All Five Hundred Of You
All Five Hundred Of You
Follower #500 arrived this evening.
Way back on August 31st of 2023, I dusted off this Substack, which had 41 followers from its first incarnation, but all of the posts had been scrubbed. The first article for Infowar Irregulars Bulletin v2.0 was All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic, Especially Roger Stone.
Things kind of bumped along until June 2nd, when MIOS: Iran’s PressTV went up, providing some additional background on this story in the Washington Post, for which I provided background: News site editor’s ties to Iran, Russia show misinformation’s complexity. I quickly received three high level recommendations, which I described in the Visitor’s Guide, and the follower/subscriber account zoomed from there.
There are 323 articles at this point. The busiest week was the start of June, with 1,737 visits. I took a break and when I returned the massive influx of new people meant that besting that number a few weeks later, with 1,747 visits, just happened without any extraordinary effort.
The dips are when I’m taking time off - if things get too intense for too long, that can get under your skin in a downright dangerous fashion.
Statistics:
The thirty three paid subscribers are four people who sent money using this platform and another twenty nine I recognized, almost all of them among the first hundred arrivals. That $507 is deceptively low - I’m seeing about that much monthly from that group of paid subscribers, and I’m grateful for every dollar. There are also a couple hardware fairies from the Apple camp in there - I have an iPhone XR, an iPad Pro 12.9”, an M1 MacAir, and an M1 MacBook Pro. They basically re-kitted me in a really posh fashion. Thanks, guys!
Refocusing:
The start of this quarter was ushered in with Snivel War, wherein we were going to review counter-insurgency material, and turn our attention to frivolous litigation, which is going to be THE problem going forward. That lasted for almost a month.
Biden dropping out and Harris entering the race has taken some of the uncertainty away - I think Harris/Walz will win. Our inevitable civil war from this will be religious para-states defying D.C. I’ve been saying We’re Gonna Fight since 2017, and I’m sticking by that. Go read Barbara F. Walter’s How Civil Wars Start if you want to know why I’m so sure of this. There are links for the book in November’s Civil War Referendum.
While things here are going well, the same can not be said for the efforts that drive the bulk of my income. There are people who are flighty. There are people who do not yet see how the openings before us can be accessed. Things that should have been done in May are only now making it to the front burner. I went off at the start of June and began doing something totally different with myself, there’s very little of it online, and that is going well. I get to be physically active and the results help around the house.
Conclusion:
I’ve been well now for a year and a month. A lot of the last seventeen years I averaged around $1,000 a month. I am really eager to get back to something like a normal adult income, but it’s been painfully slow in coming. High on my to-do list is dealing with complications from a molar I lost … clear back in 2008. Two years ago a windfall got me a top right bridge for three of them that were newer breakages, but in worse shape. Misfortune is evenly distributed - for the other four I need work on the bottom right and both top and bottom left.
The disloyal right would lionize and solidly fund someone with a record like mine. The center to left NGOs where I might want to work are all very risk averse in general, they fear the frivolous litigation, they fear the exposure that comes from my habit of roaming the dirty end of the playing field, and there’s a fundamental worldview thing, too. Over and over I see studies replicating characterizations of problems that were already done last year … and the year before.
They keep fact checking, finding fault … and then being confused and sad when the bad actors profiled just laugh at them. We’re past the “admiring the problem” phase, and well into DO SOMETHING ABOUT it phase. This is what frivolous litigation is on the menu this quarter - litigators need investigators, and here I sit, ready to go and with room on my dance card.
While I have walked point the last fifteen years, I’m married to the desired outcome, not the process itself. If I found a tech support role at an ISP … or if there’s an uptick in business at Wally’s Widget World and I have more boxes to pack, that’d be fine, too. I would happily dial back to just evenings and weekends here, still transferring wisdom, but doing less.
So … that’s the challenge … I need more work and there are now five hundred of you. Anyone got any idea who might need an R&D CTO / CISO / staff engineer that bites if provoked?