Let’s see what’s out there

November 30, 2017 11:16 AM

With the December Post Contest beginning tomorrow, I thought it might be nice to review and update this conversation from 2013 of possible places where ideas for fun Metafilter posts can be found. Please feel free to share where you find the stuff you post to Mefi in the comments.

Here are the links posted in that thread that are not defunct, organized roughly by category:

Aggregators
* Popurls

Art
* My Modern Metropolis

Blogs
* 3 Quarks Daily
* Adam Cadre
* Andre's Notes
* Bad Astronomy
* Brain Pickings
* Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling
* jimcofer
* Lazenby
* Mark "M.E." Evanier's 'News From Me'
* The New Shelton wet/dry
* Popperfont
* ODISEA2008
* ONTD
* Rhondda's Reflections
* Savage Minds: AnthroDendum
* Sore Eyes
* Tecnologia Obsoleta
* the chawed rosin
* TYWKIWDBI
* Twisted Sifter

Comics / Animation
* Cartoon Brew
* Cartoon Research

Entertainment
* Onion's AV Club

Gaming
* Rock Paper Shotgun

General Curations
* Arts & Letters Daily
* Big Think
* Blort
* Boing Boing
* Book forum's Omnivore
* Damn Interesting
* Interesting Thing of the Day
* Laughing Squid
* LinkMachineGo
* Neatorama
* Colossal
* Waxy.org

Longform Journalism
* The Browser
* Longform
* Longreads
* The Feature

Miscellany
* Farnam Street

News / Investigations / Journalism
* Columbia Journalism Review (CJR)
* Dart Center
* Hacker News
* io9
* SiliconBeat
* Slashdot

Video
* Vimeo Staff Picks

--

Also, a sad note. Gerard Vlemmings' The Presurfer was founded in 2000, and was one of the original link blogs. This year Mr. Vlemmings passed away shortly after being diagnosed with lung cancer, at the age of 67. For years, mefites mined ideas and source material for our posts to Metafilter on The Presurfer.

posted by zarq to MetaFilter-Related at 11:16 AM (21 comments total)

Thanks for this, so useful. I find I get a lot of the stuff that is interesting to me (and online) from mailing lists or newsletters. A few I like

- Science for the Public - what it sounds like
- 3 to 5 - open source links

I also find stuff, or the beginnings of posts from MLTSHP's popular page (I think available to anyone, lmk if not), from the QI podcast, and, honestly, from books I am reading. Taking stuff from books often assures that there's no concern that someone else might post something first so i can take my time.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 11:35 AM on November 30, 2017 [3 favorites]

Very nice, thanks!

Bonus randomness:
* Everlasting Blort, maintained by MetaFilter's own madamjujujive and quonsar
* Dark Roasted Blend

See the world!
* National Geographic is a mix of aggregator and publisher, at least as a website
* Atlas Obscura for interesting things local and global
posted by filthy light thief at 11:37 AM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Tech/General News
* Ars Technica
* Wired

Both have original reporting as well as re-writes of stories from other sources.


MLTSHP's popular page (I think available to anyone, lmk if not)

It's publicly available, thanks!
posted by filthy light thief at 11:42 AM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Percentage of fun posts already seems to have gone up and it's still November.
posted by puddledork at 11:54 AM on November 30, 2017

Also, a sad note. Gerard Vlemmings' The Presurfer was founded in 2000, and was one of the original link blogs. This year Mr. Vlemmings passed away shortly after being diagnosed with lung cancer, at the age of 67.

