Thursday Things is a weekly grab bag of amusing, strange, absurd, uplifting, and inspirational items I find online or in my offline reading or real life experiences. The sort of things I might otherwise post on social media.

Thursday Things is mostly short bites, not meandering essays. I accentuate the positive. No politics here! (Except dog mayors. I love stories about dog mayors.) No rants. (Well, I may rant about Pluto. PLUTO IS A PLANET.)

I aim to have a new Thursday Things waiting for you first thing every Thursday. (But sometimes the new edition will come later in the day.) I hope Thursday Things will amuse, inform, and delight you.

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Origin story begins here

Why Thursday Things? Social media has become ever more tedious. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram … why are we even there anymore? Why are we making free content to help these companies strip mine our lives to resell us wholesale to advertisers? All while mediating, moderating, manipulating — and straight censoring — what we can say to each other?

You’re always at the mercy of the almighty Algorithm. Maybe your social media friends will see what you post, maybe they won’t. You never know. You have no control.

There has to be a better way…

I like control. If I follow you online, I want to see what you have to say. I don’t want the Algorithm to decide whether I even get to see your post.

If someone follows me — and is therefore presumably interested in my “content” (because that’s all we are to the social media monoliths, producers of content) — then that content should get to them, not sent down a dark hole because the Algorithm doesn’t like links to sites outside of Instafacespacewitter.

It is disheartening to invest entire seconds of my life posting a quip about some odd item in the news and find, even hours later, that absolutely no one has seen it!

There has to be a better way to share things I find interesting or funny or thought-provoking or absurd or inspiring or uplifting — and to have my thoughts delivered, reliably, to people who are interested what I have to say.

But wait! There’s more!

There is one part of the internet that still delivers content from sender to receiver without the Algorithm interfering (at least not much) — and that’s good old email.

Enter Substack, a platform that empowers anyone to quickly and easily launch an email newsletter, and which promises to deliver said newsletter to your subscribers. All of them. Every time. Yay!

In the summer of 2019, I launched Thursday Things. It’s a channel I control where I can “curate” (as the online folk say) item I find in my online ramblings, say what I want to say, and know it will reach anyone who signs up.

Why “Thursday Things”? Mainly for the alliteration. I love alliteration. Also, because Thursday is underappreciated. Lots of stuff is waiting in your inbox on Monday. No one wants more Monday Things. But by Thursday … well, you’ve made it past Wednesday, but Friday isn’t here yet. Perhaps Thursday Things can help!

What are you waiting for?

You can read all the past editions of Thursday Things here on the website — and if you like what you see, please sign up to join scores of Happy Subscribers who get a new Thursday Things delivered to their inboxes each week.

Thank you for your interest in Thursday Things. Please subscribe and give it a try!

I’ll see you Thursday!

Dan McGirt

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A word from our platform host

To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.

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Author Extraordinaire of the Jason Cosmo fantasy adventure series and other works of magic, mirth, and mayhem. Compulsive reader.