You might enjoy seeing the complexity of optimising these systems that you know so well but only superficially. There may be articles about your region, and it will point out some huge mistake with the subway interchange at <x> that is totally obvious once you read about it. At that point you'll be sharpening some pitchfork and trying to find where that totally corrupt mayor from the 90s now lives. But on the way over to his nursing home you miss the connection at <x> and have enough time to finish the article, which gives a reasonable-but-not-totally-satisfying reason the problem couldn't be avoided.
You turn around, and pretty soon you're back in a happy mood. Because at least you don't have to suffer some US transit system.
(Sorry, I got slightly carried away in the narrative fiction there)
If you love Wait But Why, Randall Munroe's What If? blog has a similar semi-visual explainer style, but has more of a focus on scientific answers to ridiculous hypotheticals: https://what-if.xkcd.com/
ribbonfarm - a longform blog devoted to unusual takes on both familiar and new themes. What we call “refactored perception.”
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/
meaningness - Better ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—around problems of meaning and meaninglessness; self and society; ethics, purpose, and value.
https://meaningness.com/
Whereas sites like SSC and LessWrong are rationalist, both of these suggestions are predominately post-rationalist, but perhaps you’re like I was – reading the rationalist sites because I didn’t know there were post-rationalist sites
Another highly-technical blogger that I’ve enjoyed has been Ken Shirriff’s: https://www.righto.com/ Mostly focused on microcontrollers and vintage computing, but with other stuff mixed in (he did a great series in understanding the technical side of Bitcoin, although he’s definitely not a “cryptocurrency enthusiast”).
Yeah, but even there, he hasn't posted since August :( nowadays I think the only regular public activity is his participation in the podcast All the President's Lawyers - besides @Popehat on Twitter, of course.
Probably a matter of personal preference, but if you're not a fan of low-quality, intellectually dishonest shitposting in your feed, I'd avoid @Popehat on Twitter. I enjoy his columns and blog posts, but Twitter does weird things to some people's brains.
OTOH, my tolerance for that stuff is extremely low, so the SNR may suit someone else.
Pat Collison [1] (Co-founder, CEO Stripe) doesn't blog often, but is one of the most interesting and insightful people I have ever read
I don't know much about Alexey Guzey [2] yet, but he also has some very good posts (he writes more often and more long form, and is more similar to Gwern and SSC, in part because I think those two blogs have influenced him heavily)
> Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.
> Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.
There's currently about 360 articles about math, science, programming, data-mining, geekery ... in style similar to a hero of mine, the late Martin Gardner.
I love reading Granola Shotgun, it's a blog focused on how to navigate the current macro trends in urban/suburban real estate design but from a very interesting and personal viewpoint.
I find Joel Spolsky's (CEO of Stack Exchange and Co-founder of Trello and Fog Creek Software) blog to be informative for software engineering and management (link: https://www.joelonsoftware.com).
In the beginning of 2019, I felt overwhelmed with information overload across Twitter, HN, and the dozen or so newsletters I subscribed to.
I ended up unsubscribing from just about everything and now follow a handful of great curators instead. It's probably the best thing I did last year to find more signal online.
It's a short email that comes out every week or so and includes a funny/entertaining collection of ideas across a broad range of topics (AI, communication skills, evolutionary biology, etc.).
A blog that I recently discovered is the Sakuga Blog, which analyzes the process of anime production, the works of individual animators, and the state of the anime industry. The blog is very nuanced and has led me to better appreciate the artistic qualities of anime.
The blog is authored by Bill McBride who correctly called the 2008 downturn and housing market blow-up. I find his data points and corresponding analysis to be much better than any coverage in major media organizations, and it has majorly influenced the financial decisions that I have made over the past decade.
At the moment he is posting about a series of 10 questions about how the US economy will perform in 2020 that are worth checking out.
I found Do the Math really good, especially the posts assessing various energy sources' abilities to provide mankind with its energy needs. There hasn't been a new post in quite a while but the ones there are well worth a read.
Ben writes about technology companies from a business model perspective. He also has a good podcast where he weekly summarizes his blog posts about company specific platform and aggregator data/revenue models. Very insightful.
If you're a resident of the Pacific Northwest, Cliff Mass -- an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington -- has an excellent regional climate and weather blog. https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/
If you're at all interested in ships, history, or the intersection of ships and history, I can wholeheartedly recommend Naval Gazing: https://www.navalgazing.net/
Here's my list of Feedly subscriptions that update reasonably often I put together. Should all be easy to find on Google.
Shtetls optimised, slate star codex, xkcd, smbc, existential comics, put a num on it, don't worry about the vase, fake nous, overcoming bias, backreaction, preposterous universe, Krebs on security, the old new thing, torrent freak, Matt Levine Bloomberg, random critical analysis, Scott Sumner econlog, the money illusion, stratechery, freakonomics, Greg mankiw blogspot, the grumpy economist, crimestory.com, likelihood of confusion, Fred Wilson AVC
Hmm, I see it somewhat oppositely. I find that most books are bloated and spend most pages regurgitating information I already know, where blog posts tend to present only the novel information, using hyperlinks to link to information required to understand the given post.
If I know nothing about a topic I find books to be really valuable, but for topics I'm already knowledgeable on, they are terribly inefficient.
Hello Dominic
You are looking for new ideas and I have several for the NHS which will save a lot of money and improve the service.
I run Rosetrees a private family charity that has funded cutting edge medical research for 30 years using venture philanthropy - £40m of seed corn money has taken us more than half way to our target of £1bn of major Grants.
Experts describe us as unique and every day we work on new ideas,available free to co-donors who now exceed £20m.
Happy to meet/speak
Richard Ross Rosetrees Trust Richard@rosetreestrust.co.uk
Tel 0208 952 1414
You might enjoy seeing the complexity of optimising these systems that you know so well but only superficially. There may be articles about your region, and it will point out some huge mistake with the subway interchange at <x> that is totally obvious once you read about it. At that point you'll be sharpening some pitchfork and trying to find where that totally corrupt mayor from the 90s now lives. But on the way over to his nursing home you miss the connection at <x> and have enough time to finish the article, which gives a reasonable-but-not-totally-satisfying reason the problem couldn't be avoided.
You turn around, and pretty soon you're back in a happy mood. Because at least you don't have to suffer some US transit system.
(Sorry, I got slightly carried away in the narrative fiction there)