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Bradley's avatar

Morning Stephen, Brad here... thanks for putting the question out there. I had not thought about it, so as a reader with a high open rate on your stuff, I will just share my perspective and riff a moment, see if that helps you:

I chose to subscribe to your writing because the value prop *blink* was “cool, this guy seems bright and is grooving on McKenna’s whackiness with a critical eye on his ontology, and also, Stephen seems like he is broadly heterodox in his thinking; this is all rare, it aligns with me broadly (gestalt hand wave) so I will pay for the read and support this adventure of his.

Your best writing here is when you take the time to bring de novo Stephen insights to the table. You know when you’re doing it. I would rather see fewer pieces with more brilliant ruthlessly honest Stephen brain showing up rather than seeing you feel like you need to meet some inbox quota. We’re not buddies, I don’t need to hear from you often, you’re MY WRITER, so give me the stuff you’re proud of on your tempo.

Other thoughts:

**Yes, better titles might help people who are sensitive to that style of browsing. I open based on trusted authority, but some probably do on titles.

**who are you? Share more about who the hell you are.

**what are some other big questions you wrestle with that you can situate in a larger frame? What’s the Stephen provisional philosophy of what’s going on? I know you groove on crit (of thinkers with last names starting with ‘Mc’) and there are commonalities in their views or reality, I know what you’re orbiting... would love to see a piece like one of those Edge.org questions you answer “4 things I suspect might be true but cannot prove” or “4 mental models that I keep coming back to.”

I hope this helps tease out my sentiments: let’s go to the next level together as writer and readers.

Keep it up, you rock.

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JT's avatar

The length is perfect. A weekend “digest” would be pretty great; I’m the type to always get my unread emails down to zero whether I read them or not, so if the newsletter shows up when I don’t have time to read, it’ll often just get ignored, so a second-chance email would rock.

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