I'm "subscribed" through patreon or substack or some other mechanism to three or four bloggers that I wanted to support/wanted to read more of. I think of it as like a magazine subscription, since I don't get paper magazines any more. Those writers had built a big audience (and I'd been part of it) long before substack came into existence, though. How do you support yourself while building the audience? Seems very hard for anyone just starting out in the business.
Patreon is providing incomes - I think usually not full incomes, but going a long way adding to other sources - to a lot of people, especially graphic artists, podcasters, and YouTubers. This seems like it has potential to be the equivalent for people who work mostly in text, which Patreon is not as good at.
Although I subscribe to several patreons and only I think one Substack, Daniel Lavery (no longer Ortberg if you recall).
I recently dimly recalled and was unable to locate a mention of some kind of mini-boom in paid newsletters. Yay. Value add.
One or two things I sometimes read/listen to are on Substack. I thought it was just a new off-the-shelf CMS service. No obvious difference from the freemium subscriptions and patreons and whatnot everywhere else.
Adjacent to topic, I'm curious how Spike's Mastodon adventure has panned out.
I just joined Patreon last week in order to support some podcasts I've been listening to. I figured that since they're providing a valuable alleviating quarantine boredom role, I shouldn't just listen for free.
I've actually come only very recently to podcasts (last 9 months or so). They seem to me to be a fundamentally more healthy venue than social media. So are blogs, but as we all know those have mostly died out.
Roy Edroso has shifted most of his Alicublog content to Substack. I subscribe.
Maybe I should move my content from Fans Only to Patreon?
I'm very much in favour of substack, but it can't be the only future for journalism. On the other hand, winter is coming for all the ad-supported papers. It's too late in the evening to be coherent, but I wouldn't write it off at all.
Adjacent to topic, I'm curious how Spike's Mastodon adventure has panned out.
It turns out I don't have the patience for the kind of community building it takes to make that kind of thing work. Also, managing the constant software updates. But I did get to do a bit of a deep dive into the tech at one point, so from a purely educational standpoint, it was useful.
And the mastodon as a species?
Who do you think would win in a fight, a mammoth or a pterodactyl?
The Weekly Standard's former editor-in-chief, Steve Hayes, teamed up with Jonah Goldberg and David French from the National Review to create The Dispatch, which crossed $1 million in revenue in a matter of weeks.You poor stupid guy! You never can tell what some people will buy.
Did they get kicked out of National Review for not licking Trump's taint?
I could google to find out, I guess.
10: Any standout lessons, community- or tech-wise?
See, I think a pterodactyl could beat a mammoth, but only if it was like, a fuckin' huge pterodactyl.
I don't think a regular-sized pterodactyl would really be able to absorb a blow from a mammoth's trunk or tusks, especially if the mammoth could really get its mass behind the blow.
10: Any standout lessons, community- or tech-wise?
The real lessons are the friends we made along the way.
Actual Lessons:
- The Affero GPL License seems like a worthy successor to the GPL
- The decentralized pub-sub model isn't necessarily great at large scale
- Novel social software doesn't have to take over the world to be worthwhile
a fuckin' huge pterodactyl.
20: Initially i thought oh, come on. How is even a huge pterodactyl going to inflict lethal or disabling damage on a mammoth? A mammoth is an elephant only bigger. Even a pterodactyl with a light machine gun would have a hard time.
But then I did a bit of reading on Q. northropi and it looks marginally feasible. Q. northropi probably weighed about 250 kg and could fly at 130kph for sustained periods, so I'm going to make a guess that in a rapid swoop it could reach 160kph or about 50 m/s. It doesn't have teeth, and doesn't have much in the way of claws, but it does have a very long and sharp beak - it probably fed like storks or herons.
So there are two ways that Q. northropi could open its attack. Either it swoops and crashes into the elephant, in the hope of knocking it on its side, or it swoops and simply stabs straight into the elephant in order to hit a vital organ.
Method one: a mammoth has a mass of 8t and a height of 4m, and a wheelbase of (eyeballing) 1.5m width. So to tip the mammoth over you need to move that 8t centre of gravity (which we'll say is 3m off the ground) 0.75m to one side - which means pushing the mammoth's top 1m to one side.
The mammoth's weight is applying a torque of 3m * 80,000 N = 240 kNm in the other direction. For the mammoth to tip, we have to apply more torque than that. How fast would the Q.northropi have to be going on impact?
It needs to exert torque of 240kNm, and since the lever arm is 4m, the minimum force that it must apply must be 60 kN. The force applied is the force to decelerate the crash-diving pterodactyl from impact speed to zero over a travel distance of one metre (the distance it needs to move to tip the mammoth over). By F=ma, the deceleration must be 240 m/s/s. And this deceleration has to happen over a metre's travel - so if the Q. northropi is going to travel a metre while decelerating at 240 m/s/s to zero, it must start off at a speed of 21.9 metres per second.
