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Which newsletters do you read?

Raunak Ramakrishnan on August 28, 2018

Newsletters are a good way to catch up on various topics. Which newsletters do you subscribe to? My list: The Morning Paper - Acolyer...
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Jeffrey Tao

I mostly subscribe to RSS Feeds nowadays but here's the few newsletters I still have, or my favorite RSS feeds which have newsletters:

  1. Morning Cup of Coding - Mostly a roundup of articles from HN/lobste.rs/Reddit
  2. Stratechery - Great, detailed analyses about the businesses of the big tech companies.
  3. The Exponential View - Tech News & Futurism

And now a few non-technical newsletters that I love, since I firmly believe that people that work in tech should be aware of the world around them:

  1. 1843 (The Economist)
  2. Atlas Obscura - Weird, interesting stories about places all around the world.
  3. Longform, Longreads, Narratively - long-form stories and articles
  4. Aeon
  5. Nautilus
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Raunak Ramakrishnan

I read some articles from Nautilus, Aeon and Atlas Obscura. Quanta magazine is nice too for great stories on Math, Physics ans CS research.

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Jeffrey Tao

Quanta is also good! Thanks for the reminder, I should add that to my Feedly.

I had seen all of them from time to time on HN/lobste.rs and finally decided I should just start tracking them myself via RSS :P

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Chris Fitzgerald

I have been trying to cut back, but I went through every comment and regressed.

If I was going to add some suggestions, then I'd go for the easiest ones to read/enjoy:

 
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Raunak Ramakrishnan

The objective of a newsletter is not to cover every article on every website. Rather, it is curation of content.

That said, I agree that browser is not always best way to consume content. As you said earlier, RSS is flexible, so you can create RSS feeds of newsletters. That way, you can have the best of both worlds.

IMO, RSS reader requires an initial setup cost and many people get quickly overwhelmed by the number of unread articles unless they invest some time in setting up good filtering rules.

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Jennifer Lyn Parsons

Great discussion! I'm always on the lookout for more good newsletters.

Brainpickings - non-tech but always thoughtful and interesting

Orbital Operations - a non-technical but technology-oriented author's news. comic stuff, writing stuff, but also very often tech-related thoughts from someone adjacent to the field

Huit Denim - small denim company that puts together an outstanding, inspiring newsletter. Their motto: Do one thing well

Jocelyn K. Glei - newsletter on creativity and productivity

Three Weeks - interestingly curated link dump

So far, I’ve had no complaints - another interestingly curated link dump

Actual tech-related newsletters:

Offscreen Dispatch

Front End Focus

Pony Foo Weekly

JavaScript Weekly

Ruby Weekly

A11y Weekly

The Recompiler

rendezvous with cassidoo

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Raunak Ramakrishnan

Great links! I sometimes visit Brain Pickings to see how famous authors, composers and poets manage to produce great works consistently.

Increment is similar to Recompiler. They have a quarterly issue focusing on a particular aspect of programming. The latest one was on documentation.

 
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Raunak Ramakrishnan

Yes, subscribing to too many newsletters is counter-productive. If "Unsubscribe" does not work, the last resort is "Report Spam". There is also the possibility of people harvesting email addresses for spamming.

 
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Raunak Ramakrishnan

Wait till everyone is on the SPA bandwagon :P

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Raunak Ramakrishnan

I used Google Reader before. I use newsletters as a curation mechanism. Which RSS reader do you use?

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Raunak Ramakrishnan

One advantage of getting newsletters is that your mail is generally always open in browser. So it is one less app you need to worry about. Also, many newsletters do provide an RSS feed.