rss feeds, i use them

It’s 2023, and RSS is still a great way to get content that hasn’t been machine tailored to leverage a click and an ad placement out of you. While we’ve watched algorithms destroy any semblance of media trustworthiness, many reputable sites offer RSS feeds so you can directly choose what sources hit your desk for yourself. Throw them some time to weigh against seeing headlines that will goad interaction by entrenching your point of view, or pushing you into a rage spiral.

Here is a small selection of feeds that I follow, consistently delivering good content for a decade or more:

512 Pixels (feed) – Stephen Hackett delivers links, headlines, and fun takes on Apple and adjacent spaces. His Knowledge Base Article of the Week, is always a fun look in the rearview.

MacRumors (feed) – If you never want to miss a story about the multi trillion dollar fruit company, this is the best single feed to follow. Fast on breaking news, very good coverage, and despite its name, heavily favoring factual content to rumors.

xkcd (feed) – You’ve undoubtedly seen one of these scrawled comic strips before. Don’t just wait for a friend to pull one up contextually, and instead find the latest in your unread feed items.

Tools & Toys (feed) – Far from a daily read, this feed scratches the gadget itch for those of us who like to engage in light, tech-related retail therapy from time to time. Curated by Shawn Blanc “and friends,” you’ll see items ranging from quirky to indispensable.

Daring Fireball (feed) – John Gruber writes words on Apple and technology. For better or worse, he’s a fixture in the Apple community, and usually the central node I branch from to repopulate my social graph when I join a new network. On one occasion, he even linked to this very blog.

If you’re new or returning to RSS, there are a lot of options for subscribing/reading feeds. The closest thing to the imitable Google Reader (rest in peace), is probably Feedly, if you’d like a place to get started. But there are many options to dig through once you’ve gotten your feet wet, and would like to branch out.

It’s true, while writing up this list I came across a troubling number of defunct feeds that have fallen stale. No point in denying technochocolate has had brighter days too. The collapse of Twitter on the heels of some brutal years of misinformation has really shaken up a lot of the status quo again. Perhaps we can revitalize some of the rivers of communication that have been stopped up, and see some new tributaries bring something fresh to our collective conversation again.