Questions and answers.

A weekly newsletter curated by Jamie Thingelstad. Each issue is a collection of interesting links, commentary, and observations spanning technology, culture, the indie web, and whatever else catches Jamie’s eye. It’s one person’s lens on what’s interesting — not an algorithm, not a feed, just considered curation.

Nothing. The Weekly Thing is free and always will be. If you’d like to go further, Supporting Members contribute to a nonprofit selected each year — but subscribing is always free.

Most weekends, typically Saturday.

Yes — two each year, and they’re intentional:

• Summer break — July and August. No issues.
• Winter break — roughly December 15 through January 15. No issues.

Outside of those windows, expect an issue most Saturdays. If it’s mid-July or late December and your inbox is quiet, that’s why — the newsletter will be back.

Since May 2017 — over 10 years and 349 issues.

Just Jamie. There’s no staff, no editor, no syndication deal. Every link is read, every comment is written, and every issue is sent by one person. That’s the point.

Enter your email on the homepage or in any subscribe form on this site. You’ll receive a confirmation email. That’s it — no account needed.

Every issue includes an unsubscribe link at the bottom. One click, no questions asked.

Yes. The full archive is public, and you can follow along via RSS without ever giving up your email address.

Yes! The full archive goes back to the very first issue in May 2017. You can also search across all issues.

Use the search page — it indexes the full text of every issue, including link titles, commentary, and Jamie’s notes. Powered by Pagefind, it runs entirely in your browser.

Yes. The main feed is at /feed.xml. Each individual issue also has a links feed, like /archive/343/links.xml, that lists every link featured in that issue — useful for automation.

The Weekly Thing is designed to look good in plain HTML email clients — Apple Mail, Gmail, Outlook, Fastmail, and reader apps like NetNewsWire via RSS all render it well. It is intentionally not dependent on tracking pixels or web fonts.

A typical issue blends:

• Technology & web — interesting tools, platforms, standards, and ideas
• Indie web & open standards — personal sites, RSS, ownership of identity and content
• Culture & ideas — essays, talks, books, and the occasional rabbit hole
• Visual — a photo, illustration, or thing-of-the-week
• Personal commentary — short notes from Jamie on why a link mattered

Thingy is an experimental, AI-assisted way to explore the archive — ask questions, find issues by theme, or rediscover links you half-remember. It’s one of several experiments running on the Weekly Thing site.

Yes. Every issue is sequentially numbered from #1, published in May 2017, onward. URLs follow the pattern /archive/{number}/ — for example, /archive/343/ is issue 343. This makes individual issues easy to link to, cite, and reference.

Roughly, yes — but Jamie reserves the right to break the mold. Some weeks are link-heavy, some lean into a single theme, and some include longer-form commentary. The goal is signal, not formula.

Supporting Members pay a small annual fee, and 100% of that money goes to a nonprofit selected each year. Members get a gold star recognition in each issue. The newsletter itself remains completely free. Learn more on the members page.

Jamie selects a nonprofit annually and announces it on the members page. Past recipients reflect causes Jamie cares about — community, education, and digital citizenship.

No. The Weekly Thing has never run ads, sponsored links, or affiliate deals, and that’s not changing. Links appear because they’re interesting, full stop.

No. There is no paid placement of any kind. If something appears in the newsletter, it’s because Jamie found it independently and thought it was worth your time.

Absolutely. Just reply to any issue — replies go directly to Jamie’s inbox.

There’s a subreddit at r/weeklything where links from each issue are posted and can be discussed.

Yes. Content is published under CC BY-SA 4.0 — you can share, quote, and build on it as long as you provide attribution and share-alike. Linking back to the original issue URL is the easiest way to do this.

The simplest path is replying to any issue. You can also find Jamie at thingelstad.com and across the open web from there.

It’s used to deliver the newsletter. Nothing else — no resale, no sharing, no cross-promotion with other newsletters.

Open-tracking and click-tracking are kept minimal and only used in aggregate to understand which issues land. There’s no per-reader profiling, and you’ll never receive automated re-engagement campaigns.

Subscriber lists are managed through Buttondown, an independent newsletter platform. The custom site at weekly.thingelstad.com handles archives, search, and membership separately.

The site is a custom static build using Eleventy (11ty) for the archive pages, with Pagefind for search and Tinylytics for lightweight analytics. Issues are stored as individual markdown files and synced bidirectionally with Buttondown. It’s an indie-web project, owned end-to-end.

Two reasons. First, ownership — running the archive on Jamie’s own domain keeps the URLs, search, and reader experience under his control. Second, flexibility — features like Thingy, per-issue link feeds, and Pagefind search aren’t possible on a hosted archive page.

Parts of the tooling and supporting projects are open. Watch thingelstad.com for posts about the build.

Yes — the archive is plain HTML, the markdown files are stable, and the RSS feed can be ingested by any reader or archiving tool. Owning your inbox and your reading list is encouraged.

Selected issues include a Listen control on the issue page and in the archive. Podcast apps can subscribe at /podcast.xml.