substack

by

Should I write on Substack? Should I not write at all?

Well, first, today’s date is a bit boring; it’s just riddled with even numbers.  Even numbers, of course, are almost never prime‒out of all the infinite prime numbers that exist, only one is an even number, and that’s the even number:  2.  Likewise, out of all the infinite even numbers, only 2 is prime.

Now, you might point out that there is a 2 in today’s date; in fact there is more than one (har):  1-28-2026.  However, each of those twos reads, almost inescapably, as part of a larger, non-prime* number‒28, 20 (or 2000), 26.  So, they lose their charm.

And that’s my weird, number-related nonsense out of the way for now.

It’s Wednesday, which is payroll day, but I’ve done my best to get a head start on that this week, to the degree possible.  We’ll see whether or not that does me any good.  Well, I will see.  I doubt any of you will see, and you probably won’t know in any sense.  I guess I might share it here on this blog, if it sticks in my mind enough for me to mention it, but I doubt that will happen.  It seems unlikely that anyone would care, anyway.

The cliché thing to add at the end there wanted to be “but never say never”.  However, that expression annoys me, partly because it includes the word “never” twice while admonishing others not to use it.  Of course, I recognize that to be deliberate verbal irony, but I don’t find it very clever.

My preference is to say something like “never is a long time” when admonishing someone against making sweeping, “never”-related statements.  Or, if someone says something like, “they were supposed to get back to me, but they never did,” I will often say, “Never hasn’t happened yet.  They just haven’t gotten back to you so far.”

No, actually, I don’t have any (local) friends.  Why do you ask?

I still haven’t received any feedback regarding the Substack question.  In fact, the only feedback I’ve received of any kind has been from the two people who are basically the only people who comment on my blog.  It’s nice to get feedback from them, of course, but I would welcome others as well.  And I would really appreciate someone’s thoughts about the Substack and/or monetization idea.

I don’t know.  Maybe to be able to monetize one’s (nonfiction) writing, one needs to have some consistent shtick or something‒a focus on politics or medicine or philosophy or what have you.  Whereas I don’t even know what I’m going to discuss until I’m already discussing it**.  Is that the sort of thing that could sustain a paying audience?  I don’t know.

I would like to get some broader feedback on this, but I don’t know how to elicit that feedback except by asking here.  It’s not as though I have anyone else to whom I can talk about this kind of thing.  I barely have anyone to whom I can talk about anything.

I guess I could just try to “fake it until I make it” with a more focused blog, obeying an idiotic admonition that people recall only because it rhymes.

Now, I’m fond of lyrics and good poetry so I appreciate rhymes, but rhyme does not equal reason; in other words, don’t fall for someone saying something like, “If the glove does not fit, you must acquit.”

If anything, if someone tries to convince you using a rhyme, veer in the other direction from accepting what they say.  When people have good reasons for something, they don’t require clever verbosity to persuade a reasonable person.  I say “persuade”, but that’s really being a bit disrespectful to the notion of true persuasion.  Using the “rhyme as reason” fallacy is really a form of dishonest manipulation, as is the willful application of many fallacies when trying to influence another’s thoughts.

Anyway, I don’t want to fake it with respect to having a particular focus or agenda in a blog or other series of writing.  I’ve been faking being human all my life, and that’s more than exhausting enough.  Also, as time goes by, and I see more and more of the things humans do and the ways that humans do things, I’m thinking maybe trying to act like one of them isn’t such a well-advised undertaking.  Maybe humans are vastly overrated.

Then again, so are most other life forms on the planet.  Perhaps phytoplankton/cyanobacteria are the only innocent life forms on Earth (and I’m far from certain of their innocence).  Of course, since no being had any choice in being the being that it’s being, one could say that every life form is innocent, and that’s fair enough, but then the very concepts of innocence and guilt become nearly useless.  Maybe they should be.  Maybe they tend to mislead and muddle people’s thinking.

I don’t know what I’m on about with all this.  I suppose I’ll see how I got to this point when I edit the post.  I doubt it will be terribly enlightening, but it’s not impossible.

That’s enough for today, though.  If any readers do have any thoughts about the Substack idea or anything else, I would be interested to hear them.  And, yes, I would hear them even if they are just written on the page (or, rather, the screen), because when I read, I hear what I’m reading in my head; that’s how I read.  So there.

