138 stories tagged substack, newest first.
62 points by ianand | 62 comments
Venkatesh Rao essay arguing that AI panic resembles mercantilist thinking before capitalism, drawing on Joyce Appleby's history of capitalism to frame intelligence as abundant.
5 points by NaOH | 2 comments
A personal essay in Oldster Magazine where Michael A. Gonzales recalls childhood mornings in Harlem listening to WNEW and WABC radio and how it shaped his musical taste.
18 points by toomuchtodo | 61 comments
A Graphs about Religion Substack post analyzing a 557-person survey on how Americans rate their own moral character by age and religious practice.
3 points by KentBeck | 1 comments
Kent Beck newsletter post arguing AI coding "genies" should remove toil while preserving the productive struggle that builds skill, using a RoboGym analogy.
36 points by tosh | 20 comments
Scott Stevenson's Substack essay arguing that good bets come from pattern matching rather than narrative reasoning and can't be easily explained in words.
19 points by embedding-shape | 0 comments
A Substack post by T. Chaz Stevens questioning the White House Press Secretary's claim to be a lawyer, referencing Florida bar status.
342 points by RickJWagner | 561 comments
Derek Thompson essay on his Substack about technological grief, using mathematicians' reactions to AI advances as a lens.
55 points by JohnHammersley | 35 comments
A Substack essay by physicist Nia Robles titled "AI was great until it was not," presented as a cautionary tale about relying on AI.
127 points by pavel_lishin | 53 comments
Ken Klippenstein Substack article reporting on Task Force Raider's role in the 2026 US elections and military officers' unease about it.
91 points by surprisetalk | 57 comments
A Substack article giving a visual, intuitive introduction to complex numbers, including a historical overview of how they were developed and why they are useful.
4 points by surprisetalk | 0 comments
A Substack essay from Chill Physics Enjoyer on how to choose which scientific experiment to pursue.
18 points by surprisetalk | 16 comments
A Substack essay by Justis Mills arguing that habitually asking AI like Claude to solve problems is a surprisingly rare and valuable skill.
925 points by doitLP | 653 comments
A MapWriting Substack essay by Parker Tatum asking whether dentists actually know what they're doing, questioning the evidence behind dental practice.
10 points by fathermarz | 4 comments
A Substack essay questioning whether perceived cognitive decline might instead reflect increasing sanity or changed priorities.
22 points by cobbzilla | 29 comments
A Substack essay by Rebecca Lowe posing six philosophical questions, in a choose-your-own-adventure format, for people who believe AI systems are conscious.
15 points by cliffclimber | 0 comments
Chain of Thought newsletter post featuring npm co-founder Laurie Voss on how AI-cheapened coding shifts value from software engineering to product engineering and context.
92 points by actfrench | 47 comments
A Substack post by Maya Sissoko offering parents a guide to rejection sensitivity in gifted and twice-exceptional children, covering connection and friendships.
120 points by young_mete | 160 comments
A Substack newsletter post by product designer Mete Polat arguing that Meta's Muse shows design matters in consumer AI for companies with the money to invest.
40 points by dblack12705 | 14 comments
Substack post by Dylan Black examining the calibration of Jev, TypeSafe's "System One" classifier model, contrasted with LLMs as System Two models.
6 points by bluepeter | 3 comments
Ethan Mollick's One Useful Thing Substack essay revisiting his view that humans must manage AI agents like an organization, in light of the bitter lesson.
63 points by ekluger | 4 comments
An essay on The New Critic Substack recounting the author's experience attending SlutCon, a conference about dating, flirting, and sexuality.
66 points by btables | 56 comments
A personal Substack essay by Robert Ross reflecting on reaching 13 months of sobriety and the less eventful phase of the journey.
458 points by firstSpeaker | 459 comments
Alex Ewerlöf's opinion essay arguing that AI and LLM coding tools have not solved software coding, drawing on his experience building AI systems.
15 points by speckx | 5 comments
Mark Manson Substack essay arguing that highly intelligent people get trapped by their own ideas, opening with the story of professor Malcolm Caldwell's 1978 trip to Cambodia.
281 points by zzzeek | 204 comments
Substack essay by Eoin Higgins arguing that calling AI agents "rogue" lets companies like OpenAI avoid responsibility for their behavior.
406 points by minimaxir | 168 comments
A Substack essay by the mother seen in a viral San Francisco Giants game clip, giving context about her husband and family that night.
7 points by barry-cotter | 1 comments
A Substack essay by Jack Despain Zhou criticizing Nikole Hannah-Jones's argument that parents should keep children in public schools to improve them.
26 points by surprisetalk | 1 comments
A Substack post by an amateur physicist describing a new strategy for doing home experiments after reorganizing a messy lab to fit limited free evenings.
268 points by azhenley | 257 comments
Christian Kästner's Substack post describing how he redesigned course assessments after AI agents could complete all his homework assignments.
