Ask HN: Which substacks do you read as soon as it hits your inbox? just curious for some good insightful reading on whatever you’re passionate about. |
Ask HN: Which substacks do you read as soon as it hits your inbox? just curious for some good insightful reading on whatever you’re passionate about. |
Dead Man Talking. https://metatron.substack.com/
PANDA Uncut. https://pandauncut.substack.com/
Some data driven sanity in the last 3 years.
It’s the best OSR news.
He's a former speechwriter at the EPA who did stand up comedy on the side, was discovered by one of the The Daily Show producers and got hired to write on John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight".
He's super-smart, super-funny, and walks just the right political line, at least for me. I.e. he finds things to criticize about both the left and the right.
He releases audio versions of his essays which are not to be skipped, even if you've already read the print piece, because he riffs on the material as he speaks.
Not because I agree with or idolize the guy, but simply because what he says tends to veer on the provocative side. Provocative, by definition, is interesting.
So I guess none here as well.
Despite all these wannabes, there are probably 30 or so high-quality substacks that are actually worth reading. I wouldn't dismiss the entire platform.
This was a point made as well on the AMA for Substack, but it wasn't really addressed. The low-quality "journalists" reduce trust in the platform as a whole.
I don't feel like Substack is doing enough here to combat rampant misinformation and low quality "journalism." It on the platform to show me that it's not just filled with conspiracy theorists and low quality trash. And so far I don't see that and will avoid Substack just like I avoid Reddit alternatives (for instance) that champion free speech and end up as cesspools. Plenty of other places to get the same type of information out there that you don't have to tiptoe around the garbage.
Slow Boring by Matthew Yglesias: https://www.slowboring.com/ - Daily column of moderate/rational takes on politics and government.
ParentData by Emily Oster: https://emilyoster.substack.com/ - She's an economist who writes about parenting by just reading the relevant studies. If you've got kids or are planning to, start with her book Cribsheet.
Jatan's Space by Jatan Mehta: https://blog.jatan.space/ - Pretty high-quality space-related stuff.
Astral Codex Ten by Scott Alexander: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/ - I'm guessing the HN crowd is already largely familiar with Alexander and Slate Star Codex/Astral Codex Ten.
Patent Drop by Nat Rubio-Licht: https://patentdrop.thedailyupside.com/ - A regular look at some interesting patents that have been filed recently.
The only newsletter I read when it comes out is Matt Levine's, I think. Or maybe I only remember this one because it comes out daily and others come out weekly or monthly.
(This also isn't because I have impeccable taste but because few of the people I'd like to follow even seem to have subscriptions so I get notified about their new posts via Twitter mostly.)
I don't read every single thing that comes across, but Scott does a particular weird brand of fiction now and then that I really love. I also enjoy the book reviews a lot. It's just a good hodgepodge of stuff I find interesting and I think Scott is a pretty good curator and commentator.
It honestly changed the way I looked at religion and I think made me a bit of a softer, more spiritual agnostic-atheist than I had been before. I particularly love the chapter where God explains the problem of evil.
Also coined the term “luxury beliefs”
OldHouseGuy Blog: https://www.oldhouseguy.com/ Has great taste regarding old buildings
Syonyk/Sevarg/Russell Graves: https://www.sevarg.net/ Some combination of /homesteading/off-grid/tech passion/tech skepticism/
The Long Now Blog - makes me think different things
Early Retirement Now - in depth financial writings regarding saving money more than the common person.
Tynan.com - eclectic person
Hugo Landau: https://www.devever.net/~hl/ - Thoughtful insights on tech and adjacent topics.
Casey Handmer - Crazy dreams about space and carbon
scripting.com - Old guy shouting at clouds, old-school Internet guy building stuff. I just read it for variety.
Money Stuff by Matt Levine - he's great at explaining what's going on in the financial industry.
Ridgeline by Craig Mod - Guy walks around Japan and takes beautiful pictures and writes about it.
