[HN Gopher] The Inkhaven Blogging Residency
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The Inkhaven Blogging Residency
Author : venkii
Score : 47 points
Date : 2025-08-07 00:20 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.inkhaven.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.inkhaven.blog)
| tenkabuto wrote:
| It'd be fun to join in from afar by pledging to do the same
| things, but for nowhere near the cost. (The place looks super
| neat, but I'm not paying that much, don't live near there, and
| need to report to my employer's office twice a week.)
|
| 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).
| paulcole wrote:
| > It'd be fun to join in from afar by pledging to do the same
| things
|
| 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?
| habryka wrote:
| > It'd be fun to join in from afar by pledging to do the same
| things, but for nowhere near the cost.
|
| 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.
| darknavi wrote:
| > It'd be fun to join in from afar by pledging to do the same
| things, but for nowhere near the cost.
|
| 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.
| throwanem wrote:
| 500 words a day isn't much for $3,500! I've done that for free
| before. But given the weirdo cult this is designed to recruit
| naive suckers as propagandists for, I suppose that all checks
| out: requiring a stupid amount of money right up front, for what
| amounts to a social entree with some rich weirdos and hangers-on,
| both filters out the sensible and makes the sunk cost fallacy
| pretty easy to invoke.
| defrost wrote:
| Back in the day it cost a round of drinks at the pub to be read
| and questioned about your work in progress: 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.
|
| ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inklings
| throwanem wrote:
| And admission to an Oxford college, of course.
| defrost wrote:
| For that group of Inklings, sure.
|
| 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.
| netown wrote:
| interesting idea, kind of like the y-combinator of blogging
| except with upfront tuition being paid instead of a longer-term
| investment by the 'provider'--i wonder if that business model
| could work as well?
| habryka wrote:
| We were thinking about whether there is any way to do some kind
| of income sharing agreement, but given how messy those tend to
| be (see all the Lambda school stuff as an example) we couldn't
| figure out a way to make it work.
|
| 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.
| inhumantsar wrote:
| Maybe an Inkhaven substack that the writers agree to
| crosspost to for some length of time?
| habryka wrote:
| Interesting idea. Some thoughts:
|
| I think the volume would really be a lot. For the program
| we'll be dealing with 900 (!) blogposts (30 residents times
| 30 blogposts). I doubt something with that volume would
| actually end up with many subscribers
|
| Also, I would feel bad about splitting the audience of the
| authors. I feel like you really want to build your own
| audience early on.
|
| And last, I am worried it would push people towards
| homogeneity. My ideal outcome from the whole project is
| that we will have a bunch of really very different blogs
| and essay writers find traction who share little of an
| audience, but add some important perspective to the world.
| dotcoma wrote:
| Do you envision a single writer writing largely on the
| same subject during the course of that month, or not?
| habryka wrote:
| Definitely not "same subject" if we are thinking of
| something as narrow as "Frontend development" but I would
| like many people to find a niche/style/perspective they
| feel at home in. Something as consistent as
| simonwillison.net seems good for many.
|
| Also, my guess finding such a style/niche will take a
| bunch of exploration, so I think most people should
| probably write in a bunch of different styles and on a
| bunch of different things during Inkhaven to get more
| evidence about what they enjoy writing about the most
| (and which of their writing people want to read).
| tolerance wrote:
| " _Inkhaven (business model: Uber for Yaddo) is..._ "
|
| That's where my best impression of n-gate stops short at. Someone
| is welcome to fill in the rest.
| benwerd wrote:
| It feels like there's a particular ideology uniting the bloggers
| involved that isn't actually declared on the page, centering on
| Lesswrong and the kinds of conversations hosted there. I think
| that's fine for that community; I'd love to see a version of this
| for people who buy into a more humanist version of the present
| and future.
| habryka wrote:
| Definitely not trying to hide it!
|
| 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.
| habryka wrote:
| Oh, hey HN! I run Lightcone Infrastructure which runs this
| residency (as well as LessWrong.com and the venue,
| Lighthaven.space).
|
| 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.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| Any sweetheart deals with a blogging platform yet? I expect the
| Nearly Free Speech folks or the bearblog dev would hear you
| out.
| habryka wrote:
| Not yet! My guess is Substack is the best choice for most
| people, just because it's easy to set up, has a bunch of UI
| problems solved, and has a non-terrible way to get towards
| getting food on the table (even if you don't paywall
| anything).
| dotcoma wrote:
| How do you earn money with Substack if you don't paywall
| anything?
| habryka wrote:
| You use it more like a Patreon. I don't think it's easy,
| but it works for at least some people like Scott at
| AstralCodexTen (who arguably has some paywalled essays,
| but it's extremely rare and I doubt it's the reason why
| almost anyone is subscribed to him).
| dotcoma wrote:
| So content is free, and readers can make a donation?
| habryka wrote:
| Yep, something like that.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| Substack? Talk about unfortunate connotations. Hopefully
| their drama dies down before November.
| wink wrote:
| Is "endorsing nazi content" a drama that can die down?
