10 ms·
Ask HN: More magazines like Quanta and Noema?
I find the level of writing quality in the essays and articles of these two magazines quite impressive.
What other online magazines do you read?
- asciimike 4y agoI really enjoy Delayed Gratification (https://www.slow-journalism.com/); https://www.slow-journalism.com/); good breadth of globally diverse news, written a quarter or more after the event, to discuss the long term impact.
- YounesDz 4y agomassivesci.com The key differentiator in this digital magazine is that it offers science stories as told by scientists. And that's quite rare in a clickbait-y world.
- mharig 4y agoIMO, some blogs are of better quality than most magazines. E.g. History related: acoup.blog Physics: backreaction.blogspot.com
- nohaydeprobleme 4y agoThe Conversation (https://theconversation.com/ https://theconversation.com/) publishes news-style articles by working academics and graduate students, so the contributors typically have a technical background relevant to the subjects they are writing about (making the publication comparable to Quanta). Nautilus magazine also publishes excellent science journalism (https://nautil.us https://nautil.us) with high-quality writing comparable to Quanta. In contrast with The Conversation, the contributors are typically professional journalists and writers—the writing quality is therefore often much higher and more literary than The Conversation's, though Conversation contributors have relevant specialist knowledge more often than Nautilus contributors. Also, Lapham's Quarterly (https://www.laphamsquarterly.org https://www.laphamsquarterly.org) is perhaps comparable to Noema, as the magazine publishes essays and analyses of modern issues, often via making comparisons between current affairs and important parts of history. This looks similar to Noema's approach of analyzing current events from an academic perspective, from noticing references to academic publications in several essays featured on Noema's front page.
- abhgh 4y agoSeconding the recommendation for Nautilus. I used to subscribe to their print edition for a while, and had loved it.
- wannabebarista 4y agoNautilus' print quality is next to none!
- konradx 4y agoLong answer. You are a boot other ?
- nohaydeprobleme 4y agoI'm not sure what you mean, but all the publications are non-profit organizations—none of which I am affiliated with. Lapham's and The Conversation also don't have any paywalls, though Nautilus does have a soft paywall of two articles a month (this is comparable to the magazines mentioned by other users in this discussion, with similarly fairly relaxed or stricter paywalls).
- roughly 4y agoHadn’t seen Noema before, thanks for the pointer - someone already mentioned nautilus, Aeon.co is quite good with a very diverse set of topics, and Hakai (https://hakaimagazine.com/ https://hakaimagazine.com/) has some very good environmental writing.
- jnsaff2 4y ago+1 for Hakai, they have a very good podcast too.
- wahnfrieden 4y agohttps://libcom.org https://libcom.org
- Vaslo 4y agoHoly commieland
- wahnfrieden 4y agoi hope you haven't mistaken it for dreadful state socialism. this is anarchist territory.
- y0ssar1an 4y ago> The name libcom is an abbreviation of "libertarian communism" It blows my mind that some people think communism hasn't been tried enough times. "Yes it failed 999 times before, but THIS flavor of communism will definitely work!"
- mharig 4y agoAt least it does not fuck up a whole planet when it fails - in contrary to capitalism.
- y0ssar1an 4y agolol right, because China and the Soviet Union are wonderful examples of environmentally friendly economic systems /s > Coal supplied about 55% of China’s total energy consumption in 2021 https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/CHN https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/CHN > It was one of the fastest decimations of an animal population in world history—and it had happened almost entirely in secret. The Soviet Union was a party to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, a 1946 treaty that limited countries to a set quota of whales each year. By the time a ban on commercial whaling went into effect, in 1986, the Soviets had reported killing a total of 2,710 humpback whales in the Southern Hemisphere. In fact, the country’s fleets had killed nearly 18 times that many, along with thousands of unreported whales of other species. > The Soviet whale slaughter followed no such logic. Unlike Norway and Japan, the other major whaling nations of the era, the Soviet Union had little real demand for whale products. Once the blubber was cut away for conversion into oil, the rest of the animal, as often as not, was left in the sea to rot or was thrown into a furnace. https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-senseless-environment-crime-of-the-20th-century-russia-whaling-67774 https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-senseless-environment-c...
- compacct27 4y agoSky and Telescope is fantastic for hobbyist astronomy with only a slightly less scientific bend than Quanta
- candlemas 4y agohttps://inference-review.com/ https://inference-review.com/ but it doesn't publish frequently.
