I've got a few that I read most, if not every time they hit my inbox:
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.
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.
Do you mean newsletters in general or do you literally only mean substack?
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.)
Yeah it especially doesn't make sense since most of Bloomberg is paywalled. Even the web view of Money Stuff is paywalled I think? But the newsletter is not.
Yeah, web view is paywalled unfortunately. I wish I could read it via RSS, but it’s pretty much the one newsletter/blog type thing that I don’t mind getting in my inbox.
I think the May thing was a glitch - I’ve continued to receive mine, but I’ve heard from at least a couple friends who stopped receiving it around then. If you want to re-subscribe, it’s still free and don’t have to deal with the Bloomberg paywall.
After many years I'm still a big fan of Astral Codex Ten (previously Slate Star Codex).
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.
Unsong is one of my all time favorite reads, it's such a unique and fun thing. I could talk about it for hours honestly, there's so much great material in it. I actually just reread it a month or so ago and still enjoyed every chapter.
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.
I choose not to engage in proprietary newletter programs, but do read a lot via RSS. Here are some that I consider insightful and/or interesting, above average quality, have limited or no commercialization/monetization, and have a chance of being interesting to someone else:
There's one called Technically Food by Larissa Zimberoff, where she talks about food and food technology. I'm not involved in the space anymore, but I used to sell CPG food and it's fun to read about what's happening in that space.
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.
Not a substack, I think it’s hashnode or ghost or something custom made, but https://unzip.dev.
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.
The Pragmatic Engineer[0]. Gergely Orosz has very pragmatic, practical advice and stories about just being a successful software engineer. He also covers the differences of working at different places, and how to suss out if a work environment is likely to be a good one
Full of great resources. Also access to a great job board. Big fan of his work thus far.
Noah Smith[0]. I appreciate his level-headed analysis and how he usually backs up all his claims with sources and statistics. I was never much into economics before I found his Substack, but now I read it regularly and I feel like I've learned a lot from him.
Can we please keep the responses relevant to OP’s request? It’s pretty clear that OP is looking for a curated list of newsletters to check out but some people are seeing this as an invitation to get on a soapbox about how they don’t like email/newsletters/whatever.
I love Letters of Note. Each post features reflection on letters that were sent/written at some point in time, often but not always by notable people. They are whimsical, short, and have introduced me to many interesting facts and rabbit holes.
I really just use Google with Tools set to Verbatim, and search strings like, for example:
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.
Charlie Guo - Artificial Ignorance. I don't have time to keep up with everything going on in the AI world, and Charlie's writeups each week keep me up to date enough to not feel lost.
Shameless plug, I write Mostly Python, so I read that many times before it hits my inbox. :)
None, because the absolute last thing I need is more email and I’m really not sure who ever though that trying to get people to sign up to get more email was a good idea.
I read Adam Tooze's Chart Book[1] and it's become the only source of information I really need to understand general macroeconomics and how it relates to the events of the world.
blackbird spyplane mostly for the incredible prose.
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.
Lots of good suggestions here. One that's missing is I Might Be Wrong by Jeff Mauer[0]. All the content is free.
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 substacks, but I start my mornings reading the TLDR and the TLDR AI newsletters. Lots of overlap with the sort of tech that HN covers. TLDR AI is very useful to keep your finger on the rapidly changing pulse in the world of ML.
Related: I go out of my way not to receive articles in my inbox. I keep my bills (which do reach my inbox) in "interruptions" mode while my entertainment operates in "poll" mode.
Related: is this question marketing for substack hosted stuff? I mean, every article you click on is trying to cram a newsletter down your throat. Why mention substack specifically?
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.
For me, Substack has a reputation problem. All Substack's I've seen shared (on HN) have spouted outlandish claims and had zero (or little) "evidence" to back their claims up. Of course it's just a platform and it is probably made up of some great content too, but the bad content has turned me off to the platform.
There are a lot of wannabes on Substack. There are wannabe "journalists" who don't leave the house and wannabe philosophers who don't study philosophy. There are lots of tech and VC types like PG who are nowhere near as interesting as they think they are.
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.
Do you have examples of high-quality ones? My main exposure to Substack is on HN and every one that I've seen shown on HN has been low quality and usually flagged to death eventually.
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.
I don't think it's possible to have it both ways. A commitment to free speech means you get more garbage and conspiracy theories, but in exchange you get more intellectual conversations for adults, something you increasingly can't find on Reddit due to its overbearing moderation. Reddit itself has a good track record of banning subs, with only a few exceptions, but it's mostly the moderators and Reddit-enforced mod policies that have caused its decline.
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).
Thanks for those examples, I will take a look at them.
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.
> Are there examples I may have missed that take this approach and are better for it?
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.
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.