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| In this media environment? Yeah probably. We've all
| gotten very good at forgetting inconvenient facts.
|
| Should it go away? Probably not.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I could be the only person to have thought this, but when I saw
| this was a residency advertising money and accommodation I
| assumed this was a _grant_ for an arts /culture programme. If
| it's just me that thought that then I'm clearly too naive, but
| if ten people do then it might be worth adjusting the copy.
| habryka wrote:
| Makes sense, it certainly is the case that these programs
| tend to pay people, though I have kind of learned to treat
| that with a bit of suspicion (having run lots of programs of
| that kind).
|
| 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.
| venkii wrote:
| Any sense if applying later will be detrimental?
|
| 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.
| habryka wrote:
| My guess is not much? Because we are doing rolling
| applications, so we are somehow trying to judge how many good
| applicants in total we are going to get (classical secretary
| problem). Applying early means we might let you in with a
| lower bar if we end up getting a lot of great applications
| later and raise our bar. Applying later might be better if we
| realize we were overly conservative in the beginning and are
| disappointed in the later applications.
|
| 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.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| I'd be interested to see the writing of folks that do this
| course.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| It's a pity Gwern is saddled here with the two Scotts. It's like
| if Umberto Eco shared the stage with Travis Baldree and Sarah
| Maas.
| velcrovan wrote:
| Is Gwern known for being a great creative coach and advisor?
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| He's known for being a prolific blogger with multiple
| interests and excellent research skills.
|
| 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...
| velcrovan wrote:
| Yes that's what I know him for as well. It's a very
| different skill set than that used by a good creative
| advisor.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Flirting maybe, but I don't see clear racism.
|
| > The large difference between sub-Saharan Africans in
| developed countries (eg the US) and in sub-Saharan Africa
| demonstrates that the latter aren't performing at their
| genetic peak, and that developmental interventions - again,
| nutrition, health care, and education - are likely to work.
|
| If I go to this blogging thing I'll tell him that the time
| for being a "grey party" enlightened centrist was about 20
| years ago and it's a stupid act to keep up. Just say you're
| not racist. (Unless he's actually able to deprogram any
| racists, which I'd need data to believe)
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > Flirting maybe, but I don't see clear racism.
|
| True, he's not made any public, unequivocal statement on
| the topic. Not yet.
| velcrovan wrote:
| This is something I might otherwise consider, but Gwern being an
| advisor gives me pause. Awhile back I shared a blog design on
| Twitter in response to someone doing a "show me your cool stuff"
| kind of thing, someone replied and tagged gwern and then he
| replied with a bunch of very unconstructive crap-on criticism. I
| had looked up to him before that. Maybe he's different in person
| but based on that interaction I have no desire to find out.
|
| Edit: if someone can explain why this was instantly downvoted I
| would genuinely appreciate knowing where I went wrong here
| gwern wrote:
| > Edit: if someone can explain why this was instantly downvoted
| I would genuinely appreciate knowing where I went wrong here
|
| 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.
| h0p3 wrote:
| I can appreciate your defending yourself here, and you
| should. You're obviously suitable for the role, and I think
| folks will be incredibly lucky to learn from you. I'm not
| saying your criticisms are that bad (far from it), but I
| can't say I think you're always as careful as you should be
| in that role (which I also suggest you're sometimes too quick
| to assign yourself) either, sir. If you're asking for bug
| reports, this is one.
| adiabatty wrote:
| I've helped friends with their writing.
|
| If _I_ got this bit of feedback I wouldn't know what to
| make of it.
| h0p3 wrote:
| Thank you for telling me.
| velcrovan wrote:
| Sometimes, when the nature of someone's problem is such
| that it also prevents them from even seeing or
| understanding it, the best you can do is signal to them
| that a problem exists and see whether they care enough to
| try and understand it further.
| throwanem wrote:
| It's just that you come off as a high-handed, unbearable jerk
| even by _my_ standards, which is saying a really enormous
| amount. Everyone thinks you 're an asshole because you act
| like an asshole, and some people are afraid of you because of
| that and the social power they understand you to have, ie the
| ability to effectively blacklist people from a weird,
| unpleasant, mostly pointless, but highly remunerative niche
| labor market providing an expedited path to US citizenship
| which is still probably a few years out from its inevitable
| collapse in value. (You're not really special in this, of
| course; your pal Scott also has it, for example. So do lots
| of others.)
|
| 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.
| gjm11 wrote:
| > the ability to effectively blacklist people from a weird,
| unpleasant, mostly pointless, but highly remunerative niche
| labor market providing an expedited path to US citizenship
|
| Huh?
| velcrovan wrote:
| Since you offered:
| https://x.com/gwern/status/1235977354918404096 -- though it
| seems like the intermediate commenter I mentioned has also
| either locked or deleted their tweets.
|
| ...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.
| gjm11 wrote:
| "Cet animal est tres mechant, Quand on l'attaque il se
| defend."
|
| Saying in public that someone "replied with a bunch of very
| unconstructive crap-on criticism" and "[m]aybe he's
| different in person but based on that interaction I have no
| desire to find out" _is_ , by any reasonable standards, an
| attack on that person, and if that person doubts your
| description it is perfectly reasonable for them to object.
|
| (That doesn't mean you're in the wrong and gwern's in the
| right, of course. It could well be that your account of
| things is entirely correct and gwern was gratuitously
| dickish to you, in which case it's fair enough to point it
| out. Something can be fair and correct and _also_ a
| personal attack that it 's reasonable to respond to by
| trying to counter it.)
| dang wrote:
| > if someone can explain why this was instantly downvoted I
| would genuinely appreciate knowing where I went wrong here
|
| It seems unduly personal.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Man I wish I had $3.5k to do this. Actually I wish I had $3.5k to
| do this and try to go into total overdrive mode on my queer
| comics for a while, I could probably crank out a page a day if I
| just sat my ass in front of the computer all day instead of going
| out and doing errands and slacking around the park.
|
| 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.)
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| 500 words a post and I'm not working full-time? Shit that's not
| even a third of a NaNoWriMo. My hands don't even hurt. I
| already shitpost 500 words a day on Hacker News, my third-
| favorite social media content platform.
|
| 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
| itronitron wrote:
| This submission is just an advertisement, and advertisements
| submitted to HN usually get flagged dead.
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