5 ms·

A possible future for Damn Interesting

318 points by mzur 3mo ago

dclowd9901 3mo ago
Admittedly, I haven't read DI in quite a while, but seeing this post brought back a flood of memories from my college days of waiting for the next article to drop. This blog was the precursor of an entire genre of "generally interesting shit" that has kind of underpinned most of the spirit of podcasting today. Shows like 99PI, Stuff You Should Know, RadioLab and so on owe I think a little something to this blog. The amount asked for is meager, and I was more than happy to throw some bucks at it.
- OgsyedIE 3mo ago
  Generally interesting shit, as a category, has been shedding audience figures. It's unclear which of the explanations for this is correct.
  - dclowd9901 3mo ago
    Just more focused places to find it, I think. I loved the historical seafaring stories that DI would post, but then I realized that there were subject matter podcasts that dug into these stories even more. So I think it was just specialization taking over.
  - jambalaya8 3mo ago
    Could be the rapidly deteriorating attention span of the typical person that now doesn't have to look too hard to find answers to things in the first place anymore. Previous to the internet (not that this is anything new to say), most people had to learn a little bit about most things to get answers about them, especially if it wasn't something they had much of a natural proclivity for. Information retention isn't great either now. So mostly the audience for generally interesting things now is more limited to people with a specific interest in whatever that thing is, and people who just seek out interesting things. Though, and no disrespect to DamnInteresting intended, it also makes the interesting things seem less arcane, which also could be affecting your hits. People can be that way.
- DamnInteresting 3mo ago
  > 99PI, Stuff You Should Know, RadioLab It's funny you mention those three in particular. We've collaborated with Stuff You Should Know several times, and we almost worked with both 99PI and RadioLab on separate occasions (i.e., I pitched ideas that got some traction, though they didn't ultimately materialize). I still think my pitch for RadioLab is a good one, though it's a throwback to when they did episodes with three stories around a central theme (e.g., Blood). > I was more than happy to throw some bucks at it. Thanks! If this fundraiser works out, you're part of the reason we get to keep going.
joeguilmette 3mo ago
I miss the old internet. I wish this fellow traveler well.
DamnInteresting 3mo ago
Heavens to Betsy. My server alerted me that traffic was far exceeding a median Thursday. For the record, I am a fairly active user on HN, but I was not responsible for sharing this link here, directly or otherwise. I have little stomach for self-promotion (probably to my detriment).
- NetOpWibby 3mo ago
  Hear hear!
- areoform 3mo ago
  I've come across your site before, but I didn't realize just how well researched your articles were until now. I thought you were recycling other folks / were blogspam. (oops) I understand the aversion to self promotion, but it genuinely made it harder for me to hear about Damn Interesting. And I feel like my life has been poorer for it, because your site really is damn interesting. Suggestion, I think you have at least 1k people who'd be willing to chip in to give you a "job." FWIW, in this new age, patronage might be the only way. Allow people to pay on a sliding scale, with an uncapped upper end. And give them access to a tightly moderated, thoughtful community. Who knows, maybe there are Damn Interesting superfans out there who can chip in $1k/mo. You never know. The modern economy of fan economics is strange. It's very much a whale phenomenon. People want community and belonging. And a community of people who like stuff that's damn interesting is pretty damn neat. Also, you should consider turning some of these images into items people can buy. There's something funny, sweet and thoughtful about these, if you know the story, https://damn-8791.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/disney.jpg https://damn-8791.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/disne... https://damn-8791.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Bathyscaphe_Trieste_Piccard-Walsh.jpg https://damn-8791.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Bathy...
  - newppc 3mo ago
    Yea - I think moving to Substack (retain domain) would be a much stronger way to build in the long term as they make it super easy to pay $8-15/mo which the best readers won’t even miss!
MBCook 3mo ago
That explains why it’s so rare for a new episode to appear. I’ve been reading (then listening) to DI forever. Not the full 20 years, because I remember reading through the entire back catalog when I first found it, but a very long time. Happy to help. Donated.
scientifik 3mo ago
https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor/ https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of... - has long been one of my favorite articles on the internet. Happy to chip in to support the site.
- dclowd9901 3mo ago
  Oh yeah, I think I alone have shared this article with a few dozen people.
js2 3mo ago
Can't remember the last time I read a DI article, but I've definitely read them before and value the non-AI content[^1]. Donated. (Good golly, GoFundMe defaulted to a 17.5% tip. WTF?) > This fundraiser is entirely separate from our Give a Damn donation system, which aims to cover Damn Interesting monthly expenses —web hosting, subscriptions, usage licenses, link curation, and that sort of thing. An amazing array of donors support us through that system, and those lovely people are the reason we survive to this day. This new experiment is specifically so I myself can afford to spend more time writing and running the site. I'm left confused... Why you don't run this experiment through that same system? Why you don't pay yourself out of that system? What will happen if this experiment fails? [^1]: "Rider on the Storm" is very memorable - https://www.damninteresting.com/rider-on-the-storm/ https://www.damninteresting.com/rider-on-the-storm/
- DamnInteresting 3mo ago
