Blog Appreciation

Now that the year's almost over, here's a quick run-through of blogs I have Appreciated this year.

My opinion of the value of political blogs has declined precipitously recently, but I still find myself compulsively reading Andrew Sullivan, Kevin Drum, and Matthew Yglesias. Marc Ambinder has lots of useful political coverage around election time. Based on his blog I'd always pictured Ambinder as this grizzled old journalist with a cigar clenched firmly in teeth; when I found out he was only a year older than me my brain imploded. FiveThirtyEight.com deserves every bit of praise it has accumulated. I'm impressed with how smoothly it's shifted from hardcore election analysis to general political analysis. Finally, the fine people at Shakesville have helped me develop my socially progressive conscience, and for that I thank them.

Moving away from American politics, Ethan Zuckerman is into all sorts of cool geeky musings, and on top of that shows a genuine interest in global issues that mainstream media tend to ignore. His blog is great, period. The cartography geek in me is fascinated by Making Maps and amused by Strange Maps. The science-fictiony geek in me reads Tor.com, every kind of geek in me reads John Scalzi for all-around coolness, and Making Light is fascinating and amusing. And of course I always keep up with BoingBoing.

For snark I rely on The Comics Curmudgeon, Passive-Agressive Notes, and of course Fail Blog.

Unfortunately, I have not been keeping up enough with Taiwanese and East Asian-centered blogs. I suppose that shall be my New Years' resolution.