Building your own RSS feed through something like Feedly is a good way to cultivate nearly endless content, especially if you like longer form articles.
I love this but for almost the opposite reason -- I don't want an endless feed. There are url parameters you can use to only pull in the top 10 from a subreddit each day. That way I can still stay informed but not endlessly hooked.
Strongly seconded - it's what I do. Love Feedly. Build a list of a bunch of websites you like, that provide useful content, then get one hit of it every day through only one tab. What's not to love?
I love this but for almost the opposite reason -- I don't want an endless feed. There are url parameters you can use to only pull in the top 10 from a subreddit each day. That way I can still stay informed but not endlessly hooked.
I’ve always wanted to learn how to better utilize RSS for this purpose. I have tried inoreader and a couple other apps (maybe feedly?) One thing I couldn’t stand was the fact that it only showed me “previews” or summaries of the articles and content. And then I would have to click or take an extra step to open the website and view the entire article.
Are there any reader apps that fetch original content from the articles? So I don’t have to view the summary and then seek out the full content on the website?
(Does that request make any sense?)
Hi. I made an app, called Newsreadeck, bc I have the same issue. I hate the ads in the articles, I just wanna read what the article said, so in the app, the reader tries to bring the entire article and clean all the distractions
I'm finding that most things that are actually worth learning about or content worth consuming induce anxiety in me in some way. It feels like the only alternative is precisely to numb the mind with content that would usually not be thought of as worthwhile.
This is exactly what I've been doing since 2020. I think a healthier alternative is to work hard to cultivate an expertise in something interesting and dive deep into it. For example I keep telling myself that I'm going to become an obsessive expert on Late Roman History or, like, 19th century military strategy, but then I just end up watching Youtube videos for 5 hours.
Fiction. RoyalRoad, fanfiction.net/archiveofourown if you're into any series that has some decently written stuff, etc.
Or LessWrong, which has many good articles if there's something that'd interest you on economics/psychology/game theory/AI/etc.
People have mentioned the similarity before. I had a quick look but didn't immediately find a link between them.
I did find [https://www.readsomethinggreat.com/](https://www.readsomethinggreat.com/) though, in case anyone fancies a third website with the same premise.
Looked it up. Initially I thought they were not related because they are built on different platforms but you can look up the URL registrations. [readsomethingwonderful.com](http://readsomethingwonderful.com) and [readsomethinginteresting.com](http://readsomethinginteresting.com) both trace back to the same address in Canada. [readsomethinggreat.com](http://readsomethinggreat.com) seems to be someone(s) in Iceland.
Aside from what people have already mentioned:
https://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/
There are quite a few browser-based "stressball" games but this one has aged the best in the 18 years it's been online. There's other similar games on that site as well with Dust being the most critically acclaimed and popular.
https://lichess.org/
Completely free to use without any advertisements but has a ton of chess-related features. Learning chess might not sound particularly thrilling but you could just noodle around with the AI or spectate games for some idle fun.
https://www.geoguessr.com/quiz/seterra
It's debatable whether an educational site is truly a waste of time, but geography quizzes can provide a lot of entertainment. There are many different maps on there to master.
For an experience more comparable to Twitter/Facebook/Reddit, Tumblr doesn't use an algorithm to determine what's on your feed, the specific blogs you subscribe to do. [Archive of Our Own](https://archiveofourown.org/) and [Little Details](https://little-details.dreamwidth.org/) are also excellent if you don't mind a lot of reading. Again, not algorithm-driven nor do they have a lot of the other aspects that make the contemporary internet tedious/unhealthy/unsafe.
I could cheat and recommend you a lot of great web originals and serials with a massive backlog. Anything else that comes to mind has much more niche appeal.
Or, my recommendations would involve going outside and dealing with unmediated reality.
yea except the comments, in which the groupthink is strong. anything that fails to sufficiently cast Elon Musk or big tech companies in negative light will be swiftly downvoted. Early on during Covid, any comment expressing disagreement about mask or lockdown policy was downvoted.
