#founding memberships on Substack

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Section 12: Practical Guide to Substack Discounts & Founding Memberships

Summary of my Udemy Course “From Zero to Substack Hero.” Image source from the video location Purpose of this Series for New Readers This is a new series upon request from my readers. I recently developed a course titled “From Zero to Substack Hero” and published it on Udemy and shared it on Content Marketing Strategy Insights owned by Dr Mehmet Yildiz who kindly allowed me to use his Substack…

[solfulletters]

Entry to your 20s, advice to the 20-year-old women

Four pieces of advice for the twenty-year-old women from a twenty-something year old woman.

1. Move Your Body

I cannot stress this enough, if you can, please move your body! Move your joints and build your muscles. The doctors, scientists and our parents were unfortunately right, the older one becomes, the weaker they get. If you want to still be able to run around in your fifties, sixties, etc. You need to start the habit now. Get a routine, start working out, try a sport, attempt a dance class, and get active in general.

I’ve recently gotten a gym membership and have begun pilates once or twice a week. Although at first, my muscles were burning, my body soon got used to it and I found my stamina and flexibility improving.

However, you don't need to spend money on a gym membership or Pilates to get fit. You can take a run around your local park, start a sports team with your friends, or try a YouTube workout from the comfort of your home. There are so many different ways to stay fit without emptying your pockets.

2. Eat Your Vegetables

I understand that some people are genuinely picky eaters and their parents never took the initiative to introduce different textures and flavours healthily. Thus this has followed into adulthood and are now unable to eat anything outside the same four meals.

I also understand I cannot say too much as someone who can eat almost anything but as a reformed vegetable hater I do have a little bit to offer. To live a long, healthy life vegetables are a necessity. So if you find yourself unable to eat certain vegetables, I would suggest cooking the vegetables differently, or incorporating ingredients you enjoy in your meals, think outside the box!

There are many articles about breaking picky eating, as adults we should try to expand our tastebuds, there's so much food to enjoy in this life. Nobody likes to be the person ordering chicken fingers at a Michelin restaurant.

3. Feed Your Brain

[edited: the previous paragraph has been published on my personal substack as a full piece; I've rewritten and changed this section for publication and privacy purposes].

I urge young women to nurture their brains; you are so blessed to be in a society and world where education is so accessible for women. If you live in the West, take advantage and don't feed into the propaganda of "I'm just a girl". Women are being minimised, and I don't want young ladies falling down the rabbit hole of this recent no-purpose lifestyle that's advertised.

Looks are essential, and don't get me wrong, I know attraction still plays a huge part in society, but it isn't the only important thing. It's not cute to be ignorant, lack life skills and use social media concepts like "I'm just a girl" as excuses. Stupidity isn't hot, so while it's okay to indulge in media consumption, find yourself hobbies outside of that and put in the effort to grow intellectually and further yourself.

4. High Self-esteem Will Protect You

Most of my girlfriends are in the dating field, and from the stories they tell me its clear these men are crazy. Good discernment is needed and for you to trust your discernment you need a healthy level of self-worth.

I’m not just talking about romantic interest, in general, high self-esteem will take you far in life. From romantic partners to career paths, when you know your value and do not settle, that translates to every crevice of your life. People treat you with more respect, you're likely to find yourself in fewer abusive scenarios and get better opportunities in your place of work.

Nothing good comes from beating yourself down and letting others treat you horribly. Overall your twenties can be fun but also filled with anxiety so take it step-by-step, don't beat yourself up and remember comparison is the thief.

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT SEO & MARKETING NEWS FOR ECOMMERCE, AUGUST 2024

Hello, and welcome to my very last Marketing News update here on Tumblr.

After today, these reports will now be found at least twice a week on my Patreon, available to all paid members. See more about this change here on my website blog: https://www.cindylouwho2.com/blog/2024/8/12/a-new-way-to-get-ecommerce-news-and-help-welcome-to-my-patreon-page

Don't worry! I will still be posting some short pieces here on Tumblr (as well as some free pieces on my Patreon, plus longer posts on my website blog). However, the news updates and some other posts will be moving to Patreon permanently.

Please follow me there! https://www.patreon.com/CindyLouWho2

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

A US court ruled that Google is a monopoly, and has broken antitrust laws. This decision will be appealed, but in the meantime, could affect similar cases against large tech giants. 

Did you violate a Facebook policy? Meta is now offering a ��training course” in lieu of having the page’s reach limited for Professional Mode users. 

Google Ads shown in Canada will have a 2.5% surcharge applied as of October 1, due to new Canadian tax laws.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Search Engine Roundtable’s Google report for July is out; we’re still waiting for the next core update. 

SOCIAL MEDIA - All Aspects, By Site

Facebook (includes relevant general news from Meta)

Meta’s latest legal development: a $1.4 billion settlement with Texas over facial recognition and privacy.  

Instagram

Instagram is highlighting “Views” in its metrics in an attempt to get creators to focus on reach instead of follower numbers. 

Pinterest

Pinterest is testing outside ads on the site. The ad auction system would include revenue sharing. 

Reddit

Reddit confirmed that anyone who wants to use Reddit posts for AI training and other data collection will need to pay for them, just as Google and OpenAI did. 

Second quarter 2024 was great for Reddit, with revenue growth of 54%. Like almost every other platform, they are planning on using AI in their search results, perhaps to summarize content. 

Threads

Threads now claims over 200 million active users.

TikTok

TikTok is now adding group chats, which can include up to 32 people.

TikTok is being sued by the US Federal Trade Commission, for allowing children under 13 to sign up and have their data harvested. 

Twitter

Twitter seems to be working on the payments option Musk promised last year. Tweets by users in the EU will at least temporarily be pulled from the AI-training for “Grok”, in line with EU law.

CONTENT MARKETING (includes blogging, emails, and strategies) 

Email software Mad Mimi is shutting down as of August 30. Owner GoDaddy is hoping to move users to its GoDaddy Digital Marketing setup. 

Content ideas for September include National Dog Week. 

You can now post on Substack without having an actual newsletter, as the platform tries to become more like a social media site. 

