Happy to answer questions if anyone has any. Ben (one of my co-founders) is more centrally in charge of it, but I should have enough context to answer really any question.
As they say, "if you are not the customer, you are the product", and I really wanted this fellowship to not be the kind of thing where the actual underlying motivation is some kind of recruitment scheme that drives the program objectives, while looking on the surface like a thing that is optimized to help the residents.
The main reason to delay: I've started writing relatively recently, and expect I might have more posts I'd showcase in my application by then.
Thinking about it, my guess is we will probably let promising people who applied early know that they are on some kind of waitlist and extend an invite to them if we end up disappointed with the later applications, so if you are flexible, I think that makes early strictly easier. I don't expect the effect to be that large though.
Until late 1949, Inklings readings and discussions were usually held on Thursday evenings in C. S. Lewis's rooms at Magdalen. The Inklings and friends also gathered informally on Tuesdays at midday at a local public house, The Eagle and Child, familiarly and alliteratively known in the Oxford community as The Bird and Baby, or simply The Bird.
University was free for, say, the likes of Greg Egan and others to study physics and math, with a nominal student union fee to be able to join / form clubs and apply for a base beer, wine, and cheese fund to lubricate weekly discussion.
Oh well, guess I'll stay in New Orleans and draw queer comics at a less punishing pace instead.
(actually sheesh if we use the standard conversion rate of "a picture is worth a thousand words" then my usual peak of two pages a week is probably more work per week than the stated minimum of 500 words per post.)
Honestly I'm tempted. I know the rationalists have a bad rap but I have a grudging respect for Scott Alexander.
Plus $3,500 to live in Cali for a month... barely more than I'm paying over here
Maybe if everyone was definitely starting a Substack we could take a small cut of Substack revenue for the next year or two, which would be straightforward enough.
If anyone has ideas, I would definitely be curious to hear them.
I wonder if there'll be an aggregator of the blog posts written as post of this cohort (and others, if there's more cohorts).
Yep, Bay Area rent and cost of living is a big pain. $1,500 for housing for a month is still below real estate costs on our side, and $2,000 in program fees is barely enough to pay for the staff costs and program supplies. We might barely break even, but my guess is we'll lose a bunch of money on the program (which is fine, we are doing this because it's good for the world, not to make money).
I feel like for a program like this it might make sense for someone to run it outside of one of the highest cost of living places in the world, but it's where we are located, so that's what we have to make work (I do think being in the Bay Area does also attract people and makes it more likely for people to participate, so it's not an obvious call even from first principles).
> I wonder if there'll be an aggregator of the blog posts written as post of this cohort (and others, if there's more cohorts).
We're definitely planning to do something like that! Not sure yet about the exact format, but we'll definitely make it easy to find what everyone is publishing as part of the residency somehow.
I am not familiar with blogging or this sphere at all, but it's so funny to me that I was assuming the website said that the program would PAY the bloggers to be there for a month (including housing) and not the other way around.
I assumed this was one of those "We'll let you write a book while riding Amtrak for free" sort of thing. Not sure why I thought that, but it made me laugh after reading your comment.
What’s stopping you besides the unsettling truth that it’s more fun to think that it’d be fun to join in from afar by pledging to do the same things than it is to actually do the same things from afar?
I do want to not scare people who aren't into LessWrong and similar things, as I would really like this residency to be less opinionated about stuff than LessWrong and other projects we usually run, so I feel like putting a big LessWrong logo somewhere would have given the wrong impression.
I would also love to see other people run similar things (including in places that aren't the Bay Area and so where they can run it much more cheaply). I feel like it could be a cool model.
I also think an online-only version of this could be great. The original inspiration for this project came from seeing that the Nanowrimo charity had shut down, and realizing that I would love to do something like Nanowrimo but focused on blogging and essays instead of novels. I ended up registering Nablowrimo.com (National Blogging Writing Month) and might end up trying to make that a thing, or would be happy to give the URL to someone who is committed to make something happen here.
I guess on the other hand, it wouldn't be a blog if the author didn't do it all.
The minimum is $2,000 if you want to source your own housing (and for example stay with a friend in the area).
The food cost is just fully straightforwardly passed on ($20 for a catered meal is not a lot!), and the rooming is also provided below cost (good luck finding a short term rental for less than $1,500/mo, or even $3000/mo in Berkeley). We are subsidizing this with our own money, this isn't going to make us anything.
Like, man, what are these expectations? Where can you get a month-long hotel experience in a major metropolitan area for less than $3,500 a month? And that is ignoring all of the costs associated with the rest of the program, which will involve a lot of volunteered time from staff with opportunity costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
$100/night in Berkeley is not going to get you something pretty, and definitely no food included.
Surely most people dropping work to focus on blogging would be looking for minimal costs (whilst they have limited income as they hone a skill) rather than maximal costs?!
If you rent sharing for maybe $1,500 pcm and then spend $50 a day you'd finish with $500 left vs Inkhaven.
Some writing programs with similar naming schemes: * https://iyws.clas.uiowa.edu/2-week-summer-residential-progra... * https://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/literary-arts/deep-winte... * https://www.hedgebrook.org/residencies
Open to other names. I don't like "retreat" because of the above, don't like "fellowship" because it IMO more strongly implies that you would get paid money instead of paying money, and don't currently have any other great ideas.
The other two blog, yes, but now Scott flirts with race realism [1] and other Scott is hyperfixated on being pro-Israel at any cost. I can’t imagine they’re much fun at parties (or in communes, shtetl-optimized or not).
[1] https://www.stevesailer.net/p/scott-alexander-comes-out-of-t...
Edit: if someone can explain why this was instantly downvoted I would genuinely appreciate knowing where I went wrong here
It seems unduly personal.
Alluding to some conversation which supposedly demonstrates my unsuitability for such a role, while pointedly refusing to link it or describe it any detail which could be judged (to the point where I, the person in question, have no idea what misdeeds you are talking about), is not credible and reeks of, one might say, 'very unconstructive crap-on criticism', and people might be understandably reluctant to upvote it.
If you think my criticisms were that bad, then link the tweets in question - and, since my account is currently locked, I will happily copy them all out here so everyone can read them and judge for themselves. I am not afraid.
…But responding as though this is an attack to be countered and defeated further illustrates why I had doubts about your suitability as a creative advisor. It may be the only way you _know how_ to interpret any reference to yourself or anything anyone might compare to your work. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. You just may not have the tools to draw out the best of other people’s creative skill. And then again, maybe you do, and I just caught you on two separate really bad days five years apart.
I suppose you have some justification for all of that, but I wouldn't really know; without the aid of either preternatural patience or some sort of pharmaceutical support that Shulgin would have no doubt highly favored, I've always found you so needlessly and interminably self-indulgent in prose as to consider it must be really fortunate for your sake you had firmly established your reputation before the advent of true conversational AI. Certainly I don't expect you to change your whole personality at this late date. I doubt you can even very reliably restrain yourself from indulging it.