Ask HN: Favorite text heavy blogs that are a joy to read?

Lesswrong for both sidebars: the heading based TOC on the left, and the margin notes on the right: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bJ2haLkcGeLtTWaD5/welcome-to...

For interactive / code snippets Maxime Heckel: https://blog.maximeheckel.com/posts/the-study-of-shaders-wit...

Honorable mentions Maggie Applebaum https://maggieappleton.com/ai-enlightenment Marek Chotoborski https://zanlib.dev/blog/number-inputs-in-react/

Line width, sane fonts, avoiding clever shit unless very polished, gets you a long way.

I like reading Julia Evans blog. Aside from the good writings, I think the typography and the paragraph width fits nicely.

https://jvns.ca/

I like the design of https://dbushell.com/blog/

Though mainly I just like the general 50s aesthetics of it, rather than specific UI elements.

surprised this isn't top

> https://ciechanow.ski/

Here is a decent collection of some text heavy personal sites. Not affiliated in any way: https://mnmm.xyz/

https://dfns.dyalog.com/n_sudoku.htm

Explanation of Sudoku in APL. Lots of information, absolutely no clutter. Entire page is nothing but text in a single precise sans-serif typewriter font, the same size and strength for everything: headings, explanation, code, and tables. Typewriter font includes mathematical symbols.

https://gwern.net

This one looks good to me. https://matklad.github.io/. Coincidentally the author has recently posted about CSS for blogs https://matklad.github.io/2026/06/04/css-unavoidable-bad-par....

I have my own blog, but I'm unhappy with its design as well; therefore I'm not sharing it. Nevertheless, I find particularly challenging two things: 1. Make tables readable from a smartphone. There are a few tricks which allow you to make a responsive table. However, those tricks implies that you use <ul> or <div> instead of <table> which defeats the point of having a table. 2. I had an article where I needed to put a tiny mind map. Eventually I put it as a picture, because the solutions to draw a mind map with JavaScript made the page as twice as heavy.

Language Log: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/

The simple layout/theme does not get in the way of the reading.

https://sites.gatech.edu/alexburgin/on-self-respect-by-joan-...

Dramatic sepia photograph contrasts with understated gray text on light gray background with lots of empty space.

https://www.worksinprogress.news

I like the formatting and readability of https://nesbitt.io/2026/05/28/protestware-for-coding-agents.... though I wish it loaded faster.

https://www.datagubbe.se/short/

Header, body, trailer panels with three complementary background shades that soften the large black sans-serif typography.

Just finished a series on

acoup.blog

Must also mention

https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

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