Comic Book writer/artists took off within the past year on Substack after Substack gave some industry stars a bunch of money. I follow You and Bari - and then like 10 comic book substacks. Substack is a huge disruptive force in the comic book industry.
in an effort to help some of the non-rich get middle-classer, allow me to plug with a deep shame and sadness in my heart, the comedy writings on Both Are True - Absurd, honest comedy delivered twice a weekish through the vulnerable personal essays of Alex Dobrenko: friend to all, father to one, and tv actor+writer to anyone hiring.
It's in the Humor category and definitely not first but routinely in the top 20 or whatever so hey, why not try!
Will this bold shilling be respected as a great example of one man shooting his shot amidst a sea of idk what, or will this post be swiftly deleted and perhaps the writer even banned? Time will tell, dear friends, but until then, allow me to just say it has been a priv and hon to spend a little time with all of you
It does, frankly, annoy me that politics so dominates Substack, social media, the news, whatever. Perhaps because it's not my specific main interest. Or at least not the kind that gets reported on. A question I've never gotten a satisfactory answer to: Why does broad politics seem to dominate news so much?
I have my own substack and have to say that another fun way to explore the site is through the Recommendations. It's like a wikipedia race where you start out in the short story realm (my realm) then you get to writing...then travel...then cooking...then the shadow realm of politics...
For me, the business one didn't feel very parallel universey (I went and read the article as well). Which ones of these felt in-universe for other people?
What makes substack a community of substackers that is different from people using wordpress or ghost or insert-the-thousands-other-blogging platforms?
"I asked a friend who is more up-to-date on evangelical culture, and she tells me yes - it is normal for evangelical pastors to claim divine inspiration for their sermons and other religious works."
As an "evangelical," I bristle at this. Maybe there is a more accurate descriptor for those who claim this, like "charismatic" or some less kind terms I could think of.
I find the tone of thunderdome much less irritating than the "just the news without the bias" letter from an american et al. Thunderdome guy is obviously a loon but its out there in the open to see. Promoting a demented ideological claim (not being okay with uncontrolled immigration into your state that blue states won't let you effectively prevent is basically the same as being a secessionist slave holder) while acting like you're the sane and rational adult in the room is kind of nauseating.
Heather Cox Richardson explains current events through the informed lens of History. As such, she has no bones to pick, but just puts everything into context. It is immensely comforting to learn that many of the stupid things we see politicians doing are recycled versions of stupid things politicians have been doing for decades, and sometimes centuries. Her fans are literate and love her, and the comments are often wonderful in and of them selves. After reading Letters from and American for about 6 months, I was able to stop subscribing to the New York Times, and I don’t miss it. Reading her regularly will improve your outlook on life. Really.
I worry it says something about me that I actually get the newsletters from *two* of these blogs (Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American & Ted Gioia's The Honest Broker). FWIW, I had read books by each before subscribing to their substacks...
FYI, Ted Gioia has a claim to being one of The Most Interesting Writers in the World (in a personal sense; his actual writing is good but not unbelievable.)
Following him online is a mix of "well, in this class I had with GEM Anscombe when I was doing philosophy at Oxford" and "when I was literally a spy" and "Here's me and Stan Getz playing jazz together!" and "my brother is the poet laureate of California" (Dana Gioia; Tyler Cowen has an excellent interview with him).
There are certain topics I am willing to read an indefinite number of articles on. For example, right now I will read any number of detailed breakdowns of why what Russia is doing is dumb, even though there are really only a few things to say about this and every article says most of them. There are a lot of Scott Alexander type topics in this category too. I bet for some people, articles about being in this "always on" environment are like that.
Ethan Strauss has been dabbling in broader political and cultural topics and cross-podcasting with Rob Henderson and Razib Khan; I'm not surprised about the size of his audience. He is the only sports commentator I could name.
Other than that, I recall reading a bit of Gioia and trying to read Richardson but quickly starting to wonder what the fuss was supposed to be about (I always thought her claim to fame was getting on Substack early, but now I'm not sure this is actually the case).
