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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 28th, 2023

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  • Post from July, tweet from today:

    It’s easy to forget that Scottstar Codex just makes shit up, but what the fuck “dynamic” is he talking about? He’s describing this like a recurring pattern and not an addled fever dream

    There’s a dynamic in gun control debates, where the anti-gun side says “YOU NEED TO BAN THE BAD ASSAULT GUNS, YOU KNOW, THE ONES THAT COMMIT ALL THE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS”. Then Congress wants to look tough, so they ban some poorly-defined set of guns. Then the Supreme Court strikes it down, which Congress could easily have predicted but they were so fixated on looking tough that they didn’t bother double-checking it was constitutional. Then they pass some much weaker bill, and a hobbyist discovers that if you add such-and-such a 3D printed part to a legal gun, it becomes exactly like whatever category of guns they banned. Then someone commits another school shooting, and the anti-gun people come back with “WHY DIDN’T YOU BAN THE BAD ASSAULT GUNS? I THOUGHT WE TOLD YOU TO BE TOUGH! WHY CAN’T ANYONE EVER BE TOUGH ON GUNS?”

    Embarrassing to be this uninformed about such a high profile issue, no less that you’re choosing to write about derisively.








  • Yeah, and applying the Yggy rubric, I’d bet that he started earlier, he posted more consistently, and he didn’t let ignorance of a subject or even mockery of past failures slow him down.*

    And if there are a few other rats with more hustle that he’s overshadowed, well sure give him some points for talent, and a few more for luck.

    • He did famously quit when the NYT made clear they were doing a real profile on him instead of PR puffery, but he couldn’t stay away long.

  • I think you are overestimating how much of SlateScott’s success comes from his brilliance, and how much even his dedicated readers understand (or even properly read) of each post. He’s a poster in a tight knit network of posters, many of whom know each other socially, and all of whom heap praise on the leading lights as high IQ geniuses. Being influenced by SlateScott is self-flattering to a certain type, so you get many testimonials.

    This may be a bit of a stretch, but I really liked this essay on Matt Iglesias, but really it’s about the banality of posting success: https://maxread.substack.com/p/matt-yglesias-and-the-secret-of-blogging

    There are all kinds of things you can do to develop and retain an audience – break news, loudly talk about your own independence, make your Twitter avatar a photo of a cute girl – but the single most important thing you can do is post regularly and never stop.

    …it’s the best time there’s ever been to be somebody who can write something coherent quickly. Put things out. Let people yell at you. Write again the next day.