Long form content in magazines still used to have limited pages. So there needed to be a balance between information and prose. So even in long prose, the content was well edited, every sentence brought something important to the table.
Nowadays, on the web, an article could have infinite length without any limits. Less editing skills required and more importantly, the longer you stay on page, the better their metrics.
So the content tends to be way longer with more passages that do not really add anything to the central message. Most of them are approaching novellas in length.
At one point in time, this became such a big time sink for me, I wrote a firefox extension to warn me how long the page was and how long I spent on it. I am a moderately good reader and still some of these articles would typically take 45 mins to finish.
One heuristic I follow nowadays: Before reading, I think about what my purpose of this article is, what I hope to learn from this exercise: (It could just even be entertainment)
A few mins in, I see if this purpose is being fulfilled. If yes, I continue. If not, I just bail out.
That said, the long-form essay is an ancient genre—much older than the modern magazine article—and they have always been filled with "irrelevant" asides, tangents, artistic flourishes, and so on. Concisely conveying their "central message" wasn't the primary point of the form, and people who enjoyed that type of essay wouldn't expect a linear explanation of the topic. The prose style, imaginative complexity, unexpected comparisons, digressions, and explorations were integral to the genre.
Sadly, great essays of that type take a long time to write and edit, and most people aren't interested in reading them. So we get long, repetitive, unimaginative junk instead.
I really hate that thing where the authors tease you with an interesting story like "Mr X did this really interesting thing" and the third paragraph starts with "Mr X grew up in a nondescript village and now we take a detour to highlight how he grew up that has basically nothing to do with the thing I expected to read about here" ...
Anyway ... I grew up in Germany in the early 80s and my parents were completely normal people ...
My personal favorite read from the past months is definitely the article on ivermectin. Its a hell of a ride and he was able to create a very well working (at least for me) metaphor that allowed me to imagine how the covid-denial people came to their conclusions.
He changed to Astralcodexten after the New York Times threatened to Doxx him (for "policy" reasons), which basically upended his entire life, since he had (and now still has, in a slighly altered form), a successful psychiatry practice. Brilliant guy.
The author reads voraciously and follows common threads across many works, compiling her thoughts into articles which often contain beautiful prose in their own right. I often pickup book recs from here that get me into reading about art, poetry, love, spirituality, and more, which I never would otherwise.
And, while I'm commenting, some of my favorite Substacks who tend to write long content are:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/
https://justinehsmith.substack.com/
- https://moretothat.com/ by Lawrence Yeo
- https://www.quantamagazine.org/
I didn't realise till now, I read at least 2-3 articles a week from the above list. Well written long form content.
I see it's published twice a month. I also see that it has an RSS feed that doesn't seem to have an obvious link on the front page: https://lrb.co.uk/feeds/rss
It's more than book reviews, also social and political commentary.
And often the book reviews will be nominally about 3-4 related books, and give really interesting in-depth takes on historical events, social movements, etc.
Archive.org tends to have out-of-copyright stuff, LibGen newer stuff, but stuff in between (mid to late 20th C) you can often get by "borrowing" the ebook from archive.org for a short time (free, requires sign-up.) LibGen also has the vast majority of scientific papers/journal articles I look for, no matter how old or obscure.
Archive.org's holdings are truly amazing for older works. Newer, in-copyright works can be checked out, though I find the e-reader software, which works well on desktop, is poorly-suited to tablets.
Other sources of legal works include:
- Project Gutenberg: https://gutenberg.org/ (60k books)
- Standard Ebooks: very-well formatted quality ebook, largely public domain https://standardebooks.org/
- Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/ Public-domain works, downloadable in ePub and other formats.
There are numerous other smaller collections focusing on specific topics which may also be useful. Searching for "filetype:pdf", "filetype:epub", or "filetype:djvu" may find ebook formats elsewhere.
Their lending library has lots and lots of in-copyright stuff. With a free account (takes minutes to setup), you can borrow them (read in an online browser, or via DRM-controlled PDF) for an hour or for two weeks. My impression is that they limit simultaneous borrowers to the number of physical copies the Archive possesses.
If it sounds too good to be true, give it a try. It's only drawback is a poor search engine (just use a general one like DuckDuckGo and add "site:archive.org" to your search)
formerly known as Slate Star Codex prior to doxxing by Cade Metz at the New York Times.
which is a shame because the writing is generally good as you note.
I have seven library cards and I can read almost anything for free. If none have what I want, they will often order it and notify me when it arrives. All from my sweet Gesture chair. Also Kanopy has wonderful classes for free.
Although there can be good long-ish form content on the internet, there's simply too much incentive to spew loosely connected ideas that aren't fully formed and serve mostly to get attention. And a lot of it really is just chum to get clicks, however nicely it's presented.
The way I see it, written content on the internet went the way of TED talks. I remember a time when TED was popular, at least in my social class, and now it's pretty widely mocked not only for being vapid but by lowering the barrier to entry via TEDx. Medium is a perfect example of this phenomenon.
https://www.instapaper.com/daily (contains some automated spamming, flooding submissions to trick the popularity scoring I guess)
I recently discovered https://expmag.com but can't really tell yet, since it's too fresh in my bookmarks. I enjoyed the article about clothes in landfills though (mentioned a while ago on HN).
I'm getting tired of long-form content that wanders around the point. That's just taking a small subject and adding words. I like long form when the subject demands it and its complexity makes the long form useful.
- https://fasterthanli.me, already quite popular on HN. Amos articles are often really long and have lot of details, they read like adventures and I love that.
- https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing, Old New Thing by Raymond Chen at Microsoft. He’s writing articles since ~20 years and has a lot of really cool anecdotes regarding low level Windows stuff.
I stopped trying to find platforms with long form content, personal blogs is the only thing that works for me (and HN, but that’s an addiction more than anything else :p).
TRIGGERnometry: https://audioboom.com/channels/4991237.rss
Lex Fridman Podcast: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur: https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:23460834...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/ADV2256857693
- Fall of Civilizations podcast (Has few but some absolutely gorgeous, long episodes).
- People I mostly admire
- Freakonomics (earlier episodes better than current IMO)
- The Joy of X
- Numberphile and The 3b1b podcast
- In Our Time (BBC)
I like how they might be talking about a serious subject one minute, then crack a joke at just the right time.
I started "The Story of Us" [3], but haven't gone through all. I think it crossed the threshold of long-blog-post and became almost a book-in-a-blog.
[1] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/10/religion-for-the-nonreligious...
Arts and Letters Daily: https://www.aldaily.com/
Lit mags: LRB, NYRB, Paris Review, McSweeneys
Lit-adjacent mags: Harpers, Laphams Quarterly
I usually follow a lot of these via RSS, and subscribe to some.
Beyond that, several newsletters. Astral códex ten (as already mentioned) and tomas pueyo’s uncharted territories come to mind.
The Browser is easily the best reading money I’ve spent in a long time. $5/mo and it finds such good articles.
yes, they are 2.5hrs+ long, but IMO at least half of it is chit-chat and irrelevant to the guests knowledge often about fitness/hunting/deer/monkeys. I prefer much more focused podcasts, where the interview has prepared a series of well targeted questions.
I think that he believes that by not researching before the interview, he will be better able to represent and empathize with his viewers, who also won’t have done any research before watching. I’m not sure if this is good interviewing technique, but it certainly gives the interviews their characteristic disorganized feel.
Try some of William F. Buckley's old Firing Line episodes, available on YouTube.
Some of the episodes of JRE with Bill Burr I've watched more than once.
Texas Monthly
Its not sensational, but just well researched and put together. A good example is bootstrapping buyouts: https://neckar.substack.com/p/reginald-lewis-bootstrapping-b...
Cedric's commoncog already mentioned here.
And second these resources:
- https://waitbutwhy.com/ by Tim Urban
- https://moretothat.com/ by Lawrence Yeo
My general preference these days is non-fiction. For discovery methods see this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29609479
Generally my problem is far too much content and not enough time, rather than the reverse.
Online content seems to have rapidly diminishing quality. Search and discovery tools are increasingly disappointing.
More on general "finding stuff" here: https://tildes.net/~misc/szx/what_tips_or_tricks_do_you_use_...
XXX Review of Books are good, but they're basically convoluted essays. Good for anybody else, not for my time though
Aeon focuses much on philosophy. I no longer read this though because it's too academic for my taste
Brain Pickings, Arts & Daily, 3 Quarks Daily focuses much on classics, mostly - I'd rather read classics that reading writings about classics, nowadays
Meaning quantity =/= quality. That being said, a lot of short content today has near zero quality.
When TikTok reached first place on the DNS thingy, I decided to try it, so as to not feel like I'm out of touch. My findings were that TikTok works on disappointment, it's going to show you low quality content for so long that you drop your expectations to almost zero, which means that when you do eventually see some content with at least a bit of effort put into it, it gives you a dopamine hit and you feel like it was all worth it. I personally have not been able to find any usefulness from the app except consuming time, which it's great at. But if you've got a lot of time to waste you might as well be reading a book or something, not sure. I haven't really been able to fit TikTok into my life, but I don't really feel like I'm missing anything.
Also food for thought: "YouTube used to have much more short form content, but then the algorithm forced many to making videos that are at least 10 min long. Doing that YouTube removed enough creators for a platform like TikTok to be viable and successful. Now YouTube introduced YouTube Shorts. Think..." (https://twitter.com/LoveMortuus/status/1485258235137429507?t...)
Also popular substack Newsletters. It totally depends though, some are just hot air even in the paid versions and others really have good content also for free subscribers.
