A few thoughts after 2 years on Substack

Plus: A peek at my dashboard, a minty cocktail I've been making, and more

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, and here are this week’s five items for you.

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1. A take I haven’t written elsewhere

A few thoughts after 2 years on Substack

my home office

This week—well, this past Sunday, so close enough—marks two years since I sent my first Substack post, starting with an email list I began lackadaisically building c. 2016 and an announcement of my then-new book project, which has since come to fruition as Untrustworthy. The anniversary, which basically coincides with my return from maternity leave, seemed like a good time to take stock of what I’m doing here.

First, though: Thank you. Thanks for reading what I write. Thanks for your comments and replies. Thanks for signing up to hear from me. I have a pretty thick skin and, by writer standards, high confidence that I’m good at what I do. Still, it’s incredibly encouraging to have people—you—specifically asking for updates on my work.

That said, being on Substack hasn’t changed the course of my career, like it has for some. I think I had my career-changing following with my politics blog on Tumblr in the 2010s. There I peaked at 115,000 followers, a figure that undoubtedly helped land my first book contract (A Flexible Faith).

I don’t know if I’ll ever have a list like that again, and one lesson from these two years on Substack is that I’m fine with that. I mean, I appreciate this list and would like it to grow. My publisher would doubtless also like that. But at the same time, I’m getting pretty tired of the endless online numbers game, which now seems to be starting a new round on Threads (where, yes, I do have an account, for now). I’m hoping others are getting tired of it, too.

On that note, I always like it when other people’s anniversary posts include the full dashboard screenshot with the subscriber numbers visible, so here’s mine:

That big jump in the summer of 2022 is from when I asked my Twitter followers to get me to 500 so I could register for a Substack-run course on how to grow your Substack. (If you’re here from then, thank you again!) The uptick c. March was, I think, my consistent weekly posting schedule starting to have an effect. I was hitting a good stride on the paid subs then, too.

Then, whoops, the flatline since late April is my maternity leave.

Jk, but seriously: Bad timing, baby.

On that note, paid subscriptions are unpaused as of this week. The only thing I may (possibly) change is which day I post. Otherwise, I’ll return alternating paid and free posts weekly and will get a paid post out next week. So if you’re not already a paid subscriber, please consider upgrading to receive that post and future paywalled emails:

Why? Well, in many ways, what paid subscribers get is the same as what free subscribers get, only in a larger quantity—the same five items, of which this essay is the most significant, every week instead of every other week.

But paywalled posts also offer those rare online commodities: a modicum of privacy and assurance of a friendly hearing. So it’s there that I tend to share ideas I’m still developing and projects I’m still in the process of researching, like my theory about smartphones in schools (I’m setting up some interviews with teachers on this subject this week, btw!), my initial reactions to ChatGPT, and my thinking on the college gender gap.

As a writer, I like having a smaller space to explore these ideas before exposing them to the whole internet. This is why a paid subscription includes access to the comments section, as I want your feedback. I hope you’ll join me there.

Finally, I hope you’ll bring your friends along, too. I’ve just turned on Substack’s new referrals feature, which gives you comped access to my paid content in exchange for getting other people to subscribe. Here are the tiers:

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2. What I'm reading this week

Render Unto the Machine

L. M. Sacasas

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There’s a particular type of AI-related story that I keep encountering. The kind of story I have in mind has nothing to do with the cataclysmic fears and anxieties that seem to be getting the most press. Rather it involves the far more mundane, actual uses to which generative AI models are being put by perfectly ordinary people and institutions.

These ordinary uses that I have in mind tend to fit a pattern. It is discovered that some task lends itself to automation because it was already formulaic, mechanistic, and predictable: thoughtless writing, box-checking busy work, bureaucratic hoop-jumping, the generation of meaningless content, etc.

In short, it is discovered that AI is especially adept at displacing human labor (or, from the enthusiast’s perspective, liberating) in situations wherein humans had already conformed, willfully or otherwise, to the pattern of a machine.

Read the rest here.

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3. A recommendation

A low ABV cocktail for if your garden, like mine, is overrun with mint:

• 1 oz. gin

• 0.5 oz. simple syrup (I’m using a lime-orange oleo saccharum)

• 0.5 oz. lemon juice

• a bunch of muddled mint leaves

• 4ish oz. fizzy water of choice

• ice

It’s a highball version of the South Side, basically.

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4. Recent work

• Digital appeasement | The New Atlantis (now out from behind the paywall)

• When more troops mean less security | Reason

• How the GOP’s debate rules favor Trump | The Daily Beast

• The reckless absurdity of calls to attack Mexico | Defense Priorities (newsletter)

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5. Miscellaneous

Fridge-pickled red onions. Gotta have ‘em. For tacos, deviled eggs, all kinds of sandwiches.

Here’s a recipe, though I don’t even make it that complicated, let alone measure stuff. I just put some sugar, salt, and a sliced up onion in an old jelly jar, fill it with red wine vinegar, and start using the slices the next day. Each time you run out, put in a new onion, some more sugar and salt, and refill the vinegar to the top.

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