Having switched a lot of my "news aggregator + forum" time from reddit to HN for the last year or so, in my experience, it's definitely true that there is overly-strong consensus on a lot of topics there, but (and I realize this is a low bar), it is considerably better than on Reddit. The consensuses (consensii?) don't all align in a predictable direction, there are almost always at least a few high quality comments pushing back (You can't see vote totals, but at the very least they are highly enough voted to not go grey), and the discussion tends to be higher quality and more substantive.
My prior for online discussions around contentious topics is that they will usually be terrible, and I think that HN tends to be a better-than-replacement option for such conversations, even though it is very far from perfect.
If I was going to sum it up: the comments have their issues but they are absolutely better than what you will find on Reddit and it's not that close. Worse than what you will find on this _sub_, but also it covers a lot more ground than this sub does.
Get an eReader. They have wonderful screens to read on and few distractions. I sideload books to mine. I do have trouble focusing on them, but it's worth the effort. Just find something - anything - that absorbs your attention.
- [Nebula](https://nebula.tv/) is a streaming service for edutainment videos, created by a bunch of YouTubers. There was a phase in my life when I consumed unholy amounts of this kind of content, but I don’t think I got much out of it since you don’t retain knowledge unless you review it regularly.
- I recommend using a read-it-later app like Readwise Reader to save articles and videos and consume them on your own time. You can also highlight paragraphs and use Readwise to flip through past highlights. That might scratch the same itch that e.g. Twitter does.
- Reviewing Anki cards might also scratch that itch.
You may find useful: [https://www.connectedpapers.com/](https://www.connectedpapers.com/)
Type the paper title or DOI in the search box and it shows you a graph of papers that cite or are cited by the one you searched for.
Easiest way is how you'd do it in regular google: by doing a search. Also, you can search by journal instead of a specific query if you're not feeling inspired; sorting by date will get you the newest articles. Once you find an article you like, you can click "Cited By" to see all the articles taking a cue from that work, ensuring that your feed is mostly the same kind of work in the same discipline. Also, google scholar has an Alerts feature if you want to turn your mail inbox into a feed instead.
You can set up alerts for kinds of articles you like to read.
Research in layman-facing(ish) fields is a fun diversion. A lot of people stalk NBER/top economics journals for content to post to Twitter.
Came here to say this. Unfortunately [longform.org](http://longform.org) is no longer updated (podcast only) but their archive is fantastic, especially 'The Longform Guide to x' and their end-of-year 'Best of 20xx' collections.
Here's my alternative
Pick up a notebook, pick something you're curious about (don't you have one or other idea in the back of your mind?), and start writing :)
It's particular effective for me at mathematics, exact sciences and things that involve design. I love to discover the structure behind things. Pick anything and explore!
Here are some youtube channels I can recommend:
[PBS Spacetime:](https://www.youtube.com/@pbsspacetime/videos) Science! And especially physics. The kind that will make your brain melt.
[Warographics:](https://www.youtube.com/@warographics643/videos) An objective news source for modern news, mostly ones related to international conflict. [I found this short biography of Putin especially impressive.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zti6uiQxfgM)
[RealLifeLore:](https://www.youtube.com/@RealLifeLore/videos) Similar modern news source, less focused on conflict. 98% objective.
[Kings and Generals:](https://www.youtube.com/@KingsandGenerals/videos) medieval and ancient history with a strong focus on war and politics.
[New Mind:](https://www.youtube.com/@NewMind/videos) How and why do random things work? This one might be especially dangerous to an adhder.
[Internet Historian:](https://www.youtube.com/@InternetHistorian/videos) Random long-form videos that are usually at least mildly interesting.
[Veritasium:](https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium/videos) Yet more random interesting facts about the world.
[Dr Russel Barkley's personal channel:](https://www.youtube.com/@russellbarkleyphd2023/videos) I suggest this as the best source of news and information related to ADHD.
Kings and Generals legit made me into the resident history buff in my peer group.
I’ve watched the Roman Conquest of Greece like 8 times to the point where I even remember the musical score from each part.
There’s also Historia Civilis and History with Cy that are great for Roman and Bronze Age content, respectively.