As of November, Patreon memberships started in the iOS app will be subject to a 30% surcharge from Apple. Patreon is giving creators the ability to add that charge to the member's bill, or pay it themselves.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (EXCEPT INDIVIDUAL SOCIAL MEDIA AND ECOMMERCE SITES) 

Google worked with Meta to break the search engine’s rules on advertising to children through a loophole that showed ads for Instagram to YouTube viewers in the 13-17 year old demographic. Google says they have stopped the campaign, and that “We prohibit ads being personalized to people under-18, period”.

Google’s Performance Max ads now have new tools, including some with AI. 

Microsoft’s search and news advertising revenue was up 19% in the second quarter, a very good result for them. 

One of the interesting tidbits from the recent Google antitrust decision is that Amazon sells more advertising than either Google or Meta’s slice of retail ads. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER TRENDS, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

More than half of Gen Z claim to have bought items while spending time on social media in the past half year, higher than other generations. 

Shopify’s president claimed that Christmas shopping started in July on their millions of sites, with holiday decor and ornament sales doubling, and advent calendar sales going up a whopping 4,463%.

[drdemonprince]

Just got the email about you moving to substack, apparently I subscribed to yours at some point in the past. Getting an e-mail about you doing pretty much exactly what I expected you were going to when I noticed Mediums nonsense 4 weeks ago was pretty funny. I was going to send an ask about it, if only tumblrs automatic systems hadn't shadowbanned my account in their infinite wisdom. Only just now got around to annoying support until they let me use the social features of the social media website again >:[

Hey welcome back, and yeah, Medium left me with no choice. I actually migrated all my Medium email subscribers over to my Substack, so that may be why you got the message. I've poached my followers back!!! Ehehehe.

My only regret is that I did not do it sooner. When Medium started requiring a login to view anything, my understanding was that users could still see three articles for free per month. But then I kept hearing complaints. I dug down into it and found out that new account creators only get one free read ever, which is completely unacceptable. I had to take it up with Medium's head editor to even find out what had happened.

So, everyone, if you aren't paying for a Medium membership, you can read all my work for free at drdevonprice.substack.com instead.

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Tom Warren • The Verge

PS5 owners really want to play Xbox games, as Microsoft tops Sony’s preorder charts

From an outsiders perspective this makes sense given Microsoft’s move to purchase extremely popular game studios. They should absolutely make sure everything they create is playable on PlayStation. It’s kind of been Microsoft’s M.O. all along. Write software that runs anywhere. 👨🏻‍💻

JanerationX

The other day, I was reading an interesting article about moving away from social media siloes and getting back to basics with a domain and a web page. (Neocities is also a nice place to learn HTML markup and put up a home page.) I liked the article and was looking forward to leaving a comment, BUT when I got to the bottom of the post, I was confronted with a prompt to sign up for a membership. Really? To leave a comment? Especially on an article about the small web?

Of course this is about Substack. It is, along with X, an internet Nazi bar and it’s full of amazing writers supporting it.

Money talks, I guess. 😞

Alana Loftus • Irish Star

A major Tesla investor has called on Elon Musk to step down as head of the company as a nationwide boycott causes stock prices to plunge.

Ross Gerber, who owns an estimated $105 million in shares of Tesla stock, called on Elon Musk to step down as head of the company, saying that he “destroyed” the company’s reputation

Does anyone know what Tesla is up to anymore? It’s just sitting there, not making progress. It was once a bright shining star. Now it’s a losing afterthought. Wonder why?

Tesla board, fire Musk.🔥

Chris Medland • Racer

Red Bull only has itself to blame for its driver mess

It’s really incredible to see Red Bull panicking over two races with, in essence, a rookie driver. They fire Danny Ricardo and Sergio Perez in favor of Liam Lawson — over Yuki Tsunoda — and expect the man to be top 10, or better, on day one. Absurd.

Red Bull has competition, that’s it. McLaren has caught up and Mercedes is show some of their old spark. Not to mention Alex Albon keeping Williams in a good spot.

I’d expect Ferrari to show some teeth soon. It’s gonna get really interesting! 🏎️

Fiona Jackson • TechRepublic

Once upon a time, landing a job at the likes of Amazon, Google, or Microsoft was seen as the golden ticket — offering generous salaries, four-day work weeks, and nap pods. Over the last few years, though, that image has been transformed into one that is far less idyllic, marked with mass layoffs and employees sleeping on the office floor.

Basically the BigCo’s are returning to the way they used to be. When I was at Microsoft everyone worked long hours moving as fast as we could to meet deadlines. My nap pod was the floor under my desk where I’d grab some shuteye as I worked overnight. I’d imagine I worked an average of 60 hours a week for months on end.

It’s not a good way to live. It’s hard on you physically and mentally and if you have a family it punishes them.

I do not recommend doing it.

InfoQ

Rebuilding Prime Video UI with Rust and WebAssembly

This link is to a video and slides for the presentation. I didn’t watch it but I thought I’d share it because I do find this interesting.

The browser as operating system feels more than a bit odd. Folks like Apple, Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft really need to put way more effort into tooling to make it better for developers. As a developer I want a full IDE with real debugging support, no matter the language I choose. Perhaps they’re already there and I’m just naive?

I’m still a bit bitter WebAssembly was chosen over a CLI implementation — ECMA-335 — that runs in the browser. But, at least we have something common for browsers and languages to target.

It is strange to take this low level language and spit out WebAssembly. ⚒️

Noor Al-Sibai • Futurism

Researchers have found that ChatGPT “power users,” or those who use it the most and at the longest durations, are becoming dependent upon — or even addicted to — the chatbot.

It was inevitable, right?

The Eclectic Light Company

Each new version of macOS has increased the complexity of launching apps, from the basics of launchd, the addition of LaunchServices, to security checks on notarization and XProtect.

If you’d like to see a really nice overview of how macOS launches apps, this is for you! 🚀

It’s not crazy technical, an intentional choice by the author, and will give you an understanding of how things work when you start up your favorite application.

Steve Yegge • Sourcegraph

In this post, I assume that vibe coding will grow up and people will use it for real engineering, with the “turn your brain off” version of it sticking around just for prototyping and fun projects. For me, vibe coding just means letting the AI do the work. How closely you choose to pay attention to the AI’s work depends solely on the problem at hand. For production, you pay attention; for prototypes, you chill. Either way, it’s vibe coding if you didn’t write it by hand.

Vibe coding is the new way I guess.

