Is This a Blog, a Weblog, a Newsletter, or a Substack?
THE ∞$VorV?∞ SCALE - 11/20/2024
Not a fucking Substack. The other three labels? Yes.
No shame to any of you who are on the Substack platform.
But warning: the owners of your art have proven that they can't be trusted with your art.
Anil Dash
And here is an excellent thread about why this business model is so fucking doomed to follow the extraction and enshittification playbook that so many other vulture capital-funded business models eventually succumb to.
Okay, now that we're thinking about Substack and both its cultural influence and its business model, can I walk you all through the economics? Because they make no sense, and we can use that to predict how things are going to go... (Caution:🧵)
— Anil Dash (@anildash.com) 2024-11-20T01:32:52.712Z
Fuck the tech bros that are funded by Vulture Capital.
So if what I am doing here is not a substack, what is it?
5/28/99: Salon. "Weblogs, typically, are personal Web sites operated by individuals who compile chronological lists of links to stuff that interests them, interspersed with information, editorializing and personal asides. A good weblog is updated often, in a kind of real-time improvisation, with pointers to interesting events, pages, stories and happenings elsewhere on the Web. New stuff piles on top of the page; older stuff sinks to the bottom."
Dave Winer wrote that post. Like Anil, he is a long-time blogger.
Actually, Dave is the OG blogger.
I will often link to his continued essential work on these pages.
Dave is much more technical in his approach to this stuff than I am. So, I know this experiment does not fit 100% with his definition of a weblog. But like that Salon quote, I think what I am trying to do here will fit in with the spirit of what a weblog should be.
So, is this a blog? A newsletter? A weblog?
This is me blogging four times a week on a weblog, which can be viewed in your email feed like any other email newsletter (or RSS reader).
This weblog chronicles the stuff on the interweb that interests me enough to share my thoughts on that stuff or simply provide a link to that stuff so others with my shared interests can also see that stuff.
I do read many amazing bloggers, journalists, and artists who post on the Substack platform. But this is something much different than what they are doing.
I own my content, and my content is hosted by the open-source community I love most right now: Ghost.org.
Since I own this content, even if Ghost.org's owners decide to sell out one day, I'll quickly and easily move my content to a new home.
I don't have confidence that my friends who post their art on the Substack platform will be able to do the same.
Also, you don't have to view my work on my website. You can read everything posted here in the magical home of your preferred RSS reader. Just copy and paste my website into your reader's search function, and then subscribe.
Unlocked, free distribution to RSS is what makes a blogger a blogger and a weblog a weblog.
From Anil's blog that inspired this rant, here is some advice on how to get out of the Substack world and where to take your art.
Here's how you can export your subscribers. Here are great alternatives. Before you start those processes, one change you can make today: you can talk about your work as your work. It's your newsletter, or your email, or your blog. Or just your writing. But it sure as hell isn't "your Substack".
WEDNESDAY'S WEBLOG
TODAY ON THE VICIOUS SIDE OF THE ∞$VorV?∞ SCALE
Let's start with the folks who love that vicious side of my handy economic scale. You know, like these guys.
Sean O’Kane, Margaux MacColl
Absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong with this lovely partnership.
In other "fuck the AI bros" news of the day.
Georgia Just Released Eye-Popping New Energy Demand Estimates
We’ll give you one guess as to what’s behind the huge spike.
by Matthew Zeitlin and Heatmap News
Public transit funding — and the lack thereof — will be an ongoing theme on this weblog. And this is such an important point.
The NEC accounts for 42% of total Amtrak ridership and travel between cities that generate about $5 trillion in GDP (more than Japan) The trains should literally levitate. Thats how advanced this rail line should be. But instead, a few scraps here, a few there. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
— Shabazz Stuart (@shabazzstuart.bsky.social) 2024-11-20T01:31:03.453Z
LONGREAD OF THE DAY
And as fundamental American freedoms are about to be gutted, it is good to read about the history behind the fight to get those essential freedoms.
This has been an open tab all week, but I finally got to it today. It's well worth your time.
The Origins of Birthright Citizenship
The Fourteenth Amendment was shaped by freed blacks’ insistence that everyone born in the United States deserved full citizenship.
Robert L. Tsai
HT to this skeet where I first saw this link
ONWARD TO THE BEST STUFF IN MY FEED TODAY
Went for a hike in Mt Tabor Park in the heart of Portland today. I'm new here, but I must say that living in a city in the middle of a forest is pretty tough to beat.
I love a great podcast on my hikes. Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff has been delivering what I have needed to hear for years, and today was no different.
Highly recommend this conversation about the religion of Silicon Valley. Most importantly, this is about how not to let these rapacious assholes control our lives.
This looks like a conversation worthy of my time tomorrow afternoon.
Where Do We Go From Here? A Post-Election Assessment
Thu Nov 21, 2024 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM EST Online, YouTube
Join Naomi Klein, Chenjerai Kumanyika, Astra Taylor, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor for a post-election assessment and urgent conversation about how to chart a path forward.
Speaking of our 'moving forward' strategy, yes to all this.
Instead of taking a middle path between fighting and capitulating Democrats, leaders should sell both factions on a strategy designed to corner Republicans and protect the country, and then dictate tactics down the ladder. www.offmessage.net/p/trump-musk...
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler.bsky.social) 2024-11-20T16:50:13.845Z
REMINDER: The MAGA 2.0 Kleptocrats fucking hate each other.
Miles Klee
And from that same article, I had forgotten about the one time Trump told the truth.
TRUMP BASHES ELON MUSK AS ‘BULLSHIT ARTIST’ AT ALASKA RALLY
This gives me hope that these idiots and lifelong bullshit artists will tear down each other's empires before they destroy this nation.
And there is a booming home for those of you who want to participate in the social network thing without being a pawn for extraction in the Zuckerverse or being subjected to the blue-check trolls who fill up the feeds in Elon's 24/7/365 hate rally.
This is an excellent recap of what has been going on with the 'great xodus' of 2024.
Faine Greenwood
How can I block miserable assholes in large quantity on Bluesky? For is it not true that the world contains a tremendous multitude of miserable assholes?
There are indeed more assholes in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, and for this, Bluesky offers interesting remedies.
Do read about those remedies.
I currently only lurk on bluesky, but I should start posting soon.
Stay strong, my friends.