As Substack reports a million paid subscribers to its newsletters this week, I’m often left wondering what might have happened to the newsletter space had Substack remained a business that only grew as its audience did.Substack started out as a company with a pitch that anyone who wanted to could start a paid newsletter and, with the right amount of work, claim financial independence. But at some point, the company broke this essential model by beginning to accept venture capital money, culmina…

Dongle Doom. https://t.co/CDQxptcTVx

Dear developers of Popeye: Don’t screw with @johnblueriggs because he posted a review you didn’t like. https://t.co/SpWSd9Z1xt

Did venture capital spoil the promise of the newsletter space? Thoughts on Substack reaching 1 million paid subs: https://t.co/peQmXANq5I new #MidRange

The problem with my tweeting style is that I feel like I create a slam-dunk joke and I’m the only one who agrees.

@NeoYokel Yeah, definitely write about it. I think the only thing it needs for me to use it more is sync. My use case these days is for writing when focus is paramount (usually Tedium pieces).

The internet is too complex for simple explanations of utopia. https://t.co/QrI5yJSBZV new #MidRange via @revue

To sort of get at my bigger point here, I offer a thought experiment: Try going somewhere you love, but haven’t been for a while—should be easy, given the pandemic. Odds are if it hasn’t been torn up or built up, it looks much the same.

@backlon For your next trick make a cellular acoustic coupler that allows you to sideload apps

I should make a phone app that’s nicer than the iPhone’s built in phone app, submit it, and see what happens. It would let me answer calls on an Android phone by transmitting the signal there directly. Of course I will call the app Carterfone. https://t.co/MH4rI08oVp

@NeoYokel Love what Pine64 does and what it and this phone represents, but at some point, flagging that I struggled to keep the USB-C dongle in the port felt important to point out.

@NeoYokel It might amuse you to know, given your comments, that I at one point jokingly considered reviewing this by directly comparing it to the OnePlus 9 Pro, but decided against it. I do think external input like you suggest would be useful.