An administrative note

Hello, dear readers.

As perhaps the last person still writing at blogspot (https://shylockholmes.blogspot.com/ ), I have at last caved to modernity, now that it’s far too late, everyone is bored with Substack, and subscribes to a bazillion email newsletters they increasingly don’t read.

All my old writing is still there at blogspot, and it will keep being published there as well. So if you, like me, nostalgically cling to something still referred to unironically as a blog, that isn’t going away. My general principle here is that you should be able to read me wherever fine hypertext products are found. I’ll probably post long form on twitter too (@shylockh).

But one thing to allay your possible sense of annoyance. This is just a convenient way to send you my writing, after Google ruined RSS feeds. It is not an attempt to guilt you into paying me money. There is no paid option, and unless I somehow become both a) broke and b) insane enough to think that the solution to being broke is to become a professional writer, there never will be. Samuel Johnson once wrote that nobody but a blockhead ever wrote but for money. I very much admire the good doctor, but I think he had it exactly backwards. To be able to write, simply because you think something is true and interesting and you feel like saying it, is an enormous pleasure. To be comfortably well enough off in my regular employment that I don’t need writing to provide any income for me is a further blessing. It allows me to write only what I want, on whatever schedule I want. My posting schedule is so lax these days I couldn’t in good conscience take anyone’s money anyway, in the unlikely event they wanted to offer any. I have also learned from experience that there is a pernicious influence of retweets on one’s choice of writing. Adding dollars, even very few dollars, would surely make this worse. This will remain what it has long been - periodic dispatches of whatever takes my fancy.

So that’s it. Subscribe to get this by email, if you are so inclined.

Yours Truly,

Shylock