HACKER Q&A
📣 Gooblebrai

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?


  👤 mapierce2 Accepted Answer ✓
For convenience, here are the RSS/Atom feeds for some of the publications mentioned in this thread:

Quanta https://api.quantamagazine.org/feed/

Noema Magazine https://www.noemamag.com/feed/

Aeon https://aeon.co/feed

Nautilus https://nautil.us/feed/

The Point Magazine https://thepointmag.com/feed/

Asterisk Magazine https://asteriskmag.com/feed

Symmetry Magazine https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/feed

n+1 Magazine https://www.nplusonemag.com/feed/

Harpers Magazine https://harpers.org/feed/

Low←Tech Magazine https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/feeds/all-en.atom.xml

Public Books Magazine http://www.publicbooks.org/feed

The New Atlantis https://www.thenewatlantis.com/feed


👤 pncnmnp
If you're interested in retro stuff, I highly recommend checking out Byte Magazine's archive at 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-199... (page 147)

Also, there is Communications of the ACM (https://dl.acm.org/magazine/cacm). Many of their articles are free to read.


👤 hackandthink
Somebody 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_be...


👤 oliveshell
I 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


👤 frutiger
I 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-blo....

👤 kklisura
https://aeon.co/ I find essayes on aeon.co really good.

👤 nohaydeprobleme
The Conversation (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) 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) 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.


👤 akudha
I 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


👤 joshmarinacci
I’ve subscribed to the Economist for years and love it. You can skim or go deep as desired.


👤 roughly
Hadn’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/) has some very good environmental writing.

👤 optimalsolver

👤 callistus
* https://thepointmag.com/

* https://asteriskmag.com/ - they just published the second issue. I really enjoy the topics covered and the quality of writing.


👤 walthamstow
It'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.

👤 gregwithtwogs

👤 miguelazo
Harper’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…


👤 dinkblam
Symmetry [https://www.symmetrymagazine.org] is quite similar to Quanta.

👤 tomduncalf
If 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

👤 COGlory
Undark:

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.


👤 saperyton
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.

👤 ted_dunning
You 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.


👤 akeck

👤 HungSu
You 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/

Some magazines that no one has mentioned:

https://worksinprogress.co/

https://pudding.cool/

https://knowablemagazine.org/


👤 kingkongjaffa
Not technical but https://www.themarginalian.org/ is a fabulous online publication.

👤 saltymimir
The magazine has ceased publication, but I really enjoyed reading https://reallifemag.com/.

👤 flawn
You 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
Foreign 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.


👤 Diapason
I love https://www.themarginalian.org/ (formaly called Brain Pickings)

👤 candlemas
https://inference-review.com/ but it doesn't publish frequently.

👤 clmay
A bit more tech and tech-impact focused, but I've enjoyed https://logicmag.io.

👤 hackandthink
I 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/

Do I miss anything?


👤 asciimike
I really enjoy Delayed Gratification (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.

👤 run2arun
You can find many more via https://www.aldaily.com

👤 jay5252
A great quality center/independent political view is AmericanAffairs journal, a quarterly: americanaffairs.org

👤 wmwragg
I really enjoy the Resurgence & Ecologist[1]. I also like the IEEE Spectrum[2]

[1] https://www.resurgence.org/

[2] https://spectrum.ieee.org/


👤 musictubes
Liberties 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/


👤 compacct27
Sky and Telescope is fantastic for hobbyist astronomy with only a slightly less scientific bend than Quanta

👤 swayden
Just read this, and i think the whole publication is worth of note: https://thecritic.co.uk/putin-shute-and-nukes/

Not specifically science oriented though.


👤 wannabebarista
Works in Progress: 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.


👤 clnq
Some other thoughtful things I read - https://bigthink.com, https://www.freethink.com, https://positivepsychology.com (written for therapists but helps me see new perspectives), https://www.newscientist.com, https://futurism.com.

👤 SomeHacker44
Since nobody shared the Quanta URL yet: https://www.quantamagazine.org

👤 timtzm
I like the New Philosopher magazine.

https://www.newphilosopher.com/


👤 johanam
logic magazine is wonderful too: https://logicmag.io/


👤 solresol
New Scientist (but I read the print version).

👤 mharig
IMO, some blogs are of better quality than most magazines.

E.g.

History related: acoup.blog

Physics: backreaction.blogspot.com


👤 SonOfLilit
Scott Alexander's blog at https://astralcodexten.substack.com is my favorite intelligent reading material.

For more in the same style, try https://asteriskmag.com/.


👤 YounesDz
massivesci.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.


👤 call-me-al
am I the only one wondering: why is nobody partnering with these companies to create podcasts out of their content and split the ads revenue?

👤 wahnfrieden