I was right about Medium (unfortunately)—>
Mark Ellis:
Therein lies the rub. Without boosts, you will not enjoy writing on Medium - nor will you feel valued as a writer. During the months when I’m lucky enough for a human being to hit the boost button on a couple of my stories, everything changes - numbers shoot up in all directions. But I can’t live like that as a creator - I’m not here to play the lottery; I’m here to build an audience, help that audience consistently, and create a profitable business off the back of it. I can do that on my website and YouTube. Medium? I’ve given up, I’m afraid. Adopting the role of a Medium writer is incredibly bad for your inspiration, motivation, and mental health.
I have always looked up to Mark and his ability to continue to post so much each week. He was and is an inspiration to writing and blogging. The fact that he has been boosted, and still has struggled to keep his views and audience seeing his work is sad.
I have yet to be boosted, ever, since the new Partner Program was implemented. The revenue loss sucks and it sounds like Mark was making a lot more than me and seeing his losses is very disappointing. But the fact that he has double my followers (over 20,000+) but only got 900+ views on a post that should have been popular shows the downfall of Medium.
Building an audience and having that audience read your work is what made Medium so enticing. The extra cash was just a bonus. To see a more successful writer in Medium seeing the downfall clearly shows that what Medium doing is not it.
The only criticism in Marks post is that he did it in Substack:
Substack still excites me. I’m here for the long run. It doesn’t come close to Medium yet in terms of audience size or revenue, but I can see a future when it does. And, what’s more, I think about Substack a lot - which means something.
Come over to Ghost, Mark, it’s pretty great!
Don’t Speed Up Your Podcasts—>
Mike Rockwell:
My advice? Don’t do it. Keep playback speed locked at x1.
No thanks.
Dr. Julia Alvarez
UC Merced Graduate Commencement Ceremony
My wife received her Doctorate in Quantitative and Systems Biology yesterday and proud is not a strong enough word for how much I look up to her and her achievements. After sitting through her dissertation defense last week and seeing her walk across the stage this week, it is amazing to see her reach the goal she decided to go after over five years ago.
Not only am I honored to have her as a partner and coparent to be a role model for our son, and new son on the way, but she has always been someone I look up to as well. It was amazing to see her walk onto that stage and earn something that less than 2% of the United States has; a Doctorate Degree.
Vultures
I’m indifferent to Kanye West and Ty Dollar $igns new album dropping this Friday. So far it seems like this is Kanye’s first album that feels more complete compared to the Donda releases, which is exciting.
But I feel like the world has forgotten what Kanye has said and done in the past. People deserve forgiveness, but with the Israel and Gaza war and all the other anti-Semitic behavior in the world right now, it feels wrong to be so excited about Kanye’s new music without recognizing his part in spreading bad rhetoric.
I believe in free speech and believe in people having differing views. Consequences of doing certain things are non-trivial, but government involvement is never the answer. I just feel icky being excited about new art by someone I am also still disappointed in.
Kanye was my favorite music artist for years. I defended his behavior in the past feeling like it was necessary to make the amazing work he has made. Since his remarks on Alex Jones, and other instances, I no longer can defend him.
Vultures might be amazing, but it will never be the same for me as it was in the past when new Kanye music dropped.
iPhone Blogging
ShortcutsScreenshot
I wanted to create a process to be able to blog shorter or linked posts from my iPhone. The great thing about Blot.im is that all you need to do to post a new blog post is drop a .md file into a folder.
So after setting up Alvalog, my new personal blog, on Blot.im all I needed to do was setup a process to write and drop the files into the Dropbox folder that Blot.im is connected too.
I created a Shortcut called Post To Alvalog and decided to just you Apple Notes to write and then run the shortcut from when I was ready to post. I could probably use another app that natively supports markdown, but it was easy enough to just convert the text file to markdown in Shortcuts.
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/8ceef5b702ac452ca8e976eacff74cc8
The process is super simple and now I can post on my blog easily from my iPhone. I can add links, photos, and markdown formatted text and everything just works!
The future is awesome!
Alvalog Is Born
Alvalog on iPhone
I don’t want, but need a personal blog. I want a place for me to write thoughts and link interesting stuff on the internet. It’s important today to have a place for yourself on the internet and that is what Alvalog plans to be for me.
Welcome!