This week I got an email from TinyLetter - which I've been using for the past few years for my newsletters - telling me that they are shutting down the service next year (on my anniversary). They've been less craptastic than some other enshittified web services (if you aren't familiar with the neologism, On The Media put together a pretty good series with Cory Doctrow, who coined the term: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/projects/enshitification), but TinyLetter is (was) owned by Mailchimp, and they're following the playbook, although not as evilly as some other companies might've done in similar circumstances.

So I'm transferring and setting up on a service called Buttondown. A couple newsletters by others that I've recently found/joined also use this service, including SF author Ann Leckie and science journalist Ed Yong, and I consider those endorsements. I had been bookmarking some notes about Buttondown already, and TL pulling the plug just accelerates this process. Migrating things into the service here has been pretty easy (it certainly also helps that this is only a fairly small list).

This is just a relatively quick update and first test of the new service. You were signed up for the old newsletter on Tiny Letter, and there's maybe even less tracking from this one, but you can unsubscribe if you don't want to participate further - that's always been an important thing for me to have in any newsletter.

I also have a few house updates.

This past Friday (1 December) was 5 months since the lightning hit. Although the insurance company is still horrid in many ways, we do finally have some progress (and I'll try to include a few photos next time). The porch framing and repair was done right before Thanksgiving. And, earlier this week, the roofing was done. That means that we are now, finally, once again weather tight. We're keeping the furnace at 60F, which is enough to not be too uncomfortable, and to be a decent environment for workers to work in, while not spending a lot of energy on a house no one is currently living in.

Electrical is next; along with interior rough carpentry to bolster the living room ceiling and some other miscellaneous repairs. Then insulation and plastering and finish carpentry. Hopefully it will be to a point of livability and we can get moved back in by spring, but I'm not banking on anything as yet.

Keeping this short for now. I still have more to explore with Buttondown. And I'm aiming to have one more newsletter out before the end of the year.