The World Needs More Blogs

Blogs are great. I used to run multiple blogs, but now I only maintain two (a general literary/essay/review-y one and a more specialised one for my academic work on Samuel Taylor Coleridge). It suits the way I work: I generally don’t really know what I think about something until I write out my thoughts, and blogs give me the opportunity to do that, at length (often) and more or less unconstrained by other factors. The problem comes if I then want to do something more permanent with my research, since publishers don’t like running reprints. So for example, pursuant to an Anthony Burgess project I was doing over the last couple of years I re-read his entire run of novels and blogged my thoughts as I did so, but now that the actual project is nearing its actual publication I’ve deleted that blog so as not to tread on its ‘official’ toes. I did something similar with H G Wells: having been commissioned to write a literary biography of that horny old geezer I read through his whole output and blogged my thoughts as I went. Now, through the rest of this summer, I’m going to start pulling my actual thoughts into proper order, and cannibalising my own blogposts as I do so, and when I do that I’ll take the Wellsblog private.

I think the reason blogs work so well for me is that they have this Poe-like purloined letter quality of being hidden in plain view. See the two blogs I linked to above? Hardly anybody reads the things I post there. I have a few dedicated readers, and their comments are often immensely useful to me, but thsoe commentators all in effect friends of mine and I can count them on the fingers of one hand. In a broader sense nobody cares about and nobody reads what I blog. And that’s good. A blog is public enough to force me into at least a degree of finish in what I write; so its not just jumbled and incoherent notes in a private notebook; but at the same time a blog is obscure and overlooked enough that I am not intimidated by the thought “thousands will read this, I’d better make it super-good and polished”. It slots neatly in between the two.

Thanks for the link to Sluga’s blog. There’s some interesting stuff there (or linked there), but I wish there were more on his specifically philosophical interests.

Of blogs not included in the blog roll here, the one I read most regularly is probably Robert Paul Wolff’s:

http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/

Philosophically, I disagree with Wolff more often then I agree, I think, but it’s an enjoyable place and often has interesting thoughts.

Thank you for these. RSS feeds from blogs are still my main source of information/stimulation.

I will soon have a blog, connected to my rather skeletal website — http://johncrowleyauthor.com/ — and CT is certainly one I’ll link to. I remember the list of blogs and sites that ran down the left side of my LiveJournal, growing as recommendations and discoveries cae in. Is it odd — is it slightly fatuous — to experience nostalgia for an aspect or former state of the Internet, which is hardly out if its infancy even now?

Metafilter community weblog about art, politics, science & everything else, many people know by know.

People may not know the dazzling Everlasting Blört, going on for almost 20 years, totally addictive and the links often go to deep places. The complete archives are down the side in convenient weekly chunks:
http://blort.meepzorp.com/

Would it be wrong to hear a somewhat Foucauldian tone in Sluga’s April 28 post about London and “the quandaries of modern individualism”?

Blog that I like that is somewhat-aligned with the kind of blogs I would expect CrookedTimberites to like. Alan Jacobs on “technologies of knowledge,” Text Patterns.

I’m still here. Politics (mostly state and local, these days), philosophy (still communitarianism, mostly), and crappy pop music since 2003.

tl;dr version of Sam Chevre:

If this is the sort of blog that appeals to a reader like you, I think you are the type of person who will find it to be something of interest

Tried to post earlier; apologies if it now appears in duplicate.

Basically, what Adam Roberts said. I love my blog; it’s a place to try out ideas as preparation for writing something more formal, for playing around with topics that are either too small or too frivolous ever to form the basis of a ‘proper’ academic piece, for thinking about issues in teaching and other aspects of university life, for commenting on non-work stuff like music and German novels, and for writing jokes and parodies and polemic. And one of my favourite posts every year is the one where I pull together all my favourite blog posts by other people over the course of the year – though I occasionally wonder about doing this monthly instead.

I’ve occasionally wondered about trying to do a vlog (I do occasional music-focused podcasts), as apparently that’s what the with-it people are all doing these days, but that would involve making a specific chunk of time available, and preparing everything properly, whereas I can work on a blog post in odd moments on the train until it’s finished.

