New Blog + BlueSky

Gordian Blade's New Home

I’ve decide to start posting my main blog content over on my new blog, GordianBlade.com. This Substack isn’t going anywhere, and pretty soon you’ll start seeing me mirroring posts from my main blog onto here (similar to Bastionland vs. Bastionland Presser), so if you enjoy my content, you can simply stay subscribed here! However, the new blog ought to be considered my content’s “real” home.

I’ve been wanting to move off Substack for quite a while, as I’m less excited than ever about being beholden to a platform to host my content. Platforms like Substack are vulnerable to enshittification, and ultimately I don’t feel like I can trust them to have my best interest in mind. Substack itself has had a dodgy history with how it has chosen to run itself. I’m honestly just kind of sick of it all.

Fortunately, I am a giant nerd whose day job is full stack web development, so I put my devops chops to work and set up a homelab, including a Ghost instance. It’s definitely more expensive than Substack (which is “““free”””), but the amount of control and peace of mind I have about owning my content and my platform is worth it to me. If the blog gets big, it’s very possible I’ll have to migrate to cloud hosting like Digital Ocean or Linode, but for now I’m happy with what I’ve got.

I was considering deleting Substack entirely, but after reading Prismatic Wasteland’s take on the issues, I have to agree that Substack’s network effect is its one redeeming quality. Thus, I intend to keep this around, mirror my blog content, and maybe include a postscript on each Substack post with some links to TTRPG stuff that interests me lately (blog posts, YouTube videos, adventures, etc.). So feel free to stay subscribed here, or mosey on over to GordianBlade.com and check out the new digs.

Also, in related news, I’m active on BlueSky! You can find me @bentorell.com (yes, my personal domain is my handle, and no, my personal site hasn’t been updated in ages). BlueSky is a lot easier to use than Mastodon (and significantly better than Elon’s tire fire), and there’s a lot to like about its ATproto tech stack (I can self-host my own data!). It’s not perfect, and I appreciated this measured take by Gavin Anderegg (especially in light of my above concerns with platforms), but I’m enjoying it in the meantime.