Happy Substack Anniversary!
And Happy Absolutely Nothing Else!
So it’s been a year on Substack – what a long strange trip it’s been.
Barf – strike that – this is not a high school yearbook from 1979 (and I’ve never been arrested for free-basing in my BMW near the Golden Gate Bridge so all Grateful Dead references are out).
So let’s just start with the thank yous and see where we end up.
I want to thank my agent…oh, wait I don’t have one…strike two.
Ah – here’s a safe one – I’d like to thank my subscribers. Obviously I enjoy writing these pieces but I especially appreciate that there are people out there that seem to actually enjoy reading them, so thank you for signing up (and an extra thank you – specifically 44 extra thank yous - to my paid subscribers!!)
I’d also like to thank the other publications that have run these articles – I think it’s pretty neat that many of the concepts and ideas have found real purchase in the real world, from providing the occasional giggle to, surprisingly enough, tens of thousands of people, all the way to impacting national policy (sorry - but not really - you lost the IRS contract, ID.me).
So, here are the links, all of which you’ve seen before but, you know, karma…
https://www.realclearpolicy.com/
https://www.americanthinker.com/
https://californiapolicycenter.org/
…and thanks to the many, many, many other sites that have “re-linked” stories as well (I even have a subscriber from France and two from Canada now – thanks Justin Trudeau!)
As for the highlights, well, everyone may have their own favorite but I’m especially fond of this paragraph from “The Cult of Safety:”
“Admittedly there were children – one assumes - who did manage to trap themselves inside random refrigerators, hence the televised public service announcements (seriously, and such a seventies solution) asking the public to at least take the handle off of the appliance before heaving it over an embankment or leaving it in a burned-lot in the Bronx. And admittedly – again, one assumes – a child somewhere somehow managed to get themselves tangled up in a dry cleaning bag. As to the bucket problem, that one is rather hard to fathom but it must have happened at least once to spawn the lawsuit that forced manufacturers to put drowning warnings – complete with a graphic depiction of the inept toddler – on their buckets.”
And yes those PSA’s existed and here - as part of this site’s reasonable but not perfect customer service because it’s not exactly the one I recall and from another country – you go:
And on that note – thanks again!