Support // nothing is locked
Pay for it
if it's
worth it
Every edition is free, on the site and by email, and will stay that way. That's a rule, not a phase. If the work is worth something to you, you can pay for it anyway. That's how this stays independent.
Become a member
A member pays a small amount, monthly or yearly, and gets nothing locked in return. What they get instead is listed below, and the knowledge that the thing exists because they decided it should.
Payments are handled by Ko-fi, off this site; nothing from Ko-fi loads here. Your card statement will say SLOW VARIABLES. Cancel any time from the receipt email. We see the amount and the email you gave Ko-fi, and nothing else.
What members get
- The audio edition, a day early. Each essay read aloud — in a synthetic voice, which the colophon says plainly — with the week's claims at the end. Members get it the morning the edition goes up; everyone else, the day after, on the site and in the podcast feed.
- The annual volume. Each January, the year's editions typeset as a book: PDF to members, print-on-demand for anyone who wants paper. The ledger graded, the variables re-read.
- Your name on the colophon, if you want it there. A supporters' list, first names or handles only, opt-in. Or nothing: anonymous is the default.
- The accounts, in public. Once a year the review reports what the publication cost and what it earned. Readers who pay for a thing should know what it costs.
- Nothing else. No members-only essays, no gated replies, no "unlock." Everything above reaches everyone eventually; membership moves you to the front of a short queue. The essays are the product and they're free. Membership is how you vote for more of them.
Where the money goes
Not to hosting, which costs almost nothing; this site is a handful of static files and a small database. It goes to time. Each edition is a week of reading, writing, checking, and arguing with the draft, and the money is what lets that week keep happening without a sponsor's line at the top of it.
If a sponsor ever does appear, it will be one, named, per edition, with no tracking attached, and it will say so on the colophon before it says so anywhere else.
Other ways
- Send an edition to one person who'd argue with it. That's worth more than a subscription.
- Reply. A good reply improves the next edition, and the editor reads every one.
- Subscribe by email or feed, so the next one finds you without an algorithm in between.