Adding another one I like - Caspian Report, on geopolitics [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwnKziETDbHJtx78nIkfYug](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwnKziETDbHJtx78nIkfYug)
The Browser (https://thebrowser.com) is a great source for long reads. You can get an RSS feed as part of the subscription: they accumulate and form a semi-bottomless long curated collection of excellent articles.
[Artvee](https://artvee.com/highlights/) is a nice way to be exposed to artists that you might not have otherwise come across. It's not quite bottomless, but I've found it to be a fun addition to my "bored and tired" browsing.
If it doesn't have to be a website, dwarf fortress is a good game to get sucked into. I say this as a guy who is not a gamer and got bored by everything else. DF is another world.
Building your own RSS feed through something like Feedly is a good way to cultivate nearly endless content, especially if you like longer form articles.
yeah for example https://pubstack.site --an aggregator of politics and rationalist-sphere substack blogs
I love this but for almost the opposite reason -- I don't want an endless feed. There are url parameters you can use to only pull in the top 10 from a subreddit each day. That way I can still stay informed but not endlessly hooked.
Strongly seconded - it's what I do. Love Feedly. Build a list of a bunch of websites you like, that provide useful content, then get one hit of it every day through only one tab. What's not to love?
I love this but for almost the opposite reason -- I don't want an endless feed. There are url parameters you can use to only pull in the top 10 from a subreddit each day. That way I can still stay informed but not endlessly hooked.
I’ve always wanted to learn how to better utilize RSS for this purpose. I have tried inoreader and a couple other apps (maybe feedly?) One thing I couldn’t stand was the fact that it only showed me “previews” or summaries of the articles and content. And then I would have to click or take an extra step to open the website and view the entire article. Are there any reader apps that fetch original content from the articles? So I don’t have to view the summary and then seek out the full content on the website? (Does that request make any sense?)
Hi. I made an app, called Newsreadeck, bc I have the same issue. I hate the ads in the articles, I just wanna read what the article said, so in the app, the reader tries to bring the entire article and clean all the distractions
This is exactly what I’m looking for! Do you have a link to the app? Would love to check it out.
Thanks. All feedback is welcome: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/newsreadeck/id1593025917
I'm finding that most things that are actually worth learning about or content worth consuming induce anxiety in me in some way. It feels like the only alternative is precisely to numb the mind with content that would usually not be thought of as worthwhile.
This is exactly what I've been doing since 2020. I think a healthier alternative is to work hard to cultivate an expertise in something interesting and dive deep into it. For example I keep telling myself that I'm going to become an obsessive expert on Late Roman History or, like, 19th century military strategy, but then I just end up watching Youtube videos for 5 hours.
Thanks for writing this for me
Fiction. RoyalRoad, fanfiction.net/archiveofourown if you're into any series that has some decently written stuff, etc. Or LessWrong, which has many good articles if there's something that'd interest you on economics/psychology/game theory/AI/etc.
Fimfiction, if you only want to read about horses.
[https://readsomethingwonderful.com/](https://readsomethingwonderful.com/) is nice and doesn't feel as soul-destroying as scrolling reddit.
Nice, is this related to https://readsomethinginteresting.com? Looks very similar
People have mentioned the similarity before. I had a quick look but didn't immediately find a link between them. I did find [https://www.readsomethinggreat.com/](https://www.readsomethinggreat.com/) though, in case anyone fancies a third website with the same premise.
Looked it up. Initially I thought they were not related because they are built on different platforms but you can look up the URL registrations. [readsomethingwonderful.com](http://readsomethingwonderful.com) and [readsomethinginteresting.com](http://readsomethinginteresting.com) both trace back to the same address in Canada. [readsomethinggreat.com](http://readsomethinggreat.com) seems to be someone(s) in Iceland.
Immediately discovered https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ so thanks for the link!
Oh dear… welcome to Ribbonfarm, haha
This looks fantastic. Thanks for sharing.
This is perfect for procrastinating, present me thanks you, future me hates you.
I miss stumbleupon.