  There are a few considerations. One is that the 'Give a Damn' system only aims to collect about $1,800/month, an approximation of our monthly expenses (not just hosting, but author payments, subscriptions to archives, research expenses, etc). And most months it barely collects the target amount. I've tried nudging the goal upward to see if I can slowly push it into actually-make-a-living territory, but it seems to have plateaued; increasing the goal there just means we usually miss our goal. There's also the fact that the 'Give a Damn' system is supporting the site, to the benefit of all of its contributors, not just me. Changing that dynamic could be detrimental to morale. There are lots of other small things making it very difficult to just update the existing system, not least of which being the same time shortage this fundraiser is trying to relieve. I'd need to make a bunch of changes to a very sensitive money-handling chunk of code, which requires careful coding and testing. > What will happen if this experiment fails? I have a series of decreasingly appealing follow-up plans if this one falls too short. But it's already earned enough to get me through at least a few months, so I'll have a chunk of time to take some positive action. Maybe that means I only get 6 months off before I'll have to resume full-time work, but I'll take what I can get.
Aachen 3mo ago
I found Damn Interesting because of an orbital mechanics simulation the author coded in javascript as a one-off for an article about iirc cyclers. Crazy amount of effort for what's probably about 10 seconds of eye-candy for the average reader. I found it a really neat implementation and while the articles are a bit long for me, it got me hooked on their podcast. There seem to be few projects as thorough and long-lived as this one.
- DamnInteresting 3mo ago
  Ah, you must mean the one embedded in this article: https://www.damninteresting.com/the-martian-express/ https://www.damninteresting.com/the-martian-express/ Originally, in 2008, it was 100% Javascript, but a few years later I updated it to use CSS transitions for a much smoother animation. That cycler simulator actually led to a very cool life experience. An administrator at NASA contacted me wanting to use it for a presentation. Of course I said yes! Then he invited me to be his guest to watch an early test of the SLS rocket that was happening about 90 minutes from my home. Of course I said yes! I got to meet a bunch of astronauts, see a big rocket engine fire horizontally in the desert, and got a NASA SLS pin. The fellow ended up not using the animation, as that part of his talk got edited out, but nevertheless niftiness.
  - bigiain 3mo ago
    This is a beautiful turn of phrase - the likes of which is unlikely to ever be generated correctly and in appropriate context by an LLM: "An additional inconvenience is the flyby speed: as designed, the Cyclers would swing by Earth at approximately 15,000 miles per hour, and fly past Mars at 22,000 mph. In order to intercept such speedy Cyclers, the rocket-taxis would need to be capable of splitting a lot of lickety."
quapster 3mo ago
What I like about this is that it quietly exposes how broken the "creator economy" narrative has been for text on the web. For 20 years the model was: have a normal job, let the internet subsidize the rest with cheap distribution and a bit of ad/support money. That worked as long as (1) part-time/contract engineering was plentiful, (2) search sent humans to long-form, and (3) nobody was flooding the commons with infinite free derivative text. All three legs are wobbling now. Hiring shifted to "full time or nothing", SEO is a mostly hostile environment, and AI has turned "writing" into something that looks abundant from 10,000 feet. The result is that the remaining high-effort indie sites end up in this weird funding gap: too small and stubborn to become a VC-scale "media brand", too big and polished to be a casual side blog. So you get this old-school, almost embarrassingly direct solution: just ask readers to buy back the author's time. No growth story, no "community platform", just "I can make more of the thing you like if you cover what the labor market no longer will." In a way that's the most honest possible response to the AI slop wave: not "we'll use AI better", but "we'll opt out of that game entirely and see if real people care enough to pay for it."
john-tells-all 3mo ago
Wife and I adore the podcast. Will be sending money. We love you guys.
- Tylast 3mo ago
  Ditto on the podcast...still subscribed here. I also bought your book (Alien Hand Syndrome) way back when. Cheers!
jdthedisciple 3mo ago
Open a Patreon page with different tiers and a private Discord server for your patreons. From what I gather that's been a fairly successful standard model for independent content creators.
foolserrandboy 3mo ago
I think remember you said in one episode you didn't want to run ads in the podcast so you could talk about anything you want, but most of the episodes are about one of historical events. Do you really think the sponsors would try to alter your content. Personally I wouldn't mind 1 or 2 ad spots in the episodes.
- DamnInteresting 3mo ago
  Well, our unwillingness to be beholden to sponsors is just part of the reason we avoid advertising, but it's not an empty concern. We've done stories that big brands wouldn't like (the true story of Colonel Sanders, the New Coke debacle, etc) and we frequently share some unflattering stories in our Curated Links section. The larger reason is just that I personally despise ads. I take great measures to eliminate them from my life--paying for YouTube Premium, using the SponsorBlock plugin, running aggressive ad blockers on every device, piHole, etc. It would be quite hypocritical for me to add ads to my own content, I don't think I could live with myself. I know that some podcast providers wrap ads around everything anyway, but that's between the listener and their provider, there are absolutely ad-free alternatives.
cwmoore 3mo ago
"Signs point to yes" Good luck!
Beestie 3mo ago
Hi Alan, good to see you again. Another valuable creator I follow on a different platform went through the same thing about a year ago. I strongly recommend you reach out to him for guidance - he’s a good dude and will share how he broke out of the same death spiral. Fraser Cain of Universe Today on Patreon. There is a way out of this and the quality of your content is easily good enough to sustain a susbscriber-supported model.

