Side Effects Magazine

An open-source publication exploring frontier technologies and their cultural n^th-order side effects.

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Subscribe

npx side-effects-mag subscribe

Or via email: buttondown.email/sideeffects

Read

npx side-effects-mag latest        # the 3 most recent issues
npx side-effects-mag read 001      # read issue 001 in your terminal

Or browse /articles directly.

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API

Side Effects is a JSON API. Three endpoints, no auth, no rate limit beyond GitHub's.

GET  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/1999labs/side-effects-mag/main/feed.json
GET  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/1999labs/side-effects-mag/main/articles/{slug}.md
GET  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/1999labs/side-effects-mag/main/tags/{tag}.json

Inspect endpoints from the CLI:

npx side-effects-mag api

Sample response

GET /feed.json:

{
  "title": "Side Effects Magazine",
  "description": "",
  "author": "Side Effects Magazine",
  "canonical_url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/1999labs/side-effects-mag/main/feed.json",
  "subscribe_url": "https://buttondown.email/sideeffects",
  "cli": "npx side-effects-mag",
  "updated": "2026-05-23",
  "version": 1,
  "articles": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "title": "An Open-Source Magazine",
      "slug": "001-an-open-source-magazine",
      "published": "2026-05-23",
      "tags": ["Technology", "Culture"],
      "summary": "A magazine about the fine print on technological progress, published as a public GitHub repo where the editorial process is part of the publication.",
      "read_time": "4 min",
      "version": 1,
      "canonical_url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/1999labs/side-effects-mag/main/articles/001-an-open-source-magazine.md"
    }
  ]
}

Schema — article

field	type	notes
id	number	monotonic, starts at 1
title	string
slug	string	{id-padded}-{kebab-title}
published	string	ISO date (YYYY-MM-DD)
tags	string[]
summary	string	one sentence
read_time	string	e.g. "3 min"
version	number	bumped if an article is materially revised
canonical_url	string	raw markdown URL on GitHub

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Archive

#	Title	Date	Tags
001	An Open-Source Magazine	2026-05-23	Technology, Culture
002	The CDN Tax	2026-05-23	Publishing, Economics, Content

Contribute

Anyone can contribute. The internet's fine print shouldn't have a single author.

Pitches are issues. Submissions are pull requests. Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening either.

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License

Articles: CC BY 4.0. Code: MIT.