I Am, Obviously, Moving To Substack

Cerebralab is dead.

Seriously, I am going to be moving this blog to Substack, under a new name which I like better.

My plan was to write for the sake of building a community around the blog, to get feedback and comments. This hasn't happened, I've conversed with one or two dozen people via email due to this blog. A handful of those conversations spanned dozens of emails, are still ongoing and are quite interesting. But I have not managed to make it the comment hub I wished it to be ala the blogs of Scott, Hanson, and Aaronson. Maybe it's just that I refuse to write about politics? I don't know

Second, I had this idea of the blog as a sort of "repository" of my ideas, but I realize my ideas 3 years ago are really bad and poorly written. Fuck me, I didn't even use a spellchecker back then, and it shows. My current plan is more realistic: write an article a week on substack to quench my thirst for writing, keep doing that until I get bored, be that 1 or 10 years. Once I'm done with that I might be able to start a real timeless blog to live as a gift for my grandchildren; My current inspiration for this is David Chapman and his weird website-book-blog format.

I'm hoping Substack will help me get more people reading and hopefully engaging with the articles. That is because its subscription model makes it easier and more familiar to subscribe.

I'm also considering doing a paid newsletter on substack, or paywalling some posts. I don't think I can make any significant amount of money out of this, but I can judge the quality of my writing better.

If 10 people are willing to pay me 10$/month to read 4 articles, that's a much better indicator of quality than 300 people subscribing for free.

This still feels off, but it seems like the second-best option given that adding a comment section here utterly failed.

Either way, if I add a paid tier current subscribers will be grandfathered into it at no cost, so don't worry on that front.

What else is there to say?

See the previous post for what this new blog will focus on, it's mainly going to be more of the same. I might re-write some old articles and re-publish them there, but I'm unsure as of now.

If you really want to use RSS, there are email-to-RSS tools.

If you already subscribe via email, I've already added you to the substack mailing list, and you should receive the first post from substack soon (unless you already did).

I'm really sorry to see this blog go, the weird reactions that nobody gets, the series posters, the weird icons, the categories... There's something lovely about having your own blog, it's not just about writing, it's about an act of creation. But right now I need to work more on my writing before I engage in another such act, and this one is starting to feel stale and oppressive.

The blog will live in archive "forever" at blog.cerebralab.com.

I'm not yet sure what will happen to cerebralab.com, I've been considering starting a consulting practice with a focus on applied ml, as a practical hobby, Since I'll be working under my eponymous company, I might as well use it for that, but for now, it too remains a mirror for the blog (and I will probably find a way to keep the links compatible, since I still get over a hundred views a day from random clicks)

Finally, the new blog will be joined by 2 podcasts soon~ish, since substack seems like a decent place to host those, if any of you has experience with substack, and doubly so if you have experience with podcast on substack, I'd be great to hear it.

I'll hopefully see you all at epistem.ink.

Published on: 2021-11-28

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