As someone who has spent over 30-years struggling to become better each and every day I find this depressing. I know I’m an ok developer. Not the worst and certainly not the best, not even close. But to spend a lifetime at something only to see folks produce more output without even trying is extremely discouraging.

Craftsmanship goes out the window in favor of expediency. It is the new way and we’re all going to have to get used to it or be left behind.

I’ve finally become a dinosaur. 🦕

[digitaltoolsblogcom]

Unlock The Best Blogging Platform for 2025!

Looking for the best blogging platform? Compare top options for features, ease of use, and pricing. Start your blog with the perfect platform today!

Starting a blog is one of the best ways to share your thoughts, build a brand, or even make money online. But with so many options out there, choosing the best blogging platform can feel overwhelming. I remember struggling with this decision when I started—I wanted something easy to use, yet powerful enough to grow with me. After testing multiple blog platforms, I realized that the right choice depends on your goals, budget, and technical skills. In this guide, I’ll walk you through the best options, share my experiences, and help you find the best platform for a personal blog or business. Let’s dive in and find the perfect home for your blog!

What Makes a Blogging Platform the Best?

Choosing the best blogging platform isn’t just about picking a name from a list—it’s about finding the right fit for your needs. When I started blogging, I made the mistake of jumping on the first free platform I found. It seemed easy at first, but as my blog grew, I hit roadblocks—limited customization, poor SEO, and no way to make money. That’s when I realized that the best blog platforms share a few key features.

1. Ease of Use – Does It Feel Like Home?

If a platform feels like a complicated puzzle, you’ll spend more time figuring things out than actually blogging. A good platform should have a simple setup, an intuitive dashboard, and easy publishing tools. For beginners, Blogger and WordPress.com offer the easiest start, while Wix and Squarespace provide drag-and-drop convenience.

2. Customization – Can You Make It Truly Yours?

A blog is like a digital home—you want it to reflect your personality or brand. Platforms like WordPress.org offer thousands of themes and plugins, while Wix and Squarespace give beautiful design flexibility. But some platforms, like Medium and Substack, keep things minimal, limiting how much you can customize.

3. Monetization – Can You Make Money Blogging?

If you’re serious about blogging, you might want to earn from it. The best free blogging platforms often come with limitations—you can’t run ads or use affiliate marketing. WordPress.org gives full control over monetization, while Blogger allows AdSense. Medium and Substack let you earn through memberships.

4. SEO & Performance – Will Google Love Your Blog?

A beautiful blog is useless if no one finds it. WordPress.org is the best blogging platform for SEO, offering advanced plugins like Yoast SEO. Wix and Squarespace have built-in SEO tools, but Blogger and Medium have limitations. Speed, mobile-friendliness, and optimization tools also play a big role.

5. Community & Support – Are You on Your Own?

Ever felt lost and wished for a helping hand? A strong support system matters, whether it’s customer service, forums, or a blogging community. WordPress.org has a massive support community, Wix and Squarespace have dedicated customer service, while Medium and Substack offer built-in audiences.

6. Pricing – Free vs. Paid: What’s Worth It?

Free platforms are great for beginners, but they come with trade-offs—limited features, ads on your site, or lack of monetization options. WordPress.org requires hosting, but it’s the most scalable. Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress.com have paid plans for extra features.

The best platform for a personal blog or business depends on your goals. If you want full control, WordPress.org is the winner. If you prefer simplicity, Blogger, Medium, or Wix might be better. And if monetization is key, choose a platform that supports ads and affiliate links.

Still unsure? Don’t worry—I’ll break down the best blogging platforms in the next section so you can make an informed choice.

Best Blogging Platforms in 2025 (Pros & Cons)

So, you’re ready to start blogging, but there’s one big question: What’s the best blogging platform? With so many options, it’s easy to feel lost. I’ve been there! When I started, I picked the first free platform I found, only to realize later that it lacked customization, had poor SEO, and didn’t allow monetization. I had to start over—don’t make the same mistake!

To save you time (and frustration), I’ve broken down the best blog platforms based on your needs, whether you want a personal blog, a business blog, or a way to make money blogging. Let’s dive in!

Learn More

[theloniousbach]

GOING TO JAZZ CLUBS—ACTUALLY AND VIRTUALLY—IN 2024

My Toledo friend had the good sense not to invite me to offer a list of jazz albums of the year as he has regularly for at least a decade. I know it’s a standing invitation and had I had more than a few favorites I might have volunteered them. But, I have a better excuse than usual for my annual shrug—I hear new music via live performances in clubs and not via recordings. He and I listen differently as I don’t have the responsibility of programming 12 hours a week of album cuts. I just check out what’s happening in the clubs I can get to in person and via streams.

Experiencing live music was my biggest loss from lockdown, so I had to scrambled in 2020. I found success with a contribution to the Smalls Live Foundation that provides access to their ever growing archive of four sets a night from both Smalls and Mezzrow’s. Smoke Jazz Club has continued with nearly weekly streams. And I have recently rejoined The Jazz Gallery with a streamer membership. Each venue has its own booking aesthetic and production quality, but, taken together, I am finally a regular on the New York jazz scene. It is a dream fulfilled after reading the New York Times Sunday Arts section and the front of the New Yorker from the time I began getting into the music.

While I have a window on a community of players I like and find interesting, I am behind on their recording projects as leaders and how they show up on one another’s as accompanists. I could pose as an ultra-hipster and assert that I’m doing what jazz fans did back in an idealized past. That’s utter crap, of course.

Still it is how I discover the music and I had a good year with several highlights, including

BILL CHARLAP/NORIKO UEDA, MEZZROW’S, 11 OCTOBER 2024, 9 pm set

I made it to MEZZROW’S in real life! I now have a sense of the place—the barely room for a drum kit, the cozy set of five tables on each side with one chair in the aisle and benches for two with five stools before the bar, the cameras that provide my streams, the intimacy. BILL CHARLAP is in my Pantheon of pianists so I can’t claim that he was having anything more than a regular night but it was special. I had chatted with him when he was at Jazz St Louis the year before and so greeted him as I walked in and chatted briefly about Bradley’s and Jimmy Rowles as a comparison point as he walked up the aisle after the gig. When he’d asked for suggestions for a last tune, I’d called out “Detour [Ahead]” which he agreed was a great tune but he played another standard. I’d also chatted with NORIKO UEDA when she was at Jazz St Louis with ARTEMIS, mentioning that I was going to be at this gig. So I introduced myself again as I walked in. Overhearing me at the ARTEMIS gig, Renee Rosnes sniffed that she’d be playing with Ron Carter that weekend at the Blue Note. Charlap had his own duo with Carter a couple of weeks later which I also thoroughly enjoyed.

