The Best of Real Life
10+ most popular Real Life articles, as voted by our community.
We were a magazine about living with technology. The emphasis was more on living
Real Life on Essentialism
Natural’s Not in It — Real Life
Countering biological essentialism with a biological futurism
Real Life on Military
New Sensation — Real Life
The military use of haptics technology includes ideological indoctrination
Real Life on Scraping
Fair Game — Real Life
Commonly used by researchers and journalists, data scraping is an underacknowledged privacy concern
Real Life on Self Care
Why Can’t We Be Friends — Real Life
Podcasts and other forms of “parasocial” media reframe friendship as monetized self-care
Real Life on Technology
Still the Same — Real Life
Nineteenth-century critiques of technology show how longstanding many current concerns are
Popular
These are some all-time favorites with Refind users.
Temporal Belonging — Real Life
The timeless, futile effort to fix circadian rhythms with tech
«itious marketing campaign f»
Our Friend the Atom — Real Life
The aesthetics of the Atomic Age helped whitewash the threat of nuclear disaster
Condition Critical — Real Life
AI mental health diagnostics risk oversimplifying the complex social dynamics of any medical concern
Entangled Intelligence — Real Life
Technology often presupposes human domination, but it could instead reflect our ecological dependence
How to Eat the Future — Real Life
The consultancy-futurism Jane McGonigal offers in Imaginable is part of the problem it is meant to fix
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks 5 links from around the web that make you smarter, tailored to your interests. is one of more than 10k sources we monitor.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
- Our algorithm processes 100k+ new links every day and uses external signals to find the most relevant ones, focusing on timeless pieces.
- Our community of active users gets 5 links every day, tailored to their interests. They provide feedback via implicit and explicit signals: open, read, listen, share, add to reading list, save to «Made me smarter», «More/less like this», etc.
- Our algorithm uses these internal signals to refine the selection.
- In addition, we have expert curators who manually curate niche topics.
The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Can I submit a link?
Indirectly, by using Refind and saving links from outside (e.g., via our extensions).
How can I report a problem?
When you’re logged-in, you can flag any link via the «More» (...) menu. You can also report problems via email to hello@refind.com
Who uses Refind?
100k+ smart people start their day with Refind. To learn something new. To get inspired. To move forward. Our apps have a 4.9/5 rating.
Is Refind free?
Yes, it’s free!
How can I sign up?
Head over to our homepage and sign up by email or with your Twitter or Google account.
Real Life on Social Media
Influencer Creep — Real Life
Self-documenting and self-branding are becoming basic to all forms of work