318 points by mzur 3mo ago

Admittedly, I haven't read DI in quite a while, but seeing this post brought back a flood of memories from my college days of waiting for the next article to drop. This blog was the precursor of an entire genre of "generally interesting shit" that has kind of underpinned most of the spirit of podcasting today. Shows like 99PI, Stuff You Should Know, RadioLab and so on owe I think a little something to this blog. The amount asked for is meager, and I was more than happy to throw some bucks at it.

OgsyedIE 3mo ago
Generally interesting shit, as a category, has been shedding audience figures. It's unclear which of the explanations for this is correct.
- dclowd9901 3mo ago
  Just more focused places to find it, I think. I loved the historical seafaring stories that DI would post, but then I realized that there were subject matter podcasts that dug into these stories even more. So I think it was just specialization taking over.
- jambalaya8 3mo ago
  Could be the rapidly deteriorating attention span of the typical person that now doesn't have to look too hard to find answers to things in the first place anymore. Previous to the internet (not that this is anything new to say), most people had to learn a little bit about most things to get answers about them, especially if it wasn't something they had much of a natural proclivity for. Information retention isn't great either now. So mostly the audience for generally interesting things now is more limited to people with a specific interest in whatever that thing is, and people who just seek out interesting things. Though, and no disrespect to DamnInteresting intended, it also makes the interesting things seem less arcane, which also could be affecting your hits. People can be that way.
DamnInteresting 3mo ago
> 99PI, Stuff You Should Know, RadioLab It's funny you mention those three in particular. We've collaborated with Stuff You Should Know several times, and we almost worked with both 99PI and RadioLab on separate occasions (i.e., I pitched ideas that got some traction, though they didn't ultimately materialize). I still think my pitch for RadioLab is a good one, though it's a throwback to when they did episodes with three stories around a central theme (e.g., Blood). > I was more than happy to throw some bucks at it. Thanks! If this fundraiser works out, you're part of the reason we get to keep going.

joeguilmette 3mo ago

I miss the old internet. I wish this fellow traveler well.

