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Ask HN: Which substacks do you read as soon as it hits your inbox?

by sharps_xp on 6/16/23, 1:43 PM with 58 comments

just curious for some good insightful reading on whatever you’re passionate about.

  • by idopmstuff on 6/16/23, 2:17 PM

    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.

    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.

  • by eatonphil on 6/16/23, 1:56 PM

    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.)

  • by epiccoleman on 6/16/23, 2:13 PM

    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.

  • by bkohlmann on 6/16/23, 2:47 PM

    Rob Henderson - deep insights in human psychology from the Lens of an ivy-league educated academic who grew up as an impoverished foster kid.

    Also coined the term “luxury beliefs”

    https://www.robkhenderson.com/

  • by aaronax on 6/16/23, 2:14 PM

    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:

    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.

  • by dhr on 6/16/23, 2:11 PM

    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.

  • by lostfocus on 6/16/23, 1:57 PM

    It doesn't hit my inbox but my feedreader but I usually read https://www.garbageday.email/ first thing in my reading time

  • by tomgs on 6/16/23, 2:04 PM

    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

  • by jkkramer on 6/16/23, 2:20 PM

    3 that I always watch for:

    - 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/

  • by no_wizard on 6/16/23, 2:46 PM

    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.

    [0]: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/

  • by mkaic on 6/16/23, 2:50 PM

    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.

    [0] https://www.noahpinion.blog

  • by enumjorge on 6/16/23, 2:17 PM

    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.

  • by xrendan on 6/16/23, 2:19 PM

    The Diff [0] and Capital Gains [1][2] by Byrne Hobert are excellent.

    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

  • by lachlan_gray on 6/16/23, 2:10 PM

    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.

    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...

  • by photochemsyn on 6/16/23, 2:34 PM

    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.

  • by japhyr on 6/16/23, 2:54 PM

    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. :)

    https://www.ignorance.ai

    https://mostlypython.substack.com

  • by rebeccaskinner on 6/16/23, 2:06 PM

    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.

  • by sdfghswe on 6/16/23, 2:30 PM

    I love this:

    https://www.thebignewsletter.com/

    Truly high quality writing.

    Also, Matt Levine.

  • by ciguy on 6/16/23, 2:07 PM

    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.

    1: https://adamtooze.substack.com/

  • by iamgoat on 6/16/23, 10:34 PM

    Nick Cave - The Red Hand Files https://www.theredhandfiles.com/

    I wouldn't say immediately or even regularly, but I do like to catch up on them every so often. Short food for thought.

  • by jger15 on 6/16/23, 2:52 PM

    big fan of the below:

    -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/

  • by jot on 6/16/23, 2:42 PM

    Right now these weekly breakdowns of highly profitable companies: https://netincome.substack.com/

    But there are more ConvertKit based newsletters I read.

  • by giraffe_lady on 6/16/23, 2:22 PM

    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.

  • by ifyoubuildit on 6/16/23, 3:00 PM

    People seem to have strong opinions about him here, but Matt Taibbi.

    I started off with Glenn Greenwald because of his past with the Snowden work, but over time his style put me off.

  • by caldarons on 6/16/23, 2:52 PM

  • by collyw on 6/18/23, 2:54 PM

    Bad Cattitude. https://boriquagato.substack.com/

    Dead Man Talking. https://metatron.substack.com/

    PANDA Uncut. https://pandauncut.substack.com/

    Some data driven sanity in the last 3 years.

  • by pnzrdrgoon on 6/16/23, 2:11 PM

    https://questingbeast.substack.com/

    It’s the best OSR news.

  • by mahathu on 6/16/23, 2:08 PM

    Maybe Baby by Haley Nahman!

    https://haleynahman.substack.com/

  • by rcarmo on 6/17/23, 1:44 PM

    None. I’ve seen a marked decrease in quality across the board and stopped using it a few months ago.

  • by TheLoafOfBread on 6/16/23, 5:51 PM

    None, because my ISP from some odd reason decided to block the Substack domain.

  • by maroonblazer on 6/16/23, 2:30 PM

    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.

    [0]https://imightbewrong.substack.com/

  • by WirelessGigabit on 6/16/23, 2:42 PM

    Only RSS. On my own time.

  • by crosen99 on 6/16/23, 2:29 PM

    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.

  • by menotyou on 6/16/23, 1:53 PM

    None

  • by 1MachineElf on 6/16/23, 2:20 PM

    Curtis Yarvin / Mencius Moldbug: https://graymirror.substack.com/

    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.

  • by chewmieser on 6/16/23, 1:59 PM

    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.

    So I guess none here as well.