Quick and dirty summaries of interesting stuff I don’t really dive into. Guy’s clearly a talented dev and has a knack for drawing diagrams that make sense
- Lenny's newsletter. While lately it's become mostly about how to succeed as a PM in Big Tech, he occasionally covers juicy startup tactics. For example, "What is good retention?" was solid gold.
- Casey Newton's Platformer. Balanced and insightful coverage of breaking industry news
- Data Analysis Journal. Goes deep on many growth topics, with tons of real SQL code from an experienced practitioner, which is extremely hard to find.
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/ https://www.platformer.news/ https://dataanalysis.substack.com/
Full of great resources. Also access to a great job board. Big fan of his work thus far.
If you're interested in in-depth analysis of current events in finance, tech and other related musings.
Capital Gains is more focused on ideas in finance and how to think about them.
[0] https://www.thediff.co/ [1] (With referral code) https://capitalgains.thediff.co/subscribe?ref=zlPGzwicD7 [2] (Without referral code) https://capitalgains.thediff.co/subscribe
https://news.lettersofnote.com/
P.s. My favourite one so far, where among other things, I learned about the infamous and hilarious “please advise” CBS memo surrounding Miles Davis : https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/this-is-my-favorite-memo-ev...
site:substack.com transformer LLM OpenAI
It's generally more productive to find a topic you're interested in and then collect a wide variety of articles on that topic from many different sources, rather than to follow any individual source. This isn't really what substack writers like, they want you to pay to follow them, and I guess if you can afford dozens of subscriptions it's a charitable thing to do.
Shameless plug, I write Mostly Python, so I read that many times before it hits my inbox. :)
I wouldn't say immediately or even regularly, but I do like to catch up on them every so often. Short food for thought.
-Bookbear Express: https://ava.substack.com/
-Cedric Chin (not a Substack): https://commoncog.com/
-Henrik Karlsson: https://escapingflatland.substack.com/
-Rob Henderson: https://www.robkhenderson.com/
-Robin Hanson: https://www.overcomingbias.com/
But there are more ConvertKit based newsletters I read.
luke o'neil's welcome to hell world also for the very good prose in a totally different style.
small bow is the best recovery-focused one I know of.
alec karakatsanis for justice system stuff; that thread about prison chess this morning made me wish y'all read this.
used to read ed zitron and he's still very good but honestly I already hate bosses & owners enough and the bullshit they're getting up to is rarely novel or surprising, just odious, so I've been dropping off.
I started off with Glenn Greenwald because of his past with the Snowden work, but over time his style put me off.
As far as recommendations, it depends what you're interested in. I'd generally agree with the first two and disagree with the last two, but they are all high-quality reads (for me).
https://jessesingal.substack.com
I do disagree with your premise though. From the examples I've seen in the past, "free speech bastions" usually drive away a significant portion of their users and discourages deep discussion with insults, name-calling, derailment, thread crapping, etc. Are there examples I may have missed that take this approach and are better for it?
I personally think some limits on free speech are required to nurture healthy discussion in a community.
Substack isn't a social network. Discussion is just a function of a post's comments, which can always be disabled. If you don't like a blog, you can leave and go to another. There's no real cross-pollination. I suppose the "bad" blogs could hurt Substack's reputation, but they're willing to bear the reputational damage rather than shut it down, which I respect.
Since you initially brought up Reddit, it's worth examining whether healthy discussions are happening there. If you've ever used reveddit, you can see the types of censorship that happens on popular threads. Activist moderators are everywhere. The only reason discussion looks healthy is because anything remotely "controversial" is nipped in the bud before 100 others had a chance to upvote or agree with it. A thread's apparent civility is not always an indication of healthy discussion.
My point is there are negative externalities no matter how far you move the dial on moderation/censorship. Not enough moderation, and you discourage real discussion but encourage toxicity, harassment, and trolling, i.e., 4chan and Parler. Too much moderation, and you also discourage real discussion but encourage censorship, intolerance, and groupthink, i.e., Reddit in 2023.
I do this using https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ -- it's a great service
Edit: It says "Sorry, We are currently unable to process your request. Please try again later." with multiple email addresses.
Maybe it's a glitch but it's sure a persistent one.