- kklisura 4y agohttps://aeon.co/ https://aeon.co/ I find essayes on aeon.co really good.
- clmay 4y agoDefinitely second the Aeon recommendations you and others have put forth.
- spookybones 4y agoThird
- wannabebarista 4y agoI like Aeon and have regularly read it for a few years. I've found the articles to be pretty high variance, so I've been hesitant to recommend in general. When it's good, it's good e.g. https://aeon.co/essays/how-gods-beat-astronomers-in-the-solar-system-name-game https://aeon.co/essays/how-gods-beat-astronomers-in-the-sola....
- oliveshell 4y agoI feel I get a lot of value for the $60 I pay annually to read The New Yorker online. [1] It's not perfect, but it's become essentially the only place I consume "long-form articles about interesting stuff"-type content, which I think they still do better than anyone. 1: https://www.newyorker.com https://www.newyorker.com
- ternaryoperator 4y agoAgreed about the New Yorker. Likewise, agree with the exact same description for the Atlantic. And I have bounced back and forth between them over the years.
- sphars 4y agoBe sure to find out to see if you can check out issues from your library through Overdrive/Libby. Granted, I have to read it via a browser but can still read for free.
- joshmarinacci 4y agoI’ve subscribed to the Economist for years and love it. You can skim or go deep as desired.
- viburnum 4y agoI used to be a fan of The Economist but after a while I figured out that it’s better at sounding smart than being smart. If they ever write about a field you know we’ll you’ll see what I mean.
- qnleigh 4y agoMaybe it depends on your field a bit. I'm in physics, and a few of their articles on particle physics and quantum computing have really impressed. They hit all of the main points and caveats that almost all other news sources usually miss.
- nohaydeprobleme 4y agoThe depth of the reporting also depends on the article. For a particular example, I thought The Economist's article on GPT-3 published in June 2022—before ChatGPT would later be released in November—was particularly good, as the article soberly discussed at length the strengths and weaknesses of large language models, without overhyping the technology (paywall): https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2022/06/11/huge-foundation-models-are-turbo-charging-ai-progress https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2022/06/11/hu... However, it's also fair to note that many articles in their weekly issue—often at 600-800 words—just don't have the space to go in-depth enough into an issue, in contrast to a feature in The New Yorker or another long-form magazine like Foreign Affairs. I've found The Economist to be a useful publication to hear about interesting problems I might otherwise have never heard of, and to read a fact-checked concise overview of a particular topic, before looking for a more in-depth source if there is a motivation to read further into the topic.
- PaulHoule 4y agoI feel that way about Bloomberg Businessweek. There was a time when I was doing a lot of business development work and it seemed I had some insider insight into some story in in every issue. That is, I had been in on a sales call with the people at some company they profiled, or knew some competitors in stealth mode or somebody had told me and my partner more than they should have about what was talked about in some article.
- frutiger 4y agoI just wish Quanta Magazine would do a print edition so I can subscribe. Sadly it does not seem part of their mission: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/soapbox/article/78788-digital-or-print-that-publication-better-have-a-mission.html https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blo....
- mFixman 4y agoSame. I find it hard to read long and complicated articles from a screen, and I would pay a lot for a weekly subscription to dead-tree magazine Quanta. Right now I print articles I'm interested in, which is far from the most efficient solution.
- rbanffy 4y agoI’d be happy with a PDF version with good layout. I get Communications of the ACM, IEEE’s Computer and Software that way. But I still miss BYTE. The articles are half the fun only - the ads painted a colourful portrait of the computer scene back then.
- jay5252 4y agoA great quality center/independent political view is AmericanAffairs journal, a quarterly: americanaffairs.org
- saperyton 4y agohttps://thinking-about-things.com/ https://thinking-about-things.com/ is great, it's one interesting article three times a week. I've learned about a lot of interesting blogs/publications from them.
- SonOfLilit 4y agoScott Alexander's blog at https://astralcodexten.substack.com https://astralcodexten.substack.com is my favorite intelligent reading material. For more in the same style, try https://asteriskmag.com/ https://asteriskmag.com/.
- cma 4y ago[dead]
- clmay 4y agoA bit more tech and tech-impact focused, but I've enjoyed https://logicmag.io https://logicmag.io.
- clmay 4y agoYou may also like Emergence Magazine. It's significantly more humanities/culture oriented but similarity wide-ranging and imaginative. Come to think of it, I think imagination is one of the qualities that makes Quanta so magical. Ostensibly it's a magazine about the interactions of formal and natural sciences, but they're not afraid to include a bold dash of imagination.