My media habits are super weird, but to keep myself from completely losing touch with “who is famous right now”, I’ve continued reading a celebrity blog called Dlisted for the past 15 years. So I understood that whole “culture” paragraph from House Inhabit.
I’ve stuck with Dlisted because it’s stayed lighthearted and the writers can be genuinely funny. I was particularly grateful for having read it one time when I was on my way to an ACX meetup and the local rail system froze up, leaving me and two other ladies stranded at my suburban train station. I had my car and gave them both rides home, and on the long drive their topic of choice was the Kardashians. I have zero actual interest in the Kardashians, but I felt palpably more “normal” for at least having a rough count of them.
Scott didn’t mention fiction as a category in the body or the look-ahead, which I’ll take optimistically to mean that that space isn’t saturated yet. Seems like as good a context as any I’m likely to get in which to un-lurk and plug my periodical fiction blog - https://open.substack.com/pub/ghostsinglasshouses?r=b9xg2&utm_medium=ios. Just got it going with the plan to post books in chapters with blog-like frequency and formatting. If anyone would try it out I’d appreciate it!
> "But under the circumstances I finally signed up for the seven-day free trial."
Where the circumstances are that you were concerned there was a not-insignificant probability that God would have another line after that and it was, "You, of all people, after seeing those sevens..." and hold you responsible for not taking that action?
> Political Substacks tend to have names that suggest stability - “The Bulwark”, “North Star”, “Steady” - or reasonableness - “Common Sense”, “Civil Discourse”, “Lucid”. They all have taglines like “Just the news, the way it should be, without the craziness and partisan bias”. Their articles are all things like “WATCH how the FASCIST ultra-MAGA Republicans ABUSE women and CHILDREN because THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT!!!”
I think this extends out to criticism/media/news in general. I've can't think of an extremely partisan news source that didn't have that kind of name.
Love this! Yes please keep exploring. Besides the topic categories, are there emotional/psychological benefit categories like “get your tribal fix,” “conspiracy stuff,” “pump those anger fluids,” (Sorry I don’t what the amygdala makes). Not sure what emotion is attached to the business blog. A self-improvement related emotion?
How do we learn which substacks are popular with people who don’t like to read? Are we in a bubble of readers?
"Their articles are all things like “WATCH how the FASCIST ultra-MAGA Republicans ABUSE women and CHILDREN because THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT!!!”
I think you're being unfair to Bari Weiss. I'm actually a paid subscriber there, despite being a registered Republican - and it's not because I'm masochistic.
Could you not do the media criticism thing of labeling the migrant stunt as just anti Republican? Like what are your feelings about the actual occurrence. Yes, it looks bad to some people while it looks good to other people.
What does Scott Alexander think about it? Was it a cruel waste of Florida tax payer dollars or a necessary action to break blue America out of its tribal bubble?
Oh, thanks for the interesting comment. Who said, “Those who don’t know the mistakes of the past, are doomed to repeat them”? Heather Cox Richardson’s ability to place current events into the timeline and context of events that have gone before is why I read her with a sense of relief, you know?
I notice that my readers overlap with the readerships of the Substacks I read a surprising amount. It’s been interesting to watch a bubble emerge in real time because the last time it happened (on Twitter) I was too stupid to notice for a long time.
The "International" Substack landscape reminds me of the prayer rooms in Abu-Dhabi airport. You can have large, clearly marked gender-separate traditional prayer rooms (at least a pair per terminal), or a single, much smaller "Multi-Faith Prayer Room" near the bus gates at Terminal 3.
I can't even blame them for anything; the difference in sizes probably reflects the difference in demand very accurately.
Grateful. Amused. But also sad: The kings&queens of substack at 250 likes for their top-posts. Thousand of rather unknown guys on twitter get 10K of likes for a tweet (if it has a cute pic).
Not that many readers of longer pieces, no surprise. And some magnitudes less of good-enough-to-follow-writers.
And here I am, spending the better parts of my life reading Scott, Erik, Zvi & such.
I have to admit to being a bit disappointed here Scott.