Hossein Derakhshan has interesting things to say about the decline of blogging; he blames social media, though actually I find most stuff via Twitter.

Thanks for the suggestions, y’all! For those who can read German, my blog can be found here.

Ray Davis keeps track of a bunch for ya.

(also, to add to Manta’s, Peter Woit)

Here’s another vote for Robert Paul Wolff’s blog.

I like what he writes about, and I like the straightforward yet quirky yet funny yet profound way he writes.

I started reading Wolff’s blog some years back when he was writing an autobiography divided up in small parcels, about one a day (Brian Leiter linked to it…). That was a really enganging read. I don’t know how it works if you read the complete document of all the autobiographical instalments. But have a go at them.

Another good place to start is series of posts of Wolff’s reading of Thomas Piketty.

Cheers,
trane

My blog (link on my name) is almost at its 10 year anniversary and although I post less than I used to I still really enjoy blogging. I have had a few hits (my review of star wars the last jedi seems to be very popular still) but it mostly slides by unremarked, since it’s mostly about gaming.

I regularly read LGM, I visit unfogged a few times a week, and I read Andrew Gelman’s blog a bit too. But for some reason I don’t understand I only ever comment here…

Ok, my first attempt seems to have been eaten by the system.

1. the NZ group blog Public Address: https://publicaddress.net/

2. My (recently relocated) blog: https://notstatschat.rbind.io/

3. My department’s blog: https://www.statschat.org.nz/

https://www.balloon-juice.com is a daily pleasure. The comments are almost always sane, as very few trolls are interested. John Cole is a mensch.

Here’s my blog http://abandonedfootnotes.blogspot.com

And here’s an unsystematic and incomplete selection of other blogs I have often found interesting : Justin E. H. Smith http://www.jehsmith.com/1/; Noel Maurer at the Power and the Money http://noelmaurer.typepad.com/aab/; The Scholar’s Stage http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/; Ribbonfarm (sometimes) http://www.ribbonfarm.com/; Pseudoerasmus (though it’s been a long time without posting)

nnyhav–thanks for that link to Berube.

I have to say that when I read your post I had a sudden shock of fear that something unfortunate had happened to him. Instead it was great to hear his voice again.

And interesting to see that his taste in blogs and writers has evolved pretty much as mine has–I still read LGM, but have added Jamelle Bouie’s twitter feed and newsletter. I started reading Yggles and Klein even before they were the juice-box mafia, and still read them at Vox (they have gone from adolescence to the brink of middle age as I have gone from old to ancient).

Berube used to grace the pages of CT, and I remember that he and I once did some off-line high-fiving about a particularly funny debate with some right-wing visitors here (but to quote one of your biggest hits, Michael, I just haven’t met you yet).

It amazes me that CT is still afloat, and I think this is primarily a testament to the incredible stamina and devotion of its main posters, who are willing to overlook what a dysfunctional and pathological swamp the comments section always becomes. Somehow, CT is sort of the anti-“Making Light”. Over there, the front-pagers have atrophied quite a lot, while the community chugs along with incredible good will and cooperation, and it can truly be said that the comments are better than the posts. Here, the posts remain good although the comments inevitably degenerate into toxic waste-dumps.

Thanks for doing it–CT is still a valuable community resource.

@oldster
Disagree that the comments here degenerate into toxic waste dumps. The moderation system has improved things, IMO.

LFC @ 41–

I’m sure not going to fight about it, and if I’m wrong then I’m happy to be corrected.

LGM and Unfogged. Especially Unfogged.

FWIW, Tyler Cowen is in favor of more blogging. Given his astonishing blogging output, I suppose, that’s not surprising.

For more than 10 years, I have been blogging at http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blogposts about research methods, the Radical Right, and German/European politics. I post every couple of weeks or so for what sometimes feels like an audience of one, but I still immensely enjoy having my own space.
While I have developed a bit of a twitter dependency, I get most of my news from RSS and follow about a 100 blogs including CT, which is actually one of my favourites.

Do you like Disney comics? TOO BAD. Here’s my blog about Disney comics, linked in my name.