My Favorite Newsletters, 2022 Edition.

The newsletters I'm currently reading can roughly be divided into three categories: everything internet (online culture, trends, memes), programming (front-end development and general computer science principles) & computers (Mac OS, productivity), and language & culture.

Written by Eva Dee on (about a 3 minute read).

I'm an inbox 0(ish) type of gal. Today, my inbox contains between five and fifteen emails (it used to be around 10k!), primarily unread newsletters.

I spend around 30 minutes reading the newsletters (about two or three every day). Then, depending on the newsletter type, I either add some notes in Obsidian, add some flashcards to Anki, bookmark the articles, forward relevant bits to my friends or hit unsubscribe. 🔪

My bookmarks live inside my 'Reading' folder inside the Firefox browser. I again try to process two or three items each day (currently, that folder has 28 links! 😱).

If possible, I read everything with Firefox's reader view (not all websites allow it) - it has a nice big font and fewer distractions.

I try to be ruthless when it comes to unsubscribing or deleting bookmarks - if something has lingered in my inbox for more than a month, that clearly means I'm not interested, so bin it is. Life's too short, and there's an unending flow of interesting/useful information. 💡

I also try no to stress about it, and if at some point I accumulate too many of these unprocessed items, I just do a mass delete and start all over.

Everything internet

  • Garbage Day: Meme explainers, Tweet analyzers, social media trends (e.g., the slow death of Facebook, explainers of weird TikTok algorithms, conspiracy theories, the NFT madness, furries...?). Great for a general overview of what's happening online, sent several times a week.
  • Culture Study: deep dive into online culture and trends, often featuring interviews with authors or members of academia. Single topic, more in-depth. Sent... weekly?
  • Why Is this Interesting: different contributors, essays on various topics (e.g., how to find good olive oil, GeoGuesser, electric car wheels). Short, sent several times a week.
  • The Best Song Ever: deep dive into the history of a different song every week. Great for finding good music or reading up on your favorite authors.
  • The Whippet: very random musings.
  • Weekly Fillet. Five links from around the web, weekly. In praise of memorization was one of my recent favorite ones.

Programming & computers

  • Software Lead Weekly: recommended articles on software development and leadership
  • Pointer: a reading club for software developers, weekly
  • Obsidian Roundup: news, updates on the open-source note-taking tool Obsidian
  • Stefan's Web Weekly: web development news & productivity tips from my buddy Stefan. Weekly
  • Labnotes: quick tech roundup, funny, lots of Twitter links, weekly
  • OSx Daily: daily tip for mac computers, iPhones, and iPads

Language & culture

  • Mandarax: monthly newsletter from my favorite podcast! Everyday science (in Spanish). Mandarax lo explica todo!
  • Chaoyang Trap: nuanced reporting on Chinese internet culture in the form of a group chat. The most recent "episode" was on Shanghai's lockdown. Loooooong (but worth it).