You praise Richardson's post, despite acknowledging that she's blatantly anti-Republican in a very harsh way (you describe it as comparing all Republicans to Antebellum slave holders, which certainly doesn't match your normal approach of "necessary, true, or kind"), giving her a 2/3 and high praise. For the Spiritual/Faith category, you give the same description, which I would think would elicit the same "hey it's got 2/3" response, but instead you make up a bunch of things you wish you had seen in the post to mock, that wasn't there, and you move on.
That's not your normal style and I'm bothered by why you might feel the need to praise an explicitly left politics post and make up things to dunk on a spirituality post that from the rest of your review are quite similar.
Here's how you described Richardson: "Still, all of her posts are like this. A daily discussion of one timely issue, a lot of useful context and explanation, and a paragraph or two about why it proves that the Republicans are the party of hatred and bigotry."
Here's what you say about the Faith post: "The most common type of article is the Tipping Point Quick Hits, which is oddly similar to Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters. It’s a few of the day’s biggest news stories, some well-written and useful context on each, and then a few paragraphs on why it means we are living in the End Times."
I can guess why you have such a double-standard on reviewing them, but the two most obvious answers are personal bias and signaling to a certain ingroup, and I would be disappointed if either of them were accurate. If, in fact, Richardson's writings are just simply better, you did a poor job of explaining that.
Like the early blogs (many of which developed tremendous readership despite content that was just so-so), the top Substacks include more than a few people who were there early and publish consistently. I put Letters from an American in this group.
She delivers a well-written summary of what's going on through a comforting lens for liberal readers in which their priors are rarely challenged. She's published more or less daily for three years and rode the Trump preoccupation wave much like Haberman et al.
> I think the right genre for Trump is “outlaw prince” - like Robin Hood, or Song Jiang, or your better class of pirate captain. Realistically he’s just out to enrich himself. But he defeats and embarrasses so many people along the way that he becomes a legend, inextricably tied to the idea that the establishment can be beaten. He develops a cult following, his relatively meager real accomplishments get exaggerated in song and legend, and everyone assumes that he was only stealing from the rich in order to give to the poor or something. He can’t be caught, he can’t be defeated; like Elvis, he won’t even be able to die.
This kind of thing is why I always read Scott posts to the end even when I'm not that interested in the subject; you just might find an unrelated gem like this.
>”The hook of seeing other single people on campus for the first time (and knowing if they’re interested in you) went viral.”
I’m reminded of that Louis CK bit from his first leaked show after his canceling. He realized after finding out who is real friends were that he never wanted to find out who his real friends were.
Re The Honest Broker: hmmmm, I am pretty sure this is not the first time Scott writes about singers being a persecuted underground rebel movement who use mysticism, magic and wisdom from ancient texts to fight the cold uncaring power that rules the world. TINACBNIEAC.
> I found myself imagining the scene after my death. I would arrive at the Pearly Gates, and God would say: “Depart from Me, for you did not serve Me, but followed false prophets and wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
> And I would answer: “Look, I was going to read the blog post on how to distinguish between the the Spirit of God and the Antichrist spirit, but it required a $7/month subscription, and I just really don’t like paying for online content.”
> God would ask me “But why didn’t you take the seven day free trial?”. I would answer “You know how those things work, they’re just banking on you forgetting to cancel after seven days and getting auto-charged forever.” God is merciful, I think He would understand.
Kinda, sorta about the origins of the industrial revolution? But also about how and why innovation happens kinda live-blogging all of the research (and rabbit holes) that goes into writing a non-fiction book.
If anyone wants to dive into a bit of a more whacky, random, interesting substack, I'd be grateful if you joined around 1000 others and took a look at Pryor Thoughts, always glad to have another eyeball or two
“Fair decision, but Politics remains the core of Substack. Here we have such famous names as Bari Weiss, Michael Moore, and Matt Taibbi. 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has a Substack, as does leading ivermectin advocate Dr. Pierre Kory.”
Why would Dr. Kory’s substack or ivermectin advocacy be classified as a political stack?
"I guess this is the QAnon thing (though he has some kind of complicated objection to that terminology)."
