People and resources added to my reading list in 2023

This is the eleventh edition of my annual overview of the most interesting discoveries made during the previous year, whether it’s been a blog worth reading, a creator on YouTube worth following, or a cool website/resource. As a tradition, this overview used to be published every January, mostly as a sort of last look in the rearview mirror at the closing year before moving on to the new one.

This time I’m breaking the pattern, and publishing this towards the end of March, instead. My schedule is a bit off due to reasons I explained in my previous update, but at the same time I have to say that 2023 was a strange year overall. I’ve often mentioned this low tide brought up by a general feeling of ‘tech fatigue’; as a consequence, last year my interest in adding technology-related sources to my reads was rather low. I even neglected to stay up-to-date with the people and blogs I was already following.

2023: breaking patterns, tech exhaustion, and where to go from there

During 2023, my whole routine of staying informed with everything happening in tech ended up pretty much shattered. Before, I used to try my best to reach the equivalent of ‘inbox zero’ in my RSS feeds, but last year’s exhaustion made me really wonder whether all this information absorption was actually worthwhile. I started noticing the same effects of overexposure to news and newscasts. When I was living with my parents, morning and evening newscasts were the unavoidable daily ritual, and in the household there was this idea that basically you’re not living your life properly if you don’t stay up-to-date with what’s happening around you. That not following the news isn’t smart, and so forth.

The problem of course is that what you see through a newscast isn’t a balanced snapshot of the world around you. You’re mostly fed pieces of news about what’s exceptional, and for the most part this focuses on what’s exceptionally negative. What makes the news is 50 people dead in a building’s fire, not the 5,000 people of that neighbourhood whose life goes on as usual. In the end, overexposure to news and newscasts just overwhelms your worldview with depressing negativity. This, in turn, fills you with a constant sense of dread, alternated with bouts of anxiety. The first thing I did when I started living on my own was to get rid of the TV. At the time, Internet was still innocent enough that I could use it to retrieve the information I needed to catch up with what was happening around me, without the daily shower of negative news thrown in my face. This was obviously before social networks effectively turned into newscasts.

While overexposure to tech, tech news, and tech debates hasn’t exactly brought the same sense of dread and the same kind of anxiety as the overexposure to newscasts, it certainly created a feeling of exhaustion and also a renewed criticism towards how we talk about technology today. Just as what you see through a newscast isn’t a balanced snapshot of the world around you, what you get from following the news and debates in technology isn’t a balanced snapshot of the actual situation. Apart from ‘objective’ bits of news, like product announcements, new technological breakthroughs, and the like, everything else in the tech discourse is pretty much biased and unbalanced. It’s the us-versus-them mentality wherever you look. When you realise this, when it finally hits you that — except for a few sources who steadfastly maintain their integrity — the tech discourse keeps going through its motions all the time, your enthusiasm really goes out the window. You start noticing how the same pundits keep reacting the same way; you start recognising their bias; you re-evaluate their assessments. Cynicism and scepticism are necessary evils in tech if you want to keep thinking critically, but your daily tech soup will definitely taste more sour.

This exhaustion stage, this tech burnout, is necessary as well. I’m more and more convinced that more people ought to reach this stage, to then try to approach tech in a different — hopefully healthier — way. Because the next stage is to focus on whatever good remains out there after the squeeze. That’s why I’m trying to approach 2024 with the goal of finding out who and what’s really worth following, who and what is truly distinctive, who and what is ultimately worth my (and your) time. Mind you, it’s what I’ve always been trying to do when compiling these yearly overviews; the only little thing that has changed is that from now on I’ll try to be even more selective.

Blogs

I know, that was a bit of a long introduction, but it was necessary to explain why, this time, the list of sources added to my feeds is going to be quite short overall — maybe shorter than it’s ever been.

Tech

This category was this close to remaining empty. However in November 2023 I discovered Manuel Moreale — or rather, he discovered me through another person, and got in touch. And I, in turn, was made aware of his very good blog. I really like his down-to-earth, no-nonsense approach, and I’ve been enjoying one of the main features of his website — the weekly interviews for the People and Blogs newsletter.

