u/anonboxis

Slightly unusual question for this sub, but I think people working in the Brussels bubble are probably better placed to answer it than a generic newsletter or marketing community.

I run a free newsletter covering the upcoming Digital Fairness Act.

It started as a fairly small side project, but it has unexpectedly grown to around 1000 subscribers. From what I can tell, most readers are actual people working around the file: tech lobbyists, EU officials, lawyers, journalists, trade associations and public affairs consultants. It is still quite niche, but arguably a valuable niche.

The law has not even been proposed yet and has received relatively little mainstream coverage, so I expect readership and interest to grow considerably once the proposal comes out and formal negotiations begin.

I'm wondering whether there is a good way to monetise it without turning it into an annoying industry advert or undermining its independence.

For those working in public affairs, law firms, consultancies, trade associations or EU media, what would actually make sense here?

Paid subscriptions? Sponsorship from relevant organisations? A small jobs section? Sponsored events promotion? Paid briefings or research? Something else entirely?

I have come up with some ideas, but I don't really know how I would implement them since I'm not really in the bubble (yet). Like, do I just email random consultancies and say "Do you want to pay X for an ad in my newsletter", and if so, how much could I charge?

I am especially interested in what organisations in the Brussels bubble would realistically pay for, and how this might actually work in concrete terms. Does anyone have experience with this or have real anecdotes that might give me ideas?

I think this could make for a good documentary.

Modern society is more than ever before plagued by mental illness, isolation, and a general sense that something isn't quite right.

Two men in particular noticed this.

They both said capitalism was to blame, but they came to startlingly differing conclusions.

They were Mark Fisher, and Nick Land, and they had both belonged to the CCRU, the "Cybernetic Culture Research Institute", an intellectual collective at the university of Warwick in the 1990s, which focused on experimental cultural theory.

Their opinions differed in many ways:

Fisher said that the inevitability of Capitalism was an illusion, a falsity created by capitalism itself, which prevents us from imagining a world without it.

He also believed in the idea that one should always preserve one's empathy, despite the turbulent moral complexities of the world we live in.

Nick Land, on the other hand, had quite a different idea:

He had come to believe that humanity had been destined from the very beginning to create capitalism, the markets, and technology, and that these were but a primordial soup out of which something, much stranger and more inhuman than we'd ever imagined, would one day emerge.
Not only did he think the inevitability of Capitalism was real, he believed we should accelerate it as much as possible.

He, furthermore, believes human empathy to be a weakness, a brake for the technocapital machine.

Each of us is fighting two contrasting forces inside us:
Fisher's way: Questioning the system, "tuning in" to the world's suffering, and preserving your empathy, despite the pain.
And Land's way: Giving your self up to these forces, leaning into the chaos, shutting down your empathy, and retreating within, away from the pain.

We will also discuss how Land's dark, esoteric ideas have strongly influenced silicon valley, the tech billionaires, and the very systems we live in.

(And then you could get into Dark Enlightenment, e/Acc, Peter Thiel, and show how ridiculous and unhinged Land is, and how shocking his level of influence is despite that).

Edit: the "each of us is fighting" part is probably not something Curtis would say. He's not really one to inject his own personal view so directly into the commentary

I got an interview last round and this round. Last round was super casual: I just got a phone call before the end of the selection deadline, where they mostly told me about the position rather than asking me too many questions.

This round, though, was more of a formal interview over Teams. They quizzed me a bit about how IMCO specifically works and about my knowledge of the EU legislative process.

I’m curious why it was so different, especially since it was the same person both times. Do they just do last-minute phone calls if you aren’t their top candidate, and proper interviews if you’re more like a top 3 choice? Or did the whole system change between the last round and this one?

Not sure how realistic this is yet, but I was wondering if MacWhisper has any plans to test Apple’s new Core AI framework.

Since MacWhisper is mainly about private local transcription, it seems like it could be a big deal if Core AI ends up being a better way to run speech models on Apple Silicon than the current options.

Could maybe help with speed, battery, memory use, loading models, etc. Also curious if it could eventually be useful for things around transcription like diarization, VAD, noise cleanup or subtitle alignment.

No idea if Whisper-like models can actually run well on it, but it feels worth keeping an eye on.

Just wondering if there are any plans to add Apple’s new-ish SpeechAnalyzer / SpeechTranscriber stuff as an engine option in MacWhisper?

I know Whisper is probably still better for a lot of things, but Apple’s version seems really fast and on-device.

Also feels like it could make MacWhisper more native on macOS, especially if it works well with Shortcuts/App Intents etc.

Not sure how good Apple’s API is for long files, timestamps, proper nouns, multilingual audio etc, but seems worth testing imo.