Although I try to keep navel-gazing to a minimum, I’m happy to report that this publication has crossed 7,000 email subscribers (plus an unknown number of RSS weirdos).
Keep publishing and do not despair. While it is hard to break through the noise, there are thousands of people who think your writing makes the internet a better place. It has been a hard few years for those who value depth, but without people like you things will not get better.
Another RSS wierdo here. I think that blogs like this has never been more important for me than now. OK, maybe I'm lying a little bit. Finding out that there are still sane and trustworthy people who value the same things I do – knowledge and skills (including communication and writing) – was equally important for me many years ago when I was looking at world around me going crazy and discovering BBS and later early internet. What is happening in the world right now is having devastating consequences for trust and human connection. And that is precisely why it is important to preserve that little we have.
PS. Preordered several of "The Secret Life of Circuits" books. Santa will be very thankful here.
There seem to be quite a few authors who post long-form content on substack regularly and have a lot of readers. I follow Scott Alexander (astralcodexten), Freddie deBoer, Richard Hannia, and others.
Sure, but that's mostly political / current-events commentary. I don't think that genre is at a serious risk because people like to read opinions that can be attributed to the personalities they know and like.
Pisz swoje. Dla mnie Twoje artykuły to światełko w tunelu umierającego Internetu. Miałem "pecha" stawiać w nim kroki kilka lat po Tobie i niestety pamiętam jakie to było wspaniałe środowisko. Udaje się jeszcze rzadko znaleźć jakościowe rodzynki, wszystkie gdzieś upchane w czarnych niewypromowanych kątach i czytelnikach/widzach liczonych raczej w setkach niż tysiącach. Niestety często już opuszczone i tylko czekać aż domeny wygasną. Stare powiedzenie "co raz trafiło do Internetu, nigdy go nie opuści" już się nie sprawdza, niestety.
Czytam przez RSSa, ale żeby Ci było milej w cyferkach to subskrypcję na maila też mam :) Wszystkiego dobrego!
Hello from an RSS weirdo, I've been following your work on and off since Silence on the Wire.
Do you worry about Substack getting enshittified too? I feel like I've lost all trust in commercial platforms remaining good for any reasonable amount of time, which makes me reluctant to engage with many.
Discord serves a similar purpose to me as I suspect Substack may do to you - in terms of finding a community of like-minded people to engage with - but I am also very aware that the good times won't last forever.
A thought on discovery: most of what I find interesting these days comes from recommendations from others in small communities that I frequent (now that I write this, it reminds me of The Machine Stops...), and via alternative search engines and archives whilst researching my interests. The latter sometimes turns up small personal sites that people are still building and maintaining, which gives me hope. This has led me to recently creating my own personal website again for the first time in years. I am not promoting it at all as it partly exists to have somewhere I can refer back to, and partly to sow some seeds that may flower if others interested in the same topic stumble across it and contact me.
There is a caveat of course, which is that most such personal sites I come across are on extremely niche technical topics. Sometimes it feels like being part of an underground resistance, but I think the reality is that social media platforms in particular do offer something of value to many people - and the tech industry has failed to give most people the tools to share things in an open way without having to rely on walled gardens. (A particular frustration of mine is how much history is posted in closed Facebook groups, which cannot be archived and will likely be lost eventually.)
Perhaps we're all having our own small parties at the end of the internet.
Hey, please don’t give into the AI slop. Please keep writing. It’s more important than ever for real humans to write about real things. I for one seek out real human content all the time. I just read a real book on my beach holiday and the thoughts and emotions it provoked made me realise that human writing is one of the most powerful mediums we have. We’re going through a weird phase at the moment but I’m positive that human originality will prevail. People need the knowledge and emotions that can only be portrayed in the human written word.
First of all, this is peak content. Period. Certainly most of the posts are all above my brain paygrade, yet somehow I feel smarter after reading them and pretending I agree with all the proofs and explanations. Illustrations do help me a lot, that’s for sure! (The 5 year old part of me cheers on that). Also it’s one of the few things that brings me joy when I see the toast in my phone. Please continue for the good of all of us. Thank you and congrats for your 7k 🎉
Keep publishing and do not despair. While it is hard to break through the noise, there are thousands of people who think your writing makes the internet a better place. It has been a hard few years for those who value depth, but without people like you things will not get better.
