Blogging

Last month, the online magazine Current announced it will be shuttering in April. A small magazine run by a dedicated team of editors volunteering their time, Current was a lovely diamond in a whole mess of internet rough. I was only able to publish a few short pieces there since discovering it, but many of my favorite writers have appeared in its digital pages, and the outpouring of support it has received since the announcement makes me confident that it will be sorely missed. The economics of online publishing without ugly advertisements dominating the page are dismal, and the magazine’s announcement indicates that financial support through subscriptions was declining, even as “the number of clicks on the site has remained steady.

After countless, endless days and nights in permabanned purgatory, Donald Trump has at last found his way back on to the social web. No, he's not back on Twitter. No, he's not back on Facebook. No, he hasn't started a Substack ... yet. Let's not give him ideas. For those who need a refresher, the former president has been largely absent from the internet since his accounts were suspended from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat in the wake of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol in Washington DC. The decision of various tech companies to muzzle a world leader was (and remains) controversial, as many saw the Capitol riot as merely an excuse for beleaguered Silicon Valley administrators to do what they'd wanted to do all along and silence him.