Conversation

I’ve heard the argument that maybe one can support book-writing by writing a weekly newsletter *while* writing a book. Ideally the newsletter might be exhaust from research or book-drafting sessions. I think

@antonhowes

is trying this! I’d love to see success stories here.

Note that this approach is the opposite of a common practice: write a blog for a few years; get popular; staple posts together into a book. I like some of those books, but they usually seemed just as good as blog posts: they don’t seem to be accessing new depths as books.

Maybe it doesn’t matter if Substack’s model can’t produce book-depth thought. After all, if the model could “only” support the creation of lots more SlateStarCodexes, that would be really incredible!

8:21 PM · Nov 24, 2020Twitter Web App

Anon friend suggests that much Substack criticism can be read as: "Yeah, [your fave neighborhood restaurant] is great, but I fail to see what they’re doing for world hunger, farming challenges related to depleted soil, etc, to say nothing of how useless it is to dead people"

Replying to

I like this framing too!

Quote Tweet

Ava

@noampomsky

· Nov 24, 2020

people say real intimacy doesn’t scale, but I think personal blogs work bc one-sided intimacy is just as interesting + meaningful as two-sided intimacy. teenage-girl-making-youtube-covers-in-her-bedroom energy is powerful

Show this thread

Replying to

Also

: scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/11/why-i-

This Tweet is from an account that no longer exists. Learn more

Can we stay cool without heating up the planet? by Recode Daily

Indeed. No idea what Substack’s message is here but it’s sad/fun to imagine a whole community is talking up a restaurant’s humanitarian efforts, writing thinkpieces, etc, but it’s all a hallucination and the restaurant never said anything of the sort. What do you do?!

Replying to

VOX's hot take is something like : Substack is "Bro and alt-right adjacent"

cms.megaphone.fm