Recommendations you can check.
by Matthew Yglesias
Who uses, recommends or left Slow Boring, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.
3 people
Matt has been my favorite blogger for nearly 20 years now and his work has shaped my thinking on a number of policy issues. His newsletter, Slow Boring, has a high signal-to-noise ratio.
His Substack's 'Recommended by Understanding AI' page listing newsletters he endorses (page carries no publish date; retrieval date used) (undated page)
He takes a very proto-rationalist, practical approach to this, that I very much appreciate, complete with yearly predictions. The writing is consistently enjoyable and clear.
A post going through the blogs and newsletters he recommends and why, written after declining offers of reciprocal recommendations.
2025-06-30·thezvi.substack.com ↗
Matt Yglesias' blog. 'Nuff said!
Noah Smith's own recommendation blurb for the newsletter Slow Boring , on their Substack's recommendations page.
2022-03-25·noahpinion.blog ↗
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.