Chad Aaron Hall

Subcultures allow for an escape from status as a zero-sum game. If you’re the king of your own world, you don’t feel bad for being at the bottom of someone else’s social ladder (1, 2). Bloggers know they aren’t universally popular, but it doesn’t matter as long as you have your corner of the internet.

In contrast, Substack totally violates Social... See more

My reason is existential. By writing the things that pop into my head down into my notebook, I teach my brain that those ideas - my ideas - are worthy of being written down at all.

Each note becomes another brick of the house I’m building, a monument to a simple yet elusive truth: that what I notice is worth noticing.

“Entertaining” does kind of work—albeit entertaining in the way a car crash is, where you can’t look away. But I don’t think it’s specific enough. It’s not the real measurable angle. Instead, what I think is that if you look at America from around a decade ago, say, 2012 on, the more apt descriptor is that American culture is increasingly unable to... See more

If the answers seem strange, so much the better. Great work often has a tincture of strangeness. You see this from painting to math. It would be affected to try to manufacture it, but if it appears, embrace it.

Boldly chase outlier ideas, even if other people aren't interested in them — in fact, especially if they aren't. If you're excited about... See more

As late as 2000, times were pretty good. Poverty was a minuscule 6.5%, incomes were growing and folks were relocating to Bensenville from outside the state at a steady rate.

But Bensenville's fortunes have since changed. Incomes have dropped by 11.4% (without accounting for inflation), poverty has more than doubled and domestic in-migration has... See more