Adding option to benefit Science and AAAS to this site
If you choose to be a paid subscriber, you'll support non-profit science journalism and commentary
When I launched this site at the end of 2022, I was mainly doing it as a way to build a network away from Twitter, which was changing. Because my main job is generating content for Science, I never considered offering a paid option for subscriptions. Now that I’m up to 7,000 subscribers, I’ve decided to experiment with a paid option where all proceeds will go to benefit our work at Science. Also, I saw my friend Eric Topol was doing his awesome Ground Truths site for Scripps and realized that was a great idea.
Being a non-profit journal that competes with peers that have much more corporate backing is always a challenge. But all of us are devoted to do everything we can to maintain our non-profit status and continue to provide the best news and commentary in science. In addition to sending on your subscription revenues to support the work, I’ll also try to come up with some premium content that will make it worthwhile to sign up.
Thanks to everyone who has supported this Substack so far. More ideas ahead.
Dear Professor Thorp, I understand that the more money one has the more good one can do. Having acknowledged that, I find many major institutions, including The Salk Institute and your Science family asking for money (of course to do good) somewhat unseemly in the sense I'd beg for money from those who have more money than I do and find it somewhat uncomfortable taking money form those who have less. It may be simply a matter of cultural conditioning; for example, I am averse to superlatives, but American psyche goes evangelical with being the best / greatest et al. More importantly, knowing fullwell the contribution of the March of Dimes to the betterment of human condition, I'm grateful to all those dimes (all of which might amout to: conflicted ;) Thanking you, yours respectfully, posina
P.S. Even in the political realm, unlike the MIT which had no qualms about taking Epstein pedo-dollars, getting my political hero Pawan Kalyan (a philosopher-king in a terminology familiar to you; I wonder how many western political science professors / politicians can escape being dwarfed by the intellect, along with the range and depth of understanding hardearned by Pawan Kalyan, a high school dropout) to accept contributions to his JanaSena party is almost impossible (with all the background checks that go on for months / years), in spite of the fact he's broke most of the time. Pawan Kalyan, Deputy Chief Minsiter of Andhra Pradesh, India, is a stellar embodiment of corruption-free governance ensuring that his ministries of Enviroment, Forest, Pachayath Raj (village admin), and Science & Technology are absolutely corruption-free (obviously at great risk to his life).