Not only is that well within its performance envelope, it might even be able to survive the impact with only minor injuries. Once the mammoth is on its side, the Q. northrop or its mates can deliver multiple penetrating strikes with their long beaks to the mammoth's vulnerable underside.
Method two is the simple swoop and stab - this raises three difficult questions. First, is Q. northropi's beak long enough to reach through the ribcage of the mammoth and strike the heart or lungs? Second, is the beak robust enough to do so without breaking, especially if it hits a rib? And third, doesn't that sound a bit shit for the Q. northropi if it misses and finds itself embedded like a lawn dart in the side of an enraged mammoth?
More research is needed.
Stab through the heart with its beak? That's loony.
How is even a huge pterodactyl going to inflict lethal or disabling damage on a mammoth?
iPhone atlatl.
is Q. northropi's beak long enough to reach through the ribcage
Unnecessary. This is clearly a Yamato/USN situation. Exsanguination may take a thousand cuts, but there's no doubt the pterosaur can get through.
26: but the question relates to one giant pterodactyl. If you have an entire Carrier Air Group of pterodactyls, the situation is very different.
I think these sentences may explain to outsiders exactly why this place appeals to a particular readership:
Initially i thought oh, come on. How is even a huge pterodactyl going to inflict lethal or disabling damage on a mammoth? A mammoth is an elephant only bigger. Even a pterodactyl with a light machine gun would have a hard time.
But then I did a bit of reading on Q. northropi and it looks marginally feasible.
mmmmmphmm [thrashes wings]
Fuck off of me!
Quetzacoatlus clearly would beat a mammoth. 6 foot jaws!
27: Are you proposing seriously that a mammoth has the eyesight and agility unfailingly to present only its frontal armament to even a single divebombing pterosaur?
I think it takes a lot of beak wounds to exsanguinate a mammoth, and that's a lot of successful attack runs, and the mammoth only has to be successful once. As soon as the pterosaur is down, it's trampled to death.
Pterosaur! Fucking last time I trust you people with paleontology.
I'm reminded of those videos of steppe hunters taking out deer or wolves with birds that on the face of it just don't seem big enough. That seems to work much like ajay's comment above. Slam into the bigger mammal at full speed, bowl it over, get to work with the grab and slash.
Quetzalcoatlus is a pterosaur. And also a pterodactyl.
The problem with those huge pterosaurs was that their skeletons were incredibly friable to make them light enough to fly. The long bones were hollow with the actual bone about as thick as a cardboard tube for mailing posters. If they hit anything at 160 kph they'd just crumple.
Most people think they predated by walking around and picking up things that didn't run away fast enough. Or the heron thing. Or scavenged, probably all of them.
All the pterosaur needs is patience. Watch. Wait. Come out of the sun. Mammoth's gotta drink sometime.
Most people think they predated by walking around and picking up things that didn't run away fast enough.
Sure, if you ask any shmuck on the street. Can we please limit our inquiry to pundits and other experts?
The problem with those huge pterosaurs was that their skeletons were incredibly friable
This is why you never see boneless pterosaur wings on menus.
Mammoth bones, on the other hand, really only boilable. Soup and stock, that kind of thing.
Bullshit. One mammoth thigh had enough marrow to feed a hominin for a month.
I should at this point mention the pure delight I felt a few years back when reading that "Deutsche Bank is having problems managing the risk of its mammoth loan portfolio". Because, yes, I can understand that. The main risk would be that when you lend someone a mammoth, they won't want to give it back.
I think it's clear they were making loans to mammoths and were not being paid back.
And had failed to recruit enough repo pterosaurs.
That's why you need a hulking Pterosaur behind you when you go talk to them, to generally give some side-eye and threaten to beak some legs.
Damnit, I added value with "beak some legs".
I hate it when I'm pwned on that old pterosaur-as-repo-muscle shtick.
45: That article wasn't about lending mammoths; it was about lending to mammoths. They are notorious deadbeats.
Dammit, 46 is way ahead of me. Let's try this: Deutsche Bank had a lot of success with auto loans, but it had trouble managing the risk of its mammoth loans because, well, have you ever tried repossessing a mammoth?
Do keep up, pf: you use a pterosaur.
You can't borrow animals as big as a mammoth, you can only lease them. They are too distinct to be fungible.
Mammoths are stickshift, whereas rhinos are automatic.
I'm just saying, when you rent a car, you need to return that car. When you borrow a dollar, you can return any dollar. Mammoths are more like cars than dollars.
I'm just saying that kids today can't even drive a mammoth properly.
57 Certainly not one with a stick.
Mammoths are not elephants. A mamout has no need for a stick; he need only tug gently on his steed's locks.
58 I was making a cock joke, Mossy. For old times sake.
Also, if you haven't read 24 link, do so.
24 is an augury so obvious that even an ancient Roman would mutter something about it being a bit too on-the-nose.