It's actually not a complicated objection. It's the slogan that "There is no QAnon, there is Q and there are Anons", with the meaning that anyone using the term QAnon is ignorant about the subject. The only problem with this is that this slogan is actually just taken directly from Q, who started saying it, after the media started writing a lot about QAnon, so as to prove that the media was ignorant. Before this happened, Q had referred to himself as "QAnon" many times.
Can confirm that the stew is delicious. I made a batch without beans for my legume-sensitive girlfriend, and it was still good, though more of a simple soup. It really needs the beans to be thick enough for stew. And my reluctantly vegetarian roommate ate a lot of it (which generally means a vegetable dish is good.) I think the butter + onion combo is key—makes a good base for anything.
Warning that the cabbage makes a LOT of stew—I used maybe half of a head for one batch.
Comic Book writer/artists took off within the past year on Substack after Substack gave some industry stars a bunch of money. I follow You and Bari - and then like 10 comic book substacks. Substack is a huge disruptive force in the comic book industry.
in an effort to help some of the non-rich get middle-classer, allow me to plug with a deep shame and sadness in my heart, the comedy writings on Both Are True - Absurd, honest comedy delivered twice a weekish through the vulnerable personal essays of Alex Dobrenko: friend to all, father to one, and tv actor+writer to anyone hiring.
It's in the Humor category and definitely not first but routinely in the top 20 or whatever so hey, why not try!
Will this bold shilling be respected as a great example of one man shooting his shot amidst a sea of idk what, or will this post be swiftly deleted and perhaps the writer even banned? Time will tell, dear friends, but until then, allow me to just say it has been a priv and hon to spend a little time with all of you
http://botharetrue.substack.com/
It does, frankly, annoy me that politics so dominates Substack, social media, the news, whatever. Perhaps because it's not my specific main interest. Or at least not the kind that gets reported on. A question I've never gotten a satisfactory answer to: Why does broad politics seem to dominate news so much?
Such a great idea for a post!
It would be fun to start from the random tweets and try to make it back to your homeland Wikipedia-race style.
> they’re just banking on you forgetting to cancel after seven days and getting auto-charged forever.
Temp-mail.org + privacy.com you can have a burner account for a free trial in about 60 seconds, that you don't need to remember to cancel
TIL that crypto has its own Substack category.
I have my own substack and have to say that another fun way to explore the site is through the Recommendations. It's like a wikipedia race where you start out in the short story realm (my realm) then you get to writing...then travel...then cooking...then the shadow realm of politics...
For me, the business one didn't feel very parallel universey (I went and read the article as well). Which ones of these felt in-universe for other people?
Ted Giola sounds like he's REALLY into The Birth of Tragedy.
I read this and then immediately went and changed every tag on my blog.
I'm just here to say that your columns are usually really great, but this one with the snark was simply the best. That's all. Please keep on rocking.
What makes substack a community of substackers that is different from people using wordpress or ghost or insert-the-thousands-other-blogging platforms?
"I asked a friend who is more up-to-date on evangelical culture, and she tells me yes - it is normal for evangelical pastors to claim divine inspiration for their sermons and other religious works."
As an "evangelical," I bristle at this. Maybe there is a more accurate descriptor for those who claim this, like "charismatic" or some less kind terms I could think of.
I find the tone of thunderdome much less irritating than the "just the news without the bias" letter from an american et al. Thunderdome guy is obviously a loon but its out there in the open to see. Promoting a demented ideological claim (not being okay with uncontrolled immigration into your state that blue states won't let you effectively prevent is basically the same as being a secessionist slave holder) while acting like you're the sane and rational adult in the room is kind of nauseating.
Heather Cox Richardson explains current events through the informed lens of History. As such, she has no bones to pick, but just puts everything into context. It is immensely comforting to learn that many of the stupid things we see politicians doing are recycled versions of stupid things politicians have been doing for decades, and sometimes centuries. Her fans are literate and love her, and the comments are often wonderful in and of them selves. After reading Letters from and American for about 6 months, I was able to stop subscribing to the New York Times, and I don’t miss it. Reading her regularly will improve your outlook on life. Really.
Am I an outlier? This is the only substack I read.