DamnInteresting 3mo ago

Heavens to Betsy. My server alerted me that traffic was far exceeding a median Thursday. For the record, I am a fairly active user on HN, but I was not responsible for sharing this link here, directly or otherwise. I have little stomach for self-promotion (probably to my detriment).

NetOpWibby 3mo ago
Hear hear!
areoform 3mo ago
I've come across your site before, but I didn't realize just how well researched your articles were until now. I thought you were recycling other folks / were blogspam. (oops) I understand the aversion to self promotion, but it genuinely made it harder for me to hear about Damn Interesting. And I feel like my life has been poorer for it, because your site really is damn interesting. Suggestion, I think you have at least 1k people who'd be willing to chip in to give you a "job." FWIW, in this new age, patronage might be the only way. Allow people to pay on a sliding scale, with an uncapped upper end. And give them access to a tightly moderated, thoughtful community. Who knows, maybe there are Damn Interesting superfans out there who can chip in $1k/mo. You never know. The modern economy of fan economics is strange. It's very much a whale phenomenon. People want community and belonging. And a community of people who like stuff that's damn interesting is pretty damn neat. Also, you should consider turning some of these images into items people can buy. There's something funny, sweet and thoughtful about these, if you know the story, https://damn-8791.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/disney.jpg https://damn-8791.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/disne... https://damn-8791.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Bathyscaphe_Trieste_Piccard-Walsh.jpg https://damn-8791.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Bathy...
- newppc 3mo ago
  Yea - I think moving to Substack (retain domain) would be a much stronger way to build in the long term as they make it super easy to pay $8-15/mo which the best readers won’t even miss!

MBCook 3mo ago

That explains why it’s so rare for a new episode to appear. I’ve been reading (then listening) to DI forever. Not the full 20 years, because I remember reading through the entire back catalog when I first found it, but a very long time. Happy to help. Donated.

scientifik 3mo ago

https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor/ https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of... - has long been one of my favorite articles on the internet. Happy to chip in to support the site.

dclowd9901 3mo ago
Oh yeah, I think I alone have shared this article with a few dozen people.

js2 3mo ago

Can't remember the last time I read a DI article, but I've definitely read them before and value the non-AI content[^1]. Donated. (Good golly, GoFundMe defaulted to a 17.5% tip. WTF?) > This fundraiser is entirely separate from our Give a Damn donation system, which aims to cover Damn Interesting monthly expenses —web hosting, subscriptions, usage licenses, link curation, and that sort of thing. An amazing array of donors support us through that system, and those lovely people are the reason we survive to this day. This new experiment is specifically so I myself can afford to spend more time writing and running the site. I'm left confused... Why you don't run this experiment through that same system? Why you don't pay yourself out of that system? What will happen if this experiment fails? [^1]: "Rider on the Storm" is very memorable - https://www.damninteresting.com/rider-on-the-storm/ https://www.damninteresting.com/rider-on-the-storm/

DamnInteresting 3mo ago
There are a few considerations. One is that the 'Give a Damn' system only aims to collect about $1,800/month, an approximation of our monthly expenses (not just hosting, but author payments, subscriptions to archives, research expenses, etc). And most months it barely collects the target amount. I've tried nudging the goal upward to see if I can slowly push it into actually-make-a-living territory, but it seems to have plateaued; increasing the goal there just means we usually miss our goal. There's also the fact that the 'Give a Damn' system is supporting the site, to the benefit of all of its contributors, not just me. Changing that dynamic could be detrimental to morale. There are lots of other small things making it very difficult to just update the existing system, not least of which being the same time shortage this fundraiser is trying to relieve. I'd need to make a bunch of changes to a very sensitive money-handling chunk of code, which requires careful coding and testing. > What will happen if this experiment fails? I have a series of decreasingly appealing follow-up plans if this one falls too short. But it's already earned enough to get me through at least a few months, so I'll have a chunk of time to take some positive action. Maybe that means I only get 6 months off before I'll have to resume full-time work, but I'll take what I can get.

Aachen 3mo ago

I found Damn Interesting because of an orbital mechanics simulation the author coded in javascript as a one-off for an article about iirc cyclers. Crazy amount of effort for what's probably about 10 seconds of eye-candy for the average reader. I found it a really neat implementation and while the articles are a bit long for me, it got me hooked on their podcast. There seem to be few projects as thorough and long-lived as this one.