While CHARLAP/UEDA was THE highlight of my year but it didn’t expand my ears much. Wait, that’s not completely true. I listen a little better and wider as I’m pretty certain that MICHAEL KANAN was in the audience that night at Mezzrow’s, so I’ve begun looking for his own MEZZROW’S gigs so that he’s now on my list of regulars, particularly when I want a set of well played standards. He has a trio with guitarist Greg Ruggerio and bassist Neal Miner and that is an ensemble I’ve not previously warmed to. I also saw him with GABRIELA STRAVELLI, so he’s also started me to adjust to singers who, after all, live inside of the tunes I treasure.

Treasure them, I do. So I sided with ETHAN IVERSON, whose Transitional Technology Substack is as valuable as Vinnie Sperrazza’s and Marc Myers’s JazzWax as windows on what’s new on the scene, who values the Bill Charlap Trio’s “And Then Again” contra Phil Freeman who urged him to “try [it]. I hate it; I’m sure you’ll love it.” Freeman’s argument is “Write your own music or fuck off.” No, wrong, dead wrong! I value the common repertoire of the Great American Songbook and the parallel canon of composers starting with Ellington/Strayhorn, Monk, Shorter, Mingus…as a reference point for those original compositions.

MICHAEL KANAN is a new addition to my line up of Smalls Live regulars: ALAN BROADBENT with Harvie S and Billy Mintz, ARI HOENIG with Gadi Lehavi and Ben Tiberio (they released “Tea for Three” this year), and MIKI YAMANAKA with Jimmy Macbride and a pick up bassist but often Tyrone Allen. The Broadbent Trio takes on deeper standards and compositions with taste and elegance; Hoenig is a gloriously eccentric multidimensional drummer; and Yamanaka too is a jazz nerd who mines the repertoire and gives the material a good ride. She too has a fine album out this year, “Chance,” which serves a fan like me as a snapshot of her emerging talent.

I did get to see Ari Hoenig with

BILLY CHILDS, JAZZ ST LOUIS, 2 FEBRUARY 2024

Childs won a Grammy the next week for his “Winds of Change” album. This set featured dancer Alicia Olatunje and Sean Jones instead of Ambrose Akinmusire who was on the album. For that matter, the rhythm section I saw was Matt Penman and Hoenig, not Scott Colley and Brian Blade. Appropriately the tunes were mostly Childs’s though the album has Chick Corea’s esteemed “Crystal Silence” and Kenny Barron’s “Black Angel.” But, this concert was a treasure for Childs’s presentation of his tunes with Olatunje’s dancing, his own robust playing, and being in the room with Hoenig.

EMMET COHEN with Reuben Rogers and Joe Farnsworth, JAZZ ST LOUIS, 21 OCTOBER 2024

also put me in the same room with another drummer hero. Joe Farnsworth has tons of energy and technique; his slogan is “time to swing” and in that he is nearly inexhaustible. His Smalls Jazz Club gigs lately usually with altoist Sarah Hanahan (her album “Among Giants” came out this year and has the virtue of being more focused and subtle than her interesting but intense live performances with Farnsworth and as leader at late night gigs) are not quite must sees for me, but I see them more often than not. With Cohen and Rogers, he could roar with his power and grace fully matched by his bandmates. Cohen has made it into my inner circle of pianists not to be missed. He has such a respect for the tradition and enthusiasm as a real student of the music that he will matter for years to come. I did not become a regular at his ongoing but pandemic era weekly stream, “Live from Emmet’s Place” which brought together an important layer of mostly younger players. That commitment to community is part of his charm. Like Yamanaka, he released an album, “Vibe Provider,” this year that captures him in this moment. That is its value as a perfectly fine album, but seeing him play is the larger testimony to his importance.

This trio’s energy and roar isn’t quite as nimble as what I’ve seen in the past from

JEAN-MICHEL PILC/FRANCOIS MOUTIN/ARI HOENIG, SMALLS JAZZ CLUB, 16-17 FEBRUARY 2024

but this time around, they didn’t quite pin my ears back as they have before. Pilc was more subdued. I have by now solved the puzzle that Ari Hoenig was for me for quite some time, so it was Moutin’s indefatigible energy that stood out this time. P/M/H reminds me of Cream in its mutual power. Paying attention to Moutin’s invention bears rewards similar to recognizing just how wild and important Jack Bruce’s bass was. These sets were not their best, but I was quite happy to see them.

It is probably telling that I was drawn to tributes to Miles Davis (with trumpeter MARK MORGANELLI with the venerable George Cables at Smalls on 6 July), Benny Golson (a Smoke stream in May with Dr Eddie Henderson Billy Pierce, Steve Davis, Mike LeDonne, and Buster Williams with drummer Carl Allen as the organizer), and John Coltrane from son Ravi also at Smoke with Gadi Lehavi from Ari Hoenig’s band in December. Renee Rosnes was at the helm as music director for Smoke’s Ode to Joe [Henderson] with Nicholas Payton and Nicole Glover. All were opportunities for important players dig into important works, celebrating their heroes and mine.

Rosnes is an important and generous band leader witness

ARTEMIS, JAZZ ST LOUIS, 26-27 SEPTEMBER 2024

I made a point of seeing two nights in a row, seeing both a strong core book from essential composers—Herbie Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance” to open and Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints” to close with Billy Strayhorn’s “A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing” (a showcase for Nicole Glover) and Monk’s “Hackensack”—with tunes from each of them with her own the one sacrificed the second night. I like this quintet with Glover replacing Melissa Aldana from the original line up and without Alexa Tarantino who was in Anat Cohen’s slot as the second reed who was on the second album. Their evolution accelerates in this leaner format.

In a year of drummers, Allison Miller is right there with Hoenig and Farnsworth. And I am just a fan of Nicole Glover who did have an album “Plays” out in 2024. Again, as with Yamanaka, Cohen, and Hoenig, I am aware of and value this recording as a fan more than as a critic. She too continues to grow, still the tenor badass Nate Chinen termed her, but able to take on the Strayhorn and her own ballad “Petrochore” with Artemis.

