Ryan Avent is a smart fella (you should sign up for his newsletter) who writes about economics, politics, culture, etc. for The Economist. This thread (yes, the irony that it’s on Twitter not a blog is not lost on me) outlines a lot of why I wanted to start blogging again.

I don’t have any kind of formal rubric in mind or anything, but I’m trying to post less on the platforms and take the space that blogging allows. Avent does a great job of covering some of the historical particulars as well as a bit of analysis.

One piece I think he’s missed is that blogging was also dying as mobile was ascendent, and there was never a great mobile substitute. Because mobile demands better user experiences than the web at that time was accommodating, it left a big opening for Twitter and Facebook.

It’s still kind of true today that there’s not a great way to blog on the most personal computer we own. The golden age of newsletters might be approaching that, but they feel too siloed whereas blogging is open but still owned by the writer. I’ve strung together a process to make this machine work, but it’s in no way meant for civilians. Strikes me as an opportunity.