Thread by @hautepop

Newsletters I read, a list:

1. @Matt_Muir's Web Curios

"Hold your breath as I raise you by the ankle and dunk you bodily into this murky, digital Styx, imbuing you forever with the power of webspaff like some sort of Poundland Achilles of modernity."
imperica.com/en/web-curios-…

Read Web Curios for:
- Voice
- Internet culture
- Everything that's happened on social media in the past 7 days
- Web games & interactive stuff
- Best longreads list anywhere. Particularly astute radar for sensitive & standout essays about gender, sexuality, bodies, relationships

2. The Interface by @CaseyNewton

Everything that's happened in tech & social media in the past 24 hours. Strong on Kremlinology and the whole the platforms vs. politics debate.
Read it for: links AND analysis. Useful.
getrevue.co/profile/caseyn…

3. Buckslip (@buckslipmail).

How to describe this one -- not just internet culture, but "Culture, given the internet."

Topics in the latest one include Amazon drop shipping hustles and the Marxist aesthetics of being Extremely Online.
us14.campaign-archive.com/?u=c9b445a0f01…

Buckslip is by Anna Duckworth (@duckwords), Eli Burnstein (@screamstein), John Di Palma (@theonlyjohnEVER), Chris Lange (@langedowne) and Patrick Pittman (@patrick_pittman).

Most of them have been at one point or another based in Toronto.

4. From Patrick Tanguay (@inevernu), Sentiers.

It's about technology and society - and cities, systems, the environment, history, scifi, and design. Covers stories like @craigmod on the future book, and @anxiaostudio & @janchip on Shenzhen.
us18.campaign-archive.com/?u=5125332501a…

(More to come in a bit!)

Actually seeing as @danoshinsky's called shared GDocs the new newsletters...

and I keep a To Read Later GDoc that's pretty much a newsletter anyway...

Why not share it?
docs.google.com/document/d/1is…

Here is @danoshinsky's not-a-newsletter on newsletters, btw:

"Welcome to Not a Newsletter, a monthly, semi-comprehensive, Google Doc-based guide to sending better emails! I’m Dan, and I’m the Director of Newsletters at The New Yorker."
docs.google.com/document/d/1py…

5. If You Pleats, @MelvinBackman's newsletter of writing-about-clothes he liked that week

tinyletter.com/ifyoupleats/le…

6. Warm And Weird -- Rahel Aima (@cnqmdi)'s hard-to-categorise link roundup

Featuring New York wigmakers, the neon signs of NYC's Chinatown, an ancient boardgame making a comeback in Iraq, and the evolution of flatfishes

warmandweird.substack.com

7. Thresholds by @hnnh_g, an artistic, occasional personal essay

"Any first feeling upon entering a foreign place, if it smells like exoticism or romanticism, should be kept in check."

tinyletter.com/hannah_e_grego…

8. "6", by Charlie Loyd (@vruba)

His Twitter bio is as good a description as any: "Miscellaneous, but lots of Earth stuff." Geography! Global plant smuggling. How drones are luring young Chinese people back to the countryside. Trash. Dirt. Satellites.

tinyletter.com/vruba/letters/…

9. Too Hot For Gmail, by @huwlemmey

"a collection of off-cuts, over-prints and other thoughts on sex, cities, technology and more. Too long for status updates, too useful for essays, too hot for gmail (so check your spam folder)."

tinyletter.com/huwlemmey/lett…

10. The Ann Friedman Weekly, by @annfriedman

I read for the generalist big-reads roundup, which Ann offers in inimitable, pithy form

us7.campaign-archive.com/?u=4a77dae67a7…

11. Other Valleys, by @anjali28

Tech news and startups from beyond Silicon Valley. If you work anywhere near this space, this one’s a must-read

tinyletter.com/othervalleys/l…

Stories covered by Other Valleys include how China recruits spies, Tirkey giving a bicycle to children whose parents quit smoking, and the growth of Facebook Lite, Messenger Lite and Uber Lite in emerging markets — ie how do you build an app for data throttling?

12. We Were Sometimes Being Bored.

Music writer @tomewing is listening to a new album a day this year, & writing them up weekly.

He’s got this knack for making you care about artists you’ve never heard of, from “clattering, muscular techno” to 60s jazz
tinyletter.com/tomewing/lette…

12. @benedictevans’ newsletter: mercifully short, to-the-point tech business analysis.

ben-evans.com/newsletter/

13. Nothing Here But Invaders (@nothinghere_but) is by a group of Australian speculative fiction writers, inc @m1k3y.

Conversational in style and covering a bunch of interesting ground: ecology, futures, crisis, decolonisation.
tinyletter.com/nothinghere/le…

14. Exponential View by Azeem Azhar

I’m about at my limit for tech newsletters by men mostly linking to things men have done or written…

…but Azeem keeps on hitting enough right notes that I’m still following
exponentialview.substack.com

In the latest issue: the rise of micromobility & cubesats (private satellites), the peaking of deep learning, critiques of Will.I.Am and McKinsey, and the question of who controls the public conversation.

Damn it! I should have called this glut of tech newsletters by men “dudeletters”.

I’d also like to have a conversation about why us gals aren’t publishing so regularly… (and it’s not bc kids or 2nd-shifting bc we’re not married or parents)… but that’s a conversation for FB.

15. Griefbacon by Helena Fitzgerald

She subtitles this “weekly-ish essays about crying in public”, and each time it arrives it makes me feel inadequate about my gender identity for not having so many big serious capital-F Feelings like this.
griefbacon.substack.com

“The hot sad online girl is beautiful in an aggressive way, horny in a way that acknowledges desire as a farce and a tragedy. She is defiantly and messily emotional, and the “online” aspect of her persona refers not so much to the internet as to a belligerent confessionalism”
—HF

16. Craig Mod (@craigmod) writes several newsletters.

There’s Roden, about what he’s been up to (craigmod.com/roden/)

And Ridgeline, a new weekly newsletter about going for long walks in Japan (craigmod.com/ridgeline/subs…)

Craig wrote recently about publishing infrastructure and the ‘future book’, which many of you have likely read.
wired.com/story/future-b…

In it, he talks a bunch about newsletters and monetisation — something he’s now doing with his own newsletters in quite an interesting way.

“I don’t start this membership program lightly, and I do it with all the fear and trepidation you’d expect of someone who isn’t a psychopath, who respects their audience, is generally self aware, who treats these sorts of asks like handling plutonium in a paper sack.”
—@craigmod

“By becoming a member you’re saying: ‘Craig, ya weird bird, I wanna to see more of your work in the world.’

That means oodles to me.”

I hadn’t previously seen Craig as the sort of man to say “oodles”, so I was amused by this.