Cognitive Daily

Birthday present for me

Posted by Dave Munger on January 30, 2008
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Today is my birthday, so instead of offering a post for you, I thought I’d ask for a small gift. I’d like to revamp my personal web browsing system so that it’s more efficient. I already keep up with psychology blogs via RSS, but I’d like to start browsing other things — news, entertainment, and so on — the same way.

So here’s what I want for my birthday: I’d like you to suggest what should go in my RSS reader.

I’d like my whole list to be browsable in 30 minutes or so, so I need a *limited* list of suggestions for good RSS feeds to subscribe to. The whole list should have perhaps 100-200 items in a day, so if a blog posts 10 times a day, it better be good — that’s 1/10 of my list! Ideally some of the items in the list should be link-rich, so if I’m bored in the afternoon and I’m looking for extra reading material, I can always follow the links.

Please provide the actual link to the RSS feed itself along with your reasons why you think it’s something I should be reading every day.

I’m looking forward to seeing your suggestions in the comments! Since comments with multiple links get held up in moderation, I’ll be monitoring the comments pretty closely over the next couple hours.

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Comments

  1. #1 Ben L.
    January 30, 2008

    This blog raises some really interesting moral dilemmas. It is also one of the few good utilitarian-oriented blogs I’ve found that seems at all serious about overcoming bias.

    http://www.overcomingbias.com/rss.xml

  2. #2 Dave Munger
    January 30, 2008

    Wow, a very thought-provoking blog, Ben. I’ve subscribed, but not in my new “infotainment” category — I’m looking for somewhat more lightweight fare there.

  3. #3 James
    January 30, 2008

    http://www.3quarksdaily.com for some great science related links. (daily)

    http://www.newsbiscuit.com for some great news satire – think a british version of the onion (few posts a week).

  5. #5 Barn Owl
    January 30, 2008

    I hope you know about this one already-Arts and Letters Daily provides a fantastic and eclectic mix of articles, essays, and book reviews:

    http://www.aldaily.com
  6. #6 Dave Munger
    January 30, 2008

    Barn Owl:

    I did know about Arts and Letters daily but I don’t have the site bookmarked so I wouldn’t have thought of it if not for your suggestion.

    That’s a good point — please don’t refrain from suggesting something because it seems “obvious.” Even if I’ve heard of the site, I may not be able to recall it without your prompt.

  7. #7 Emily
    January 30, 2008

    Okay, I haven’t read a lot of this blog, but I will post some of my favorite RSS

    Deadline Hollywood – http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/ – good for entertainment news

    Digg – http://digg.com/ – Good for all sorts of random, informative, and funny news

    Quotes – http://www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html – Just because I really like quotes

    The Onion – http://www.theonion.com/content/index – Best fake news ever

    If you use Google Reader – They have a discover area where you can get recommendations and packages of feeds.

  8. #8 Andy
    January 30, 2008

    http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/rss2.php – If you’ve ever read the mental_floss magazine, you’ll know what to expect. Well-written posts about just interesting things you never learned anywhere else.

  9. #9 Dave Munger
    January 30, 2008

    Emily: I subscribed to The Onion — that’s a good one! I took a look at Deadline Hollywood. It’s pretty good, but a little gossipy for me. I guess what I was thinking of in entertainment was movie reviews. But of course, I don’t like going to the theater, so I’m wondering if anyone knows of a good site that reviews new DVDs when they are released.

  11. #11 Michael McIntyre
    January 30, 2008

    When looking over my RSS feeds, I realized that I’m a sucker for rant-heavy feeds. Since that’s a specialized taste, here are best of my rant-lite feeds, IMHO.

    Cosmic Variance http://cosmicvariance.com/feed/atom/

    RealClimate http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/feed/atom/

    Econbrowser http://www.econbrowser.com/index.xml

    Econospeak
    http://feeds.feedburner.com/espeak

    Informed Comment (Juan Cole, mostly on Iraq)
    http://www.juancole.com/rss.xml

    Informed Comment Global Affairs (Barnet Rubin on Afghanistan is particularly valuable) http://icga.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

    Just Foreign Policy News (daily news summary) http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/newsroom/blog/?feed=rss2

    Just World News (by Helena Cobban) http://justworldnews.org/index.rdf

    Washington Babylon (Harper’s Magazine) http://harpers.org/rss/frontpage-rss20.xml

    YMMV.

