Reading Recommendations
Non-Technical
- A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (Bret Devereaux): Roman / medieval historian, often focused on warfare via a pop culture lens; much more interesting than it sounds and one of my primary intellectal influences
- The Whippet: Fun facts and trivia with a strong voice
- Robin Sloan: Bay Area-based writer (Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Sourdough) whose newsletter are always full of insight; Year of the Meteor was the direct inspiration for my newsletter
- Craig Mod: Tokyo-based photographer known for long walks around Tokyo
- Money Stuff: Serious financial news delivered with dry humor; funnier than most standup comics
- Bits About Money: Newsletter about the intersection of finance and technology; slightly strange style but deeply informative
- Waxy.org (Andy Baio): Classic blog
- The Untranslated: Blog reviewing major literary works not yet available in English translation
- Robin Rendle: Writer and designer known for gorgeous photo essays like “In Praise of Shadows”
- maya.land: Classic personal website with a variety of “evergreen” and blog content.
- Granola Shotgun: Bay Area urbanist / landlord with an interesting perspective
- Restricted Data (Alex Wellerstein): Historian exploring the development of the nuclear bomb; known for creating NUKEMAP
- Astral Codex Ten (formerly Slate Star Codex): One of the intellectual hearts of the Rationalist movement; worth paying attention to if only for influence on Bay Area intellectual fashions
- Marginal Revolution: Arguably the most influential libertarian active today; deeply opiniated but can be worth reading, albeit with a truckload of salt
Technical Writing
For each of these I dropped the description but included a link to a representative post for each. Many of these have a blog and newsletter with slightly different content.
- Julia Evans
- Aphyr:
- apenwarr:
- brandur:
- Dan Luu:
- Matt Rickard: