Dougald Hine's personal letters and essays reflect on stepping away from the promises of modern progress and asking what is worth doing with our time. Recent issues focus on John Berger and Ivan Illich, offering reading recommendations, close readings of Berger's work, and reflections on writing a book.
Website: https://dougald.substack.com
Astral Codex Ten publishes long-form essays on AI safety, rationality, politics, science and culture, alongside reader-written book reviews and weekly open threads. Readers get argumentative, carefully reasoned analysis plus community news such as meetups, surveys and grant-related projects.
Venkatesh Rao writes personal, theory-driven essays that build loose models of technology, history and culture, including his world machines theory and his experience of working with AI coding agents. Issues also cover his book club readings, protocol fiction and commentary on debates about humanism and AI.
Khaled Salih's newsletter offers long-form essays on intelligence, error-correction, and how institutions get trapped by their own ideas, currently drawing on his forthcoming book BACKSPACE and commentary on Macron's response to French protests. Readers get sharp philosophical argument applied to current political events, with close reading of key sentences and a clear critical stance.
Personal essays and cultural criticism on philosophy, the arts and poetry, drawing on memories of record collecting, Dylan's religious turn, poems about Nazi atrocities, and pop-chart history. The writer mixes anecdote with close reading and historical research to explore what art and evil reveal about people.
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