  12. #12 Lisa
    January 30, 2008

    “Marginal Revolutions” by Tyler Cowen is a popular economics blog (you might already subscribe to it)… It is one of my favorites and has a good mix of light-hearted links and commentary and heavier economics related topics.

  13. #13 kevin z
    January 30, 2008

    saint gasoline: he makes cartoons that I think yoiu might appreciate. He tends to post once a day or so and mixes it up a little with some of his persona opinion http://saintgasoline.com/feed/

    The Natural Patriot: a professor of biology from the College of William and Mary who studies marine biodiversity and crustaceans. His blog is “dedicated to cultivating and putting to work a new and universal ideal of patriotism appropriate to the new Millennium, one based firmly in Reason and a deeply held moral of stewardship for our endangered homeland”.
    http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheNaturalPatriot

    Of course you should already have The Other 95% and Deep Sea News in your RSS feed… right?

    Happy birthday!

  14. #14 Fletcher
    January 30, 2008

    Zen Habits

    http://feeds.feedburner.com/zenhabits

  15. #15 Dave Rowley
    January 30, 2008

    If you’re interested in language use, then this is always worth reading.

    http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/

    Happy Birthday!

  16. #16 Mamaebeth
    January 30, 2008

    I am quite fond of beliefnet. http://www.beliefnet.com/services/rss/index.html you can get the best of beliefnet amd/or the top religion news. both have 3 posts a day.

    postsecret is fun. http://postsecret.blogspot.com/
    “PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.” it is just on sundays.

  17. #17 Eric Crampton
    January 30, 2008

    http://www.marginalrevolution.com – Economics blogging

    http://xkcd.com – best cartoons…

    http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/ — Scott Adams…provocative and fun

    http://www.schneier.com/blog/ — Bruce Schneier…he who should be head of the TSA.

  18. #18 Dave
    January 30, 2008

    I highly suggest Seed Magazine’s RSS feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/seedmagazine-all). The brunt of it is a once-a-day post called “Seed’s Daily Zeitgeist” which is 5 links to interesting things on the web, mostly science related. Other than that one daily post, there are posts about once a week that are longer and on a single topic.

  19. #19 Dave Munger
    January 30, 2008

    Great suggestions, everyone. Keep ‘em coming!

    I’m going to have to head out for a while, so don’t be surprised if your comment doesn’t show up right away. I’d love to see 50 comments waiting in moderation when I get back!

  20. #20 Ben P.
    January 30, 2008

    Happy Birthday. Below are some of my favorite feeds. I hope you find something in there.

    http://feeds.feedburner.com/PowerSeductionAndWar Robert Green, author of The 48 Laws of Power and The Art of Seduction. Really interesting posts on power, strategy, etc.

    http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/index.rdf The Blog of Dilbert creator Scott Adams. Funny, smart, and interesting posts.

    http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/ Blog of venture capitalist Fred Wilson. He blogs about music, money, technology, etc.

    http://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsblog Freakonomics blog. Posts about economics, pop culture, etc.

    http://www.mindhacks.com/index.rdf I assume you might already have this, but I love this blog. It has all sorts of cognitive, neurological and other posts.

  21. #21 Josh
    January 30, 2008

    http://www.kottke.org
    I believe most of his posts are garnered from his own RSS. 5-10 links a day, but very few of them are more than a sentence description of the link and quote from the item itself. Always interesting.

    http://www.wohba.com
    Their sub-title is “Be Amazed, Be Very Amazed!”. Not always science related, but with >1 post a week, it’s worth sticking around to see what cool experiment or video they talk about.

    http://googlesightseeing.com/feed
    “Why Bother Seeing the World for Real?”
    They give the Google Earth/Maps links to famous places, interesting visible items, and strange sightings.

