Blogroll Keepers #6
It’s been a few months since I last posted some blogs and newsletters that I’ve been trying out for a while, and which I’m committing to reading more permanently, adding them to my blogroll.
Everyday Commentary features detailed reviews of “everyday carry” equipment — mainly knives, torches and multitools. I’m not hugely into any of that but I love reading the site. It’s written well and thoughtfully by a New Hampshire attorney who has a lengthy and detailed knowledge of these things and is down-to-earth about their sometimes excessive costs. Did you know there are two forums devoted to torches which, over time, have developed very different ideas about torch design and pricing? Even though I don’t plan to buy anything (OK, not much) that’s reviewed I look forward to every post.
Mat Segal blogs about Django web development. It’s rare for me to find a development-focused blog that contains enough stuff that I’m interested in, a signal-to-noise ratio that suits me. Mat’s blog does, with detailed and thoughtful posts about practical Django-related things.
Monomythical is Nadia Eghbal’s monthly email newsletter. I already follow her blog and the newsletter contains her thoughts on a usually internet-related topic, always interesting, and some items from her recent thoughtful notes. I’m not really selling it here but it’s good.
No Mercy / No Malice is a weekly newsletter from Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern. I got a bit lost with this for a while because, I think, I also subscribed to an RSS feed of his blog, or maybe a different newsletter by him, and content seemed to be duplicated. Confusing. Anyway, I now only read this newsletter and I enjoy his thoughts on internet-related stuff, economics, politics, his personal life etc, usually with nice graphs and illustrations.
Uni-Watch is a long-running US blog about sports teams’ uniforms. I’ve been reading it for a while and hesitated about following it permanently because the only sport’s uniforms I’m even slightly interested in is NFL football. (I found the site while wondering if there was a blog about American Football equipment; I didn’t find one.) So there’s a lot of stuff here, in lengthy daily posts made up of many sections, that I’m not totally into. And yet… It’s a really friendly site written by guys with a nice attitude, it has an enthusiastic community, and it’s a pleasure to read — it’s more fun to read about any topic if it’s on a welcoming site like this. There have been really thoughtful posts about “virtue signalling” on uniforms and today’s interview with a high school coach about removing Native American imagery. Also, some of the obsessively detailed posts are fun purely because of the detail. e.g. a long post about the belt loops on baseball uniforms.
Urban Technology at University of Michigan is a weekly newsletter by Bryan Boyer about “the future of cities, design, design education or some swirl of all of those”, in the year leading up to the launch of a Bachelor of Science in Urban Technology programme. I expected interesting topics, writing and links and I’m not disappointed.
That’s all for this time.