A few rationalist-adjacent friends have told they treat my newsletters as link posts, and largely ignore the content itself (thanks, guys). I get it, gonzo party journalism isn't everybody's cup of tea.
But most people love a good, long link post. So, I wanted to run an experiment.
I counted, and there are 48 hyperlinks in my most recent post alone, linking to all manner of content. Here's a quick sample, chosen at random:
- An excerpt from C.S. Lewis's A Preface to Paradise Lost, regarding ceremony and religious ritual,
- An analysis of the realism of Bruce Willis's acting in Die Hard's barefoot-glass scene,
- A really good yoga studio, if you happen to live in NYC,
- An obscure Chet Baker record,
- A kabbalistic Hayim Nahman Bialik poem,
- A McMansion Hell post,
- And finally, the Raven Paradox.
So, read my newsletter, linked above. But skip the content, if you wish—you're allowed to!—and go directly for the links! Pretend the title is, I dunno, September Links, or something similar. The links themselves are highlighted in an eye-searing neon green, against a black background, and white text. You can't miss them:
Some Vim wizard could probably show me how to grep my markdown files and spit them out as a bulleted list, to published as-is. Or perhaps I can ask ChatGPT to do it. If there's enough interest, I'll give it a try with my next post.
But still, two posts, for the price of one! That's not bad...
I would probably read an inline intro, depending on how many of them they were. (Like I would probably read the first few, and then skim after that.)
Hover previews wouldn't do much; I usually read this kind of content on my phone.
It's less about convenience and more about me mildly disliking the nonlinear media experience. Sometimes a link is so intriguing that I do open it, but I almost never stop reading the original page to read the link — it's usually ends up in a queue as the next thing to read after I finish the original page. My prior for any given link being worth my time is pretty low, so I either need to need the additional info to understand the current context, or I need to think that the link would be worth reading on its own, completely separate from the page I'm on right now.