If I started this essay with Bill Charlap and Noriko Ueda at Mezzrow’s in person October and Charlap with Ron Carter on a stream, it is fitting to end with duo sets led by Rufus Reid with Caelan Cardello in May and Buster Williams with Cyrus Chestnut in August.

Reid/Cardello was a find as I’ve started to keep on an eye this young pianist. He was in the Jazz Spectrum studio accompanying April Varner. I have seen trios that have been alternatively prickly and straight ahead as well as a gig with Farnsworth and Hanahan were he tended toward the designated driver role. But with Reid he was appealing and tasty. Williams and Chestnut was more a meeting of equals, indeed Chestnut is one of my favorite pianists, reliably strong, swinging, and inventive.

There is an obvious skewing of what I see based on the curation by the clubs. Smoke is uniformly more established players with high production values whereas Smoke has a range born of having two clubs with six sets a night each to fill. I do see up and comers (Baltimore bass clarinetist Todd Marcus with Canadian clarinetist Virginia McDonald with veteran Bruce Barth on piano in July was very interesting indeed with extremely capable soloing to take full advantage of the fascinating instrumentation) but I skew towards established favorites in this year end retrospective.

That skewing clearly shapes me as a fan just as only hearing albums from a small handful of labels would. I am adding The Jazz Gallery and its more experimental edge and that will make 2025 welcomingly different. But the above captures how I managed to be a jazz fan in 2024.

[mirandamckenni1]

From Chaos Magick to Tantra with Phil Hine Phil Hine is renowned for his foundational role in popularising chaos magick, a paradigm that challenges conventional magical systems by advocating a highly individualistic and experimental approach. His seminal texts, such as "Condensed Chaos" and "Prime Chaos," have been pivotal in providing a framework that is both accessible and adaptable, urging practitioners to forge their own path in the magical landscape. Alongside his work in chaos magick, Hine has extensively engaged with tantra, focusing particularly on its appropriation and reinterpretation within Western esoteric contexts. His explorations consider the complex nuances of cultural transmission and adaptation, offering critical insights into integrating Eastern tantric practices into Western magical frameworks. BIOGRAPHY Phil Hine has been a practicing occultist for over forty-five years, with a career spanning Wicca, ritual Magic, Chaos Magic and nondual Tantra. Together with Rodney Orpheus, he co-created and edited the UK’s first monthly Pagan magazine, Pagan News (1988-92). His books include: Condensed Chaos, Prime Chaos, The Pseudonomicon, Hine’s Varieties: Chaos & Beyond, Acts of Magical Resistance, Queerying Occultures and Wheels within Wheels: Chakras and Western Esotericism. In 2019, he founded Twisted Trunk, a small press specializing in publishing translations of rare Tantric texts. Forthcoming publications are Delinquent Elementals, co-edited with Rodney Orpheus (Strange Attractor, 2024) and Yoginis: Sex, Death and Possession in Early Tantra (Original Falcon Press). LINKS blog https://enfolding.org/ Twisted Trunk Releases https://ift.tt/KrGjN3f Wheels within Wheels: Chakras and Western Esotericism https://ift.tt/BUQkdHF Substack Newsletter https://ift.tt/RgwKJGW Original Falcon Books https://ift.tt/07smKDG Twitter @PhilH86835657 Bluesky @philh.bsky.social Phil Hine's Portrait by Asa Medhurst. CONNECT & SUPPORT💖 WEBSITE & NEWSLETTER 💌 https://ift.tt/WrXangh BOOK A TUTORING OR A LECTURE 📖https://ift.tt/vE437nz BECOME MY PATRON! 🎩 https://ift.tt/mj65fzl SUPPORT ME ON KO-FI ☕️https://ift.tt/1BdgcQw ONE-OFF DONATIONS 💰 https://ift.tt/IA8WuF7 JOIN MEMBERSHIPS 👥 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPSbip_LX2AxbGeAQfLp-Ig/join MY PODCAST 🎙 https://ift.tt/rHmDVyu MY MERCH 👕 https://ift.tt/gnpiX2t FOLLOW ME👣 - YouTube (@drangelapuca)🌟 - Instagram (@drangelapuca) 📸 - TikTok (@drangelapuca) 🎵 - Twitter (@angelapuca11) 🐦 - Facebook (Dr Angela Puca) 👥 ⚠️ Copyright of Dr Angela Puca, in all of its parts ⚠️ Music by Erose MusicBand. Check them out! 00:00:00 Introduction: Disclaimer 00:03:00 Phil Hine and his Start in Chaos Magick 00:007:21 AMOOKOS and Early Chaos Magick 00:09:09 Phil Hine’s Initiation into Wicca 00:10:21 The Northern English Occult Scene 00:12:28 What is Chaos Magick? 00:15:46 What makes Chaos Magick effective? 00:18:06 When Magick does not work. 00:19:43 Phil Hine’s Current Relationship with Chaos Magick. 00:21:46 "Queering" Chaos Magick 00:23:17 Phil Hine’s Interest in Tantra 00:25:19 What Type of Tantra does Phil Hine Practice 00:28:15 Tantra Reframed for a Western Audience 00:30:50 Tantra Versus Left-Hand Path 00:35:48 Phil Hine’s Favourite Book 00:37:51 Politics in Magikal Practice and Discussion 00:38:33 Examples of magical political resistance in the UK 00:42:18 The Mundane Versus the Spiritual 00:43:33 Phil Hine and Summoning Demons 00:48:04 Phil Hine using Aleister Crowley’s Goetia 00:52:19 Did Julius Evola have an effect on Chaos Magick 00:53:37 Crowley, Liber Al and Hitler 00:56:00 Magick Intersects will all Aspects of Life 00:59:20 Support Angela’s Symposium Want to create live streams like this? Check out StreamYard: https://ift.tt/SkRHjyO via YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emh5juGywFw

[cyle]

if i was going to make a new tumblr in 2022, i'd build:

a content schema -- what format the posts are gonna be in, a shared json schema; opengraph is closest to a shared one today.

a transmit protocol -- it's called rss!!!! but if you don't want pull, you could adapter anything, you could make a real time ephemeral XMPP version of this and have snapchat.