  22. #22 Freiddie
    January 30, 2008

    http://www.xkcd.com
    <1 post per day, so it won’t clog up your feeds. (Sorry, I was VERY surprised that people can read 100+ feeds per day; I have schoolwork so I guess I can’t get stuck to THAT many feeds)

  23. #23 Joe Mansfield
    January 30, 2008

    Lisa already recommended Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution but it’s worth a second vote.

    Crooked Timber is another excellent Economics leaning blog that crosses over into news and interesting articles from a broader social sciences/news and entertainment bucket that fits your posting frequency guideline.
    http://crookedtimber.org/feed/

    XKCD – the intellectual geek webcomic du jour. It’s weekly so adding it to your feed list wont be a burden.
    http://www.xkcd.com/rss.xml

  24. #24 Natalie
    January 30, 2008

    If you like the Onion, you may enjoy for some light reading the AV club, which is associated with the Onion at: http://www.avclub.com/content/home

    Also, I like Cracked (http://www.cracked.com/) for silly lists.

  25. #25 Wilbur
    January 30, 2008

    Everyone needs a bit of humour, this is funny and it’s not that often – http://www.pbfcomics.com/feed/feed.xml

  26. #26 Mark Leichliter
    January 30, 2008

    Simple exercises for your visual cortex:
    feed://feeds.feedburner.com/ffffound/everyone

    Really good webcomic:
    http://feeds.feedburner.com/WeTheRobots

  27. #27 Freiddie
    January 30, 2008

    Happy birthday! (forgot say this) See my post at the top.
    Additional feed:
    http://www.astronomycast.com Podcast website with feeds

  28. #28 B McManus
    January 30, 2008

    I second the xkcd.com recs. However, the quality of xkcd has been slowly but steadily declining for a few months, so you might want to surf through the older stuff, too. The newer stuff is fun, but the older stuff is awesome.

    A site I’ve enjoyed lately is http://scottaaronson.com/blog/ . It’s the blog of a young math/CS professor at MIT, and he has a lot of interesting things to say and almost all of it isn’t excessively dense or unapproachable.

    TED ( http://www.ted.com/talks ) boasts a very wide variety of talks, often by intellectual “celebrities.”

    B McManus
    http://bmmcmanus.blogspot.com/

  29. #29 Sandra Kiume
    January 30, 2008

    Happy Birthday!

    This is a good idea, I need to clean up my subscriptions too. Recommendations, hmm. You already read the brain blogs I’d recommend, so for something a bit different:

    Bad Science. Always hilarious, as well as very perceptive and smart.
    http://www.badscience.net/?feed=rss2

    Also, Ben Goldacre’s del.icio.us feed has leftover juicy info nuggets.
    http://del.icio.us/rss/bengoldacre

    Doc GM Splash Fly is a personal blog written by a man with schizophrenia. I like it for being poignant, intelligent, complex and revealing.
    http://docgmsplashfly.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
    I have a serious blog crush on Information Aesthetics. It causes Stendahl syndrome.
    http://infosthetics.com/index.xml

    BTW, did you see the Cog Daily (and Channel N!) review in Sci Am yet? Sweet. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=mind-reviews-feb-2008&page=2

  30. #30 Sandra Kiume
    January 30, 2008

    One more: a really good webcomic called Overcompensating.
    http://overcompensating.com/index.xml

  31. #31 Julie
    January 30, 2008

    This blog posts quirky photography ideas about once a week. http://feeds.feedburner.com/Photojojo

  32. #32 Aerik
    January 30, 2008

    Reddit.com recently overhauled their sub system. Now you have literally a few hundred subreddits to choose from. And every subreddit has a feed. At least I think this last part may still be true. I suggest the subreddits:

    science, worldnews, us, europe, cognitive science, WTF, scifi, human rights watch, podcasts, and anything else you find interesting if you set up an account.

    You can even go to keywords in del.icio.us and subscribe feeds to submissions for that keyword. Find keywords that pique your interest and also seem generous.