I worry it says something about me that I actually get the newsletters from *two* of these blogs (Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American & Ted Gioia's The Honest Broker). FWIW, I had read books by each before subscribing to their substacks...
FYI, Ted Gioia has a claim to being one of The Most Interesting Writers in the World (in a personal sense; his actual writing is good but not unbelievable.)
Following him online is a mix of "well, in this class I had with GEM Anscombe when I was doing philosophy at Oxford" and "when I was literally a spy" and "Here's me and Stan Getz playing jazz together!" and "my brother is the poet laureate of California" (Dana Gioia; Tyler Cowen has an excellent interview with him).
"The method for discerning God from the Antichrist is helpful (God wants your worship to be freely given, the Antichrist wants to compel it)."
So presumably he believes the one who says He'll make sure you suffer for eternity if you don't worship Him is the Antichrist.
Which category does Astral Codex Ten fall under?
Loved this post.
The section on the stew was the funniest thing i've read all year.
Alright, has anyone tried making The Stew? How good is it?
There are certain topics I am willing to read an indefinite number of articles on. For example, right now I will read any number of detailed breakdowns of why what Russia is doing is dumb, even though there are really only a few things to say about this and every article says most of them. There are a lot of Scott Alexander type topics in this category too. I bet for some people, articles about being in this "always on" environment are like that.
Ethan Strauss has been dabbling in broader political and cultural topics and cross-podcasting with Rob Henderson and Razib Khan; I'm not surprised about the size of his audience. He is the only sports commentator I could name.
Other than that, I recall reading a bit of Gioia and trying to read Richardson but quickly starting to wonder what the fuss was supposed to be about (I always thought her claim to fame was getting on Substack early, but now I'm not sure this is actually the case).
My media habits are super weird, but to keep myself from completely losing touch with “who is famous right now”, I’ve continued reading a celebrity blog called Dlisted for the past 15 years. So I understood that whole “culture” paragraph from House Inhabit.
I’ve stuck with Dlisted because it’s stayed lighthearted and the writers can be genuinely funny. I was particularly grateful for having read it one time when I was on my way to an ACX meetup and the local rail system froze up, leaving me and two other ladies stranded at my suburban train station. I had my car and gave them both rides home, and on the long drive their topic of choice was the Kardashians. I have zero actual interest in the Kardashians, but I felt palpably more “normal” for at least having a rough count of them.
Scott didn’t mention fiction as a category in the body or the look-ahead, which I’ll take optimistically to mean that that space isn’t saturated yet. Seems like as good a context as any I’m likely to get in which to un-lurk and plug my periodical fiction blog - https://open.substack.com/pub/ghostsinglasshouses?r=b9xg2&utm_medium=ios. Just got it going with the plan to post books in chapters with blog-like frequency and formatting. If anyone would try it out I’d appreciate it!
> "But under the circumstances I finally signed up for the seven-day free trial."
Where the circumstances are that you were concerned there was a not-insignificant probability that God would have another line after that and it was, "You, of all people, after seeing those sevens..." and hold you responsible for not taking that action?
> Political Substacks tend to have names that suggest stability - “The Bulwark”, “North Star”, “Steady” - or reasonableness - “Common Sense”, “Civil Discourse”, “Lucid”. They all have taglines like “Just the news, the way it should be, without the craziness and partisan bias”. Their articles are all things like “WATCH how the FASCIST ultra-MAGA Republicans ABUSE women and CHILDREN because THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT!!!”
I think this extends out to criticism/media/news in general. I've can't think of an extremely partisan news source that didn't have that kind of name.
Love this! Yes please keep exploring. Besides the topic categories, are there emotional/psychological benefit categories like “get your tribal fix,” “conspiracy stuff,” “pump those anger fluids,” (Sorry I don’t what the amygdala makes). Not sure what emotion is attached to the business blog. A self-improvement related emotion?
How do we learn which substacks are popular with people who don’t like to read? Are we in a bubble of readers?
That was really entertaining. Thank you!
I have one nitpick, though:
"Their articles are all things like “WATCH how the FASCIST ultra-MAGA Republicans ABUSE women and CHILDREN because THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT!!!”