If there is more need for content I will go through my list of 100+ blogs and just grab some random old article about compiling gtk on gentoo or similar… haha
This is on Telegram and will require admin approval. I had to keep this as a private channel. I read a lot; if I find (and come across) good book recommendations, I post them too (including the books). You can save content locally, but the channel is restricted to disallow forwarding.
This is intentional, because once I plan for comments and group discussions, I need something more substantial than fluff.
Medium is more popular but they constantly bug youto subscribe and have too much tracking.
Not infra, but similar long form docu vibe: Johnny Harris, Coldfusion, Vice.
I'd probably start with Johnny Harris - his style is somewhat unique. All over the place when it comes to topics but usually thoughtfully executed & researched.
Worked with this company for building their Newsroom Workflow solution.
Seriously. Books are the ultimate long-form content; their authors typically spend years researching and writing them, and you can sample many reviews before committing to read one.
Some books in the popular business press can be reduced to several pages, with the core idea, rationale, and examples. Yet they all end up being longer than needed with tons of exposition.
Such books about:
- "the economy is shit and we are just waiting for the mega crash" (popular in Germany)
- books about sustainability (buy less shit, don’t waste so much)
- anti-consumerism (we consume to much stuff, but buy this book)
- minimalism (own less stuff)
- bootstrapping a software company (find an audience, build a product, release, iterate)
- nutrition (eat food, mostly plants, not too much, everything else can’t be properly researched because of long time horizons and an incapability to find causation)
- correlation is not causation (and here are one hundred examples, Freakonomics style)
- success (all survivorship bias)
One person's useful content is another person's filler. It depends on how familiar or agreeable you already are with the material or advice in the book, and how difficult a read you're willing to tolerate.
Its definitely not a 100% method but i feel like that the chance that the book is not well written is much lower when at least one person found it readable/enjoyable.
I have a Trello Site for that where i create a card for every book and write down or copy+paste the recomendation.
I also typically download the book from libgen first, take a quick look at it and then buy the book.
If it’s been around for generations and people have and continue to find it worthwhile, it’s a pretty good indicator that it will be a good use of time.
It’s not perfect, but the hit rate is much better than when I dip into pop psych/business/self-help books.
I do still read modern books, but only when something strikes me as particularly worthwhile.
I spend some time researching books before I read them; very low signal-to-noise books typically will have reviews saying that. I also mostly avoid whole categories of books which are prone to this; I still get bitten once in a while, but like in one book out of 20 maybe, so overall it's not bad.
1. Readily give up on a book, or skim through the rest, the moment you realise that the book has 400 pages of filler
2. Find recommendations from thought leaders you subscribe to, while staying true to Rule 1 (Sometimes it's just a matter of taste, and it's counterproductive to force yourself to finish reading something just because someone else said that it's a good book)
I used to read a lot of business books. It got to the stage where half of the stories and quirky little anecdotes kept recurring. It got boring.
But that's probably a sign that I've read enough in this field!
Now I rarely read new business books, but still find a lot of interest in other non-fiction in areas I know a lot less about.
But if you’re looking for a binary, then does it have an index?
Had I had the option to listen to audiobooks while I was in school, I would’ve been a much better student. I never read any of the assigned reading when I was in school because I couldn’t keep my focus on the words, but I’m finding myself cruising through about one very long book per month. Most of the books had been non-fiction (social science and history mostly), but more recently I’ve been getting into novels. They’re just so easy to listen to at the gym, or while driving, or while playing video games.
For all of you who have kids, please encourage them to listen to audiobooks if they don’t like reading paper books. That is, unless you think it’s a valuable skill to know how to bullshit their way through a paper on a book they haven’t read…
More broadly, I find a strong correlation between the amount of time it takes to write something and the value, which shouldn't surprise us: The product of years of study and writing and rewriting should be far superior to the same person's hot take on social media. Books > quarterly journals > monthlies > weeklies > dailies > 24/7 hot takes.
Here is my long piece on Vladimir Putin's long game that I co-authored with retired CIA officer Glenn Carle: https://www.fairobserver.com/politics/making-sense-of-vladim...
As of now I try to limit the time I spend on HN. I skim through articles very quickly. OTOH I recently reorganized my collection of research papers, most of them obtained thanks to that Kazakhstani heroïcal woman. I pick one and read it from start to finish, over the course of a week, a month, whatever. I often do not understand what I read. Little by little, reading again after a few months the same article, I understand one paragraph more :)
The two golden rules:
- stick to the most important, breakthrough papers
- read a paper from start to finish, even if you do not understand it. Do not block, just keep reading.
www.perell.com
But I'll repeat what others said, that long form != high quality, especially netflix documentaries are so bad that I simply will not watch them, they seem to be optimized only to waste your time, and somehow always manage to avoid leaking any information at all.
[1]: https://lithub.com/aneurysm/
I've also become a fan of buying ebooks through the Apple Books app on my phone, if you extend the definition of "online" a bit.
