Substack
Article
Substack is a recurring platform in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 7 times across 7 issues between March 15, 2021 and December 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Substack will still be around”; “since Substack doesn’t let me strikethrough text or change its color”; “a great platform that lets me publish whatever I want”. It most often appears alongside FDA, Substack, Trump.
Metadata
- Category: Platform
- Mention count: 7
- Issue count: 7
- First seen: March 15, 2021
- Last seen: December 22, 2025
Appears In
- Mantic Monday: Mantic Matt Y
- 2020 Predictions: Calibration Results
- Highlights From The Comments On Ivermectin
- Why Do People Prefer My Old Blog’s Layout To Substack’s?
- Apply For An ACX Grant (2024)
- Apply For An ACX Grant (2025)
- Open Thread 413
Related Pages
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- FDA (3 shared issues)
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- Substack (3 shared issues)
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- Trump (3 shared issues)
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- ACX (2 shared issues)
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- ACX Grants (2 shared issues)
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- Against Malaria Foundation (2 shared issues)
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- Apple (2 shared issues)
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- Bay Area (2 shared issues)
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- Biden (2 shared issues)
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- China (2 shared issues)
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- COVID (2 shared issues)
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- EU (2 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
...until recently! As far as I know, the first official journalists to do something like this were Dylan Matthews, Kelsey Piper and Sigal Samuel at Vox. They're trying again this year, but now they're joined by a pretty big name in traditional punditry - Matt Yglesias, formerly of Vox, now here at Substack. In theory you can read the relevant post here, but it’s paywalled. We'll start with the predictions themselves, then talk about what this means for journalism. Here are the questions to be predicted:
1. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win the Georgia Senate races 2. The same party wins both Senate races in Georgia 3. Joe Biden ends the year with his approval rating higher than his disapproval rating 4. Joe Biden ends the year with his approval rating above 50% 5. US GDP growth in 2021 is the fastest of any year of the 21st century 6. The year-end unemployment rate is below 5 percent 7. The year-end unemployment rate is above 4 percent 8. Lakers win the NBA championship 9. Joe Biden ends the year as president 10. Nancy Pelosi sets a definitive retirement schedule 11. A vacancy arises on the Supreme Court 12. The EU ends the year with more confirmed Covid-19 deaths than the US 13. Substack will still be around 14. People will still be writing takes asking if Substack is really sustainable 15. Apple releases new iMacs powered by Apple silicon 16. Apple does not release a new Mac Pro powered by Apple silicon 17. Monthly year-on-year core CPI growth does not go above 2 percent 18. Monthly year-on-year core CPI growth does not go above 3 percent 19. Lloyd Austin not confirmed as Defense Secretary 20. No federal tax increases are enacted 21. Biden administration unilaterally relieves some but not all student debt 22. United States rejoins JCPOA and Iran resumes compliance 23. Israel and Saudi Arabia establish official diplomatic relations 24. US and China reach agreement to lift Trump-era tariffs 25. Slow Boring will exceed 10,000 paid members
1. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win the Georgia Senate races (60%) 2. The same party wins both Senate races in Georgia (95%) 3. Joe Biden ends the year with his approval rating higher than his disapproval rating (70%) [83%] 4. Joe Biden ends the year with his approval rating above 50% (60%) [60%] 5. US GDP growth in 2021 is the fastest of any year of the 21st century (80%) [84%] 6. The year-end unemployment rate is below 5 percent (80%) 7. The year-end unemployment rate is above 4 percent (80%) 8. Lakers win the NBA championship (25%) [25%] 9. Joe Biden ends the year as president (95%) [96%] 10. Nancy Pelosi sets a definitive retirement schedule (60%) 11. A vacancy arises on the Supreme Court (70%) [50%] 12. The EU ends the year with more confirmed Covid-19 deaths than the US (60%) [80%] 13. Substack will still be around (95%) 14. People will still be writing takes asking if Substack is really sustainable (80%) 15. Apple releases new iMacs powered by Apple silicon (90%) [84%] 16. Apple does not release a new Mac Pro powered by Apple silicon (70%) [53%] 17. Monthly year-on-year core CPI growth does not go above 2 percent (70%) 18. Monthly year-on-year core CPI growth does not go above 3 percent (90%) 19. Lloyd Austin not confirmed as Defense Secretary (60%) 20. No federal tax increases are enacted (95%) 21. Biden administration unilaterally relieves some but not all student debt (80%) 22. United States rejoins JCPOA and Iran resumes compliance (80%) 23. Israel and Saudi Arabia establish official diplomatic relations (70%) [38%] 24. US and China reach agreement to lift Trump-era tariffs (70%) 25. Slow Boring will exceed 10,000 paid members (70%) [75%]
And here are the predictions I made for 2020. Some predictions are redacted because they involve my private life or the lives of people close to me. Usually I use strikethrough for things that didn’t happen, but since Substack doesn’t let me strikethrough text or change its color or do anything interesting, I’ve had to turn the ones that didn’t happen into links. Italicized are getting thrown out because they were confusing or conditional on something that didn’t happen. I can’t decide if they’re true or not. All of these judgments were as of December 31 2020, not as of now.
