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published on February 8, 2023

Hello! You’re one of the 82 people who get an email for each new thing I write.

Previously, I’ve published life updates, travel stories, and a few short essays. I’ve put 3-10 pieces out per year. And my writing process has been careless: I’ve gone all the way from having an idea to typing it out to clicking “send” with hardly a second thought. That is what you signed up for.

However, I’ve decided to change my format, in both quantity, quality, and topic:

  1. You can expect to hear a lot more from me— my target is no longer 3-10 posts per year, but that many (or more) per month! The minimum I’ll send is one post per month, which is firmly above my previous max.

  2. I will be putting a lot more effort into my writing: studying topics, going through lots of drafts (this email took seven!), and honing my language obsessively. I may tinker around with various styles, but whatever I publish, I’ll consistently write as well as I can.

  3. The topics I cover will be niche and diverse. I am a rabbit-holer; when something interests me, I dive deep into it, spending dozens of hours learning all the details I can stomach. But normally I’m then done, and have nothing to show for my effort! Instead, I want to spend that energy writing things for you: discoveries from my explorations, good explanations that I figure out, and stories that I might want to tell my grandchildren some day.

    (What kinds of topics? Here are three recent examples: the history of permitting law and construction financing for American nuclear fission power plants; the mechanisms by which epistemological overconfidence causes tragedy; and the big headache that Google’s about to have.)

If this does not interest you, please click the link below to unsubscribe. No hard feelings— I won’t be offended, because I see unsubscriptions as a win-win: you get less spam, and get to be more confident that everyone actually wants to read what I send them. Lord knows we all get enough email already! 😊

Talk at you soon, (or not,)
- Brennan Colberg

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