Happy Two-Year Blogiversary

This week or possibly sometime this month will mark the two-year anniversary of this newsletter’s creation. I never know exactly what day to use because there are multiple options — day I built it, first day I published something, first day I actually started doing it on a semi-consistent basis — and I also never know whether to call the day an anniversary or a birthday. But in any event, here we are. Happy birthday and/or anniversary to my blog on this day or maybe another day in the future or maybe the past. We can just have cake every night in November to cover all of our celebratory bases. 

I’ve had a blast with it, honestly. I started it back in 2023 after a scary health thing gave me a burst of motivation. (“WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE? I SHOULD BE DOING SOMETHING… MORE! I SHOULD, UH, START A BLOG?") It was just going to be a fun little creative escape where I could dump some dumb ideas and links, both to things I typed and things I clicked on. (Hence the title.) Four or five months later, I got laid off from my job at Uproxx and this became a slightly more professional endeavor, with paid subscriptions and the whole deal, because, while I do not value having “a lot” of money, I do value having enough to, like, pay for my health insurance. And gyros. Health insurance and gyros. These are my primary expenses. 

So, that was Year 1 of this sucker. Year 2 also featured some changes. I switched platforms from Substack to Ghost and put the Friday roundup edition of the newsletter fully behind the paywall. I did not love doing this second thing. In my dream world, I would just pump blogs out into the universe and money would appear in my bank account and I could have all the health insurance and gyros I want with a bunch of money leftover to give to charity and I would do it all without having to put that stupid little “SUBSCRIBE” button in between my beloved paragraphs. 

That is, unfortunately, not how things work. Also, part of me felt guilty that people were giving me money for things other people were getting for free, and I wanted them to feel like they were getting a little extra value for pulling out their credit cards and punching a bunch of numbers into a box. I really am quite bad at capitalism. That’s been the hardest part of doing all of this, actually. The blogging is fun. It is, many years later, still such a rewarding process for me. I have a dumb idea, I type some words, people read it. That makes me so happy. It’s just the, uh, other stuff I’m still figuring out. 

This brings me to you. Or at least some of you. The ones who have reached out to tell me they enjoy getting this newsletter twice a week and want to know what they can do to help, or the ones who thought that but didn’t send me an email, or the ones who are reading this now and developing that thought in real time. Here’s the short version. It’s so easy. Ready?

Share some blogs. 

That’s it, man. Truly. See a blog you like in your inbox someday? Click through to the home page, copy that web address, and send it to other people. Post it on social media. Post it on Reddit. (Reddit is awesome for driving traffic, from my experience, so please especially do this.) Link to it from your own blog or newsletter, if you have one. Forward an email to your family and friends. Read some of it out loud to your bartender or the person next to you on the subway. I will take all the eyeballs I can get. From there, it’s on me to convert those eyeballs into money and that money into health insurance and gyros. I am better at this second conversion than the first, admittedly, but I’m working on it. 

And this brings us to the last — probably most important — thing, which I almost definitely should have put much higher up on the page. (See above, re: bad at capitalism.) I’m gonna run a 20 percent discount on yearly subscriptions through the end of the month, just like I did last year. That means the $50 price (LESS THAN A BUCK A WEEK) is now down to $40 (EVEN MORE LESS THAN A BUCK A WEEK). Here is the link, found by clicking on my dreaded subscribe button. 

Anniversaries and/or birthdays have a way of making you think. I’ve been thinking a lot about all of this lately. The main things I’ve come away from all of that thinking with are as follows:

• I really do like doing this 
• I appreciate that all of you have given me your email address and allowed me to blast ramblings about TV shows and heists into your inboxes multiple times a week 
• If you’re wondering why I mentioned gyros so many times, it’s because I drafted a lot of this in the time between ordering one and waiting for it to be delivered

Here’s to a third year of typing and clicking. And here are this week’s links. 

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— Caity Weaver and Brian Phillips both wrote terrific blogs about the end of the penny

— Alex Pappademas profiled Walton Goggins

— good piece about Matthew Belloni, current chronicler extraordinaire of Hollywood stuff

— dug this thing about the real Marty Supreme

— I still have no freakin clue how Lord and Miller are going to turn this book into a movie, but I believe in both of them and Ryan Gosling

— Morgan Freeman is fed up with AI stealing his voice

— incredible details in here about Nikola Jokic’s ball-busting godfather 

— Nate Bargatze still wants to build a theme park

— Pope Leo really does love da movies

— Mad Men is coming to HBO Max in 4k, if you want to see Pete Campbell fall down the steps in the highest possible quality (I do)

— Labubu movie

— new Sharknado question mark

— “Nine thieves caught in absurd footage piling out of one car — with two in the trunk”

— “How to Not Get Kidnapped for Your Bitcoin”

— “Colombian artists transform Pablo Escobar’s hippos and excesses into art”

— incredible photo posted by Big Boi on Instagram

— I can’t stop making screencaps from Pluribus lol

That's it for this week. Please subscribe to my blog.