Fall 2024 Updates
Happy Fall, Readers!
A few updates:
Twitter/X Accounts
If you’re not on Twitter/X - or are but the platform routinely “protects” you from my posts - you may have missed that I won’t be actively posting to the @Wood_House76 account for the foreseeable future and started a different account with a handle connected to my name @JAHockett76 (“76” because I was born in 1976. #GenX #BicentennialBaby).1 @Wood_House76 may retweet @JAHockett76 on substantive things.
Reasons for that decision include wanting to a) mark the ‘end of an era,’ b) relieve my heart, mind, & soul of certain pressures & burdens, and c) use the content as an archive for other purposes without being distracted by notifications and/or tempted to keep adding more tweets to the 106K+ already posted! 🙄
I can’t pass down tweets (or Substack posts) to my kids, and even a high-volume typist like myself only has so many words per day in her!2 At this point, putting a higher proportion of those words onto Muskian X rather than toward something tangible is (for me) unwise. I’m looking forward to going through my many bookmark folders to pull content together for different formats and purposes.
Some of my many bookmark folders! 😬 (I paid the $2.99 a month for Twitter Blue - pre-Musk - for the folder option. IMO, it’s the one and only reason to pay for X if you are someone who uses it as a “printing press” and diary.
Comments/Subscriptions
Over the summer I limited comments to “paid subscribers” as a way of maintaining sanity, deflecting chaotic accounts, and improving comment relevance & quality. I am happy with that decision from a time-and-brain-space management point of view. Anyone can comment via Substack Notes, Twitter/X, or email.
There are 73 actually-paying subscribers - most of whom do not comment - and another 16 to whom I’ve given a “forever” subscription because they are associates, friends, or other people whose work and insights I know or value. “Wood House 76” did not have a paid-subscriber options until last year and generates less revenue than royalties on books I wrote before 2020.
I am very grateful to those who have shown support/encouragement for what I’m trying to do via this platform, and although generating income from Substack isn’t a goal or purpose, I freely admit it helps rationalize the rather pricey quadruple-shot almond milk lattes from a local independent coffee shop we walk to each morning!3 (We all have our vices, do we not? 😉)
Typos/Changes
I’m also very grateful to readers for their patience with my penchant for typos, missing words, etc. I blame worsening eyesight, too much screen time, and autocorrect. It doesn’t matter if I type directly into Substack or use Word and copy/paste. Somehow, I always press publish with multiple errors I need to fix! (I’m sure there are a few in the current post!) I usually catch them within a few hours, but readers can feel free to email or use a Note to notify me of something that needs correction. I prefer you don’t use Comments for the small stuff. Comments, notes, and email is fine for questions or feedback regarding faulty interpretations, content-related problems, etc. Again, I appreciate your patience - the struggle with the screen is real!!
New York City
I will continue my investigative work around the New York City death spike and other events/phenomena related to matters COVID in 2020. I expect to post a narrative version of the New York effort within the next week or two. Yesterday I posted Eleven Serious Problems with the New York City Spring 2020 Mass Casualty Event, which is a current summary of many (but not all) data-related issues. It’s is one of the few NYC articles that doesn’t include a lot of graphs. I chose instead to link or reference images and tables. For that reason, and because it’s rather long, I recommend reading it on a computer, not a phone. (I’m old-fashioned and print any article or study of significant length in order to read it. I can’t do the long stuff on a screen!)
That’s all for now!
Thank you for subscribing.
All photos taken at Morton Arboretum in DuPage County, Illinois.
Update: Clarification - The handle @Wood_House76 had been “Jessica Hockett” for awhile. I changed it to “Wood House 76” a few weeks ago.
I recognize almond “milk” is a misnomer, as almonds cannot be milked. Almond “beverage” is more accurate but “almond beverage latte” sounds like a sparkling water flavor!
I didn't realise you had a paid subscription, allow me to remedy that now. Apologies though, I would have supported your work within a couple of weeks of coming across it, it's that strong!
I can and do read longer texts on the computer, but never got to the point of preferring, say, reading a readily available non-copyrighted book from the 1800s on a screen over paying $3 or $5 or $7 to have a used copy of the book.
Also, one of the major but not obvious differences between Substack and Twitter/X is that hardly anyone knows the names of the people who run Substack.