So, It's the Last Day in May [Trenchant Edges]
In which we enjoy a little memorial day cheer.
Welcome back to the Trenchant Edges, a fringe culture newsletter where we put on our hip waders and fly fish in some bullshit to see if there’s anything worth eating in it.
Hmm, doesn’t sound super appetizing, maybe we won’t reuse that intro.
Anyway, I’m a recent convert to cold brew coffee and I’m really enjoying the morning on my back porch. The view is mostly a garage I can’t use ‘cause it’s locked w'/ a padlock, but there are trees in the distance and that’s good enough.
Looking On May
A month ago I promised daily emails in May. 31 total. I hit 25. Well, 26 if we count the “I’m not going to send an email today” email, which I don’t. Oh, wait, I forgot the Super-Secret subscriber bonus email that isn’t even hosted anymore. So yeah, 26.
A total of 16,771 words written. About 670/email. Which is about right, I reckon.
It takes about 4 minutes to read a 500 word email, so 670 is pretty ideal. My longest message (Friday’s) topped out at 1,668 which takes about 16 minutes to read.
In general, I’d like to keep things between 500-800 words.
In the future, I’d probably break that email into two, rather than demand 20 minutes from someone’s day, lol. Ain’t nobody gonna read that.
Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with this newsletter so far.
For June we’ll be moving “officially” to weekday emails. I love sleeping in too much on the weekends and it’s a ton harder to start writing if it’s too late in the day.
I didn’t check on the 10am deadline (which I’m currently missing), but I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who cares about it. Mostly they got out by 11am, which is earlier than most of you wanted anyway.
Towards June
We’re gonna continue our regular topics like McKenna’s Timewave & McLuhan’s cultural cyborg speculations, as well as some more UFO shit. Sometime this week I’m going to break out my copy of Moby Dick and just write up an official, “You should read Moby Dick” essay because it will never not be true.
Beyond that, the most popular post of the month was a post about right-wing propaganda, which I don’t want to make a regular thing. But there’s certainly no end of things to say there.
We’ll also see a return of the reading timer I used last year and a bit more polish in the formatting.
I’m also considering how to syndicate the content from this newsletter. I’m thinking reposting it edited a week or two after the email on something like Medium.
I don’t really know what I think about a topic until I’ve had a chance to write it out and react to that writing.
Anyway, I’m confident we’re going to continue here at a steady pace.
Looking forward to finding out where we go next with all of you.
-SF
Hiiii, I cannot really express how happy I am that this newsletter finally took off. Checking my mail for your newsletter became my little daily ritual. And some of the posts were really inspiring. So yeah, thanks.
For the future of this newsletter, I've noticed lack of weekend updates, so it's a good idea to make it "official". For 10am deadline I don't care at all, since I'm in different time zone and I don't even know when your 10am is here, I think it could be afternoon here. Anyway, most important thing is regular mails, so I can really immerse in it.
One suggestion that I have is that little references make huge difference, like you included photo of city hall. Or referenced "Here comes the arm" song. Or included this piece of "The invisibles" comic. Or linked super-old lionman carving. It really helps to feel the vibe and tie my attention for much longer. So if you were thinking "should I include this obscure reference?" you absolutely should.
Once again, I hope June will be as good as May, or even better. See ya tomorrow.
That intro 😂 👌