Slowly at first, and then all at once (RIP Twitter)

How to accidentally make your competition succeed, an aurora update, the EV of the week, and no, I haven't watched "Succession" yet.

First, some inside baseball.

Like all good newshounds, I have a protracted morning routine that spies and folks in the news business call “getting read in.” Reading in, for me, involves clicking on all or most of the breaking news alerts that came in overnight, between 6 and 100 newsletters, headlines from Artifact News and, usually, a stop on Twitter.

But today, my last stop on the reading-in tour was actually Substack. Specifically, it was Notes, the Twitter clone that’s gotten so much attention lately because, well, Elon Musk banned Substack over it, which literally caused some not-insignificant number of people to go, “huh, wow, maybe I should check that out!”

I was lucky enough to be invited to the private beta, so I’ve been using Notes for a few days now, and now that it’s available to everyone, it’s only gotten richer and more interesting. Meanwhile, Twitter has only gotten more boring, hostile, and ineffective.

Some of this is my fault, of course: I tweeted something about B*tco*n mining the other day, so RIP my mentions forever (way more than usual, though, ouch!). Some of this is the algorithm changes: on my Twitter feed, there is only one topic and there will apparently only ever be one topic, and that topic is AI and OpenAI and ChatGPT, and did you know OpenAI has an API!? Oh, I did. There are no other topics in my Twitter feed, after all.

Finally, some of it is utility: my tweets simply don’t have the reach they used to. I will not speculate as to the reason, other than the ones about my Substack newsletter, where I definitely know the reason. I only know that the view count is down, the interactions are down, and the overall engagement is down.

As a result, considering that Twitter is a) not fun, because everyone’s yelling at me all the time, b) not interesting, because the variety of tweets I see by default is zero, and c) it has virtually no value as a promotional outlet on top of (a) and (b), I didn’t even make a conscious decision not to open Twitter today. It just did not occur to me.

And that is how irrelevance occurs. Slowly at first, and then all at once.

Also, while I know there have been some worries about Substack due to its recent public fundraise, which caused a lot of speculation that it may not be doing well, financially, Substack is kind of killing it as an everything app, at least for publishing. This thing is a media company in a box! Think about it:

• Custom domains = it’s your homepage

• Newsletters, including monetization = it’s your writing business

• Podcasts = it’s your audio platform

• Subscriber chat = it’s Discord

• Notes = it’s Twitter (but smaller, which is actually great!)

As others have pointed out, like Ed Zitron in his latest hilarious and too-true romp, Substack is appealing to exactly the audience that’s been so obsessed with Twitter for so long: journalists, editors, writers, and content creators. Plus, unlike Twitter (certainly in its current form and arguably before), my interests are actually aligned with Substack’s interests—the more money I make, the more money the site makes. That makes me feel a heck of a lot better than being on Twitter these days.

Also, not for nothing, the actual best thing for the news business is Elon breaking Twitter beyond repair. It’s been the national assignment desk for way too many years, and it’s been an artificial bubble that whole time—not to mention doing way too good a job of making reporters scared of their own replies, and tailoring their content accordingly. I hope NPR and PBS actually do leave Twitter, and that others follow, for the sake of reporters lifting up their heads and seeing the news outside their windows.

Ok, enough about that.

Aurora update

I didn’t see any Northern Lights in Alaska. Bad luck with space weather, it just wasn’t a busy week in the geomagnetic sense (although I guess I should be grateful every week there’s not a new Carrington Event, thanks for that reminder, Bill W.).

One of the nights I got up at 2:30 am, I did see an unearthly glow behind a whole lot of clouds, but mostly I just saw clouds. But that’s all right. I had a great time with family and busted out my snow pants for the most hardcore Easter egg hunt I’ve ever been on. And like I said, this solar activity isn’t even supposed to peak until 2025, so there’s time to try again.

Alaska is no joke. Photo: Molly Wood.

Viewing:

Extrapolations on Apple TV+. As promised, I watched the four episodes of this series that are out so far, and like The End of the World is Just the Beginning, it’s not a good one for those who aren’t equipped for hard truths. I’m finding it annoyingly unsubtle, and I prefer the stripped-down bittersweet doom of Clade, or the more smoothly integrated futurism of Years and Years (which is one of the best future dramas I’ve watched maybe ever).

All that said, though, I don’t want to be too critical here; I’m in favor of anything that illustrates what our world is likely to look like in the coming decades. Storytelling is how we imagine and survive the future that’s coming, and hopefully, decide to avoid it. So in that regard, I’m glad Extrapolations is a bit of a punch in the face. We could use it.

Also, no, I haven’t watched Succession yet. Look, I’m a little busy trying to start a company over here, people!

EV of the week:

Last week I wrote about how Teslas, at least in the Bay Area, are starting to be the Uber car of choice, which seems kind of appropriate, given how generic and ever-present they are. I sometimes tell people we live in the EV future here, since Teslas have long since stopped being special, and every EV is represented here in the Bay. I’ve seen Rivians and Lucids, I see lots of other Polestars lately, the Mustang Mach-E is all over the place, the Kia Niro EV and the EV6 are starting to make appearances, sometimes I see a BMW iX or a Jaguar E-Pace. I’ve even seen a Ford Lightning or two.

But far and away, the car that’s popping up like superblooming California poppies lately, is the Hyundai Ioniq5. I know at least two people who bought this car recently and I’m seeing it more than almost any other EV all of a sudden. It’s probably some combination of Streisand effect and supply chains suddenly shaking loose—but it might also be that the Ioniq5 is an actual 5-seat SUV that starts at just under $42,000 with just over 300 miles of range, and is legitimately great by all accounts.

Have you seen this Hyundai? (Because I have. Everywhere.) Photo: Hyundaiusa.com

Whatever it is, it’s working, and it’s putting a lot of other carmakers to shame (hi, Honda, Subaru, Volkswagen, etc. etc. etc.). I haven’t gotten to drive one yet, but I’m hoping I’ll get my chance soon, because while I’m still loving my Polestar 2 like fire, I’m starting to get … I can’t believe I’m saying this … Hyundai FOMO.

What a world.