Seymour Hersh, the only strict truth-teller in “journalism”, started a Substack a few weeks ago, and immediately gathered thousands of paid subscribers. So far he’s posted one intro, one real column, and one random note.
He doesn’t seem to understand the nature of subscription media, which is odd since subscription media is similar to daily papers in one way. When people are paying a significant monthly fee they expect to receive a product at regular intervals. Checking the inbox is the modern equivalent of fetching the paper from the porch. Most Substackers and old-fashioned bloggers recognize this, and try to spit out something once a day.
I rarely miss a day here, even if the day’s spit is just a random pointless observation or a futile attempt at humor. Each random observation has a chance of generating a meaningful thought, leading to a more meaningful animation or text or programming solution.
This also overlaps the copyright topic I’ve been hitting lately. When courts are handling disputes over IP, they consider steady usage. A troll holds without publishing. A real publisher publishes, by fucking definition. Adverse possession definitely applies to IP.
Other forms of licensing also take account of steady usage. Radio stations without a real commercial purpose continue to pump out canned “programming” on autopilot, because FCC distributes the limited resource of spectrum allocations to people who will USE the airtime. An owner who wants to hold onto the license in case of future commercial need, or in case of future sale, can’t let it go dark.
Above all this applies to life. Every cell in our body and every individual in a culture needs to work, needs to be useful. The digestive system needs to chew on fiber. The immune system needs to handle pathogens. The brain needs to sense and learn. Muscles need to contract.
Deepstate knows what it’s doing. It deprives EVERY part of our body of its natural need to work, and turns peasants into purposeless recipients of money and eaters of mealworms. Deepstate knows that peasants die quickly when deprived of work and digestion and immunity and learning.
Polistra's Mill 