a renderer -- this is up to the client!! how do you wanna show this data you've received? reverse-chron, "the algorithm", short or long posts, are all decisions you can make on your end, however someone wants to build it against the given adapters. (the real question is whether the content schema dictates the renderer. the real question is whether the algorithm is yours or centralized.)

but really, what the average person cares about is the way to access this new tumblr conveniently, which is just an app that conforms to these protocols, as tumblr itself does today:

NPF is our content schema, a way of publishing posts in an open source format

the transmit protocol for tumblr is currently proprietary (our API) but it's actually mirrored as each blogs' RSS feed

the renderer is literally the tumblr apps: a specific way of displaying that content schema and surfacing interaction controls, which itself just create new things to transmit; you could define this however you want. (we literally built NPF so anyone could build their own renderer.......)

but this is crazy simple talk, right? the real hard talk comes in on:

governance of this federated network -- or maybe this is just a new web of trust?

how to make money -- though you can even make money on email with substack, you can make money via RSS with podcasting... maybe making money isn't that hard if you wanna put forth the effort for a payment portal. the transmit protocol needs a "membership" state per consumer, but it probably needed that anyway.

content moderation -- who stops someone if the majority of people use a push-based framework (which is most of them today)

discoverability -- how do you get found if you want to be? this is the opposite end of content moderation.

i'm glossing over a lot, and i feel like this is a rehash of what could've happened in ~2005 if facebook hadn't happened. i've been thinking about this a lot. still needs more thought.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 12, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

According to a proclamation from the president, today is officially “Columbus Day,” when we honor the “many immeasurable contributions of Italy to American history.” The president’s proclamation goes on to complain that “in recent years, radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy” by replacing a recognition of his “vast contributions” with talk of failings, atrocities, and transgressions.

Trump’s proclamation goes on: “Rather than learn from our history, this radical ideology and its adherents seek to revise it, deprive it of any splendor, and mark it as inherently sinister. They seek to squash any dissent from their orthodoxy.” He notes the steps he has taken to “promote patriotic education:” he signed an Executive Order to create a National Garden of American Heroes, set up “the 1776 Commission, which will encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and honor our founding,” and signed an Executive Order “to root out the teaching of racially divisive concepts from the Federal workplace.”

For all of Trump’s attention to patriotic education, his proclamation is quite bad history. Aside from its whitewashing of the effects of Columbus’s voyage of “discovery,” the proclamation misrepresents the original point of Columbus Day, which had a lot more to do with putting down white supremacy than celebrating the “enduring significance” of Columbus in opening “a new chapter in world history.”

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt officially instituted Columbus Day in 1934, but the idea for the holiday rose in the 1920s, when the Knights of Columbus tried to undercut the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan by emphasizing the role minorities had played in America. In the early 1920s, the organization published three books in a “Knights of Columbus Racial Contributions” series, including The Gift of Black Folk, by W. E. B. Du Bois. They celebrated the contributions of immigrants, especially Catholic immigrants, to America with parades honoring Christopher Columbus. The Knights of Columbus were determined to reinforce the idea that America must not be a land of white Protestant supremacy.

Trump’s words about patriotic education also ring hollow when the news of the day makes it seem that the administration is more interested in staying in power than in protecting our democratic government.

Today was the first day of early voting in Georgia, and a record 126,876 voters cast ballots. In the state’s Democratic areas some people had to wait in line for as long as ten hours to vote.

Trump’s contribution to early voting today was to tweet “California is going to hell. Vote Trump!” and “New York has gone to hell. Vote Trump!” and “Illinois has no place to go. Sad, isn’t it? Vote Trump!” Once again, he insisted that he has a healthcare plan, although he has been promising such a plan since before his inauguration and none has ever materialized. “We will have Healthcare which is FAR BETTER than ObamaCare, at a FAR LOWER COST - BIG PREMIUM REDUCTION. PEOPLE WITH PRE EXISTING CONDITIONS WILL BE PROTECTED AT AN EVEN HIGHER LEVEL THAN NOW. HIGHLY UNPOPULAR AND UNFAIR INDIVIDUAL MANDATE ALREADY TERMINATED. YOU’RE WELCOME!”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the nation's top infectious disease specialists who is advising the White House, is openly angry that the Trump campaign took his words out of context to make it seem like he was applauding the administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. He said that, by using his words misleadingly and against his will, the Trump campaign is “in effect harassing me.” Fauci’s anger hasn’t stopped the campaign, which today broke precedent to use an image of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley in a campaign ad. The image was used without Milley’s knowledge or consent, and violates the military’s strict policies against participation in political campaigns.

An article in the New York Times today outlines how the administration appears to be trying to buy votes by funneling money to key constituencies before the election. Trump has said he is sending $200 cards to seniors to help them pay for drug prescriptions. He approved $13 billion in aid to Puerto Rico, which could help win him votes in Florida (politicians often campaign in territories or even foreign countries from which immigrants come because it helps them win votes at home). He has required the Agriculture Department to enclose letters in both English and Spanish in its food distributions to families giving Trump credit for both “sending nutritious food” and “safeguarding the health and well-being of our citizens.”

The administration will also distribute $46 billion (not a typo) to farmers in the South and Midwest who have been whacked by Trump’s trade war with China and coronavirus, to try to offset the record farm debt accumulating and the rise in farm bankruptcies, although it appears the money goes primarily to big operations.

Instead of using the presidency to protect the interests of the nation, Trump appears to be using it as a money-making operation for his family. The New York Times on Saturday continued its series on Trump’s taxes, showing how he turned his hotels and resorts into “a system of direct presidential influence-peddling unrivaled in modern American politics.” Under terrible financial stress, the president used his office to line his pockets. Foreign politicians, businessmen, and contractors who wanted federal contracts, would throw pricey events, donate to Trump’s campaign, or buy memberships at Trump’s properties—he raised the membership fee at Mar-a-Lago to $250,000-- where Trump would often be there to help them get what they wanted.

Looking at Trump’s record undercutting our democracy, even just for today alone, makes you wonder just what he means by “patriotic education,” and who, exactly, are the “radical activists” he attacks for not honoring “the miracle of our founding.”

