Warning. What follows are the ramblings of a typical news blogger.

The new Swagger Wagon of Toyota, a vintage photo collection of Times Square, an autonomous neighbourhood from the Second World War, sleeping in a Hollywood sign from 1923 and infographic about oil. All these subjects have one thing in common: I blogged about it earlier today on a newsblog that covers current affairs with offbeat links. It’s a way of guiding readers through some of the web current highlights. And I love it. So when I heard about the following quote a couple of weeks ago, I was caught off guard. Here’s what productivity expert Merlin Mann said during an interview:

I really feel like that combination of little, easy motor skills and clicking combined with feeling a little less bored for a minute is completely addictive to people. When the main way we communicate with each other is through all these things — and I’m not saying, “Don’t use Facebook, don’t use Twitter.” What I am saying is, if you’re not mindful about the amount of your attention that goes to thinking about and consuming those things, you’re not going to be making good stuff, either for that medium or elsewhere. That’s what I got kind of hung up on, when I finally realized that all I was doing was eating and producing potato chips all day long.

BOOM! Scanning Twitter and Facebook, coming up with connections to the content of quality news outlets like BBC, that’s all I do as a news blogger. (meer…)