About this newsletter
“Links” — boring title and all — started in 2005 as an informal, sporadic e-mail to a few colleagues. It was nothing more than some plaintext links that had caught my interest. But as a curious and unrepentant procrastinator, my weekly reading was extensive enough that the best things I found weren’t bad.
So despite remaining stubbornly low-tech and unpolished, the list grew steadily, first by word-of-mouth, and then, to my surprise, with a few media mentions. At that point, I got enough “What is this and who are you?” e-mails to write a version of this page.
The content I include is pretty random. (Recently, I put together a roundup of my favourite sources.) I do read every word of what I send out, and I filter entirely by what I find interesting — which has meant that some topics like palaeontology, sports analytics, and behavioural psychology are probably overrepresented. Until recently, I've tried to be non-partisan and to even avoid political writing, but I must admit Trump has made this difficult. (As you can tell from some of the long pieces I send out, I’m a fan of nuance, which just isn’t his style.) I'll keep trying though; it does sadden me a bit when a somewhat partisan piece — that, in my defence, I found interesting! — leads to a wave of unsubscribes.
The links are roughly rank-ordered by some blend of quality and seriousness. I consider 4-star links “must read”; there are typically only around 20 per year. That said, a few people tell me they mostly click 1-star links since they're fast and often amusing.
Finally, I do this in my spare time, which is not always plentiful, so this doesn’t always go out regularly. (I’m now aiming for fortnightly.) Apologies in advance. Should you need more reading material, you should check out the archive (which goes back to 2017) — particularly the “best of” issues [2021] [2020] [2019] [2018] [2017].
About me
Unlike what I read, I’m not particularly interesting. I'm an American living in London, which means I attempt British spellings as much as I can. As a former strategy consultant, I still work too much, but if not for that, I wouldn’t procrastinate as much, and this newsletter wouldn’t exist.
