Friendly Indie micro-publishers
Randomly featured
Kneeling Bus
How the internet has transformed our relationship to physical space, one another, and our own selves
Kneeling Bus is a weekly newsletter. I’m an urban planner and lapsed tech guy who is constantly scanning the landscape for examples of those two domains colliding in fascinating ways. No matter how online we get, we still have to live in physical space—usually that means cities—and learning how to inhabit both domains simultaneously is more important than ever.
A list of small micro-publishers — most of them run by one person — putting out great content through their websites, newsletters, and podcasts.
When you link to the website, every visitor gets a random pick from the carefully curated list. Simple. No tracker, no ads, no cookies, no algorithm, just the websites.
Border Studies
A newsletter by Samantha Culp, a writer, filmmaker & strategist based in Los Angeles
Chaoyang Trap
A newsletter about everyday life on the Chinese internet
It’s a regular, usually fortnightly, exploration of contemporary China, one important niche at a time. We’re interested in marginal subcultures, tiny obsessions, and unexpected connections.
Dense Discovery
A thoughtful weekly newsletter helping you feel inspired, be productive & think critically
Join over 35,000 readers for a densely curated weekly email with fresh discoveries at the intersection of design, technology and culture. Free of buzzwords, hype and FOMO.
Design Fiction
Thoughts and experiences materializing ideas, making strategy, and creating products through design. Topics will range from ‘Design Fiction’ to design more generally to anything that feels inspiring and relevant to thinking about what’s next.
Flash Forward
Possible & not so possible futures
A critically acclaimed podcast about the future. In each episode, host Rose Eveleth takes on a possible (or not so possible) future scenario — everything from the existence of artificial wombs, to what would happen if space pirates dragged a second moon to Earth.
Kernel Magazine
A publication examining technology's role in shaping our collective future
Reboot publishes Kernel and is a publication and community reclaiming techno-optimism for a better collective future. We don’t publish platitudes on “tech for good,” and we won’t teach you to pass coding challenges or productivity-hack your day.
The Kid Should See This
Smart videos for curious minds of all ages
The Kid Should See This is a Webby Award-winning collection of 5,000+ kid-friendly videos, curated for teachers and parents who want to share smarter, more meaningful media in the classroom and at home. And thanks to our members, it’s free and available for everyone.
Kneeling Bus
How the internet has transformed our relationship to physical space, one another, and our own selves
Kneeling Bus is a weekly newsletter. I’m an urban planner and lapsed tech guy who is constantly scanning the landscape for examples of those two domains colliding in fascinating ways. No matter how online we get, we still have to live in physical space—usually that means cities—and learning how to inhabit both domains simultaneously is more important than ever.
Kottke
Home of fine hypertext products
Founded in 1998, kottke.org is one of the oldest blogs on the web. It covers the essential people, inventions, performances, and ideas that increase the collective adjacent possible of humanity. Frequent topics of interest among the 26,000+ posts include art, technology, science, visual culture, design, music, cities, food, architecture, sports, endless nonsense, and carefully curated current events, all of it lightly contextualized.
Other Valleys
Interesting links about primarily Asian, African or Latin American markets (China, India, Brazil, Japan, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Mexico and more), and opportunities from those parts of the world that may be of interest. All right in your inbox.
New World Same Humans
Trends, technology, and society
The newsletter is published twice a week: On Sunday you’ll get an essay in text and podcast form. On Wednesday you’ll get leading tech and trends roundup New Week Same Humans, a shot of news and super-fast analysis.
Roden & Ridgeline
Craig Mod is writing, photographing, making books, and walking
Roden: photography × literature × tech × film (monthly). Ridgeline: walking × Japan (weekly)
Sentiers
Make sense of a changing world
The weekly explorations of a generalist, synthesist, and curator. From a very broad and changing list of topics, each issue delivers a carefully curated selection of articles, from the essential to the intriguing and the curious.
The Science of Fiction
A technical guide to the future
The Science of Fiction is a newsletter on how science shapes stories about the future and how stories about the future shape science. Its goal is to highlight the awesome power of science fiction as a tool that can help bring about a better world and frankly, to engage in some rampant science based speculation about monsters.
undefended / undefeated
ideas at the heart of material culture
If you’re interested in thinking more deeply about the things all around you—high-tech and low-tech artifacts, domestic and professional products, the tiny details and big systems that arrive in the form of our tangible worlds—you’re in the right place.
The Whippet
Science, history, weirdness and 0% contemporary politics because oh my god sometimes you need a break.
The news is full of genuinely exciting and magical information! Planets where it rains diamonds, gold-eating mushrooms, wolverine frogs that push their sharpened fingerbones out through their own skin (I said magical, not pleasant). I don’t want to miss that stuff! I want that ping feeling in my brain when I learn something new and fascinating, I just don't want my brain to feel like a wrung-out dischloth from too much internet all the time.
About this site
This site is just a quick project I rolled out over the holidays, it’s a very incomplete list of websites and highly personal. So far, even the micro-publishers I love aren’t all listed, I’ll be updating the website often as I remember them and discover new ones. Right now it’s definitely not as diversified as I’d like so be sure to drop me a line with your recommendations.
I’m defining micro-publishers as small operations, usually just one person but sometimes two, three, four, who are at least in part trying to make a living or make some “side-project” money from what they publish. I’m also defining publishing as including blogs, newsletters, podcasts, small magazines (online or print), and zines.
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