Full disclosure: Manuel interviewed me as well, and at the time of writing this my interview hasn’t been published yet. I’m not highlighting Manuel’s blog as a favour to him, or for self-serving purposes. I genuinely like his blog, and I think it’s a worthy addition to your RSS feeds. Simple as that.

Addendum, just before hitting the Publish button

Two honourable mentions I haven’t actually added to my RSS feeds, but kept in my browsers’ bookmarks. The reason is that these two blogs are a bit on the technical side, but occasionally talk about things I’m interested in.

Niki’s blog tonsky.me — I discovered this when I was looking for more information about Syncthing, and encountered Niki’s article about it, Computers as I used to love them.
Julio Merino’s blog — Time ago on Twitter/X someone I follow retweeted a few tweets by Julio that piqued my interest; after an exchange with Julio, I ended up reading his article discussing in more depth what he was talking about in that Twitter thread: Fast machines, slow machines. I found both the article and the blog quite interesting, therefore worth bookmarking.

Photography

Casual Photophile — This isn’t exactly a resource I discovered in 2023; I think I stumbled on it a couple of years before, and I could have sworn I already mentioned it in these annual overviews, but checking the previous editions nothing came up. I probably just forgot to add it. Anyway, this is a really, really good photography-oriented website/blog. The focus is mainly on film photography, but digital is discussed as well. News, and mostly reviews of cameras and lenses, written with the necessary depth that comes from passionate people. Definitely recommended.

The Machine Planet — About 10–12 years ago, when I was deep, deep into my path of rediscovery of film photography, someone somewhere mentioned an article by Dante Stella I should check. I wish I remembered who suggested what and where. I don’t even remember the specific article. What I remember is entering the (now old and discontinued) website of Dante Stella, reading that article, then being so captivated by his writing style and his way of presenting and discussing photography that I bookmarked the site right away. He never updated the site with much frequency, but that didn’t matter, as I would return to just re-read some of his articles and refresh my memory about his opinion on a certain piece of camera equipment, etc. I was glad to see he persisted with his writing by opening a new blog, The Machine Planet. Stella is an excellent photographer, and an excellent photography writer, to the point that, more than once, I’ve been inspired both by his photography and his writing.

YouTube channels

There has been a lot of subscribing and unsubscribing in 2023, as some channels I discovered gave me a good initial impression but then I lost interest.

Watches & horology

You may not know this, but clocks and watches are probably my oldest interest, as I was utterly fascinated with them since I was a little boy. For an all too brief period of my life I was even apprentice to a watchmaker. Then, as time passed, this interest never really turned into a passion, and sort of remained in the periphery, as writing and photography stayed front and centre. I got into watches again after my mother’s passing, as I inherited a couple of interesting items that sent me through a rabbit hole of horologic research. And so my dormant interest was rekindled.

When you start looking for YouTube material on the subject, you definitely end up in another rabbit hole. There’s a lot of stuff, a lot of channels, a lot of different personalities and, yes, even influencers. (Ten years ago, the motto was, There’s an app for that; today I think we can all agree that There’s an influencer for that). Over the course of late 2022 up to now, I’ve checked out, subscribed, and unsubscribed to many watch-related channels. I’ll just list the ones I seem to return to more often, in no particular order of preference.

Teddy Baldassarre — Probably the channel with the widest scope, with videos about watches for all kinds of budgets. Teddy is a passionate host, and a rare combination of quantity + quality. You can find single watch reviews, comparisons, watch suggestions according to different budgets, opinion videos about the watch world, mini-documentaries about specific brands, and so forth. A really diverse selection of content, all quite enjoyable.

The Urban Gentry — Watch reviews, critique, talks. ‘TGV’, the host, is charismatic and entertaining. My favourite videos are his chats with frequent guest engineer-turned-watch entrepreneur Marc Frankel of Long Island Watch, quite fun and informative.