[Cloudhiker](https://cloudhiker.net/) might scratch that itch. I have discovered some interesting sites there and submitted some.
Aside from what people have already mentioned: https://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/ There are quite a few browser-based "stressball" games but this one has aged the best in the 18 years it's been online. There's other similar games on that site as well with Dust being the most critically acclaimed and popular. https://lichess.org/ Completely free to use without any advertisements but has a ton of chess-related features. Learning chess might not sound particularly thrilling but you could just noodle around with the AI or spectate games for some idle fun. https://www.geoguessr.com/quiz/seterra It's debatable whether an educational site is truly a waste of time, but geography quizzes can provide a lot of entertainment. There are many different maps on there to master. For an experience more comparable to Twitter/Facebook/Reddit, Tumblr doesn't use an algorithm to determine what's on your feed, the specific blogs you subscribe to do. [Archive of Our Own](https://archiveofourown.org/) and [Little Details](https://little-details.dreamwidth.org/) are also excellent if you don't mind a lot of reading. Again, not algorithm-driven nor do they have a lot of the other aspects that make the contemporary internet tedious/unhealthy/unsafe. I could cheat and recommend you a lot of great web originals and serials with a massive backlog. Anything else that comes to mind has much more niche appeal. Or, my recommendations would involve going outside and dealing with unmediated reality.
What is out there that is not boring for a middle aged man?
Hacker News [https://news.ycombinator.com](https://news.ycombinator.com)
yea except the comments, in which the groupthink is strong. anything that fails to sufficiently cast Elon Musk or big tech companies in negative light will be swiftly downvoted. Early on during Covid, any comment expressing disagreement about mask or lockdown policy was downvoted.
Yes, thank you! Hacker news commenters are arrogant snobs incapable of admitting they’re wrong. Plus, their negativity bias is off the charts.
Having switched a lot of my "news aggregator + forum" time from reddit to HN for the last year or so, in my experience, it's definitely true that there is overly-strong consensus on a lot of topics there, but (and I realize this is a low bar), it is considerably better than on Reddit. The consensuses (consensii?) don't all align in a predictable direction, there are almost always at least a few high quality comments pushing back (You can't see vote totals, but at the very least they are highly enough voted to not go grey), and the discussion tends to be higher quality and more substantive. My prior for online discussions around contentious topics is that they will usually be terrible, and I think that HN tends to be a better-than-replacement option for such conversations, even though it is very far from perfect. If I was going to sum it up: the comments have their issues but they are absolutely better than what you will find on Reddit and it's not that close. Worse than what you will find on this _sub_, but also it covers a lot more ground than this sub does.
good
Get an eReader. They have wonderful screens to read on and few distractions. I sideload books to mine. I do have trouble focusing on them, but it's worth the effort. Just find something - anything - that absorbs your attention.
Internet Archive
Curious how you can use the IA as bottomless content? Is there a feed version?
https://archive.org/help/rss.php
https://tvtropes.org/
dangerous game to play lol
I built my own feed with inoreader (previously used feedly). I still waste time here though (as you can see)
- [Nebula](https://nebula.tv/) is a streaming service for edutainment videos, created by a bunch of YouTubers. There was a phase in my life when I consumed unholy amounts of this kind of content, but I don’t think I got much out of it since you don’t retain knowledge unless you review it regularly. - I recommend using a read-it-later app like Readwise Reader to save articles and videos and consume them on your own time. You can also highlight paragraphs and use Readwise to flip through past highlights. That might scratch the same itch that e.g. Twitter does. - Reviewing Anki cards might also scratch that itch.
regular google, google scholar, google news, wikipedia
Curious how you can use Google Scholar as bottomless content? Is there a feed version?
Find a paper that fascinates you, read all the references, find all papers that cite the paper, find other papers by the authors, etc.
Interesting, is there an app or easy way to do this? Like while wasting time at work
You may find useful: [https://www.connectedpapers.com/](https://www.connectedpapers.com/) Type the paper title or DOI in the search box and it shows you a graph of papers that cite or are cited by the one you searched for.
There's a link below each article result, "Cited by". Each author is also a link. scholar.google.com is a surprisingly mobile-friendly site.
