So it turns out that Feedbin, the RSS feed aggregator service that I pay for, has long supported receiving email newsletters and treating the source as a feed:
You can now receive email newsletters in Feedbin.
… To use this feature, go to the settings page and find your secret Feedbin email address. Use this email address whenever you sign up for an email newsletter. Anything sent to it will show up as a feed in Feedbin, grouped by sender.
Reading email in an email app feels like work to me. However, there’s a certain class of email that I want to enjoy reading, and Feedbin is where I go when I want to read for pleasure.
At first, I scoffed at this notion. Recently I checked my “Newsletters” label in Gmail and was gobsmacked by how many old issues, across a number of newsletters, had piled up. What the heck, let’s give this Feedbin hack a whirl.
So far it’s actually way better than I thought. The reading is improved because Gmail cuts off longer messages after a certain number of characters, which modern newsletter emails oft run afoul of. Then you have to follow a link to read the rest which is a pain in the ass. Also, the messages show up in a place that I’m much more prone to check for reading material on a regular basis. Finally, the autogrouping by source works better than a label in my e-mail reader. Sure I could set up Gmail to do that, but hey, work.
The only gotcha, is that for new signups, you have to go into the reader and click the verification link. No big deal, but sorta weird.
Herewith are a few newsletters that I like and have thrown into this scheme: