I get it, but I'll put my eggs in the substack basket, for now, and drop Twitter and the rest. But, I've been contemplating spinning up my WP site once again with a paywall to mirror my substack in case this goes the way of the rest. Fingers crossed it doesn't happen as I really love this platform and don't mind them getting a cut from subscriptions.
A considered message deserves a considered response, no?
Firstly, I think I recall you restacking one of my recent articles. Thank you for that. I've yet to devote to the time to look in any depth at your articles, but I will, and shall return the compliment when I find one of your articles with which I strongly agree and meets the standard I expect of citation of references.
Secondly, I don't do subscriptions. I use RSS or just note URLs. I see not why I should tell Substack more than I wish. I used to use Tor religiously, but for the moment that is not the correct solution. It shall return soon enough.
I am inclined to agree with you on the social media score. I think I'll keep my twitter account. I primarily use it for making fun of idiots like Blinken. Cheap laughs. Occassionally for retweeting people I respect, but I've so few followers its all pretty much a waste of time. Whatever.
The little use I've made of Notes seems nicer, for the moment, than Twitster. Hence the article, with the requisite warning. Your plan to re-spinup your WP site is a VERY GOOD IDEA. May I humbly suggest that you link to the WP version of each article when you publish at Substack to advertise its existence, so that if you need to switch, your community is already aware of it. Indeed, they can choose that which they prefer.
I plan on building something similar for a bit of fun. The plan is to build a parser of the zip archives which Substack provides and from that generate two things:
* a database of the metadata and references for each article (title, substitle, publication date, [ref 1, ref 2, ...], culture), where each ref is split into its four parts (title, author, publisher, date)
* a markup representation of each article which can then be pumped into an engine which converts the markup into static HTML.
The first will be of interest to me, where my references are coming from and how they have changed over time. The second is a form of backup and emergency representation. Seems like a fun project.
Anyway, best of luck with your publishing and community building.
Thank you for your excellent advice. For markup, consider the use of Obsidian. You can use it as your base repo. It's local so no one can get to it except you. To track your reference, tags, etc. take a look at zotero. I use it in local mode, also. No cloud on either app. Those are the two tools I use for my research, and they help organize. Again, thank you for the excellent advice and response.
Thanks for the hint about obsidian. I'm a bit of an old *NIX hand, so I'll probs be gluing together with make, bash, python, and gdb, but I will look at obsidian for the markup. One of the good things about Substack and how I use it is that I use very few markup variations. So, the variety of HTML tags is small and style control will be simple via CSS. It is, nonetheless, wise to overengineer a little and obsidian may well hit the spot. I'll check out zotero too.
I see this “notes “ feature on substack as a slippery slope. I see it as them trying to turn nourishing essays, referenced articles and in depth self expression into fast food for the mind.
Making substack more like facebook, Instagram or twitter will likely mean we see an increase in all that comes with all those types of platforms, such as selfy-narcissism, government bots "sock puppets" posing as humans, superficial discussions and a long list of mental issues that arise from the “i need more likes syndrome” that such platforms were designed to elicit.
I think “notes” will serve to feed into the proclivity of most people to embrace a severely impaired attention span due to widespread addictions to social media frameworks that have limited character counts.
This, for the most part, keeps posts superficial and not able to comprehensively inform or educate the reader, leading to endless re-posting of meaningless screenshots of other people’s posts… echoing around.
I see this trend to make everything ‘facebook-esk’ and ‘twitified’ as pathway that will likely lead to mental atrophy for many and an entire generation of children that find it hard to sit down and read a book because it contains more than 280 characters.
I will not be using “notes” on my end. Thanks for posting this and sharing your thoughts on "notes".
I caved and now use notes, but I do regret it and feel my concerns were well founded as I just had a lady show up on my most recent post and say "I appreciated this well written article , especially the video of Derrek Jensen on the democracy technologies and the authoritarian ones…your thoughts on what is a Citizen…then I zoned out…as they was so much, all of value undoubtedly . Could you send them in separate posts , so your readers could reflect and not be overwhelmed ?"
And you've fallen for it too ;-)
https://yesxorno.substack.com/p/anger-deflection-hey-i-love-you
I get it, but I'll put my eggs in the substack basket, for now, and drop Twitter and the rest. But, I've been contemplating spinning up my WP site once again with a paywall to mirror my substack in case this goes the way of the rest. Fingers crossed it doesn't happen as I really love this platform and don't mind them getting a cut from subscriptions.
Kev,
A considered message deserves a considered response, no?
Firstly, I think I recall you restacking one of my recent articles. Thank you for that. I've yet to devote to the time to look in any depth at your articles, but I will, and shall return the compliment when I find one of your articles with which I strongly agree and meets the standard I expect of citation of references.
Secondly, I don't do subscriptions. I use RSS or just note URLs. I see not why I should tell Substack more than I wish. I used to use Tor religiously, but for the moment that is not the correct solution. It shall return soon enough.
I am inclined to agree with you on the social media score. I think I'll keep my twitter account. I primarily use it for making fun of idiots like Blinken. Cheap laughs. Occassionally for retweeting people I respect, but I've so few followers its all pretty much a waste of time. Whatever.
The little use I've made of Notes seems nicer, for the moment, than Twitster. Hence the article, with the requisite warning. Your plan to re-spinup your WP site is a VERY GOOD IDEA. May I humbly suggest that you link to the WP version of each article when you publish at Substack to advertise its existence, so that if you need to switch, your community is already aware of it. Indeed, they can choose that which they prefer.
I plan on building something similar for a bit of fun. The plan is to build a parser of the zip archives which Substack provides and from that generate two things:
* a database of the metadata and references for each article (title, substitle, publication date, [ref 1, ref 2, ...], culture), where each ref is split into its four parts (title, author, publisher, date)
* a markup representation of each article which can then be pumped into an engine which converts the markup into static HTML.
The first will be of interest to me, where my references are coming from and how they have changed over time. The second is a form of backup and emergency representation. Seems like a fun project.
Anyway, best of luck with your publishing and community building.
Thank you for your excellent advice. For markup, consider the use of Obsidian. You can use it as your base repo. It's local so no one can get to it except you. To track your reference, tags, etc. take a look at zotero. I use it in local mode, also. No cloud on either app. Those are the two tools I use for my research, and they help organize. Again, thank you for the excellent advice and response.
https://obsidian.md/
Kev,
Thanks for the hint about obsidian. I'm a bit of an old *NIX hand, so I'll probs be gluing together with make, bash, python, and gdb, but I will look at obsidian for the markup. One of the good things about Substack and how I use it is that I use very few markup variations. So, the variety of HTML tags is small and style control will be simple via CSS. It is, nonetheless, wise to overengineer a little and obsidian may well hit the spot. I'll check out zotero too.
No notes for me, I will not fall in this trap, as I gave up many years ago on fb, instagram etc. I prefere the blog type for many reasons.
Respect. You do you.
I see this “notes “ feature on substack as a slippery slope. I see it as them trying to turn nourishing essays, referenced articles and in depth self expression into fast food for the mind.
Making substack more like facebook, Instagram or twitter will likely mean we see an increase in all that comes with all those types of platforms, such as selfy-narcissism, government bots "sock puppets" posing as humans, superficial discussions and a long list of mental issues that arise from the “i need more likes syndrome” that such platforms were designed to elicit.
I think “notes” will serve to feed into the proclivity of most people to embrace a severely impaired attention span due to widespread addictions to social media frameworks that have limited character counts.
This, for the most part, keeps posts superficial and not able to comprehensively inform or educate the reader, leading to endless re-posting of meaningless screenshots of other people’s posts… echoing around.
I see this trend to make everything ‘facebook-esk’ and ‘twitified’ as pathway that will likely lead to mental atrophy for many and an entire generation of children that find it hard to sit down and read a book because it contains more than 280 characters.
I will not be using “notes” on my end. Thanks for posting this and sharing your thoughts on "notes".
I share your concern about the dopamine habit and the trivialization of exchange. As with Papilon above, I say:
Respect. You do you.
I caved and now use notes, but I do regret it and feel my concerns were well founded as I just had a lady show up on my most recent post and say "I appreciated this well written article , especially the video of Derrek Jensen on the democracy technologies and the authoritarian ones…your thoughts on what is a Citizen…then I zoned out…as they was so much, all of value undoubtedly . Could you send them in separate posts , so your readers could reflect and not be overwhelmed ?"