Just the Watch — This channel is more focused on affordable watches and digital watches, since Dave the host is a Casio aficionado (like yours truly). I really enjoy Dave’s reviews: honest, balanced, concise but never superficial. He’s a nice, down-to-earth fellow; a pleasure to listen to.

Jenni Elle — Jenni’s channel is more about luxury brands and watch micro-brands I’ll never be able to afford. But she’s a joy to watch nonetheless (pardon the pun). Smart, fun, competent. I especially enjoy her chats with her husband (another watch nerd) about the watch world and market.

Britt Pearce — Britney’s strength, in my opinion, is that she created a watch channel that’s not snobbish or intimidating. She’s perhaps the most eclectic of this group. She produces fun, lighthearted videos that are just the right length when you want to watch something entertaining that doesn’t commandeer too much of your time. Essentially her message is that we can all enjoy watches without taking ourselves too seriously, and I strongly agree with the sentiment.

Music

Only one recommendation, but it’s a really good one:

Digging the Greats by Brandon Shaw. As the title suggests, here you’ll find a great mix of (modern) music history, breakdowns of entire albums, artists’ profiles, and so forth. Brandon is a remarkable host: passionate and knowledgeable, smart and entertaining. You can see by the way he produces and edits his videos that he’s pouring his soul into the work. If you like what he does, I suggest you support him on Patreon. In return you’ll get even better and extended versions of his videos, which he has to carefully edit to avoid all the related restrictions and copyright headaches faced by everyone trying to do music education on YouTube.

Podcasts

Another year, another round of copying-and-pasting the same quote from a couple of years ago:

In 2019 I unsubscribed from all the podcasts I was following, and I haven’t looked back. I know and respect many people who use podcasts as their main medium for expression. My moving away from podcasts is simply a pragmatic decision — I just don’t have the time for everything. I still listen to the odd episode, especially if it comes recommended by people I trust. You can find a more articulate observation on podcasts in my People and resources added to my reading list in 2019.

If you’re wondering why I keep the Podcast section in these overviews when I clearly have nothing to talk about, it’s because to this day I receive emails from people un-ironically asking me for podcast recommendations.

My RSS management

Again, nothing new to report on this front. The apps I’ve been using (and loving) on my several different devices are still the same, and I haven’t found better RSS management tools worth switching to. In my previous overviews, I used to list here all the apps I typically use to read feeds on my numerous devices, but ever since I broke my habit of obsessively reading feeds everywhere on whatever device, I’ll only list the apps on the devices I’ve used over the past year or so. If you’re curious to read the complete rundown, check past entries (see links at the bottom of this article):

On my M2 Pro Mac mini running Mac OS 13 Ventura, and on my 13-inch retina MacBook Pro running Mac OS 11 Big Sur: NetNewsWire.
On my Intel Macs running Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra: Reeder and ReadKit.
On my PowerPC Macs: older versions of NetNewsWire.
On my iPad 8: Unread, Reeder, NetNewsWire for iOS, and ReadKit.
On my iPhone SE 3, iPhone 8, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5, iPad 3: Unread. (Though on the iPad 3 Reeder seems to be more stable and less resource-hungry).
On older iOS devices: Older versions of Reeder, and an older version of Byline.
On my first-generation iPad: an older version of Newsify, which appears to be the only decent app still working on this device, as Slow Feeds (which is now called Web Subscriber), and the Feedly app itself have stopped working. Essentially, you can no longer properly authenticate and log into your Feedly account. It’s the same old problem — security certificates and vintage hardware don’t seem to like each other very much. I was able to make Newsify work by creating a ‘My Newsify’ account and importing all the feeds from Feedly.
On all my Windows machines I use FeedLab. It’s not a bad app at all, but I’m still looking for something more elegant visually. Nextgen reader used to be a great client, but development appears long discontinued.

Past articles

In reverse chronological order:

I hope this series and my observations can be useful to you. Also, keep in mind that some links in these past articles may now be broken. And as always, if you think I’m missing out on some good tech writing or other kind of resource you believe might be of interest to me, let me know via email, Twitter/X, or Mastodon. Thanks for reading!

Riccardo Mori

Writer & Translator