The Approach
How it's built, and what goes into the calls it makes.
The philosophy
Most news is too zoomed in. Fragments without trajectories, events without history, problems without progress. The Less Scrolling Newsletter is built on the idea that people benefit from viewing news at a greater distance, with more context and broader perspective.
How AI helps
AI doesn't write the news or generate opinions. It solves a scale problem: every day, hundreds of articles come out across dozens of outlets. No single person can read all of it and spot the patterns.
AI reads through all of it to find where Reuters, the BBC, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR are all pointing at the same underlying shift. That cross-source view is something no single outlet can give you.
What goes in, what stays out, how it's framed: those are human calls. AI handles the part that would otherwise take forty hours a week of reading.
What goes in
- Policy changes, economic shifts, and public health developments that affect daily life
- Long-term trajectory changes: climate milestones, demographic shifts, scientific breakthroughs
- Stories that will still matter in six months
- Progress and setbacks on major human challenges
What stays out
Sports, celebrity news, individual crime stories, outrage-cycle clickbait, and horse-race political coverage. If it won't matter in six months, it doesn't make the cut.
The format
Every Thursday morning, you get seven trends. Each one has context (what's happening and why) and a zoom-out (the bigger picture). Every digest ends with a few bright spots from the week's news, and civic actions if the timing is right.
The sources
The digest draws from a wide range of trusted publications: wire services, public broadcasters, major newspapers, and specialist outlets. The goal is breadth, not any single outlet's framing.
What this newsletter stands for
The trends aim to present what's happening as clearly as possible. The actions section is different. It's grounded in values I think readers of this newsletter share:
- Democracy, freedom of the press, freedom of speech and protest
- Social equality and opposition to concentrated power, whether corporate or political
- Accessible healthcare, mental health, and pandemic preparedness
- Environmental protection and climate action
- Global cooperation over isolationism