Here's the story: historians are not denigrating the nation when they uncover sordid parts of our past. Historians study how and why societies change. As we dig into the past we see patterns that never entirely foreshadow the present, but that give us ideas about how people have dealt with circumstances in the past that look similar to circumstances today. With luck, seeing those patterns will help us make better decisions about our own lives, our communities, and our nation in the present. As they say, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

If we are going to get an accurate picture of how a society works, historians must examine it honestly. That means seeing the bad as well as the good, because, after all, any human society is going to have both. Sometimes good human actions change society; sometimes bad ones do. George Washington’s heroic refusal to be a king is no truer than his enslavement of other human beings, and both changed our nation in ways that we need to understand if we are to make good decisions about how to take care of our own society.

History, though, is different than commemoration. History is about what happened in the past while commemoration is about the present. We put up statues and celebrate holidays to honor figures from the past who embody some quality we admire. But as society changes, the qualities we care about shift. In the 1920s, Columbus mattered to Americans who opposed the Ku Klux Klan because he represented a multicultural society. Now, though, he represents the devastation of America’s indigenous people at the hands of European colonists who brought to North America and South America germs and a fever for gold and God. It is not “radical activism” to want to commemorate a different set of values than we held in the 1920s.

What is radical activism, though, is the attempt to skew history to serve a modern-day political narrative. Rejecting an honest account of the past makes it impossible to see accurate patterns. The lessons we learn about how society changes will be false, and the decisions we make based on those false patterns will not be grounded in reality.

And a nation grounded in fiction, rather than reality, cannot function.

——

LETTERS FROM AN AMERiCAN

Heather Cox Richardson

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

We Are Building a Creative Support Path for Freelance Writers in 2025

ILLUMINATION Substack Mastery Boost Program We will offer customized services based on the needs of creators, freelancers, and content entrepreneurs with innovative solutions for their sustainable growth on multiple integrated platforms. Happy New Year, dear Creators, friendly Freelance Writers, esteemed Content Entrepreneurs, and potential Sponsors! Greetings from hot Down Under summer with a…

[stoweboyd]

Medium buys Bay Area mag The Bold Italic to add to its paywall | Josh Contine reports on Medium's buy of The Bold Italic:

Medium is seeking to juice up its premium subscription content in its home market with the acquisition of The Bold Italic. The 10-year-old online culture magazine will go behind the $5 per month Medium membership paywall. The deal will keep The Bold Italic afloat when other San Francisco-local publications have struggled, following the shutdown of the The Oakland Tribune an SFist, plus the layoff of most of the Easy Bay Express.

The Bold Italic could make Medium membership more appealing to Bay Area techies, newshounds and community-philes. It needs all the subscribers it can get after pivoting away from ads and laying off 50 employees, as well as shuttering two offices in 2017. That’s despite having raised $132 million. Last year it gave some publications whiplash by suddenly terminating its program that let them operate their own paywalls on the Medium platform. With so many publications competing for subscription revenue (TechCrunch launched its own subscription product called Extra Crunch today), and having raised so much money, many are uncertain of Medium’s fate.

The question might be, who will buy Medium? Will some billionaire do a Bezos and endow it? Lord knows, no one seems to have found a winning formula for new media.

Isn't placing locally-focused journals behind a global paywall kind of odd? Maybe if they had two dozen for various metropolitan centers, but really, whey can't Medium allow for individual subscriptions for individual publications, and simply take a slice, like Patreon and Substack do?

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 1, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Still operating on a generator without room for much revision, so again, apologies for typos or inelegance….

There is an increasing feeling of desperation coming from the White House. Trump continues to insist he won the 2020 election, although the states whose results he has challenged have all certified their votes for Joe Biden. Biden has tallied more than 6 million votes more than Trump, including significant majorities in all the states Trump claims, in the biggest win for a candidate challenging an incumbent since Franklin Delano Roosevelt challenged Herbert Hoover in 1932.

Today loyalist William Barr, Trump’s Attorney General, admitted that the Department of Justice has not found any evidence of widespread voter fraud that would mean Trump won the election. Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis promptly issued a statement saying “With the greatest respect to the Attorney General, his opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud.” Trump allies told PBS NewsHour correspondent Yamiche Alcindor that Barr’s statement was a “complete betrayal.”

For the last three weeks, Trump and his supporters in the Republican Party have attacked elections officials—including Republicans-- who failed to throw out Democratic ballots to give the election to Trump. The president called Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger an “enemy of the people,” and Trump’s loyalists are intensifying their rhetoric against officials who have persisted in defending the integrity of the election. Right-wing followers on social media called for jail, torture, or execution for a 20-year-old Georgia election technician, falsely alleging he manipulated election data. On NBC’s Today Show, the president’s lawyer Joseph diGenova called for former cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, whom Trump fired after Krebs stated the election was not marked by fraud but was quite secure, to be “drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”

Social media accounts from right-wing loyalists are increasingly calling for violence. One user on the conservative media site Parler said that “[We the People] want to kill all of you cheating traitors….” Another called for “Civil war if Biden does steal the election.” These loyalists claim to be waiting for Trump’s “order” to start just such a war.

Today Gabriel Sterling, a voting systems manager for Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger held a news conference in which he said: “It has all. Gone. Too. Far. It has to stop.” Of the young technician whose life is now in danger, he said, “[t]his kid… just took a job. And it’s just wrong. I can’t begin to explain the level of anger I have right now over this. Every American, every Georgian, Republican or Democrat alike, should have the same level of anger.”

Sterling attacked Trump for the death threats Georgia officials have been receiving, and chewed out Georgia Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who both face runoff elections in early January against Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, for refusing to shut such language down. “Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language,” he said. “Senators, you have not condemned this language or these actions. . . . Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence…. That shouldn’t be too much to ask for people who ask us to give them responsibility.” Sterling also called out diGenova for his language: “Someone’s going to get hurt,” he said. “Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed.”

Trump and allies of Don Jr. have been fundraising on the idea that Trump must contest the 2020 election. Trump’s Save America Political Action Committee (PAC) has raised more than $170 million in contributions to overturn the election, but very little of that money goes to the recount effort. It goes primarily to whatever Trump wants—including golf memberships, travel, and salaries-- and to the Republican National Committee.

