Some tips for new users

First off, a very big thank you to everyone who reads this site. It's slow going, building up a new site from scratch, and everything always more time than it looks like it should. I hope you can see, in this simple first version of the site, what the philosophy is going to be.

I'll be giving an update on what's next for the site Real Soon Now, but first I want to give some tips for readers who may be having trouble or who have questions about how to sign in. Drop your own questions/tips in comments, if you like.

• If you're having trouble making an account: When signing up, you need only a username and an email address—no passwords needed. Instead you'll get a confirmation email to that email address that you need to click on to activate the account.

If you're not getting that confirmation email, the odds are 99% that it's ending up in your email program's "Junk Mail" folder. Email providers have gotten increasingly wary of letting through any email that smells of being automated. Check there, move it out of junk mail by dragging it somewhere else, and respond to it. You may have to do this with newsletter emails as well, until your program learns those are emails you want. A very effective way to keep future emails out of your spam folder is to send a simple reply message back, something like "thanks" or whatever: once you're replied to an email address most providers recognize that you really did want that email.

• Your username can be anything (well, within reason). The sign-up form encourages real names, but we don't care here. You can use an account name you tend to use elsewhere, your real name, or a third thing. You can also change your username anytime; go to your 'Account' page by clicking the link you'll see on the top right of site pages.

• Site comments are, for the moment, threaded only one layer deep and are dreadfully simple. If you want to reply to a reply, you can either (1) reply to the original comment, the 'parent' comment of the reply you're, um, replying to, or (2) just make a new comment with the name the user you're trying to respond to. Neither's better or worse. Yeah, it's clunky and I'm working on that.

We love getting comments. Please leave comments. It's the only way we know for sure that people are actually listening to us.

• What's the deal with this 'Newsletter' thing? Since our posting schedule here is fairly light—a day or even two can go by between posts if I and all of our currently-volunteer writers all have other commitments—the 'newsletter' is simply a way to get emailed when a new "major" story is posted. I highly recommend it. We generally post one 'major' story a day, sometimes two, sometime zero. You won't get emails for the posts we put up in the 'Quick Reads' columns.

But if you know for sure you won't read those emails, turn them off. If you never open them, your email provider will start marking them as "junk mail" again and the Great Cycle Shall Begin Anew.

• Do you accept community-written posts? Not quite yet. But stay tuned on that.

• How is the site funded? Right now? It's not. We have no backers. Everything is 100% volunteer work. That's obviously not sustainable long term and we're about to announce our first fundraising drive—but we are not a charity, because that would require keeping our nose out of certain political takes we have no intention of keeping our nose out of. More on that Real Soon Now.

• What do we need most? Readers! We need readers! That's the key to everything else, and what will allow this site to grow into what we want it to be quickly, rather than slowly.

So the very best thing you can do for us is to share things you read here to your friends, especially ones who are horrified by the election results, angry with the media for acting as accomplices, and frustrated by the almost complete lack of progressive voices in public discourse.

Send people the links, and encourage them to sign up too. Let them know they're not alone. Follow me on Bluesky (@hunterub.bsky.social), and share that too.

The only way we're all going to survive the next four years in one piece is by making noise. If you can't make noise, at least prod someone else to make some for you. I'll tell you right now that I don't think anyone's going to learn the right lessons from this last election, not when the incentives are greater than ever to not learn them, so we're going to have to do all of it ourselves.

--H