Here’s some real gems that I make sure to keep up on.

I’m gonna skip my incredibly-long webcomics list, and show off some of the more interesting informational and long-form stuff I like to read.

Futility Closet

Futility Closet is one of my all-time favorites. Daily (at least), Greg Ross writes up a short article on an unusual fact, piece of history, or story. Sometimes these are accompanied by videos and photos as well. They’re always entertaining, and often completely unexpected.

Hacker News Daily

Hacker News is a Reddit-like site hosted by Y Combinator. There’s a strong focus here on technical articles, but also quite a bit of tech-focused news and some product demos. I subscribe to this RSS feed, which is automatically built out of the day’s top 10 best performing links that have not been on the HN Daily before. It’s a bit much to keep up with Hacker News itself, so this RSS feed is invaluable.

HighScalability

HighScalability is very much like the HN Daily in terms of topics covered, though it strays to anything related to tech. There’s much more on here related to infrastructure, for example. The posts you really want to keep your eyes open for are the “Stuff the Internet Says on Scalability” series. This is a dense link dump with quotes pulled out of each article, making it much easier to pick out what’s interesting to read and what’s not. This week’s article is topped by a site that claims to have mapped the dark web.

Slate Star Codex

SSC is a long-form blog written by a big name in the rationalist community, Scott Alexander. He’s a psychiatrist, and several of his articles are focused on that, but his topic list is all over the place. His posts are well written and well reasoned, and generally they tend to explore ideas rather than promote particular ones. One of my favorites is I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup which explores how we self-select the communities we’re involved in and create thought bubbles despite how many diverse people we encounter on a daily basis. Highly recommended, even if you only read part of it.

Taylor Olmstead

Taylor is a friend of mine from back in high school (and even before that if memory serves). He and I made a bet that we could produce one piece of writing every week on our respective blogs, and we’ve been doing pretty well at it so far. His writing is wide-ranging, covering Apple news, personal opinions and viewpoints, and the arts. I’ve been enjoying his recent posts. I think my favorite so far is Running the Streets which relates his personal experience of exploring Atlanta on foot.

Sam Casavant

When I told my brother Sam about Taylor and I’s blog pact, he decided he wanted to jump in as well. In my opinion, he’s been showing Taylor & I up with his weekly humorous fiction compositions. His recent Science of Hiccups is great, as is The King of Space.

Conclusion

These are the things I’m most excited to see show up in my RSS feed reader. They’re always interesting. Do you have a favorite you’d like to share? I’d like to hear about it. Let me know in the comments.