The art of aggregation
Postcard #12
Hello and welcome back to another edition of THE POSTCARD, Unregistered’s fortnightly roundup of recommendations.
Thoughts, tools, and treats
Those who search for information on the web essentially face three options:
AI-powered chatbots that detach knowledge from its source and blend it into a kind of mush
search engines whose algorithms primarily follow commercial interests and tailor results to your previously shown preferences
compilations of linked articles by trustworthy individuals who read the web on behalf of others, allowing their readers to focus on the best articles.
This week’s POSTCARD presents newsletters curated by human beings who read tons of material and recommend the best to their readers.
World news
If it’s just the news you’re looking for, a major newspaper’s briefing like The Morning from the New York Times does the trick. If you want to reduce your news intake, try reading only the weekend edition of a paper.
Niche news
For those interested in a particular field, there are, of course, specialized niche newsletters and link collections for any number of topics. Pioneering blogs like John Gruber’s Daring Fireball or Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution continue to be great sources, too.
Longform reporting, analysis, and orientation
The most well-known newsletter in this category is probably The Browser, which offers hand-chosen articles, podcast episodes, and videos each day. I like their criteria:
„Would we go out of our way to recommend the piece to friends? Will it inform and delight the intelligent general reader? Will it still be worth reading a month or a year from now?“
On Substack, Conor Friedersdorf’s weekly newsletter, The Best of Journalism, separates the signal from the noise. His aim:
„to keep subscribers better informed than most while sparing them the frustration of wading through dreck; to amplify the work of deserving writers; to pop filter bubbles.“
Science, arts, and literature
For the arts, there’s the encyclopedic Arts & Letters Daily, „a thinking person’s guide to the world of art and ideas.“ A more „curatorial“ place to find your daily dose of interesting items from around the web is 3 Quarks Daily. Their motto:
„We want to provide you with a one-stop intellectual surfing experience by culling good stuff from all over and putting it in one place.“
Creative curation
A special category I like a lot is links carefully curated and commented on from the personal perspective of an eminent writer. Gurwinder Bhogal’s series of useful ideas is one of my favorites.
Noteworthy
“I always include the names of the people who created the content I am linking to, if I can figure that out. (...) I try to add something extra. (...) My most basic version of this is trying to provide context as to why I think this particular thing is worth reading (...) I might tie it together to other similar concepts (...) If the original author reads my post, I want them to feel good about it.“
—Simon Willison, reflecting on the ethics of his link blog
A mystery link leading into the unknown
This extraordinary article moved me. If you care about art, criticism, and the state of our world, chances are, it’ll move you, too.
As always,
Dirk
P.S.: Feel free to send me pointers to articles, books, sites, pods, tools, and treats that could be interesting for this roundup. While I cannot promise to link them, I read and appreciate every hint.
First I read the art of aggression, but that only made me smile on my own drives.
It has always been my source of culture: well sieved and curated names of films, music, books by my friends including the guy who's writing here. In a time of arbitrary abundant information, those keyholders, funnel-bottle-necks should be paid like I once paid some feuilleton d'art. Keep on doing so!, maybe a paywall for that sort of special postcard will do, like: If you want to read r e a l l y good books, follow here: cta.