The Journal of Uncharted Blue Placesâor Uncharted Blue, for shortâis the new haunt of Hunter Lazzaro, a humorist and progressive political commentator most known for his past work at the liberal website Daily Kos.
You can expect to see serious commentary mixed with purely satirical nonsense, short pieces and long, and frequent forays into the state of American business, new tech trends, environmental news, and whatever else comes to mind on any given day. As for where we'll go from here? We'll see. We're counting on you, our community, to help guide us.
All Uncharted Blue content is free. We do plan to ask for donations at some later dateâif and when things progress past the experimental, doing-what-we-feel-like stateâbut we won't hide posts behind a paywall. For now, the best thing you can do for us is simple: Tell your friends about us, keep visiting to see what we've got on offer, and join our mailing list so that we can tell you when we've got something new to read.
Subscriptions
Subscriptions to Uncharted Blue are free, don't obligate you to do anything, and won't put you on any mailing list but our own. We will never sell your personal information to outside vendors or "swap" mailing list names with outside groups; you don't have to worry about the new curse of the internet, drowning under waves of new spam after you gave your email address to a single company you liked.
Spam is evil, we hates it, and we're not going to play that game.
Being a subscriber will allow you to pick how (or whether) you want to receive emails letting you know when our site has new feature stories. After we've gotten it all set up, we envision options that allow you to receive an email whenever a story goes up, a daily summary of stories, or a weekly summary that includes only the posts we're proudest of. You'll be able to turn each of those on and off separately.
Only subscribers have the ability to post comments on our site. That's an unfortunate necessity in order to combat spammers, malware, and the internet's omnipresent trolls. Uncharted Blue runs on the Ghost platform and relies on our service providers for the majority of that work. You'll need a valid email address to sign up.
Ghost uses email addresses, not passwords, to secure member accounts. When signing in, you'll be asked to click a link sent to you by email to verify that it really is you. This method is theoretically more secureâand, again, makes it much easier for Ghost-based sites to combat spamâbut it takes some getting used to. (Since it's controlled by our service provider, we're not able to modify that sign-in process.)
Paid Subscriptions and Donations?
Maybe someday. We'd like to offer paid subscriptions for members who want to support our work going forward, but it will only make sense if our community grows to the point where such options are plausible. We'll also be looking for input from you, the community, on how that might be structured or what perks we could offer that don't involve a paywall for everybody else.
Community Guidelines
Uncharted Blue is a squarely progressive site. Everyone is welcome to read our stories, but our comment threads are intended for progressive discussion, not political free-for-alls. Goofballs who remain enamored with Donald Trump or other walking national catastrophes can peddle their wares elsewhere, as can conspiracy cranks, anti-science cranks, spreaders of intentional disinformation, and anyone dimwitted enough to still be impressed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Comments that promote racism or bigotry, threaten violence, or are otherwise abusive will be removed, just as they are on every other responsible social media platform, and the commenter may or may not have their ability to comment revoked going forward. Nobody wants to read comment threads filled with pointless vitriol and petty abuse! Well, some people do, but they have The Entire Rest Of The Internet to play in.
Other Site Terms and Conditions
Our site takes claims of copyright infringement seriously, and site users who repeatedly infringe on the intellectual property rights of others may, at our discretion, have their ability to comment revoked.
Full information on how to file a Notice or Counter Notice of alleged infringement as set out by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") can be found here.
Credits
Uncharted Blue runs on the Ghost platform.
Site theme is based on the "Tripoli" Ghost theme by Aspire Themes.
Seascape image used in header and footer is Madiera, Portugal by Mylene2401.
Seascape at sunset image by Kien Virak.
Other images are from the New York Public Library collections of public domain works.