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It’s been exactly three years since I moved on from Discover. Change is timeless. So I thought it would be a good time to announce the move to another project today.
Until further notice this is my last post as a blogger at Unz Review. Just as when I left Discover, this shouldn’t impact regular readers very much in terms of substance and content. As always you can follow me through my RSS feed, http://feeds.feedburner.com/RazibKhansTotalFeed, Twitter, http://twitter.com/razibkhan, and of course, my website, http://www.razib.com (I’m surprised how many people bookmark that website, as I got some emails when I changed the formatting).
The new site where I will host my content is not up yet, but it should be live within less than two weeks as engineers and designers work to get the final pieces in place (~2 weeks is within 95% confidence interval of the expected value, obviously hope it will be closer to now than not). If you want to be notified by email when the site goes live, subscribe to my newsletter. I probably won’t send out an email more than once a month, but I realize that not everyone uses RSS or Twitter, so it is probably best to start collecting a list of addresses for those who follow my work and would prefer to be contacted that way. If you are old school and just want to bookmark and check the site to see when it goes live, this will work:
If you have a blog, please update your link to: http://gnxp.nofe.me. It will help me with getting some PageRank (I’m also going to point the front page of http://gnxp.com to the new site).
There will be some changes and flux. I’m starting “my own thing” over at N of Everyone, where I’m working with some friends to develop a new way of disseminating science to the masses. That is, I’m not just going to be a blogger, but am taking an active role in running the shop. A few of the big ideas motivating this move can be found in the piece I coauthored with David Mittleman from a few years back, Dragging scientific publishing into the 21st century. So expect the newest iteration of Gene Expression to be somewhat more experimental in terms of playing around with feature set and evolving more over time.
Also, honestly I’m not sure that Twitter will be around in its current form in another five years, so the Gene Expression at N of Everyone is going to be my attempt to create an independent platform so that I can communicate to who I want to communicate without relying on intermediaries…indefinitely (as long as I’m interesting in doing this, my professional path is definitely going to remain in science so I can express my opinions honestly without having to toe party lines).
Addendum: I’ll be moderating comments here for a bit as long as stray threads continue as long as Ron lets me continue with my permissions, but eventually I’ll stop checking.
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Well, I can say it has been a pleasure to interact with you here at Unz.com and I look forward to keeping up with your new venues.
Peace.
Yeah, it’s curious what’s going to happen with “gab.ai”. Currently 90% of the people on there are alt-right, but I think it’s conceivable that there could be some sort of right wing twitter that slowly gets created if there is too much censorship. I guess we’ll see in a couple of years. Also, good luck and I’ll see you over at this new place. 🙂
Thanks for all the fish!
Cool, look forward to the new site. Also, if you can convince Godless Capitalist to return to writing/blogging in some capacity that would be great 🙂
he is 🙂 you just don’t know it’s him.
Time flies I suppose. And I just pestered feedly to get the unz feeds working again!
Excited to see GNXP making a comeback, since I discovered you after you started moving away from it.
Been thinking about creating a “Razib’s greatest hits” sort of page, with links to all your best posts over the years… it would be a lot of work though. Perhaps other commenters could help compile it?
You were among the more valuable contributors, so it’s a pity. Good luck for the new site!
If enough right wingers move to Gab, eventually leftist will move there, too, to debate.
But for it to be viable, nonpolitical things need to move there, too, and they need to find a way of making money, at least to cover their costs.
Has been great to read your stuff here
Thanks, and good luck. See you on the other side.
Sorry to see you go Razib but best of luck with your new project!
I would love to learn more about Reader. Any plans to expand it into a system for open peer review and/or a citations manager?
the former, yes. don’t know about latter.
Good luck with your new site!
I have to say though I’m surprised it took this long. To be honest, it was never clear to me why you were on unz.com in the first place. I’m a big fan of some of the writers here (Sailer and Derbyshire especially), but you were never political like that, and didn’t benefit from the association. And frankly, some of the other people who get published here are plain nuts! You may not be able to pick your family, but you can pick your friends, and you can pick the people you are associated with online. I look forward to meeting your new online family!
Sorry to see you go, will be bad for the unz review obviously. Anyway, good luck with your new project.
Good luck
i’d appreciate it. i think i’ve written in the range of 5 million words now over all these years?
Good luck Razib. I have added your link to my feed reader*.
I can’t say that I will miss the rest of Unz, which has seemed to me to be a swamp of alt-right and hard left, with a sprinkling of anti-semitic commenters.
