Gwern Branwen

There's so many bad websites out there and it depresses me.

There's at least one website I love.

Yeah, well, I don't necessarily want more Gwerns to exist.

I just want more writers and more activeness and more agency in general.

I would be perfectly happy if someone simply wrote more Reddit comments and never took a dollar for their writings and just wrote better Reddit comments.

I'd be perfectly happy if someone had a blog and they kept writing, but they just put a little more thought into the design.

I'd be kind of perfectly happy if no one ever wrote something, but they hosted PDFs so that links don't rot.

In general, I think you don't have to be a writer delivering long-form essays.

That's just one of many ways to write.

It happened to be the one that I personally kind of prefer, but it'd be totally valid to be a Twitter thread writer.

How do you sustain yourself while writing full-time?

Patreon and savings.

I have a Patreon which does around 900 to 1,000 each month, and then I cover the rest with my savings.

I got lucky with having some early Bitcoins and made enough to write for a long time, but not forever.

So I try to spend as little as possible to make it last.

I should probably advertise the Patreon more, but I'm too proud to show it harder.

It's also awkward trying to come up with some good rewards which don't entail paywall.

Patreon and Substack work well for a lot of people like Scott Alexander because they like writing regular newsletter style updates, but I don't like to.

I just let it run and hope it works.

Yeah, I mean, listen, I live in the middle of nowhere.