The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven is the grandiose name of my weekly newsletter. It began on the 19th July 2020, right after I finished my debut novel and short story collection and a few months before I swapped factory life for a startup. More on that here: msweet.net.
It goes out every Sunday at 0700 GMT/BST and contains seven things that elicited a “Whoa!”, a “Wow!”, a “Huh?” or a “Hmmm” from me—mostly text-intensive items like books, articles, blog posts or essays; sometimes projects, graphics, ideas, excerpts, videos, songs, tools, artists, art, creators, software, hardware.
To prevent my attention—and thus, your consumption—from converging on a single theme every edition generally includes one item from each of the following categories:
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Ecology/systems
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Philosophy
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Technology
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Movement and health
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Politics
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Other – light
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Other – heavy
The above is a guideline and there’s often crossover. That can’t be helped.
It’s worth noting that the content of the newsletter is chunky. Like me, you probably have an abundance of links already. I try to provide some substance without requiring a click-through or a visit to an external resource outside your inbox.
I also reserve the right to include links to any blog posts I publish, or a short sentence concerning active or upcoming projects. This won’t happen too often but when it does it’ll be towards the top of the given edition and easy to ignore.
Finally, a note on sources. They’re varied: Twitter, Farcaster, various Discords and Slacks, dialogues with friends and correspondents, whimsical searches and trail following. These serve as a foundation for further exploration, as well as direct sources. Unfortunately I don’t include “hat-tips” in editions of the Magnificent Seven; the admin associated with that practice would make consistently publishing Mag7 implausible.
Final final note. I implemented the seven categories above to ensure the breadth of my attention is always sufficiently stretched. For that reason, I also occasionally include things I don’t agree with. And I avoid anything that deserves to be starved of all attention. Thus: inclusion in Mag7 is not to be confused with an endorsement.