I’m gonna be so honest, y’all. I really spent most of my newsletter writing time researching alternatives for beehiiv. I mentioned this to my partner, and they thought it was a betrayal of the bit. (The bit, of course, being this newsletter’s origins in the Barry ‘Bee’ Buzzword joke campaign.)

On this, I agree. It is a betrayal of the bit. BUT, I think a greater betrayal is happening right now: the betrayal of beehiiv HELPING ME SPY ON YOU.

It’s really uncanny. Like… I don’t need to know that one of you is reading from Dublin.

I could have known when Danielle got back to the US from the ol’ term abroad in Italy because of this location tracking. I haven’t even spoken to Danielle!!! I’m just able to stalk you. (btw, thanks for listening to a reading of my column, but I can’t believe you said you would have voted for Scooter Dom. You’re dead to me, Danielle <3)

Back when I was doing these nightly, I COULD SEE WHETHER PEOPLE WERE SLEEPING IN SURREY OR OFF SASAMATS. It’s honestly so weird and uncanny. I truly don’t need this information.

Beehiiv also puts trackers in to determine when you open emails. Giving stats that I truly don’t need to know, like how of the past 15 emails, the president of our student union has opened 12 within less than a minute (and 9/15 in less than 15 seconds — the median was 12 seconds, the minimum was 6 seconds, and the maximum was 43 minutes).

Likewise for seeing who opens what links. I don’t need any of this information. And I hope you feel kinda creeped out that I know this. I’m creeped out that I know this. Because I shouldn’t.

So… here’s the deal. I’m gonna bail on beehiiv — probably not next newsletter but the one after. In the meantime, I figured out RSS, so here’s the link to that: https://rss.beehiiv.com/feeds/aLcPMS8KAn.xml

You should RSS it up. It’s great :D. I can’t track you, and neither can people on other websites.

I’ll be able to copy y’alls emails over to whatever service I switch over to, so there shouldn’t be any service disruption for you folks, just a visual change, probably. Also, I may send the next newsletter from both beehiiv and whatever new service I settle on. But maybe not, too :D.

Other News

Reading books goes hard

CW: Discussions of suicide (by an LLM)

Who’d have thought, reading is good??? I’ve read four books so far this year, which is honestly epic. 3 non-fictions: On Tyranny, Enshittification, and One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (the last, on loan from my boyfriend). And one poetry (ish): What Makes Us Human, which is… co-written by GPT-3.

I liked the first three.

The AI Poetry was… not good. Here’s an excerpt:

I can’t recommend the book. BUUUUUTTTTTT. I annotated it, and I thought it would be fun if a bunch of people wanted to read and annotate it. :D. Then you’re reading a collection of people reacting to each other and a silly little language model. Idk could be silly.

Anyways, here’s my favourite quote from this ai poetry collection:

Anyways, if people have recommendations for books not cowritten by GPT-3, that’d be snazzy :D. Bonus points for fiction, extra bonus points for a sci-fi anthology.

Invermere.

Can’t believe Justin made it out there (plz don’t notice me Justin).

I’ll keep the curling in mind next time I write about a place I haven’t been to.

I watched Guardians 3

I hate to say it, but I am now vaguely aware of Doomsday and I’m a little bit excited for her. Why is Steve Rogers coming back??? Just for money???? Unclear.

I thought I fell off Marvel but she is in fact fun. (Whoever would even dare to say Marvel is in the same genre as inferior films such as the Transformers franchise should be given the electric chair.)

Journalism-ing

New column! With another coming Soon™️ 

Some have said this is the best one :). She’s gonna be in print, me thinks. NEW PRINT LAYOUT, TOO!!!!! (I like what I’ve seen of it, Ayla)

Sam Low-key

I’m gonna be sad when you leave in three monthsssssssss.

Also I regularly fear that everyone hates me lmao. My poor partner has to listen to me stress about “what if Spencer decided he hates me and he hates what I wrote and he never wants to speak to me ever again” literally every week. (They’re a champ for putting up with me LMAO).

Hope you feel better bud. Can’t wait to leave you more notes in the new office :D

IDK why but i’ve been thinking about trips I want to do :)

No plans, just desires. Probably won’t do any of these because I hate spending money:

• Big train — maybe to Toronto??? (It’s sad because train is like 3x the cost of plane)

• Cheeky little Whitehorse visit

• Cheeky little meet up with friends in New York maybe a Niagara type situation

• Fourth thing

That’s All!

Oops we’re a little late. It’s been a weird week. My failing tech startup had their all hands this week. That was something.

Fun week coming up, though :D. Something pretty exciting overmorrow, but it means I’ll have to get to work early tomorrow — and probably Wednesday too.

Also we’ve got a Dune scheduled for the end of the month and i’m so excited to Dune again. We need to get a Bene Gesserit win condition.

Aaaaannny ways. I’ll stop writing so I’m only 15 minutes late on this one.

Gay socialist polyamoury since 2025