---
id: weekly-thing
title: Weekly Thing
summary: My weekend newsletter of links with commentary, sent since May 2017 and published as a website, email, and podcast.
collection: Publishing
status: active
url: https://weekly.thingelstad.com/
started: 2017-05-13
topics:
  - open-web
  - archives
sources:
  - kind: github
    repository: jthingelstad/weekly.thingelstad.com
    role: implementation
  - kind: website
    url: https://weekly.thingelstad.com/
    role: website
    sitemap: https://weekly.thingelstad.com/sitemap.xml
    feed: https://weekly.thingelstad.com/feed.xml
  - kind: website
    url: https://weekly.thingelstad.com/podcast/
    role: podcast
    feed: https://weekly.thingelstad.com/podcast.xml
  - kind: website
    url: https://www.thingelstad.com/2026/05/07/massive-weekly-thing-website-build.html
    role: reference
connections: []
story:
  color: "#eaa18f"
  introduction: Curiosity, collected and shared.
  engineering:
    - WT Builder keeps an issue structured until it is sent, then renders different editions for the website, email, and audio.
    - The public archive is an Eleventy site. Thingy's private Librarian API builds the searchable archive that Thingy answers from.
    - Authoring, public publishing, and archive retrieval have explicit ownership boundaries.
  stack:
    - Eleventy
    - Publishing
    - Email
    - Audio
  related:
    - wt-builder
    - yearly-thing-2025
    - thingy
    - another-thing
  questions:
    - What is behind the publishing workflow?
    - How do Weekly Thing and Thingy connect?
  source: https://weekly.thingelstad.com/
  sourceLabel: Read the archive
  started: Published since 2017
page: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/weekly-thing/
---

# Weekly Thing

My weekend newsletter of links with commentary, sent since May 2017 and published as a website, email, and podcast.

The Weekly Thing is my newsletter of links I found interesting, each with my commentary, plus my own blog posts from the week. I sent the [first issue](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/1/) on May 13, 2017, and have sent it most weekends since, taking breaks in summer and over the winter holidays. It began on TinyLetter, moved to MailChimp with [issue 23](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/23/) in October 2017, and moved to Buttondown with [issue 131](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/131/) in January 2020. I numbered those moves myself: “1.0: Launch on TinyLetter, 2.0: Move to MailChimp, 2.1: Custom HTML Template, 3.0: Buttondown.” I reached [issue 100](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/100/) in April 2019, [200](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/200/) in October 2021, and [300](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/300/) in November 2024, which took “7 years 5 months 3 weeks and 6 days” ([Thoughts after writing 300 newsletters](https://www.thingelstad.com/2024/11/17/thoughts-after-writing.html)).

In May 2026, at 345 issues, I [rebuilt the website](https://www.thingelstad.com/2026/05/07/massive-weekly-thing-website-build.html) as a full archive with search, a table of contents for each issue, and Thingy for asking questions of the archive. The ten newest issues also got an audio edition, published as a [podcast](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/podcast/). I built it with Claude Code, Claude Design, and Codex. [Issue 349](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/349/), two weeks later, was the first made in the Weekly Thing Workshop, a team of Discord agents. Starting with [issue 350](https://www.thingelstad.com/2026/09/20/i-just-published-weekly-thing.html) in September 2026, every issue has been written and sent from WT Builder. In October 2026 I [restructured the whole archive](https://www.thingelstad.com/2026/10/06/weekly-thing-archive-improved.html) so old issues render like new ones, and rendered every issue in audio, so the podcast feed “goes all the way back to the very first issue.”

Readers have had places to talk about issues. I [created r/WeeklyThing](https://www.thingelstad.com/2022/10/30/i-decided-to.html) in October 2022, and in September 2023 I opened the [Weekly Thing Forum](https://www.thingelstad.com/2023/09/22/introducing-weekly-thing.html) on Ponder, which closed when Ponder shut down in November 2025 ([Farewell Ponder and Weekly Thing Forum](https://www.thingelstad.com/2025/11/17/farewell-weekly-thing-forum-and.html)). Discussion moved back to the subreddit ([Weekly Thing 334](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/334/)).

Since November 2024, readers can become [Supporting Members](https://www.thingelstad.com/2024/11/17/weekly-thing-supporting.html). All of that money goes to one digital non-profit each year: Creative Commons first, then the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which [received $1,164.92](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/347/) in May 2026, and now [Signal](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/350/).