I think you're being unfair to Bari Weiss. I'm actually a paid subscriber there, despite being a registered Republican - and it's not because I'm masochistic.
Scott seems to have run out of things to write about . . .
Could you not do the media criticism thing of labeling the migrant stunt as just anti Republican? Like what are your feelings about the actual occurrence. Yes, it looks bad to some people while it looks good to other people.
What does Scott Alexander think about it? Was it a cruel waste of Florida tax payer dollars or a necessary action to break blue America out of its tribal bubble?
To be honest, this is sort of why I have mostly been avoiding anything on the internet and just doing crossword puzzles.
Oh, thanks for the interesting comment. Who said, “Those who don’t know the mistakes of the past, are doomed to repeat them”? Heather Cox Richardson’s ability to place current events into the timeline and context of events that have gone before is why I read her with a sense of relief, you know?
> This blog is mostly locked, but I was able to find Adam Scheffer And The Problem Of On-Ness.
should be "Schefter"
I notice that my readers overlap with the readerships of the Substacks I read a surprising amount. It’s been interesting to watch a bubble emerge in real time because the last time it happened (on Twitter) I was too stupid to notice for a long time.
That looks like a really good bean stew recipe... thanks
The "International" Substack landscape reminds me of the prayer rooms in Abu-Dhabi airport. You can have large, clearly marked gender-separate traditional prayer rooms (at least a pair per terminal), or a single, much smaller "Multi-Faith Prayer Room" near the bus gates at Terminal 3.
I can't even blame them for anything; the difference in sizes probably reflects the difference in demand very accurately.
Grateful. Amused. But also sad: The kings&queens of substack at 250 likes for their top-posts. Thousand of rather unknown guys on twitter get 10K of likes for a tweet (if it has a cute pic).
Not that many readers of longer pieces, no surprise. And some magnitudes less of good-enough-to-follow-writers.
And here I am, spending the better parts of my life reading Scott, Erik, Zvi & such.
Good you are there. Good you get rewarded.
I have to admit to being a bit disappointed here Scott.
You praise Richardson's post, despite acknowledging that she's blatantly anti-Republican in a very harsh way (you describe it as comparing all Republicans to Antebellum slave holders, which certainly doesn't match your normal approach of "necessary, true, or kind"), giving her a 2/3 and high praise. For the Spiritual/Faith category, you give the same description, which I would think would elicit the same "hey it's got 2/3" response, but instead you make up a bunch of things you wish you had seen in the post to mock, that wasn't there, and you move on.
That's not your normal style and I'm bothered by why you might feel the need to praise an explicitly left politics post and make up things to dunk on a spirituality post that from the rest of your review are quite similar.
Here's how you described Richardson: "Still, all of her posts are like this. A daily discussion of one timely issue, a lot of useful context and explanation, and a paragraph or two about why it proves that the Republicans are the party of hatred and bigotry."
Here's what you say about the Faith post: "The most common type of article is the Tipping Point Quick Hits, which is oddly similar to Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters. It’s a few of the day’s biggest news stories, some well-written and useful context on each, and then a few paragraphs on why it means we are living in the End Times."
I can guess why you have such a double-standard on reviewing them, but the two most obvious answers are personal bias and signaling to a certain ingroup, and I would be disappointed if either of them were accurate. If, in fact, Richardson's writings are just simply better, you did a poor job of explaining that.
Like the early blogs (many of which developed tremendous readership despite content that was just so-so), the top Substacks include more than a few people who were there early and publish consistently. I put Letters from an American in this group.
She delivers a well-written summary of what's going on through a comforting lens for liberal readers in which their priors are rarely challenged. She's published more or less daily for three years and rode the Trump preoccupation wave much like Haberman et al.