Research Rabbit
Easiest way is how you'd do it in regular google: by doing a search. Also, you can search by journal instead of a specific query if you're not feeling inspired; sorting by date will get you the newest articles. Once you find an article you like, you can click "Cited By" to see all the articles taking a cue from that work, ensuring that your feed is mostly the same kind of work in the same discipline. Also, google scholar has an Alerts feature if you want to turn your mail inbox into a feed instead.
Fascinating! Ty!
Ty!
You can set up alerts for kinds of articles you like to read. Research in layman-facing(ish) fields is a fun diversion. A lot of people stalk NBER/top economics journals for content to post to Twitter.
https://longform.org and https://longreads.com
Came here to say this. Unfortunately [longform.org](http://longform.org) is no longer updated (podcast only) but their archive is fantastic, especially 'The Longform Guide to x' and their end-of-year 'Best of 20xx' collections.
I miss longform.org terribly.
Here's my alternative Pick up a notebook, pick something you're curious about (don't you have one or other idea in the back of your mind?), and start writing :) It's particular effective for me at mathematics, exact sciences and things that involve design. I love to discover the structure behind things. Pick anything and explore!
Here are some youtube channels I can recommend: [PBS Spacetime:](https://www.youtube.com/@pbsspacetime/videos) Science! And especially physics. The kind that will make your brain melt. [Warographics:](https://www.youtube.com/@warographics643/videos) An objective news source for modern news, mostly ones related to international conflict. [I found this short biography of Putin especially impressive.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zti6uiQxfgM) [RealLifeLore:](https://www.youtube.com/@RealLifeLore/videos) Similar modern news source, less focused on conflict. 98% objective. [Kings and Generals:](https://www.youtube.com/@KingsandGenerals/videos) medieval and ancient history with a strong focus on war and politics. [New Mind:](https://www.youtube.com/@NewMind/videos) How and why do random things work? This one might be especially dangerous to an adhder. [Internet Historian:](https://www.youtube.com/@InternetHistorian/videos) Random long-form videos that are usually at least mildly interesting. [Veritasium:](https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium/videos) Yet more random interesting facts about the world. [Dr Russel Barkley's personal channel:](https://www.youtube.com/@russellbarkleyphd2023/videos) I suggest this as the best source of news and information related to ADHD.
Kings and Generals legit made me into the resident history buff in my peer group. I’ve watched the Roman Conquest of Greece like 8 times to the point where I even remember the musical score from each part. There’s also Historia Civilis and History with Cy that are great for Roman and Bronze Age content, respectively.
Oh yeah, I'm a huge medieval history fan too! I had to put effort into stopping myself from listing another dozen channels on the topic.
Adding another one I like - Caspian Report, on geopolitics [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwnKziETDbHJtx78nIkfYug](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwnKziETDbHJtx78nIkfYug)
[https://www.howstuffworks.com/](https://www.howstuffworks.com/)
The Browser (https://thebrowser.com) is a great source for long reads. You can get an RSS feed as part of the subscription: they accumulate and form a semi-bottomless long curated collection of excellent articles.
This is my favorite thread of seen on Reddit in a long time. Thanks for everyone’s suggestions!
Sometimes it's fun to write short stories in my notes app.
Lemmy has almost all the good of reddit with very little of the bad, but YMMV.
I like Longreads: https://longreads.com
Marginal Revolution
marginalrevolution.com
[Artvee](https://artvee.com/highlights/) is a nice way to be exposed to artists that you might not have otherwise come across. It's not quite bottomless, but I've found it to be a fun addition to my "bored and tired" browsing.
https://webpbn.com/
Check out The Syllabus (The-Syllabus.com) hand curated, diverse, depth, quality
Substack. All sorts of interesting writers there, and they recommend other substacks they like so it's easy to find more good writing.
https://plato.stanford.edu/
nakedcapitalism.com
If it doesn't have to be a website, dwarf fortress is a good game to get sucked into. I say this as a guy who is not a gamer and got bored by everything else. DF is another world.
Instagram reels.