    If you use twitter, definitely subscribe to a few friends, especially the badastronomer and wil wheaton.

    Just like del.icio.us, do the same thing at newsvine.com.

  33. #33 Internev
    January 31, 2008

    Some of my favourites:

    Waxy.org: Andy Baio consistently provides top-notch links on his sidebar ( http://www.waxy.org/links/index.xml) and a weird mish-mash of internet reporting/investigation on his blog (
    http://www.waxy.org/index.xml) both are highly recommended.
    Waiter Rant: Surprised nobody has mentioned this popular one. NYC waiter crafts nice little stories out of his daily grind. Surprisingly good read a couple of times a week (
    http://waiterrant.net/wp-rss.php)
    Indexed: Another internet favourite. Daily hand-drawn graphs of weirdness. ( http://indexed.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default)
    Dilbert: I personally skip the blog and just get the daily comic delivered to my reader from this feed (
    http://feeds.feedburner.com/tapestrydilbert)

    My site has a feed too (
    http://www.internev.com/atom.xml) though I can’t recommend it in good faith…

  34. #34 Jodi T.
    January 31, 2008

    Happy Birthday!!! I have no suggestions, but my birthday is today as well, so I stopped to read your page. I am new to blogging, so I am checking sites out.

  35. #35 Khalil A.
    January 31, 2008

    I really enjoy the BBC’s Magazine. It’s got short interesting articles about random things which are making the news from science to politics with a little twist here and there.

    Here are some of today’s headlines:
    1. Masking a crime: This man is actually a woman. How do make-up artists use cosmetics and prostheses to disguise true identities?

    2. Handing it down: Nigella Lawson is the latest wealthy celebrity to vow that she will not pass on all her money to her children when she dies. But why should you pass on your earthly wealth?

    3. Ships on legs:
    Wind farm Ships on legs
    It’s stormy and deep. So a boat steadied on stilts is used to build the giant towers of offshore wind farms.

    Fascinating! And light.

    Happy birthday.

    http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/uk_news/magazine/rss.xml

  36. #36 Gyanish
    January 31, 2008

    Happy Birthday…. And thanks a lot for a great blog!

  37. #37 Dermot
    January 31, 2008

    Following Khalil A’s comments, I’d recommend picking something from the BBC’s list of feeds – everything from world news and technology to science/nature and entertainment.
    The list is here:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/3223484.stm

  38. #38 Dave Munger
    January 31, 2008

    Thanks for some great suggestions, everyone. I’ve subscribed to a whole bunch of feeds:

    NYT > NYTimes.com Home
    DavidsonNews.net
    The Onion
    Slate Magazine
    Charlotte.com: Breaking News
    Charlotte.com: Sports
    Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
    The Morning News
    Political Animal
    Marginal Revolution
    Rotten Tomatoes: New DVD Releases
    Saint Gasoline
    RealClimate
    Language Log
    Fernham
    kottke.org
    The Perry Bible Fellowship
    WE THE ROBOTS
    Conversational Reading
    Titles are so 2007
    information aesthetics
    waiterrant.net
    Uncertain Principles
    Reason Magazine – Hit & Run
    Dilbert
    BBC News | UK News | Magazine | World Edition
    Whatever
    Megan McArdle
    xkcd.com

    I went through them this morning and it took a bit longer than I’d like — probably because there was a backlog of posts. I think in the end this will be a manageable number of blogs to read, with plenty of fascinating/hilarious/enjoyable posts, so thanks!

    I think ultimately I’m going to want 20 or so more subscriptions, so keep those suggestions coming.

