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Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

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Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#131

Post by lhoff »

ismail wrote: post #96
eliben wrote: post #80

Books 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.

How do you avoid the problem of low signal to noise ratio? 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.

I only read books where i have a recommendation. This can either from a conversation or just a mention in a Blog post or here on HN in a comment.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#132

Post by clementneo »

ismail wrote: post #96
eliben wrote: post #80

Books 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.

How do you avoid the problem of low signal to noise ratio? 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.

I've found that two strategies help:

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)

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#133

Post by lhoff »

princeali_ wrote: post #73
unfolding wrote: post #70

I really like the Astral Codex blog[1]. It is rationalist blog that features a variety of long-form posts, book reviews, discussions, etc. I don't really know if I consider myself a rationalist or not but I find the posts, discussions, and community to be very stimulating. [1]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/

Thanks for posting this! Seems super dope with a large backlog of articles to dive into!

Someone wrote a nice intro to Scott Alexanders Blogs with links to some recommended articles.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#134

Post by Veen »

Three Quarks Daily often surfaces high-quality long form content from a broad ideological cross-section. As others have mentioned, Arts and Letters Daily is often interesting too.

https://3quarksdaily.com/

https://www.aldaily.com/

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://astralcodexten.substack.com/

https://razib.substack.com/

https://www.theinsight.org/

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#136

Post by Havoc »

Not sure it counts as long form since it isn’t written but I’ve been loving YouTube documentaries on big infrastructure projects and geopolitics issues. There are a handful of small content creators cranking out quality content in these areas

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#137

Post by feynman69 »

Havoc wrote: post #136

Not sure it counts as long form since it isn’t written but I’ve been loving YouTube documentaries on big infrastructure projects and geopolitics issues. There are a handful of small content creators cranking out quality content in these areas

What are the channel names? I've been looking for some quality YouTube videos. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#138

Post by edanm »

ismail wrote: post #96
eliben wrote: post #80

Books 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.

How do you avoid the problem of low signal to noise ratio? 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.

Read more broadly.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#140

Post by CodeGlitch »

kzrdude wrote: post #125
CodeGlitch wrote: post #115

Podcasts. 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

My tips would be (a bit different than those maybe): - 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)

Thanks for those.
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