*https://feedly.com/ — It is my replacement for the old, and still mourned Google Reader. Feedly is good, and there is an app version for your phones and tablets.
yep, i have feedly pro. it’s great.
Good look with your new endeavour. Wish you well.
Best of luck! I’ve been following you from Sepia Mutiny back in the mid-2000s, and will continue to do so wherever you move. Not least because of your no-nonsense moderation style 😀
Good luck with your new projects.
Much of your stuff is sadly over my head in detail, but I’ve taken what I could from it over the past few years and that has been plenty.
I look forward to more.
You are one of the best things on the internet. I look forward to the new site.
(BTW: I have read five books you recommended. Some I probably would have read eventually; some I only knew of because of you. They were all worth the time.)
Have always been a avid reader of your blog/articles, will continue to do so in your new venue.
I am looking forward to the new site, sounds exciting!
Congratulations and good luck!
Will definitely follow you at the new place. I have been following you since at least 2004 (maybe earlier). I think you are one of the more misunderstood people on the internet. Of course, blogging on places like Unz does not help either. You clearly are not a race baiter and nor are your commenters and so you were always out of place here.
Have learnt a LOT from you over the years. Good luck!
Good luck with your new site, Razib. I too was always a bit perplexed at how you fit in with Unz Review, which seems to otherwise be at a pretty low intellectual level.
Feedly is great, but Inoreader is also worth checking out, for those who were fans of the old Google Reader.
You have been my favorite blogger since I started to read your work in 2003, and I will follow your writing wherever you go, hopefully for many years to come. I deeply appreciate all you’ve done to bring science and history to the layman. Can’t wait to see what you do with the new site.
I know you are a very busy person, but do you think you might write a book someday? You’ve mentioned before how the pace of scientific research goes so fast that books or magazine articles can get outdated pretty quickly. But it would be nice to collect your writing in a more permanent form, and maybe also have another way to introduce non-blog-reading people to your work too.
Joe Q: It’s a reflection of the state of affairs in America that Ron Unz will host Razib but New York Times won’t! As a leftist, I am very concerned with these developments.
Good luck!
Could you make a last post here when your new site is finally up?
Any chance of your creating twitter account that is only notifications of new posts, Razib? Thanks!
This would be valuable in its own right but also (a) to help fight linkrot, (b) if organized with an analytical index, to bring new readers to years of past insights, and (c) to keep people pointed at the most thorough/summative posts, rather than the ones most deeply anchored in search engines. It’s especially important since GNXP is in some ways unique; when a clique of blogs go into hivemind mode they start ritually linking to one another’s best posts over and over again, so the clique becomes auto-indexing.
All the very best to you, and much success for your new project, Mr Khan!
Good to see you’re keeping it up. I hope you know how many guys are out there who barely have time to keep up with the advances in knowledge but nonetheless are very interested. It’s a real service you’re performing in that way. Honestly, though, my favorite part of your writing is your cultural observation. Good stuff. I hope you include that in the new format.
Best wishes on the new endeavor.
-Bill Price
PS I’m a bit envious and want to start writing again myself. I keep telling myself “soon, when the baby’s bigger and I have a more secure position at work,” but it’s starting to feel like an excuse. Might as well jump in. We only have one shot at this, after all.
Mr. Khan,
Have enjoyed reading your work, even if a dilettante layman like myself has precious little constructive to contribute to the discussion. Good luck with the new endeavor. I agree that the souls on Twitter may even have a thinner skin than I and it’s probably doomed. Not everyone can handle depth, intensity and directness. Although to avoid provoking the drama queens I’m getting better at crimestop as time goes by.
Mr. Price,
I’ve missed your work at your former place The Spearhead. I’m sure I’m not the only one who appreciated your tough, thoughtful but sensitive treatment of various issues of interest.
Don’t know what to tell you on writing, but you do have some skill at it. Maybe you could limit your commitment to it? Is it really necessary to be as dedicated managing and moderating community comments as say Steve Sailer does? I can’t imagine how he avoids burnout and meltdown like happened to Andrew Sullivan.
Don’t know if you are active in any other fora but would be interested in maybe joining the conversation.
@euneaux (you can find me on twitter if interested)
PS I hope you’re flourishing around B’ham with your new and old families.
I’m rapidly losing my soul like all the others here and turning into a dried up bitter man here on N. Beacon Hill, perhaps not too far from your ol’ stomping ground. I don’t know if I need to adjust my attitude or just get out before I’ve completely lost my soul like all these other zombies here.
