I turned off paid subscriptions

When the monetization costs more than the money

I turned off paid subscriptions.

I enabled the paid tier a few weeks ago mostly to suppress low-effort comments (paid subscribers self-select). Worked fine for that. The problem is Substack doesn’t let you have a paid tier without also becoming a conversion funnel: popups, upgrade prompts, friction for anyone who just wants to read.

That friction costs more than the subscriptions are worth. This newsletter grows by people sharing it. Anything that makes a new reader hesitate before subscribing is the enemy of that.

So: fully free again. Everything, always.

If you want to support the writing, tell someone about it. If you want to pay someone, pay the writers on my recommendations list.