Don Jr.’s allies have formed the Save the U.S. Senate PAC. It is nominally about the Georgia run-off Senate elections, but can take in unlimited money from anyone, including corporations, and spend it however it wishes, so long as it doesn’t explicitly coordinate with a political campaign. As Washington Post correspondent Philip Bump puts it: “Trump and his team have figured out a way to parlay his base’s concerns about the election — concerns Trump has been hyping for months — into a well-stocked bank account with few limitations on how it is used.”

And yet, Trump seems to have accepted that he’s going to have to leave office, and to be exploring his options. New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt tonight broke the news that he has discussed with advisers whether he should grant preemptive pardons to Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, Jared Kushner, and Giuliani. This poses a problem for them, though, since to make a pardon stick it needs to be as specific as possible, which would mean he would have to suggest what they might have done that requires a pardon.

Pardons were in the news tonight for another reason, too, as news broke that the Department of Justice is investigating what appears to have been a bribe before the end of the summer. Someone apparently promised payments to either the White House or to a related political committee in exchange for a presidential pardon.

Meanwhile, the country continues to suffer from the coronavirus. While the White House appears to have given up addressing the spikes that are leaving hospitals overwhelmed and the economy faltering, today Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a Trump appointee, warned Congress that it must pass a coronavirus relief package or see even worse damage. To Republicans who insist there is no need for such relief, he responded, “The risk of overdoing it is less than the risk of underdoing it.” Powell encouraged aid to state and local governments, hard hit by the pandemic, noting they are some of the country’s largest employers. Because most cannot borrow to make up for their lost tax revenues, without relief they will have to lay people off, thus worsening the recession.

Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Biden’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, echoed Powell today. “Lost lives, lost jobs, small businesses struggling to stay alive are closed for good. So many people struggling to put food on the table and pay bills and rent. It’s an American tragedy. And it is essential we move with urgency. Inaction will produce a self-reinforcing downturn causing yet more devastation.”

In May, Democrats passed a $3 trillion relief package but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refused to take it up. The Senate began to work on its own package in mid-July, just before federal unemployment benefits ran out, but McConnell could not bring his caucus together behind anything. So he turned his back on negotiations, leaving Democrats to negotiate with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who held to a $1 trillion limit. The Democrats offered to split the difference and agree to a $2 trillion compromise. The Republicans refused.

In September, McConnell offered a $500 billion bill that has the key measure he wants: a liability shield for businesses whose employees contract coronavirus at work. When the Democrats refused it, he accused them of partisanship.

Then, today, news emerged that a bipartisan group of lawmakers had tried to hammer together a stopgap relief measure of about $908 billion to rescue small businesses, the unemployed, and other hard-hit parts of the economy.

As soon as news broke of the new bipartisan bill, McConnell shot it down. Instead, he will insert exactly what he wants into the upcoming government funding bill, which Congress must pass by December 11 or face a government shutdown. This forces Democrats either to do what he wants or to shut down the government, a solution that is usually political poison.

McConnell’s new plan has no state and local aid and only one month of jobless aid, but it has liability protection for businesses.

There is overwhelming popular support for a multitrillion dollar package. A month ago 70% of voters, including more than half of Republicans, wanted such a package, including aid to state and local governments. But McConnell controls the Senate.

Biden hopes to initiate a sweeping economic relief and stimulus package immediately upon taking office. The upcoming elections in Georgia will be the difference between the fate of a new coronavirus bill, which McConnell can essentially dictate, and a tied Senate, where McConnell will have to negotiate.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Substack Mastery Book: Chapter 12

How to Boost Your Paid Memberships with Special Discounts or Mega Deals on Substack Creatively and  Money is important for freelancers and content entrepreneurs. However, this chapter isn’t just about increasing your income. It is about finding joy in the freelance journey and creating meaningful connections with your readers as a sustainable lifestyle.  If you are a beginner, in this chapter,…

[michaelmfergusonusa]

Legal Blogging Monetizes Individuality For Lawyers

I was struck reading Li Jin’s recent piece on the passion economy being the future of work by how much the concept applies to lawyers and blogging.

Jin, an investment partner with Andreessen Horowitz, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm, writes:

“The top-earning writer on the paid newsletter platform Substack earns more than $500,000 a year from reader subscriptions. The top content creator on Podia, a platform for video courses and digital memberships, makes more than $100,000 a month. And teachers across the US are bringing in thousands of dollars a month teaching live, virtual classes on Outschool and Juni Learning.

Though blogging lawyers are not monetizing their blogs directly in the form of subscriptions, lawyers are generating new business as a direct result of their blogging. In some cases, in excess of $1M a year.

Platforms, as in this case, blogging platforms, are democratizing opportunities for the passionate individual with a niche, says Lin.

“Whereas previously, the biggest online labor marketplaces flattened the individuality of workers, new platforms allow anyone to monetize unique skills.”

Lin may as well be writing about lawyers and blogging in her discussion of differentiating oneself and building relationships.

“New digital platforms enable people to earn a livelihood in a way that highlights their individuality. These platforms give providers greater ability to build customer relationships, increased support in growing their businesses, and better tools for differentiating themselves from the competition. In the process, they’re fueling a new model of internet-powered entrepreneurship”

These new platforms share a number of commonalities, per Lin, three of which are relevant to blogging today.

They’re accessible to everyone, not only existing businesses and professionals

They view individuality as a feature, not a bug

They open doors to new forms of work

A lawyer in a small firm blogging on China law puts himself along side large firms in terms of visibility. Though not able to land some of the cases a larger firm may, he’s developed an international reputation and a large client base based on his passion.

A young partner in a large firm kickstart’s the firm’s publishing of a privacy law blog and is now widely considered as one of the nation’s top privacy and security lawyers. She had the passion other lawyers lacked.

A junior partner in a larger firm, with a passion founded in her family’s history in the textile industry, launches a fashion law blog publication. She now does business worldwide in fashion law with her law school hosting a fashion law symposium which she runs.

The list goes on and on. This relatively new platform enabling blog publishing is enabling any lawyer to monetize their unique skills and passion.

Andreessen Horowitz, which has bet on the likes of Facebook and Twitter and is managing over $4B in assets, and Lin, are predicting that the passion economy will only continue to grow.

“New integrated platforms empower entrepreneurs to monetize individuality and creativity. In the coming years, the passion economy will to continue to grow. We envision a future in which the value of unique skills and knowledge can be unlocked, augmented, and surfaced to consumers.”