Adore the darktable gang.

John Wayne Gacy feels snubbed.

Yes, do this if you want your work to have the same feel as every other writer who runs their work through an llm.

Right you are. They started in 2003 a full two years before YouTube and a solid four years after the 90s.

I’m betting they weren’t around in the early 90s. I mean… If we are talking any real sort of publicly available machinima, we must be talking about the start of YouTube.

Unless watching your mate, Gary, do that thing where he voiced over Zangief as if we was a WWF wrester counts.

It is a great step forward, but the barrier to entry is relatively high. You can sign up to substack for free and they take a cut of your profits (that most writers don’t draw enough attention to earn.

Meanwhile ghost charges $9 a month, billed annually.

That’s a significant barrier to anyone that can’t afford to see if their writing will be popular and as long as that remains it will struggle to gain traction in the same way.

And yeah, I know you could host your own too, but again a price point and a technical barrier.

I like ghost, the interface and the ecology, but the truth is that it isn’t going to attract the sort of vibrant, young community it needs if you have to stump up $108 just to see.

I think one of the great things about 2000s/early 2010s internet was the proliferation of free to use platforms like livejournal, blogger and WordPress. Sure there was a lot or jank, but I found some of my favourite writers back when they were scratching their name into the internet.

Get a point for being bold enough to nominate yourself too.

I mean it, that was a cool thing to do and I’m glad you recognise it.

There’s a certain sort of grief in finishing a book you enjoy, isn’t there?

It’s harder with physical copies because you can feel the pages slipping away. Not so much on an ereader.

Oh yeah, I’m not shaming anyone who skims, read however you enjoy.

I just know that there’s more of a weird stigma for slower readers.

Same goes for finishing books. I know some folk will stick with a book even if they aren’t enjoying it, mostly because they’ve learnt that as part of their education.

I abandon books all the time. Life’s a little too short, so I treat reading like the radio… A song comes on that I’m not into, just flip over and see what else is put there.

That said, I’ve returned to books that I bailed on and in some cases I really enjoyed them at the second attempt. Which makes me think that you have to be in the right place sometimes. Still, it’s no reflection on intelligence.

People lie about how much they read and how quickly they read. I saw one guy online list his yearly reading and if you totalled up the words in those books he’d be breaking records.

People lie because they want people to think they are smart. But reading quickly isn’t an indicator of intelligence any more so than people that watch videos at four times the speed.

Retention and comprehension are far more important, but still secondary to enjoyment.

If you enjoy how you read and what you read, don’t let anyone tell you that you are doing it wrong.

Slow readers are my favourite humans.

They don’t race through a book, but instead the stroll, taking time to look around, think things through, ponder the future and reason the implications. Sometimes they just rest for a while, letting the story mull in their mind, before returning later.

Genuinely have so much time for people that take it slow with books.

I feef you.

6 feef.

I know you’ve been recommended a lot of books.

Like you I only ever read non-fiction.

Then someone gave me a copy of Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut.

You might like a lot of his work. It’s not exactly fiction and not exactly non-fiction.

Anyway, good luck on your adventure! You are doing something brave and interesting. Let us know how you get on.

Older version in case of compatibility issues.

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But not the cyclist as the cycle right through it.

You’re awesome.

This is really good. Clear and well laid out.

The only thing that might confuse some beginners is your specific choice of package manager.

I just want to add some context as a person that’s going grey.

You are still incredibly young in your 20s. There’s still so much time left for you.

It’s the ideal time to drop out. Think things over and find some purpose or direction.

Or not.

So much is made about knowing your course in life, when often learning to drift the right way can be far more enjoyable.

So yeah, not exactly a call to hedonism, but try to find what you enjoy and where your ambition lies then make positive steps to get there.