Giving thanks to Slow Boring members

 Giving thanks to Slow Boring members

A lot to be grateful for

By Matthew Yglesias

I’ve never been a person who has a ton of affection for roast turkey or any particular Thanksgiving side dish, but the older I get, the more I think there is some profound wisdom to the idea of setting aside a day to make a special effort to be self-consciously thankful.

I won’t inflict full reflections on trying to be more mindful on all of you, but I did want to note some particular moments of thankfulness that are relevant to Slow Boring — starting with thanking all of you who read the site, subscribe to the free editions of the newsletters, and especially who become paid members. And a special shoutout to folks who participate in the comments sections and discussion threads — I know that kind of thing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I do think a strength of a paid media community of around this size is that it’s possible to have comments sections that are actually thoughtful and worthwhile. But you don’t have that without members and participants. A super-special thank you to people who were able to attend the anniversary party last week in D.C. — that was incredibly fun — and I’m hoping to do more smaller-scale events in different places around the country in the year to come.

Beyond that, of course, I am thankful for the work that Claire, Marc, Milan, and Kate have put into making this a success.

Originally, I kind of thought I’d do this as a solo operation like my old pre-Slate blog, but the truth is something like that would be so laden with typos and other problems that it wouldn’t be nearly as worth your time to read.

Also wanted to thank Aaron Strauss, Simon Bazelon, David Shor, David Schleicher, Keith Humphreys, Jeff Mauer, Stan Oklobdzia, Eric Goldwyn, and Jonathan English for writing posts for the site. I hope to continue to regularly publish pieces from scholars and practitioners who find this platform valuable enough to want to put their ideas on it. But as I said in the post about Slow Boring’s Second Year, we’re also going to start running monthly freelance pieces written for pay by professional journalists. The first one, from Natalie Shure, will run tomorrow, and I’m thankful for her work on it and hope you’ll all enjoy.

This is probably enough words to publish already on a day when most of you are busy with things to do. But thank you for reading, we’ll have Natalie’s piece on Friday, and then back to the regular schedule.