I hope you have a very good day.

*I think the official term is “composite number” but I don’t think they need (or deserve) a special name.  They are just non-primes.

**I’m using the word “discuss” fairly broadly here, since usually I’m the only one “talking”, and it’s not clear whether or not that counts as a discussion.

by

I’m having difficulty coming up with a headline

Well, it’s Monday, 1-26-2026 (in the American ordering of dates), a sequence which is mildly but not very interesting because of the repeated “26”.  Now, come February 26th, writing the date in the more European fashion would be 26-02-2026, which will be almost palindromic, but not quite.  So that would be a sort of tease date, in a way.

None of it matters, of course.  Now, if there were a 62nd of February I would be somewhat tickled on that day.  Of course, in a way, you could say that the 3rd of April is the 62nd of February, if my math is correct.  I think that’s right.  Let’s see, there are 28 days in February (no more than that this year), then 31 days in March, which adds up to 59 days.  Then 3 more days will get you 62, so yeah, April 3rd.

Sorry, I know that’s probably terribly uninteresting to anyone but me.  A lot of things are like that.

I was able to get a decent night’s sleep on Saturday night by sedating myself with a combination of three (or so) different (legal and “over the counter”) medications.  Of course, I cannot do that on a weeknight or I will be useless the next day*.

Not to say that I’m particularly useful at any other time, but at least I can think with some clarity.  My emotions may tumble about‒though evidently they rarely if ever show on my face‒but at least I have a sharp mentality most of the time.  In fact, if I were able to bring myself into more durable focus, I think I could be more mentally acute than I’ve ever been in the past.

That’s because, although I’ve been through a lot of failures over time, I am at least always trying to learn, and I succeed in that quite often.  Whether or not I learn the things that are most interesting and/or most useful is another question.  But it’s hard to know for sure ahead of time what will be most useful to know, so it’s probably best to try to learn as much, about as many things, as well as you possibly can.

That’s probably as wise as I ever get.  Enjoy.

Let’s see, what else should I talk about?  I don’t know.  Is there anything you’re interested in discussing?  Do you have any questions for me that you would like answered**?

I suppose today I shall have to deal with the new format for entering the blog onto WordPress, which is somewhat irritating, because it is more difficult to read as I’m editing, and it is less user friendly.  I am at least half heartedly considering moving my blog to Substack (or something).  I have an account there, anyway, and quite a few of the people whose ideas interest me seem to publish there.

It’s a bit of a no-frills site, where you don’t make your page into a fancy-looking thing, you just publish your stuff, but it has its own sort of built-in social media thing where you can make the equivalent of tweets and respond to those of other people.  And, of course, it has a built-in capacity to set up paid subscriptions for people who want them, and one can choose which things are paywalled and which are not.

To be fair, WordPress has that capacity now, as well, but I’ve never seen it used nor looked too much into using it.  If any of my readers know about it and how it stacks up against other things, such as Patreon (and Substack) please let me know about your experience.  I would greatly appreciate it.

Of course, this is all pie in the sky thinking on my part.  I doubt that anyone cares either way, in any case.  And I don’t know if I’m going to crash and burn sometime in the near future.  I feel that the event is approaching rapidly, but I’ve felt that way often and for a long time, and yet against all odds (and certainly not by popular demand) I am still here.  I’m sort of like the world’s most verbose toenail fungus, in a way.

Anyway, I think this is enough for today.  Again, if any of you have experience with Substack, or with Patreon, or even with the subscription models on WordPress (this site is hosted through WordPress), I would appreciate your feedback.

In any case, I do hope that you have a good day.

*I will not, though, sleep more if I use this on weeknights‒I know this from bitter experience.  Something in my mind overrides even medication (within reason) and still wakes me up stupidly early on any day that I have anything to do, whether it’s work or laundry or what have you.  But the cumulative effects of pharmacological intervention nevertheless dull and slow my mind, so I feel worse very quickly.  Believe me, I’ve tried.

**I make no promise that I will answer just any question you might ask, but I will try to be forthcoming if I can.  I wouldn’t want to discourage someone who is taking an interest; such people are rare.