- pncnmnp 4y agoIf you're interested in retro stuff, I highly recommend checking out Byte Magazine's archive at https://worldradiohistory.com/Byte_Magazine.htm https://worldradiohistory.com/Byte_Magazine.htm. They have issues dating from 1975 to 1994, and the search functionality is pretty good. While not all of their content is of high quality, there are some fascinating gems hidden in there. For instance, their February 1992 issue has a section on Archie, one of the earliest internet search engines: > For many people, particularly programmers and engineers, the Internet means "info- booty": shareware and freeware source code, documents, graphics, and data sets available by file transfer downloads and from E-mail servers. Sites like UUNET and The World each have several gigabytes' worth of publicly available archives. These are but two of the hundreds of sites with archives accessible via these methods. Even admitting a fair amount of redundancy among archives, it still adds up to about 100 gigabytes, and new sites and offerings are coming on-line every day. > With so many different archives, it can be hard to figure out where (and at what network address) to access the items you want. If you don't know what you want beyond compilers or CP/M applications, it's even more overwhelming. > The "archie group" at McGill University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) has one solution to the problem: archie (archive without the v), the Internet Archive Server Listing Service (for access, see reference 2). Archie is a central database of information about Internet-accessible archive sites, plus server programs that provide access by telnet, anonymous file transfer protocol (FTP), E-mail, and the Prospero distributed computer system. https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Byte/90s/1992/Byte-1992-02.pdf https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Byte/90s/1992/Byte-199... (page 147) Also, there is Communications of the ACM (https://dl.acm.org/magazine/cacm https://dl.acm.org/magazine/cacm). Many of their articles are free to read.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoThe archive at World Radio History has much broader interest, with hobby electronics, professional electronics, radio and TV management and programming, and some popular music history.
- macshaggy 4y agoI miss Byte and Nybble mags. There are no good programming/computer mags that take you into the software and teaching programming at different levels. Not just beginner, intermediate, etc., but software and low level hardware for specific chip sets. Raspberry PI mag is the closest thing. Maybe I should just downgrade my desktop to a RPI and enjoy the hobby again. Maybe, build a robo-dog/cat/creature.
- timtzm 4y agoI like the New Philosopher magazine. https://www.newphilosopher.com/ https://www.newphilosopher.com/
- saltymimir 4y agoThe magazine has ceased publication, but I really enjoyed reading https://reallifemag.com/ https://reallifemag.com/.
- blueridge 4y agohttps://hedgehogreview.com/ https://hedgehogreview.com/ https://www.thenewatlantis.com/ https://www.thenewatlantis.com/ https://thepointmag.com/ https://thepointmag.com/ https://shop.generalsemantics.org/collections/etc https://shop.generalsemantics.org/collections/etc https://www.analogsea.com/ https://www.analogsea.com/ https://magculture.com/blogs/journal/jonathan-simons-analog-sea-review https://magculture.com/blogs/journal/jonathan-simons-analog-...
- ibn_khaldun 4y agoJust wanted to say that your contributions to HN were missed the last few weeks. Please, start a blog or something. I mean you don't have to...but, yeah. Thanks.
- blueridge 4y agoThanks for this, though you must be referring to someone else! I post infrequently and rarely compose full comments here on HN!
- dang 4y agoSorry to pile on offtopically, but can you please email me at hn@ycombinator.com? I want to send you a repost invite.
- ibn_khaldun 4y agoNo, I'm referring to you! I'm the type of guy who can feel full off of 7 cashews, your infrequent and incomplete remarks are similar to those cashews.
- clnq 4y agoSome other thoughtful things I read - https://bigthink.com https://bigthink.com, https://www.freethink.com https://www.freethink.com, https://positivepsychology.com https://positivepsychology.com (written for therapists but helps me see new perspectives), https://www.newscientist.com https://www.newscientist.com, https://futurism.com https://futurism.com.
- ars 4y agohttps://www.symmetrymagazine.org/ https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/
- musictubes 4y agoLiberties Journal continues to impress me. Culture, Politics, Poetry, good stuff. Leon Wieseltier is the former Literary Editor of the New Republic and is now chief editor of Liberties. https://libertiesjournal.com/ https://libertiesjournal.com/
- Diapason 4y agoI love https://www.themarginalian.org/ https://www.themarginalian.org/ (formaly called Brain Pickings)
- wannabebarista 4y agoWorks in Progress: https://worksinprogress.co/ https://worksinprogress.co/ Most articles are focused on public policy but there is a good spread of topics. Strangely, it was acquired by Stripe last year.
