Don't Call It a S*bst*ck! I been here for years...

I might be one of the first newsletters to move to Substack from another platform (Ghost).

I was an early adopter of Substack, but I basically just parked my newsletter name and didn’t do anything with it. Then, when I finally launched the Un-Diplomatic newsletter last year, I did it with Ghost, which was functionally quite good, but costly and isolating.

I don’t (yet) have a massive subscriber base, and I wasn’t enabling paid subscriptions…and Ghost makes you pay maintenance costs no matter the size of your audience. So the math didn’t make sense for me. But Substack has also been rolling out these social features that make communal and network effects possible, contra Ghost, where newsletters exist as remote islands from one another.

So maybe I’ll move again some day, but for now, the Un-Diplomatic newsletter is being hosted by Substack. For subscribers, this changes nothing; you don’t have to do anything differently. The old newsletter posts all migrated to Substack seamlessly. If anything, your experience as a reader should be easier and more connected than before, especially if you already subscribe to some Substacks.

Most importantly, I’m opening the possibility of paid subscriptions now. If you want to back my anti-militarist, anti-oligarch, strategy-focused, and peace-seeking voice, then please consider putting a little $ in the cup with a paid subscription.

I’ll be dropping subscriber-only goodies and opportunities in the near future, including quick-take podcast episodes that will only be released here, for paid subscribers (not through the normal Un-Diplomatic Podcast). Gotta do something for supporters. And if you have thoughts about what you’d like to see here, let me know.

✌️

--Van Jackson