I may be overstating this (I left the US almost 6 years ago), but Unz.com (writers and commenters collectively) seems to reflect today’s America a lot more closely than the New York Times does. The Gray Lady seems to have pushed herself into a silo. Trump’s victory would not have been anywhere as shocking to the typical Unz.com visitor as it would have been to the typical NYTimes reader. That said, hopefully the move from here will raise Razib’s reputation among the liberal intelligentsia; his reporting and commentary deserves to go out to a wider audience.
Best of luck with the new ventures.
You will definitely be missed, Razib. Just make sure to keep throwing out a Robert E. Howard reference now n’ then, wherever you go. 😉
Thanks for the encouraging words. Part of the reason I had to take a break was simple economics, and part time. Kids are really a handful, especially when they’re little. But they do grow up pretty fast.
So I think the time when I can put some solid days into writing will arrive in due course. I still have plenty of ideas, and aside from time that’s all I really need to get started.
Bellingham is far from ideal. It’s pretty dreary, the local economy is dominated by retail (Canadian shoppers) and Western Washington University, and it’s pretty much in lockstep with Seattle politically. That said, the rent is comparatively cheap, it’s close to my older kids and it’s only about a five minute drive to get out in the country where there’s a whole different world. From Seattle these days you have to drive for nearly an hour to get to that world.
Honestly, I miss Seattle, but I’m disgusted by what it’s become. Nostalgia prevails when I think of it. If I were you, I’d get out as often as possible, but I can’t say there’s much going on in the rest of the state. I’m hoping, perhaps in vain, that the new administration might make some effort to reverse the huge gains cities have made at the expense of the rest of the country. If so, maybe the cities will become more livable and the countryside less depressed.
Any chance of your creating twitter account that is only notifications of new posts, Razib? Thanks!
good idea.
Could you make a last post here when your new site is finally up?
yes. good idea. i’ll do that.
Seems like you had twitter account @gnxp back in 2009 to push your blog posts.
Tweets by gnxp
No reason not to revive that account as a blog feed twitter account once you move to new site.
Overall probably not worth the trouble. Very marginal in terms of page views. But suspect people who follow that kind of account tend to be high value readers (maybe they just want the posts for high SNR). I read a lot of ben thompson on tech, and also follow his blog posts via his twitter feed
Tweets by stratechery
So it’s common enough.
But I think RSS far more important for power readers.
One downside is confusion on who to follow on twitter. You or gnxp. Maybe makes more sense to name the twitter account something like @gnxp_blogfeed to make it more explicit.
Anyway. Enjoy your writing. Keep it up.
i don’t have access to that account. it fwds to an email address i can’t recognize for password reset. i think i used some third party to create that twitter account.
anyway, i made one, gnxp_posts
And so long!
Mr. Price,
Send me a private message on twitter. @euneaux
Maybe we can get together and I can invite you to dinner sometime.
I’ve driven around Bellingham a couple of times to get hiking and I’ll probably be around Mt Baker for X-Country Skiing in the next weeks.
You’ve been all over the world and have got some interesting perspectives. Would love a chance to meet.
Your webpage is still buggy. It’s pretty minor now, but I’m going to detail it. First of all, the top-level razib.com doesn’t link to razib.com/wordpress. Second, wordpress doesn’t seem to link to local copies, even though they exist. But most of them are truncated, so it’s not clear that you’d want to promote them. Third, the list of posts at the top level diverges from the list of posts at wordpress. One way it diverges is that it uses feedburner links, while wordpress has direct links. The other way it diverges is that it is behind. There is a post visible on feedburner, but not in syndication at razib.com, even though it is available at wordpress.
Pseudonymously or using his actual name?
u can guess.
Hey there. Tip from SEO world, probably best to reference your desired URL as “www….” Technical type people often prefer the non www version, but people all over the web will insert www when linking to you. In terms of building link popularity it’s best to align with what most people do naturally. You can do redirects to push people to where you prefer, but end of day, it’s just more advantageous to adopt convention of masses, use redirects for smaller number of “technical” people. Also while sites in development, you might consider still recommending your http://www.domain.com but forward that as needed, to where ever your interim posts are going. Get all the links possible to your domain. ZoneEdit offers free DNS forwarding I believe if your registrar doesn’t.
Shame. I discovered this place thanks to you.
I’ll be sure to follow up on your future ventures.