- callistus 4y ago* https://thepointmag.com/ https://thepointmag.com/ * https://asteriskmag.com/ https://asteriskmag.com/ - they just published the second issue. I really enjoy the topics covered and the quality of writing.
- miguelazo 4y agoHarper’s magazine is great for general interest (much less pretentious than the New Yorker). One of the oldest magazines in the country. Noema has some good stuff, although check out their advisory board. So many high profile neoliberal ghouls that the first time I saw it I thought it was a joke. It introduced me to Byung-Chul Han, for which I am forever grateful. Hope they can keep it up since they were hiring for a senior editor for a while there recently…
- gregwithtwogs 4y agoI like n+1 https://www.nplusonemag.com/ https://www.nplusonemag.com/
- run2arun 4y agoYou can find many more via https://www.aldaily.com https://www.aldaily.com
- leemailll 4y agoYes! Seldom see aldaily mentioned now, but aldaily was for quite a while the best aggregator site for stuff in the general humanity fields. I still remember vividly reading things from it back in college days and amazed by the quality of the links.
- optimalsolver 4y agoAeon: https://aeon.co/ https://aeon.co/ Nautilus: https://nautil.us/ https://nautil.us/
- ted_dunning 4y agoYou should check out the Times Literary Supplement. Very, very interesting articles. Fiendish crossword. They don't much cover any technical material, but they cover all kinds of everything else. The reviews are often much better than the original material.
- tomduncalf 4y agoIf you have a tablet, it’s worth checking out the apps PressReader and Libby. I’m not sure if it works in other countries, but in the UK you can login with your local library card number (which you should be able to sign up for online) and get access to lots of free digital copies of printed magazines (and newspapers) including high quality stuff like The Economist
- wmwragg 4y agoI really enjoy the Resurgence & Ecologist[1]. I also like the IEEE Spectrum[2] [1] https://www.resurgence.org/ https://www.resurgence.org/ [2] https://spectrum.ieee.org/ https://spectrum.ieee.org/
- alan-stark 4y ago+1 for IEEE Spectrum. I recently stumbled upon print issue archive from 2010-2012 and was delighted by their coverage of private space flight and 3D printing. To me, Spectrum is an early high-level overview of interesting technology.
- solresol 4y agoNew Scientist (but I read the print version).
- dinkblam 4y agoSymmetry [https://www.symmetrymagazine.org https://www.symmetrymagazine.org] is quite similar to Quanta.
- hackandthink 4y agoSomebody has to pay for it: Quanta magazine is financed by the Simons Foundation (Hedge Fund billionaire). Noema seems to be a pet project of Nicolas Berggruen (Hedge Fund billionaire). The name sounded familiar: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Berggruen#Berggruen_bei_Karstadt https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Berggruen#Berggruen_be...
- mr_mitm 4y agoI haven't heard of Jim Simons before, so I looked him up on Wikipedia. He sounds like quite a character. I, too, would stop wearing socks and fund a non-profit science magazine if I had a billion dollars.
- mikeodds 4y agoIf you want some further reading on him, the man who solved the market, is not a bad read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43889703-the-man-who-solved-the-market https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43889703-the-man-who-sol...
- hackandthink 4y agoHe is the Simons of Chern–Simons theory.
- gnatman 4y agoI liked his interview with numberphile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNznD9hMEh0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNznD9hMEh0
- belter 4y agoThe story how he got fired ...https://youtu.be/QNznD9hMEh0 https://youtu.be/QNznD9hMEh0
- ArtWomb 4y agoQuality is evident immediately from the lead story on Noema: "A Parliament of Earthlings". Fascinating read for a Sunday morning on AI efforts to enhance whale conservation (with plenty of knowing nods to Star Trek IV). At least the first half of the article felt that way. But instead the article just sort of devolves into a rolling argument for a "Gaia 2.0" hypothesis. Curious, I delved a bit deeper. And what I found is a kind of supremacy of faith in our ability to delivery planet-scale geoengineering. Terraforming Planet Earth, in a nutshell ;) https://www.noemamag.com/planetary-sapience/ https://www.noemamag.com/planetary-sapience/
- kingkongjaffa 4y agoNot technical but https://www.themarginalian.org/ https://www.themarginalian.org/ is a fabulous online publication.