Another RSS wierdo here. I think that blogs like this has never been more important for me than now. OK, maybe I'm lying a little bit. Finding out that there are still sane and trustworthy people who value the same things I do – knowledge and skills (including communication and writing) – was equally important for me many years ago when I was looking at world around me going crazy and discovering BBS and later early internet. What is happening in the world right now is having devastating consequences for trust and human connection. And that is precisely why it is important to preserve that little we have.
PS. Preordered several of "The Secret Life of Circuits" books. Santa will be very thankful here.
There seem to be quite a few authors who post long-form content on substack regularly and have a lot of readers. I follow Scott Alexander (astralcodexten), Freddie deBoer, Richard Hannia, and others.
Sure, but that's mostly political / current-events commentary. I don't think that genre is at a serious risk because people like to read opinions that can be attributed to the personalities they know and like.
I come here for these little gems in almost every article "offer dubious life advice" in this one
Pisz swoje. Dla mnie Twoje artykuły to światełko w tunelu umierającego Internetu. Miałem "pecha" stawiać w nim kroki kilka lat po Tobie i niestety pamiętam jakie to było wspaniałe środowisko. Udaje się jeszcze rzadko znaleźć jakościowe rodzynki, wszystkie gdzieś upchane w czarnych niewypromowanych kątach i czytelnikach/widzach liczonych raczej w setkach niż tysiącach. Niestety często już opuszczone i tylko czekać aż domeny wygasną. Stare powiedzenie "co raz trafiło do Internetu, nigdy go nie opuści" już się nie sprawdza, niestety.
Czytam przez RSSa, ale żeby Ci było milej w cyferkach to subskrypcję na maila też mam :) Wszystkiego dobrego!
Hello from an RSS weirdo, I've been following your work on and off since Silence on the Wire.
Do you worry about Substack getting enshittified too? I feel like I've lost all trust in commercial platforms remaining good for any reasonable amount of time, which makes me reluctant to engage with many.
Discord serves a similar purpose to me as I suspect Substack may do to you - in terms of finding a community of like-minded people to engage with - but I am also very aware that the good times won't last forever.
A thought on discovery: most of what I find interesting these days comes from recommendations from others in small communities that I frequent (now that I write this, it reminds me of The Machine Stops...), and via alternative search engines and archives whilst researching my interests. The latter sometimes turns up small personal sites that people are still building and maintaining, which gives me hope. This has led me to recently creating my own personal website again for the first time in years. I am not promoting it at all as it partly exists to have somewhere I can refer back to, and partly to sow some seeds that may flower if others interested in the same topic stumble across it and contact me.
There is a caveat of course, which is that most such personal sites I come across are on extremely niche technical topics. Sometimes it feels like being part of an underground resistance, but I think the reality is that social media platforms in particular do offer something of value to many people - and the tech industry has failed to give most people the tools to share things in an open way without having to rely on walled gardens. (A particular frustration of mine is how much history is posted in closed Facebook groups, which cannot be archived and will likely be lost eventually.)
Perhaps we're all having our own small parties at the end of the internet.
Hey, please don’t give into the AI slop. Please keep writing. It’s more important than ever for real humans to write about real things. I for one seek out real human content all the time. I just read a real book on my beach holiday and the thoughts and emotions it provoked made me realise that human writing is one of the most powerful mediums we have. We’re going through a weird phase at the moment but I’m positive that human originality will prevail. People need the knowledge and emotions that can only be portrayed in the human written word.
First of all, this is peak content. Period. Certainly most of the posts are all above my brain paygrade, yet somehow I feel smarter after reading them and pretending I agree with all the proofs and explanations. Illustrations do help me a lot, that’s for sure! (The 5 year old part of me cheers on that). Also it’s one of the few things that brings me joy when I see the toast in my phone. Please continue for the good of all of us. Thank you and congrats for your 7k 🎉