Can't wait for the ACX review of Doomberg (top finance pub written by a green chicken)
I want Universe Hopping Thurdays
> I think the right genre for Trump is “outlaw prince” - like Robin Hood, or Song Jiang, or your better class of pirate captain. Realistically he’s just out to enrich himself. But he defeats and embarrasses so many people along the way that he becomes a legend, inextricably tied to the idea that the establishment can be beaten. He develops a cult following, his relatively meager real accomplishments get exaggerated in song and legend, and everyone assumes that he was only stealing from the rich in order to give to the poor or something. He can’t be caught, he can’t be defeated; like Elvis, he won’t even be able to die.
This kind of thing is why I always read Scott posts to the end even when I'm not that interested in the subject; you just might find an unrelated gem like this.
This is hilarious. Please do more. Although the kabbalah stuff made me miss Unsong :(
Good post, I LOL'd several times.
>”The hook of seeing other single people on campus for the first time (and knowing if they’re interested in you) went viral.”
I’m reminded of that Louis CK bit from his first leaked show after his canceling. He realized after finding out who is real friends were that he never wanted to find out who his real friends were.
Re The Honest Broker: hmmmm, I am pretty sure this is not the first time Scott writes about singers being a persecuted underground rebel movement who use mysticism, magic and wisdom from ancient texts to fight the cold uncaring power that rules the world. TINACBNIEAC.
> I found myself imagining the scene after my death. I would arrive at the Pearly Gates, and God would say: “Depart from Me, for you did not serve Me, but followed false prophets and wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
> And I would answer: “Look, I was going to read the blog post on how to distinguish between the the Spirit of God and the Antichrist spirit, but it required a $7/month subscription, and I just really don’t like paying for online content.”
> God would ask me “But why didn’t you take the seven day free trial?”. I would answer “You know how those things work, they’re just banking on you forgetting to cancel after seven days and getting auto-charged forever.” God is merciful, I think He would understand.
Absolutely pealing with laughter.
If we are allowed to plug random non-politics substacks I really enjoy both
1) Cocktails with Suderman https://cocktailswithsuderman.substack.com/
The art, philosophy and techniques of cocktail making.
2) Age of Invention https://antonhowes.substack.com/
Kinda, sorta about the origins of the industrial revolution? But also about how and why innovation happens kinda live-blogging all of the research (and rabbit holes) that goes into writing a non-fiction book.
I'm only subscribed to two substacks. Your substack and Ted Gioia's Honest Broker. Beware the man of one substack, marvel in awe at the man of two.
If anyone wants to dive into a bit of a more whacky, random, interesting substack, I'd be grateful if you joined around 1000 others and took a look at Pryor Thoughts, always glad to have another eyeball or two
Your thought process is delicious ❤️
“Fair decision, but Politics remains the core of Substack. Here we have such famous names as Bari Weiss, Michael Moore, and Matt Taibbi. 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has a Substack, as does leading ivermectin advocate Dr. Pierre Kory.”
Why would Dr. Kory’s substack or ivermectin advocacy be classified as a political stack?
I do love Heather Cox Richardson. Very funny.
blogger REACTS to substack!!
Music rec: Bad Sandwich, which is the personal diary of a famous musician, except he *does* say more than "I am on tour".
He has your sense of humor, but much cruder subject matter. Good stuff.
https://badsandwich.substack.com/
This made me laugh out loud
"I guess this is the QAnon thing (though he has some kind of complicated objection to that terminology)."
It's actually not a complicated objection. It's the slogan that "There is no QAnon, there is Q and there are Anons", with the meaning that anyone using the term QAnon is ignorant about the subject. The only problem with this is that this slogan is actually just taken directly from Q, who started saying it, after the media started writing a lot about QAnon, so as to prove that the media was ignorant. Before this happened, Q had referred to himself as "QAnon" many times.
I am looking forward to the next installment, where Astral Codex Ten is the top blog in Philosophy, and Astral Codex Ten reviews Astral Codex Ten.
Can confirm that the stew is delicious. I made a batch without beans for my legume-sensitive girlfriend, and it was still good, though more of a simple soup. It really needs the beans to be thick enough for stew. And my reluctantly vegetarian roommate ate a lot of it (which generally means a vegetable dish is good.) I think the butter + onion combo is key—makes a good base for anything.
Warning that the cabbage makes a LOT of stew—I used maybe half of a head for one batch.