Dusk… and a small announcement

 

The picture was taken two days ago at dusk. This is the Seto Inland Sea of Japan where I live.

But this is not why I’m writing to you today. 🙂

 

I have a small announcement to make. It’s nothing too special, and something you may find useful.

As you may or may not know, I’ve recently shut down my Substack newsletter and a few older blogs for various reasons, and I’m trying to concentrate my writing on just a couple of blogs, especially this one (and also write more, but that’s another story).

The idea is to have all my subscribers (some of you) subscribe to this blog, and it would work both as a blog and as a newsletter you can receive in your inbox.

When I say “subscribe” I mean the possibility of receiving notifications of new posts directly in your inbox, it’s free and different from a paying subscription. 🙂

There is a small problem, though. This site is bilingual and not all of you are. And I fully understand that no one likes getting emails in languages they don’t understand.

Until now, there was no way to separate my subscribers according to their language of use. Well, I still can’t, but you can now do it yourself.

 

So, I’m inviting you to do a few minor things:

• First, if you’re not subscribed yet, now is the perfect time to do it. There should be a place to do it right after the post, otherwise, you can simply click this link.
• If you’re already subscribed (thank you) and don’t mind getting notifications of new posts both in French and English, you have nothing to do.

 

Now, if you already are a subscriber but don’t speak French and would like to stop getting notifications about posts in French, it’s not complicated, but there is a small technicality to consider.
There are actually two mailing lists associated with this blog (I won’t explain why, it’d be too long and not that interesting, but basically an older one and a newer one, and it was easier to keep both alive.) One mailing list is managed by Mailchimp and the other one by Jetpack.

How do you know which one you’re in? It’s pretty simple. I assume you’re reading this coming from a link you got in your mailbox. Look at this email, and it should say Mailchimp or Jetpack/Wordpress.com somewhere (probably the sender, or else a logo at the bottom or something).

• If you’re with Mailchimp, sorry, there is no way to split the notifications by language, but if you only want to get the English notifications, you can always unsubscribe from Mailchimp and subscribe to Jetpack. There should be a place to subscribe after this post, or you can simply click this link. 🙂

 

• If you’re with Jetpack, there is now a possibility to only subscribe to parts of the blog. So, what I invite you to do is to go check the bottom of the email you received notifying you of this current post. There is a link that invites you to manage your subscription. Click on it. It should bring you to your “WordPress reader.” There, you can check and uncheck the various ways to subscribe to this blog.

 

Note that I will (later today or tomorrow) write a similar post in French for my French-speaking readers and subscribers. Whether you receive it or not will help you see if your subscription is properly set up.

I hope it makes sense and that you will find this useful. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask. 🙂

 

Also, I may or may not implement the possibility of subscribing to only some categories of posts. However, before doing this I need to clean up the categories on this blog. There are too many at the moment for a selective subscription to be usable. But stay on the lookout, it may happen sooner or later. I’ll probably make a similar announcement.

Stay tuned, and thanks for being a reader and hopefully a subscriber.