Substack In Nazi Scandal
Pick Of The Day — 4th January 2024 — The best of last year, some new vocabulary, detecting AI, The Great Gatsby, never again and a Substack spat, taking a beat, words like X-rays, stealing a calendar, National Trivia Day, dueling blood donors in Paraguay, and Baker Street revisited.
This series features some of the best of Medium, and the wider world, rumoured to exist outside of the platform.
Pick of Medium — The best of last year, some new vocabulary, detecting AI, and The Great Gatsby.
Scourge of artificial intelligence (AI) Katharine Valentino reflects on her best articles from last year:
Ben Ulansey reviews the 2013 film of one of my favourite books F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”:
James Bellerjeau highlights some recent additions to our vocabulary in his latest philosophical musing:
James also dishes the dirt on AI and detection tools in this one –
Medium tip of the day —Be an SEO star!
The default search engine optimisation (SEO) description of your articles is based on the first sentence or so of the article which may not reflect what it is about very well.
To manually adjust the default description for an article click on the three dots in the top right portion of your article. This opens up a menu with edit story at the top. Scroll down the menu to “story settings”, and click on this. In the story settings scroll down until you get to “SEO description” and you will see the default text — you can then edit this with a description including some keywords that your article is about, so that the search engines are more likely to find your article, then save.
Outside of Medium: never again and a Substack Nazi scandal
Some Alpine villager have decided that “never again” means what it says on the tin–
Meanwhile Medium competitor “Substack” has got itself into a spat with various authors and publications over its refusal to ban extreme right content from the platform -
Life Hack of the day — Take a beat
“Take a beat” is a colloquial expression meaning to pause and reflect, before responding or acting. I was reminded of it yesterday when I had a rather fiery comment to my article on the need for peace talks over Ukraine. Sometimes it is best to slow down the pace of exchanges to take the heat out of a situation. I knew the article would be controversial, so cannot complain that it provoked a heated response. So in the spirit of the article, I am taking a beat before deciding on my response, if indeed a response it a good idea at all!
Quote of the day:
“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
(Health warning — swallow coffee before reading)
“Did you hear about the guy who stole a calendar? He got 12 months — they say his days are numbered.”
(All of these are genuine!) National Trivia Day, Pop Music Chart Day, World Braille Day, World Hypnotism Day, Tom Thumb Day, National Spaghetti Day.
Duelling is legal in Paraguay providing both parties are blood donors.
Cacodemonomania: the pathological belief that one is inhabited by an evil spirit.
Clip of the day: “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty
As always, thank you for reading, and enjoy your day.
To join a new Facebook group “Medium Matters” where writers can support each other and share articles.
Mastodon- you can find me here
Discord — link to an unofficial chat group for Medium members —