Here’s the usual graph: For the first time, I was consistently overconfident (below the green line of perfect calibration) in every bin (except 70%). It wasn’t a complete disaster, except at 50% (again, feel free to have your usual debate over whether 50% predictions are meaningful) and 95% (too low a sample size), but it was still bad.
For the first time, I was consistently overconfident (below the green line of perfect calibration) in every bin (except 70%). It wasn’t a complete disaster, except at 50% (again, feel free to have your usual debate over whether 50% predictions are meaningful) and 95% (too low a sample size), but it was still bad.
Thanks to everyone who commented on my recent post Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted To Know.
Inline links: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
Alexandros Marinos is the most thoughtful and dedicated ivermectin proponent I know of. He’s been thinking a lot about my post, so far without any clear conclusions, but I’ve enjoyed reading his process, which has also led to helpful explainers like this one: A few points of his I want to discuss in more depth:
Inline links: Alexandros Marinos, his process, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vWYg!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3e91b866-67db-4705-b6d1-1c74cb9ba991_1115x843.jpeg
A few points of his I want to discuss in more depth:
This keeps coming up. When I was first considering moving to Substack, I asked my readers what they thought. They thought various things, but one of them was they hated the layout. At some point I turned this into a formal survey, and:
Inline links: asked my readers what they thought
This keeps coming up. When I was first considering moving to Substack, I asked my readers what they thought. They thought various things, but one of them was they hated the layout. At some point I turned this into a formal survey, and: …yep, they preferred the SSC layout
Inline links: asked my readers what they thought, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gNbU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4e48a01e-724e-417c-b231-daa0af79a0cd_759x341.png
…yep, they preferred the SSC layout
I think of this as unearned money and want to give some of it back to the community, hence this grants program. I have a lot of it but not an unlimited amount. At the current rate, I can probably afford another ~4 ACX Grants rounds. When it runs out, I‘ll just be a normal person with normal amounts of money (Substack is great, but not great enough for me to afford this level of donation consistently).
I think of this as unearned money and want to give some of it back to the community, hence this grants program. I have a lot of it but not an unlimited amount. At the current rate, I can probably afford another ~5 ACX Grants rounds. When it runs out, I‘ll just be a normal person with normal amounts of money (Substack is great, but not great enough for me to afford this level of donation consistently).
This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. Most content is free, some is subscriber only; you can subscribe here. Also:
4: Thank you so much, and congratulations, to everyone who took the GWWC Pledge recently because of my post on the topic (a GWWC staff member told me Friday that it was 30 full pledges and 13 trial pledges, but more have come in since then). I’ve tried to give the promised permanent subscription to everyone involved. If you signed up but didn’t get yours, then either I didn’t see you, I misclicked something, or you have some kind of weird no-email-registered account that I can’t give subscriptions to - in any case, please email me at scott@slatestarcodex.com and we can sort it out. Please include in your email the address you’re registered on Substack with, if it’s different from the address you’re emailing me with.
Inline links: my post on the topic