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.