On a similar note, Mark Woods of the great wood s lot passed away after "a lengthy, difficult battle with cancer" on February 9; he used to be a good source for links, and it might be useful to go through the archives looking for interesting stuff. (I wrote about his passing here.)
posted by languagehat at 11:56 AM on November 30, 2017 [4 favorites]

LitHub Daily links to LitHub often, but I think it's usually more than 50% material from elsewhere that I don't see linked widely--here's today's. File770 is all good for SF/F fan news, but its Pixel Scroll category tends to be especially full of Metafilter-ish stuff.
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:01 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Don't forget Metafilter Projects!
The content is coming from INSIDE the house.
posted by phunniemee at 12:04 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Reminder: For anyone who wants to make a category/request/prize for the December Post Contest. That can be done here. I just added my category. I was having a hard time finding it, so I thought I'd link to it here. Cheers.
posted by Fizz at 12:31 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

* OpenCulture bills itself as the 'best free educational and cultural media on the web.'
* Nautilus is a science magazine. Some of their site is free, some articles are premium content.
* Odee is focused on the "odd, bizarre and strange things of our world."
* Google Arts and Culture is worth bookmarking. Sometimes the articles there will spark post ideas.

Jessamyn mentioned mail lists and newsletters. letterlist is a great way to find them.
posted by zarq at 1:09 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Mark Woods of the great wood s lot passed away after "a lengthy, difficult battle with cancer" on February 9

Oh, no. Thanks for mentioning this, languagehat.

.
posted by zarq at 1:10 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's been a sad year for blogging, with the deaths of The Presurfer, wood s lot AND Kevin Gray of Nothing To Do With Arbroath. It seems like all we have left among linkblogs by individuals are the aforementioned Blort and Miss Cellania, who recently paid the $5 to join us at the 'Filter after several years of using us as a source for her blog; she's also Managing Editor at Neatorama and a writer for Mental Floss, which is still functioning as a website even though its ded tree version is truly dead.

Other content-mongers I keep among my RSS Old Reader connections (yes, I still use that Internet Dinosaur):
MeFi's Own JScalzi and CStross (with content that is NOT Science Fictional)
Dan Grenfield's 13th Dimension does the heavy lifting of comics journalism in groups of 13
Dangerous Minds lives up to its name with the most controversial of nostalgia
...and everything else somebody has noted above...
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:41 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

all of my posts came from gothamist so now everything is terrible.
posted by poffin boffin at 2:35 PM on November 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

Modern Farmer! There was a while some years ago where their stuff showed up on the blue all the time and it was great! But then I think their content maybe went downhill for a bit, or people got bored with farming, and/or generally forgot they existed. But anyway, now I feel like I regularly see articles of theirs that would make a good FPP. Like this one about Christmas Tree prices and how they're tied to the 2008 recession! Or this one about the cranberry industry! But...I just am not the kind of person who enjoys making posts. Too much stress for not enough reward. So I've just been reading these articles by myself and hoping somebody else comes along to post them.
posted by gueneverey at 6:17 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

I was pleased to find that very longtime linkblog Bifurcated Rivets is still updating.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:08 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

There are other places on the internet?*
posted by The Great David S. Pumpkins at 10:30 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

*Yes, I've made this joke here before, but not with this sock.
posted by The Great David S. Pumpkins at 10:32 PM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Mark Woods of the great wood s lot

oh no. I was just looking at the site, hoping it would update.
.

As a note, Hacker News is more of an aggregator, not a "news" site.

Digg changed hands and is good.

Actually been sourcing posts from podcasts and books too.
I still have the long list in my profile. They're memory triggers, so if one sparks your interest just ask and I'll tell you what I thought was interesting to me.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:50 PM on November 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm too lazy to actually visit sites, so I collect most of my stuff from email newsletters, most often Nextdraft, Now I Know, and whatever newsletters Digg sends me.

The problem is that I assume a large percentage of mefites probably get the same newsletters, so the content isn't really new.
posted by Literaryhero at 4:30 AM on December 1, 2017

Eh, I remember people saying the same thing about Kottke, etc. back in the day. If you haven't seen an FPP on it, and it's interesting, post it. No way of knowing what other people have seen.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:21 AM on December 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

I get a lot of my post ideas from Autostraddle, or cool people I follow on Instagram and then want to learn more about and then want to share with y’all.
posted by Grandysaur at 11:49 AM on December 1, 2017

Lately I've found the quality at The AV Club has dropped a bit. However, Vulture is filling a lot of the same needs for me. Plus Mallory Ortberg is recapping Star Trek Discovery, presumably she'll be writing other things for them too.
posted by harriet vane at 3:58 AM on December 2, 2017