We have a newsletter

You guys,

Something amazing just happened.

In a time of constant competition for attention when sign-up forms force themselves on people on every website on the planet, one of you guys actually asked for a signup form for a newsletter. Thank you, Jorge.

I feel like a fat guy getting offered a drink by the hottest girl at the club.

This poses an interesting technical/design question: the sign-up form has to be noticeable and a liiiittle bit in your face, but, and I cannot stress this enough, I fucking hate mid-screen popups, and whenever a site does that, I close it immediately no matter what the content. Maybe my readers are a bit more patient and indulgent than me (to be fair, even rabid badgers are), but why risk it?

“Do unto others”.

At the same time, Facebook sucks as a notification system – new posts show up only for 10-20 % of followers (I am sure it would be 100 % using the paid “promote post” option, which is the whole point. Zuckerberg, lick my perineum.)

So we’ll have a newsletter.

Actually, we’ll have two:

• one, a minimalist notification system just when new articles come out.
• two, an actual extended newsletter with a paragraph or two of random musings that are too short or freeform or insane to go in an article, and links to interesting/fun/useful stuff on the internet that I personally enjoyed in the last weeks (the current hipsterword for that is “curated”, right?). I’ll send those once or twice a month tops.

You can subscribe to one or both, and you can change your mind at any time.

Speaking of hipsterwords:

“curated” = picked
“upcycling” = smug scavenging
“organic” = slightly less healthy, much worse for the environment and more expensive
“artisanal” = will work worse and cost more than the stuff made by robots
“green” = red
“low carbon” = low giving money to Russia and Saudi Arabia (hey, not a bad thing)
“vegan”/”gluten-free”/”free range”/”raw” = I’m so rich and bored I made food into a game (does not apply to the 1 % with actual gluten allergies)
“crowdsourcing” = I’m hoping someone else will do the work
“crowdfunding” = I’m hoping to socialise costs and privatise profits

You’ll find the signup form on the top right.

Cheers and keep on being the most awesome reader base on the planet,

Z.