DamnInteresting 3mo ago
Ah, you must mean the one embedded in this article: https://www.damninteresting.com/the-martian-express/ https://www.damninteresting.com/the-martian-express/ Originally, in 2008, it was 100% Javascript, but a few years later I updated it to use CSS transitions for a much smoother animation. That cycler simulator actually led to a very cool life experience. An administrator at NASA contacted me wanting to use it for a presentation. Of course I said yes! Then he invited me to be his guest to watch an early test of the SLS rocket that was happening about 90 minutes from my home. Of course I said yes! I got to meet a bunch of astronauts, see a big rocket engine fire horizontally in the desert, and got a NASA SLS pin. The fellow ended up not using the animation, as that part of his talk got edited out, but nevertheless niftiness.
- bigiain 3mo ago
  This is a beautiful turn of phrase - the likes of which is unlikely to ever be generated correctly and in appropriate context by an LLM: "An additional inconvenience is the flyby speed: as designed, the Cyclers would swing by Earth at approximately 15,000 miles per hour, and fly past Mars at 22,000 mph. In order to intercept such speedy Cyclers, the rocket-taxis would need to be capable of splitting a lot of lickety."

quapster 3mo ago

What I like about this is that it quietly exposes how broken the "creator economy" narrative has been for text on the web. For 20 years the model was: have a normal job, let the internet subsidize the rest with cheap distribution and a bit of ad/support money. That worked as long as (1) part-time/contract engineering was plentiful, (2) search sent humans to long-form, and (3) nobody was flooding the commons with infinite free derivative text. All three legs are wobbling now. Hiring shifted to "full time or nothing", SEO is a mostly hostile environment, and AI has turned "writing" into something that looks abundant from 10,000 feet. The result is that the remaining high-effort indie sites end up in this weird funding gap: too small and stubborn to become a VC-scale "media brand", too big and polished to be a casual side blog. So you get this old-school, almost embarrassingly direct solution: just ask readers to buy back the author's time. No growth story, no "community platform", just "I can make more of the thing you like if you cover what the labor market no longer will." In a way that's the most honest possible response to the AI slop wave: not "we'll use AI better", but "we'll opt out of that game entirely and see if real people care enough to pay for it."

john-tells-all 3mo ago

Wife and I adore the podcast. Will be sending money. We love you guys.

Tylast 3mo ago
Ditto on the podcast...still subscribed here. I also bought your book (Alien Hand Syndrome) way back when. Cheers!

jdthedisciple 3mo ago

Open a Patreon page with different tiers and a private Discord server for your patreons. From what I gather that's been a fairly successful standard model for independent content creators.

foolserrandboy 3mo ago

I think remember you said in one episode you didn't want to run ads in the podcast so you could talk about anything you want, but most of the episodes are about one of historical events. Do you really think the sponsors would try to alter your content. Personally I wouldn't mind 1 or 2 ad spots in the episodes.

DamnInteresting 3mo ago
Well, our unwillingness to be beholden to sponsors is just part of the reason we avoid advertising, but it's not an empty concern. We've done stories that big brands wouldn't like (the true story of Colonel Sanders, the New Coke debacle, etc) and we frequently share some unflattering stories in our Curated Links section. The larger reason is just that I personally despise ads. I take great measures to eliminate them from my life--paying for YouTube Premium, using the SponsorBlock plugin, running aggressive ad blockers on every device, piHole, etc. It would be quite hypocritical for me to add ads to my own content, I don't think I could live with myself. I know that some podcast providers wrap ads around everything anyway, but that's between the listener and their provider, there are absolutely ad-free alternatives.

cwmoore 3mo ago

"Signs point to yes" Good luck!

Beestie 3mo ago

Hi Alan, good to see you again. Another valuable creator I follow on a different platform went through the same thing about a year ago. I strongly recommend you reach out to him for guidance - he’s a good dude and will share how he broke out of the same death spiral. Fraser Cain of Universe Today on Patreon. There is a way out of this and the quality of your content is easily good enough to sustain a susbscriber-supported model.