Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Month: January 2023

  • All that Substack content that arrives via email

    I’m not a paying subscriber to any Substack at the moment. During the height of the Twitter related drama that was occurring I did subscribe to Platformer for a bit. Earlier this morning I enjoyed a free post from a different publication and hit the like button and was about to add a comment. Unfortunately, they have a setting on Substack that presents me with a prompt, “Only paid subscribers can comment on this post.” It is of course followed by a suggestion to upgrade to a paid subscription to unlock the ability to comment. In this case the author simply won’t get my thoughts or receive any communication from me on the subject. I appreciate the idea that people could gain income from writing a Substack. Independent journalism and writing in general is always a good thing to encourage. Some of that output might not be very good, but that is how the great sorting of attention brings things forward and pushes others to the background. 

    Sometimes things that I write pick up a bit of attention and people look at them, but the vast majority of the content that I have produced over the last 20 years has been pushed to the background during the great sorting of attention online. That is perfectly fine with me for the most part. I’m writing for the purpose of observation and mostly for my own learning and personal growth. My methodology of processing complex ideas at times involves writing about it to work on advancing my consideration. 

    Throughout the last 2 years I have added 16 different Substack’s to my recommendations list apparently. 

    1. https://investinginai.substack.com/
    2. https://decision.substack.com/
    3. https://www.platformer.news/
    4. https://mindfulmodeler.substack.com/
    5. https://zetter.substack.com/
    6. https://brief.montrealethics.ai/
    7. https://dblalock.substack.com/
    8. https://techtom.substack.com/
    9. https://lastweekin.ai/
    10. https://garymarcus.substack.com/
    11. https://mikeelgan.substack.com/
    12. https://thegradientpub.substack.com/
    13. https://askwhy.substack.com/ 
    14. https://aboutchromebooks.substack.com/
    15. https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/
    16. https://joefattorini.substack.com/ 

    They all provide a variety of different insights to my email inbox throughout the weeks or in some cases months. They arrive at a variety of intervals. Some Substacks are way more active than others. My efforts for example arrive every Friday. That makes it a weekly Substack and it has pretty much always been that way. I know that the team over at Substack would really like us to interact with the content on the smartphone applications or in the feed as a collection of content. I’m guessing that most people still read and consume the content as emails either as they arrive or when cleaning out an inbox.

  • Starting down that writing path

    A lot of my thoughts have been drifting toward what content should be put into the backlog for this year. Sitting down to rework my writing plan is something that happens at the end of the year and after building out what needs to be done I start down that path. This year got a little bit more complicated based on recovering from being unwell. Sometimes people describe a bit of fogginess or a lack of focus that occurs post this novel sludge that has been going around for the last couple years. It certainly did take some time to get back up to a solid game shape afterward. One of the things that I have been doing is going back and reviewing some of the work that I completed in that window to see if what happened was solid or needs some rework. 

    To that end, my writing backlog for this year’s Substack posts is an area that I’m going to keep looking at each week until I’m super happy with it as a go forward plan. Right now the backlog file has a list of posts from week 105 to week 148. That leaves 8 fresh uncopied slots for the year to fill up and of course whatever content ends up getting replaced along the way. Sitting down and writing a chapter every week is an interesting way to go about creating a book. You really have to make sure the flow and content is set up in the right order or the content being created will be a collection of essays and less of a collective work. 

    While this post certainly falls into a common weblog post tag theme of writing, Substack, and thinking about my writing plans it has become more a process blog than a collection of events. Blogging a series of process stories in a row that are essentially only relevant to my interest and amusements at the time might not seem like the best idea, but oddly enough this practice has been going on for years. You can easily check the archive and you will find while tactically unfortunate that this trend is certainly dependable. Striving toward the ultimate goal of a perfect possible future always provides opportunity. 

    One of the base levels of effort that helps set up a solid writing habit is the creation is on a daily basis filling up the blank page. You can see it in a word processing program as you get to the bottom of what is considered the page. It slowly comes into focus as the paragraphs pile up and you get that sense that in just a few more sentences a victory will be achieved. One of the things that has troubled me about that writing process is just how fast and easily some of the new chat style models are producing content. All of these words were produced after downing two shots of espresso, sitting in my office chair, and spending time striking keys on the keyboard at the start of the day. Perhaps it is debatable if I’m just a slower prompt than what ChatGPT delivers in a few moments. I like to think my writing has a deeper relevance to what I care about which in the end is the core of how experience is expressed in prose. It’s that voice, experience, and more importantly directionality toward an ongoing narrative and focus on my writing plan that I like to think makes my content distinct.