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  News from the Free Internet
   Issue 8, February 6, 2021

1. Opening (and closing!) Thoughts: Clear Skies Ahead: No Smog Expected

2. Gemini and Gopherspace News

THE FINE PRINT

Unless stated otherwise, the material here is shared under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

THE FINER PRINT

Mirroring, copying, distribution, and derivative works are not only permitted, they are encouraged. If you wish to distribute Smog to your friends, I specifically encourage you to mirror it instead of linking to it. This will help keep hosting cost down and help Smog reach a wider audience.

THE FINEST PRINT

It’s another Gemini capsule: now I shall have somebody to talk to.

OPENING THOUGHTS

1, Clear Skies Ahead: No Smog Expected

Hi everyone!

This is, unepectedly, the last issue of Smog -- but I promise it's a good thing, please hear me out!

Back in the first issue's Opening Thoughts, I was joking about the nooriously low life expectancy of ezines. As you know, most of them barely made it to issue 2. Issue 8 was... almost unheard of.

I was expecting that Smog would be largely unnoticed. It would have maybe 6 or 7 issues before somebody would eventually write me, and after 20 or 30 issues, it would maybe have some regular readers who would send in ads, letters and the like.

That's not what happened. It turned out that the "smol Internet" community is so bloody amazing that now I get an email from someone pretty much every other day. Some of them get published. Many of you have written several times now.

Quite simply, I have, in just 8 issues, ticked *every box* on my "things I wanted for Smog" list, which I'd initially hoped would maybe happen after a year, if not more.

So why stop now? I mean, there's something to be said about quitting while you're ahead but what would be the point of *that*?

Quite simply, I think that what I've managed to do so far is the best that Smog can ever be. Mind you, it's not the best that Smog's readers deserve, or the best that we could achieve -- it's just the best that I can do!

Getting to "the next level", whatever that might be, requires the work, but especially the abilities, moral compass, and experience of someone who is an actual journalist. I lack all of those things, except maybe for the willingness to put in the work.

I'd imagined Smog would (generally) get better between issues 2 and 50, and that you'd get 48 more issues of increasingly better stuff. Instead, at this point, you'd just be getting 42 more issues of the same stuff, and I just don't think that's *enough*.

Don't get me wrong, it would be good, I just think I could be of more help to the community doing other things.

Some of the things that we *have* done, you and me, with Smog, include:

1. We've shown that a (largely) text-only environment with limited linking and imaging capabilities can effectively carry the kind of content a "serious" publication would have. We have ads and some art, too, and not by "working around" the capabilities of Gemini, but by employing them creatively.

2. We've shown that an independent, unaffiliated publication, created by volunteers, in their spare time, can be of interest to a diverse and enthusiastic community. Much of this publication did consist of *links* to content that doesn't quite match the independent or unaffiliated description, of course -- but I think that both those *and* publications like Smog have a place in this world. The point isn't that we should boycott Ars Technica & friends and replace them with Smog clones, just that there's an useful void that a community can (and often does!) fill.

3. We've shown that Gemini is an easy and effective protocol for distributing such content. Smog is served from a cheap VPS that I set up over two hours or so. (Badly, to some degree, I *promise* I'll fix the damn robots.txt thing this week!)

4. And, last but not least, we've shown -- I got emails in French, Spanish, Italian and Esperanto, and I'm really sorry that I speak the first two so badly and the last two, like, not at all! -- that good intentions and a ilttle modesty can cross language and cultural barriers more than anything else.

I haven't *lost interest* in Smog, quite the opposite. I just think it has quickly lived up to, and now exceeded its expectations of usefulness for the community, and it's time we thought of what comes next.

I want to thank all of you who've written me for all your kind words of encouragement. If I didn't get back to you, I apologize for that -- I probably just missed your letter and I'd be really happy if you could write me again! If you are Stephane's crawler, thank you very much for your patience with my sysadmin (in)abilities, and please tell your kind administrator that I haven't forgotten about fixing my config!

I wish all of you, humans and machines, tech enthusiasts and luddites, all the best, and I'm looking forward to hearing from all of you again in the Fediverse, over Gemini, Gopher, IRC, and wherever else our paths may cross.

And if you ever make another zine and are looking for contributors, drop me a line, okay?

Until our next cool hack,

Little John

NEWS

2. Gemini and Gopherspace News

Well, this issue *almost* didn't have anything except for the opening thoughts, but!

Mjollna & Laërte wrote me to tell me about their project, Medusae. You *have* to check out Medusae. It's a Gemini directory, with excellent content and great design. You can find it here:

medusae.space

Classifieds

Smog and your friendly editor do not endorse any of the products, services, organisations, individuals or technologies mentioned below.

However, we really like them, otherwise they wouldn't be here, and it's only fitting that we would feature them all in this last issue!

If you think that sounds *a bit* like an endorsement, yeah, okay, you're a bit right!

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