Search is ok if looking for something specific, but I generally just go to whatever "section" best fits my new posts, and troll around the "Today's Posts" sections to see what all else is going on (which is where I found your post as well as the post I linked you to on the tier4/regen discussion)...
When you post a comment on a thread, the system "subscribes" you to that thread and you get email notifications the first few times there are replies. If you quit visiting the site, it will quit emailing you.