24 points by martythemaniak | 1 comments
A Substack newsletter essay arguing that the AI safety movement is centered on a predatory cult in Berkeley and its members shouldn't shape policy.
167 points by NaOH | 85 comments
A Substack post by Brad Montague with his drawn remembrance of Warren Zevon's 2002 appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.
20 points by surprisetalk | 16 comments
A Substack blog post about the author's attempt to test Coulomb's law at home and reflections on developing fluency with physical laws.
32 points by longitudinal93 | 28 comments
Substack essay by Michael Garfield and Simon Quarmby tracing how rent extraction, not profit, built the modern economy from enclosure to Big Tech's metered AI.
1004 points by networked | 415 comments
A Substack essay on the not not Talmud blog explaining why the author is fascinated by Papua New Guinea and what they think everyone should know about it.
377 points by shubhamjain | 281 comments
Ed West's Substack essay on children's media diets and doomscrolling, discussing James Marriott's 'The New Dark Ages'.
386 points by gpi | 93 comments
Engineering Leadership newsletter post by Gregor Ojstersek arguing that good team culture boosts productivity more than AI, which helps only when culture is right.
818 points by Ariarule | 328 comments
Adam Mastroianni's Experimental History Substack essay "I like 'em thick," subtitled an apology to his English teachers, apparently about writing style.
524 points by rzk | 452 comments
A Substack essay by Davide Piffer arguing that AI's edge over mathematicians comes from a vast symbolic working memory rather than superior reasoning.
611 points by speckx | 319 comments
Blog post by Elizabeth Tai arguing that Substack writers should maintain their own independent websites rather than relying solely on the platform.
463 points by benbreen | 222 comments
Benjamin Breen's Res Obscura essay arguing quality non-fiction books counter AI slop, introducing a vibe-coded tool indexing prize-winning books.
484 points by yenniejun111 | 435 comments
An essay on the Art Fish Intelligence Substack by Yennie Jun reflecting on whether people offload too much thinking to AI and the value of thinking for ourselves.
403 points by toomuchtodo | 185 comments
Matt Stoller's BIG newsletter post arguing that major egg producers settled a DOJ and state price-fixing case for fines far smaller than their conspiracy profits.
422 points by herbertl | 730 comments
A newsletter essay by Markham Heid on how wearing earbuds like AirPods influences people's beliefs and pushes them apart socially.
511 points by pseudolus | 219 comments
A Substack essay by Matthew Morgan for The Republic of Letters on how Bill Watterson refused to compromise Calvin and Hobbes and then withdrew from public life.
424 points by theahura | 402 comments
A Substack post on 12 Grams of Carbon discussing concerns about "Fable", prompted by the author's AI coding agent refusing a task while building HTML games.
1210 points by WillDaSilva | 1326 comments
A Substack essay by Owen McGrann on his newsletter The Palimpsest titled "The Dead Economy Theory," arguing the idea should be taken seriously.
520 points by garycomtois | 201 comments
A Substack essay by writer Shawn Smucker titled "Please Use AI," published on his newsletter The Courage to Live It.
463 points by obscurette | 494 comments
Steve Magness essay arguing that restricting children's freedom to roam beyond their street or yard has costs, citing statistics on declining independence.
403 points by gok | 100 comments
Radley Balko's Substack post responding to Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's accusation that his reporting was unethical.
403 points by Qem | 249 comments
Paul Krugman Substack post arguing that insider traders are profiting from oil futures moves, illustrated with a Brent futures price chart.
319 points by evakhoury | 305 comments
Substack post by Miguel Conner explaining his plan to spend three months coding by hand without AI tools.
322 points by zenincognito | 182 comments
A Substack post recounting how the author's Google Workspace account was suspended as 'hijacked' after he accessed it from overseas, despite DNS-verified domain ownership.
826 points by mmcclure | 576 comments
Derek Thompson essay arguing that the spread of gambling and prediction markets in America will cause worse social harm than people expect.
983 points by Amorymeltzer | 198 comments
A Substack essay by Beth Mathews explaining the color theory and history behind seafoam green paint in industrial control rooms.
465 points by Stwerner | 283 comments
A Substack short fiction piece, "Warranty Void If Regenerated," written with Claude's help, set around a rural equipment repair shop.
859 points by guilamu | 266 comments
Gary Marcus Substack post arguing that Sam Altman publicly supported Dario Amodei while signing a deal that took away Anthropic's business, calling it a scam.
867 points by mikece | 593 comments
Glenn Greenwald Substack essay arguing Amazon Ring and Google Nest show how extensive the U.S. state-corporate surveillance apparatus has become since Snowden.
514 points by jampa | 133 comments
A blog post by Jampa Uchoa sharing non-obvious lessons learned over ten years working as an engineering manager.
455 points by edent | 334 comments
A Substack post by James O'Malley describing how he rebooted his social life, offered as self-help for the New Year.
409 points by surprisetalk | 245 comments
A Substack post by Joanna Bregan ranking children's toys by the ratio of playtime to clean-up time, from a parent's perspective.
338 points by surprisetalk | 183 comments
A Substack post by Joanna Bregan ranking children's toys by their ratio of play time to clean-up time, from a parent's perspective.
700 points by florian_s | 436 comments
Substack essay by Kenyan writer Marcus Olang' arguing that his formal writing style, shaped by Kenyan education, is wrongly mistaken for ChatGPT output.
337 points by nutanc | 245 comments
A Substack essay arguing that AI is being forced into search bars, operating systems, and creative tools, and should instead be adopted slowly and organically.
363 points by casca | 242 comments
A Substack essay by Eli Stark-Elster on Unpublishable Papers arguing children need spaces and a world free of adult supervision to play.
338 points by eatitraw | 145 comments
Cate Hall's Useful Fictions essay "Maybe you're not Actually Trying," on selective agency in capable people.
555 points by eatitraw | 378 comments
Sasha Chapin's Substack essay describing six stages he went through learning to overcome social awkwardness and connect with people.
619 points by lindowe | 274 comments
A Substack essay by Ben Goldhaber surveying non-human entities, beyond corporations, that have been granted legal personhood, such as ships.
460 points by zdw | 538 comments
A Seeds of Science post by psychologist Adam Mastroianni exploring why higher intelligence doesn't seem to make people happier.
571 points by stillatit | 478 comments
Tell HN post explaining that X's app now preloads linked pages in a background webview when a tweet is opened, inflating referral traffic numbers for sites.
441 points by nowflux | 395 comments
A Wreflection newsletter essay comparing the current state of AI to the dial-up era of the internet in 1995.
369 points by toomuchtodo | 415 comments
Matt Stoller's BIG newsletter essay arguing corporate-run gambling and online sports betting are economic coercion and should be abolished.
410 points by egonschiele | 78 comments
Chapter 1 of Aditya Bhargava's illustrated introduction to linear algebra on Duck Typed, covering Gaussian elimination and the row vs column picture.
1079 points by recroad | 614 comments
A Substack post criticizing Google Search, showing that searching for Midjourney surfaces paid competitor ads above the actual product, which appears fifth.
427 points by LaurenSerino | 200 comments
A Substack personal essay by Bess Stillman about grieving her husband Jake a year after his death and how society expects grief to expire.
338 points by davidscoville | 536 comments
A Substack post by David Scoville recounting how he lost $130,000 to scammers using a fake Google call, spoofed Google email, and authenticator sync.
707 points by jger15 | 194 comments
An essay by Henrik Karlsson on Escaping Flatland arguing that sustained attention to almost anything makes it loop on itself and bloom into richness.
633 points by surprisetalk | 338 comments
Adam Mastroianni's Experimental History essay "Face it: you're a crazy person," subtitled "why your brain needs a boxcutter."
475 points by Stwerner | 368 comments
Scott Werner's Substack essay arguing nobody yet knows how to build software with AI, drawing on building Protocollie in four days without touching the code.
598 points by macawfish | 793 comments
A Substack essay by Michael Ellsberg arguing a Supreme Court ruling effectively ends free speech protections for sexual writing online, and asking whether his literary site is now illegal.
375 points by mhga | 149 comments
Owen Jones Substack post about a letter signed by over 100 BBC journalists alleging the broadcaster is forced into pro-Israel coverage.
442 points by drankl | 354 comments
A Substack essay by Freya India arguing that people now define themselves through labels and diagnoses, turning personalities into marketable products.
330 points by imartin2k | 279 comments
Ted Gioia essay on The Honest Broker arguing tech companies are forcing unwanted AI features on users, calling it tyranny rather than innovation.
652 points by alihm | 183 comments
A Substack essay by Maalvika arguing that excessive ambition and perfectionism keep creators from starting and finishing their work.
353 points by glasscannon | 216 comments
Substack post by Dan Sutherland on why he left his tech job to work on chronic pain after years of persistent unexplained pains.
338 points by jger15 | 141 comments
Cate Hall's Useful Fictions essay arguing that people should accept the embarrassment of being a beginner (the 'moat of low status') to learn new skills.
448 points by bilsbie | 240 comments
Jack Morris essay arguing that major AI breakthroughs, including LLMs, came from new datasets rather than new ideas or methods.
654 points by echollama | 404 comments
A Substack essay on how Silicon Valley companies engineer addictive products that monetize users' attention and relationships.
371 points by crescit_eundo | 249 comments
A long primer essay on the Owl Posting Substack by Abhishaike Mahajan explaining why endometriosis is a scientifically interesting disease.
400 points by vinhnx | 156 comments
Addy Osmani's Substack article offering a playbook of prompt engineering techniques for getting better results from AI coding assistants.
748 points by weltview | 334 comments
A Better than Random Substack essay arguing that being useful at work is different from being valued, and that the distinction can be subtle.