. 

MacWright. Written by Tom MacWright, a software developer in California. Much of the technical discussions go way over my head, but he has so many interesting projects, using the web, illustration, and music. An inspiration.

Maggie Haberman’s Twitter feed. Okay, I am breaking my own rules. Sometimes I feel like I am in a submerged house and the water outside my windows is the News of the World. At some point you’re going to open a door, a window, a doggie door, etc., and your house is going to flood with the News of the World, but you get to choose which windows to open and how fast you’re going to flood. The best way I’ve found is to open the Maggie Haberman mail slot. A lot of water is going to come in the house, but it’s reliable water, it’s run-through-the-treatment-plant water, it’s not going to give you dysentery, and it will take longer, relatively speaking, for your house to completely fill with the News of the World. 

Marginal Revolution. Don’t read the comments. Run by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, two academics. I immediately shut down whenever I see posts that include graphs, but otherwise an interesting view into how the other half lives, that half being the Economist Half. Remember it’s called the Dismal Science. From time to time I feel it necessary to aerate my own views with non-bananas opinion and info from different neighborhoods. Don’t read the comments. 

Freddie deBoer. Bracingly well-written. These days the focus is mostly on his new book The Cult of Smart. 

Subtraction. Written by Khoi Vinh, who used to be the web design guy at New York Times and now works for Adobe. I think? I don’t know. What is this, LinkedIn? It doesn’t matter. He has interesting stuff to say about design and technology, though these days the posts are mostly about movies and domestic life in Brooklyn. 

BirdFeed. Written by Tom Cleary, a pianist/composer/professor. Illuminating discussions of jazz piano and music theory. He often writes songs that pedagogically parody other jazz standards, which is highly informative to me, a non-good piano player who likes to walk around pretending he’s some nascent Ahmad Jamal. 

Craig Mod. Another smart person with projects. Mostly I read him through his newsletter. He just wrote a book about walking the Japanese countryside and toast. He makes me want to go to Japan. 

Emily Gould Can’t Complain. Another indefatigable blogger, though her most recent form is via this newsletter. I’m a sucker for details of domestic life in Brooklyn. Please tell me about your bodegas, your parks, your stoops. I like it best when she reviews the movies she watches with her kids. 

Do the Math. By Ethan Iverson, formerly of the jazz trio the Bad Plus, now a solo musician with multiple projects. He’s been writing for years, interviews, music criticism, philosophical notes to his students, ruminations on crime fiction. I love all of it except for the book stuff. Crime fiction isn’t my bag. Really at this point in my life the main topics I am excited to read about are jazz piano and Brooklyn parenting. A piano in a brownstone with kids’ drawings scattered all over it would basically be my ideal social vector. I don’t think Iverson has children, but for a while there, earlier in our pandemic year, he was posting daily reinterpretations of TV theme songs while various stuffed creatures lounged around his piano. Pure sugar.

Easily Distracted. Written by Timothy Burke, history professor. An oldie that I still visit. Back in the day, I read him because I was an aspiring academic. Now I read him to feel the force of his prose. Academia and politics mostly. 

Gin and Tacos. I don’t even know who this guy is, and I don’t remember how I found him. Smart, well-written, humorous. Sometimes the river of garbage gives you another gem. 

James Fallows. Is it still a blog if it’s for the Atlantic? Who cares. I have broader issues with the Atlantic as a web publication, but I always enjoy Fallows. His notes are pithy and informed. His series on Trump as he was cruising toward the election way back a thousand years ago was a helpful historical documentation of wrongs perpetrated, norms destroyed, etc. Sometimes he posts photos of interesting-looking beers. There was also a parody Twitter account run by a “Fames Jallows” for a while that was (altogether appropriately? somewhat paradoxically?) also informed and adept and worthwhile. The internet is a weird system.