  39. #39 Andy
    January 31, 2008

    Mr. Munger, I don’t know if you want to spend all of your day on your RSS reader, but if you don’t, that if way too much stuff. Political animal updates about 8 times a day, Megan McArdle about 10, NYTimes about 50 times, Arts and Letters Daily an absurd amount, and many of your other sites too. Some of those are very good, but I don’t imagine you possibly have enough time to even skim the headlines on all of those sites. I would focus on sites without an absurd amount of subscriptions, like Marginal Revolution, Language Log (very funny), and maybe:

    Ryan Holiday,
    http://feeds.feedburner.com/rudiusmedia/rch

    Ben Casnocha,
    http://feeds.feedburner.com/bencasnocha

    Ramit Sethi (I will teach you to be rich),
    http://feeds.feedburner.com/IWillTeachYouToBeRich

    each of those blogs have some funny stuff, and you don’t have to click through to the blog to read what they write. They update about once a week. I would also recommend:

    The “Humor” and “Movies” sections from the New Yorker, they only update once a week and always have some funny stuff. Anthony Lane is an excellent writer, and has some funny movies reviews. The cartoons in the “Humor” section are definitely worth it.

    Good luck!

  40. #40 Michael Meadon
    January 31, 2008

    Greta Christina has probably the best single blog I’ve ever come across. It’s a bit weird: she blogs about skepticism, atheism and… porn. I must emphasize, though, that she writes extraordinarily well, she’s damn smart and extremely knowledgeable.

    Check it out! http://gretachristina.typepad.com/

  41. #41 Jeffrey Martin
    January 31, 2008

    http://www.360cities.net/rss/rss.xml

    This is the Virtual Reality RSS feed of http://www.360cities.net. 360 Cities is the world’s largest VR (virtual reality) network comprising 50 cities from all over the world, and thousands of amazing, interactive, high resolution panoramas. The RSS feed is great because it’s a bite-sized intro to the growing archive of locations from India to the Arctic, in nice little thumbnails. Click on any of them to open the (Fullscreen!) panorama. Enjoy it!

    Jeffrey Martin

  42. #42 Sine.Qua.Non
    January 31, 2008

    These two blogs are on my top ten list. Not only are they a fun and interesting read, but, they make you think, conceive, delve, and debate with yourself.

    Blog Meridian
    http://blogmeridian.blogspot.com/
    http://blogmeridian.blogspot.com/atom.xml

    Acephalous
    http://acephalous.typepad.com/
    http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/rss.xml

  43. #43 kay
    January 31, 2008

    I really like
    http://www.metafilter.com/
    and
    http://ask.metafilter.com/.
    Ask MeFi is especially good, because people give such great answers to a variety of questions.

    I second the kottke.org, waxy.org and indexed. Oh my lord does indexed make the math geek in me laugh out loud.

    enjoy your birthday.

  44. #44 Gary
    February 1, 2008

    http://philosophyandpsychology.wordpress.com
    http://philosophyandpsychology.wordpress.com/feed

    Blog on various topics in philosophy of mind and psychology.

  45. #45 Matt
    February 1, 2008

    I saw you asked for a site that reviews DVDs, I don’t think they have a feed, but try http://www.metacritic.com/ They take reviews from major critics across the country, extrapolate their review to a 100 point scale, then average them all together to give a final rating. They do this for DVDs, in theater films, music, and video games.
    Also, this is shameless promotion of a friend of mine, but he has a blog whose feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/neuroscientificallychallenged
    It’s a quality blog where he attempts to put findings in neuroscience and genetics into laymans terms (or at least explain the terms he uses). I think the writing and topics he chooses are excellent, and would read it even if I didn’t know him well.

  46. #46 Jenny
    February 1, 2008

    Oh please. You people are way too serious. When my brain is totally fried, and I literally can’t think anymore, I go to:

    http://www.homestarrunner.com
    http://www.engrish.com
    http://www.icanhascheezburger.com
    http://www.askaninja.com

    and of course

    http://www.perezhilton.com !!!!!

  47. #47 Sarah
    February 1, 2008

    Happy belated birthday!

    I like several of the links already listed but I didn’t see one of my favorites on here. Check out The Happiness Project. It always inspires me to think about how I do things and how I could do better and she always links to other good stuff.

    http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheHappinessProject

  48. #48 NE1
    February 16, 2008

    Essentials: Marginal Revolution, Kottke.org, Brad DeLong

  49. #49 NE1
    February 16, 2008

    Ok: Delong
    Kottke
    I think MR’s been covered.