Blogroll

Last updated on August 2, 2021, with a personal blog appendix from July 16, 2023.

Applied philosophers

The only true philosophers of our time.

• Mathflaneur (by Nassim Taleb)
• Ribbonfarm (by Venkatesh Rao, who also has a newsletter of half-baked ideas he calls Ribbonfarm Studio)

The new scientists

People without major academic credentials who have interesting ideas about science.

• Alexey Guzey (also see Guzey’s Best of Twitter, and also see New Science)
• Applied Divinity Studies
• Astral Codex Ten (former Slate Star Codex)
• Fantastic Anachronism
• Gwern
• Nintil

The old scientists

People with major academic credentials and interesting ideas, something to teach, or both.

• I am Intramural (from the NIH Intramural Research Program)
• Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science by Andew Gelman
• Statistical Thinking by Frank Harrell
• Stephen Wolfram Writings
• The Mathematical Oncology Blog (see also This week in Mathematical Oncology)

The ludites

People against modernity of one sort or another.

• Axiom of Chance (Simon DeDeo, who does not seem to have a Twitter account)
• Patrick Rhone (who does have a Twitter account)
• Study Hacks (by Cal Newport, whose Twitter account, if real, has been abandoned years ago)
• Wrath of Gnon (who is in fact — and sadly — all Twitter)

People doing their own thing

Unclassifiable but exhilarating.

• Craig Mod (and on Twitter) who walks, makes books, and takes photos.
• Garden of Forking Paths (by Abe Callard, who watches movies)
• Rands in Repose (by Michael Lopp, who manages people)
• The Sephist (by Linus, who makes his own software tools)
• Thought Asylum (by Stephen Millard, who makes other people’s software tools more usable)

Apple enthusiasts

Some tips, a few tricks, many opinions.

• And now it’s all this
• Brett Terpstra (if you have a Mac and use it for more than just browsing the internet and answering email — not that there is anything wrong with that — Terpstra’s tools will save you days of work; he could easily have been slotted in the category above, but the Apple tag predates all and he is an Apple lifer)
• Daring Fireball (by John Gruber)
• Hypercritical (a sadly neglected blog by John Siracusa although what you should really check out is the podcast of the same name which has been out of production for years but still fun and relevant)
• Macdrifter
• Marco.org (by Marco Arment)

Finance-adjacent

Economists and investors, for the most part.

• Global Inequality (by Branko Milanović)
• Marginal Revolution (by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok who also wrote an excellent textbook in economics which I plan on reading some day, likely in retirement)
• Pseudoerasmus (the last post was in 2017 so I’m not holding out any hope, though he is on Twitter)
• The Rational Walk (see also Rational Reflections and the Twitter account)
• 10-K diver (as close to a blog that a Twitter account can get)

Journalist-cum-substackers

Former or current journalists who now earn some or all of their living by writing newsletters via Substack, which is slowly reinventing blogs (in the sense of reinventing the wheel, not actually making them better and in fact in many was making them much worse).

• Everything Studies (by John Nerst)
• Galaxy Brain (by Charlie Warzel)
• Insight (by Zeynep Tufekci, who is hands down the best journalist currently writing)
• Slow Boring (by Matthew Yglesias)

Company blogs

For when I really want to know when the next update is coming.

• Devonian Times, from the makers of my note-collecting tool of choice, DEVONthink
• The Omni Group, makers of OmniFocus (and OmniGraffle, which I don’t use often enough for it to be essential but which is fairly
• Wolfram Blog, from the makers of Mathematica