- walthamstow 4y agoIt's not going to be that relevant to many people here, but there is a longform soccer writing magazine called The Blizzard which is excellent. It's edited by Jonathan Wilson of 'Inverting the Pyramid' fame.
- akudha 4y agoI don’t have a link to share, but I’d like to thank OP and every comment in this thread. There are some gems here. Of course one can google, but when something is recommended by a human, and is purely based on merit, it is much more trustworthy than a random site filled with ads looking to make a buck. In short, HN is awesome
- johanam 4y agologic magazine is wonderful too: https://logicmag.io/ https://logicmag.io/
- viburnum 4y agoLogic has been absolutely fantastic but they’ve recently switched owners/editors so it may not be the same in the future.
- SomeHacker44 4y agoSince nobody shared the Quanta URL yet: https://www.quantamagazine.org https://www.quantamagazine.org
- akeck 4y agoOutside Online - Long Reads: https://www.outsideonline.com/tag/outside-features/ https://www.outsideonline.com/tag/outside-features/
- COGlory 4y agoUndark: https://undark.org/ https://undark.org/ It's along the lines of Quanta or Nautilus but with more of an investigative type of work, the main goal being bringing under-reported science-adjacent issues to light. They do have a slightly leftist tilt but it's still mostly professional. I haven't really noticed them doing that thing left-leaning publications do where they act as though some matter of opinion is fact, and can't conceive of counter-arguments. They do a good job investigating all angles, in my experience. I had the pleasure of accidentally meeting one of their editors for something entirely unrelated, but we did chat about the magazine and I was pretty impressed with her desire for rigor rather than agenda.
- HungSu 4y agoYou seem to be interested in the Slow News Movement! I keep a list of online slow news magazines (including Quanta) here: https://hung.su/slow-news-movement/ https://hung.su/slow-news-movement/ Some magazines that no one has mentioned: https://worksinprogress.co/ https://worksinprogress.co/ https://pudding.cool/ https://pudding.cool/ https://knowablemagazine.org/ https://knowablemagazine.org/
- mapierce2 4y agoFor convenience, here are the RSS/Atom feeds for some of the publications mentioned in this thread: Quanta https://api.quantamagazine.org/feed/ https://api.quantamagazine.org/feed/ Noema Magazine https://www.noemamag.com/feed/ https://www.noemamag.com/feed/ Aeon https://aeon.co/feed https://aeon.co/feed Nautilus https://nautil.us/feed/ https://nautil.us/feed/ The Point Magazine https://thepointmag.com/feed/ https://thepointmag.com/feed/ Asterisk Magazine https://asteriskmag.com/feed https://asteriskmag.com/feed Symmetry Magazine https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/feed https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/feed n+1 Magazine https://www.nplusonemag.com/feed/ https://www.nplusonemag.com/feed/ Harpers Magazine https://harpers.org/feed/ https://harpers.org/feed/ Low←Tech Magazine https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/feeds/all-en.atom.xml https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/feeds/all-en.atom.xml Public Books Magazine http://www.publicbooks.org/feed http://www.publicbooks.org/feed The New Atlantis https://www.thenewatlantis.com/feed https://www.thenewatlantis.com/feed
- swayden 4y agoJust read this, and i think the whole publication is worth of note: https://thecritic.co.uk/putin-shute-and-nukes/ https://thecritic.co.uk/putin-shute-and-nukes/ Not specifically science oriented though.
- hackandthink 4y agoI do not know any magazine worth reading in german. I'm getting Sueddeutsche Magazin but most of it is just boring. Decades ago I enjoyed Spex, some writers are still around (Diederich Diedrichsen, Dietmar Dath). Telepolis from Heise Verlag is somewhat boring but not so bad: https://www.telepolis.de/ https://www.telepolis.de/ Do I miss anything?
- mharig 4y agoThe podcast Omegatau omegataupodcast.net They have interviews in german and in (some sort of) english. Unfortunately, that is the only important one you missed.
- flawn 4y agoYou can check Refind, they have a good recommendation AI behind their suggested articles and often you can find other magazines to the one's you like!
- kjellsbells 4y agoForeign Affairs. Its basically where the serious international affairs community (Western) talks to one another. It has a print mag (monthly) with about 8 long form articles, an online version, and an app where you can read the articles offline or have them read out to you. They also run webinars where specialists talk, very interesting. You wont agree with every writer, but every article is at least thought provoking.
- call-me-al 4y agoam I the only one wondering: why is nobody partnering with these companies to create podcasts out of their content and split the ads revenue?