47 could also have used a reference to Deutsche's involvement in the repo market.
Slam into the bigger mammal at full speed
Yeah but those eagles hunting a relatively runty wolf species (only about 100 pounds) and hitting it from behind as the wolf is at a run. A 450 pound pterosaur slamming into a 12,000 pound mammoth? Might as well fly that thing into a brick wall.
It looks like an eagle weighs about 10 lbs. So still more, but not THAT much more.
A pterosaur could easily take down a baby mammoth.
Mamas, hug your babies.
Mammoth bones, on the other hand, really only boilable. Soup and stock, that kind of thing.
In palaeolithic Ukraine they used mammoth bones as building materials, and presumably lived in the resulting huts.
If you can call it living when you don't have a patio.
Could a lone pterosaur operate a pishkun? Surely.
There's a serious corvid outbreak on our block: I think one of the nesting hawks must have swiped a baby crow and the crow flock, which has to be at least 30 strong and sounds like 3000, are riotously retaliating. Amid the din there is also a mockingbird turning it up to 11. No pterosaurs, but in roughly the same spirit. You guys factored in noise on the pterosaur side, right?
It's difficult to collateralize a mammoth, no matter how many pterodactyls you get to swoop into it from the side.
So are we talking about 40 pterasaur-sized mammoths or one mammoth-sized pterasaur (assume for the moment that the mammoth-sized pterasaur can actually fly somehow).
65 makes a good point - I was picturing the mammoth at rest but of course it would be much easier to knock over a running mammoth than one standing four square. The pterosaur could probably do it at a much lower (and therefore survivable) speed. So it does a few dummy runs first to scare the mammoth into a run, just like the Avenger crews of Task Force Taffy 3 against the Japanese cruisers at Leyte Gulf, and once the mammoth is under way it comes in for a maximum deflection attack on the beam and knocks it over while it's running and therefore less stable.
maximum deflection attack on the beam
Enough with the space-opera technbabble!
To come back to the topic, I guess maybe pishkuns are the right way to describe journalism today.
https://twitter.com/JeremyRaff/status/1263547805567770624
You know, if someone was going to be using analogies, or maybe heading down the Darmok route.
The pterodactyl can also pick up rocks and drop them on the mammoth, don't forget.
Also the pterodactyl has access to the entire ACME catalog.
Now that it's another day I can say it without risking killing the thread: this is a great thread.
Now that I have discovered what a pishkun is, I think that Charley is on the money about the media business. But I don't see any corresponding cuts at Fox or any other part of the great right wing noise machine.
The pterodactyl can also pick up rocks and drop them on the mammoth, don't forget.
Ooh, now you're talking. I hadn't even thought of that. It could definitely carry a 10kg rock (it could grip it by the crust) and one of those from sufficient height would at least stun a mammoth, I would reckon. A sledgehammer blow will kill a cow, and that's about 1.5kJ. A 10kg rock dropped from 30m up by a diving Quetzalcoatlus would carry around 3.6kJ kinetic energy at the point of impact.
(What if he had a pointéd stick?)
Even better. A sort of big javelin.
Suppose he dropped a 10kg swordfish, beak-first? That would require skilful aiming, but I'd think it could penetrate the mammoth skull quite easily.
80 last: Why is that? Is the audience still receptive enough to advertising that the old model still works? Or is the media just a loss leader for the tax cuts and other ways that the patrons get to fleece the state?
The second I think. After Scaife died and his kids sued the people working for him that had been spending their inheritance on right wing propaganda, the local newspaper they own got much better (as the Post Gazette is getting worse).
The Trib's editorial page still sucks, but I think they are supposed to suck. Even the Post has a horrible one.
(What if he had a pointéd stick?) ... Even better. A sort of big javelin.
Mate, I am a sort of big javelin.
If a shorter-than-average chap with a pointy stick (and, presumably, brass clankers) can do in an elephant I'm putting my money on the giraffe-sized pterosaur's being able to take the mammoth.
I mean, he has to first convince the mammoth to expose his vulnerable underbelly, but there are ways...
81. Well, it worked with Aeschylus, but I don't know how thick a mammoth skull is.
I don't buy that bird's excuse about his head looking like a rock. It was a deliberate hit.
The aerial approach assumes that the mammoth is not in a forested area. I think you need to specify the arena.
What if the pterodactyl goes for an eye strike. Could go right through the brain.
pffft! Have you seen the state of my fucking beak now? That's the last time I take advice from hominids called Barry. Also, here I am stuck in a dead mammoth with my arse in the air and now his mates are coming back to see what happened.
83: I think it's the last. These things are run as propaganda organs so the money is really a marketing budget. But I am not sure that is as true of Fox. Murdoch has shareholders, after all. We shall see what happens to all the networks in six months.
The only way a pterodactyl would lose a fight is if he's caught on the veldt in a dead mammoth or a live velociraptor.