Happy Monday, Johnny Marr’s birthday; he is the Co-Founder of The Smiths and a guitar hero to all of us at With A Shout.

A fascinating look at who we spend our time with. The chart and data from Visual Capitalist are both striking and not surprising. The chart provides a massive split beginning at 40; as time with children declines, time alone increases. The next break starts at 60 as retirement begins, time with a partner goes up, and time with coworkers goes down.

From age 40, time alone continues to go up and doesn’t come back down. That is a complex chart to read and feel. We suck at growing old.

A rebirth for some authors, an instant dialogue with real fans for others. What’s the future look like? From award-winning authors to brand-new writers, Substack is providing new tools to help writers engage with an audience. In its best form, Substack makes it easy for a writer to write and deliver the writing directly to subscribers. The entire platform uses a simple template to create, send and track emails. A writer doesn’t need a website, social media, or anything else to start with Substack, just an account and content. Substack will help you do the rest; you can engage with an audience whenever you like.

Stealing again from James Carville (it’s the economy, stupid), the writing you put on your Substack posts and account is what will engage and grow your audience. Substack helps with an easy interface, an easy way to publish your writing, additional ways to refer and accept referrals, and metrics to track the traffic to each post. Substack also can let the writer charge for the work. Whether you offer a free or paid newsletter or a combination of free and paid, everyone who has access to your work will eventually have to subscribe. Substack provides writer access to a community of people who like their work.

Substack is a new player to a platform that includes Medium and Mailchimp. It promotes engagement and simple tools to help writers get the words out. The Guardian wrote a great piece on what a few award-winning authors think about writing on Substack. Since you are reading this on Substack, you know what we think of the platform!

In the third episode of The Peripheral, one of the main characters, Burton Fisher, is a former Marine. The show is set in the future, and in this future, a group of marines is connected through a series of wires that appear to be fused into their spinal cords. That is probably why they call it The Peripheral - Peripheral Nervous System. This gives all of the marines in the group the ability to see through each other’s eyes and feel what each other feels.

They talk about Semper Fidelis, which is a Marine motto meaning Always Faithful and is often portrayed as meaning No Member Left Behind. The show only hints at how the connection works and what it means to the marines. As with most technology, it appears to be a tool that can be used for good or evil, depending on who controls it.

From Wendy’s to Chipotle - where to get free stuff on Halloween 2022!

Secret Links to Cool Stuff:

Words | Music | Art | Unknown

Mars Needs Guitars.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

Thank you for spending a few minutes with us!

With A Shout Team