If you prefer me to read the text below to you…
Welcome!
This week we welcome four new free subscribers to CoB’s Creation Diary (soon to become CoB - The Vestry)! Praise be! You shining new stars of the burn-o-verse.
What I Didn’t Say
This week’s News from The Vestry (beta) would’ve made more sense if I mentioned the key idea that (I hope) I’ve already mentioned elsewhere.
It’s this. My intention is to make CoB’s - The Vestry available to paid subscribers only. There will be exceptions in terms of posts. For example, I’ll make posts like my tribute to Pete Loveday freely accessible. But generally, I’ll be switching over to ‘paid subscribers only’ once the churchofburn.org site is ready.
I’ll be generous with the freebies and trials. I’ll likely give everyone who is currently a free subscriber access for a while at least. And I’ll be mindful that not everyone (including me) can stretch to £10 a month. I already have a ‘Buy Me a Coffee’ option which kind of serves as the ‘pay what you can afford’ choice.
If we’re to get on with the task of saving the world, we gotta get real. There’s no way forward for Church of Burn without securing a little stream of funding. My reservoir is too small and running dry. I think setting things up in this way will give us the best chance. The Vestry will serve as the private gathering room where we change into our Priestly vestments and do whatever it is Priests do in their Vestries. Churchofburn.org will be the main hall where we’ll welcome one and all. As long as they’re not knobheads.
‘About’ Video
Here is the “About” video on its own. It’s up as an unlisted video on CoB’s YouTube channel. PLEASE DO NOT SHARE IT. Don’t link to it on your social media or anything like that. I will be hassling the hell out of you for likes, shares etc etc soon enough. But not yet. Thank you.
Redeeming Subscriptions against Merch
I fail to mention that I intend to (and already) offer paid subscribers priority access to tickets for paid events. Just to be clear the Solstice Burn is a free event. But otherwise the ideal position for paid events would be for Church of Burn to pre-sell them before we offer tickets to the public.
This would be great for all sorts of reasons. Not least because it’d help ensure that paid events can be properly budgeted and our performers properly paid. But also, there’s no better way to promote an event than saying “Sorry. Sold out”.
“Oh man, can you get me on the Guest list?” “Dude! It really is sold out. You gotta sub to The Vestry, man.” You get the idea.
Philosophy
The podcast with Scott Ferguson on the “metaphysical resonances between Modern Monetary Theory’s approach to money and Ruth E Kastner’s ‘Transactional Interpretation’ of quantum physics” can be found here. To be fair, it’s a pretty nerdy topic so I’m not expecting a huge number of clicks on the link. But I really enjoyed it.
Mentioning the Money on the Left guys (of which Scott is a member) I’ve a couple more to recommend. On Paradox with Elizabeth S Anker. And I think possibly my favourite The Metaphysics of Accounting with Paolo Quattrone. I know it might seem weird but honestly when I occasionally meet accounting folks at the odd academic money conference we find far more common ground between us than you might think.
Politics
I’m worried, I’ve been a bit mean. I guess I just picked on Ms Reeves because I happened to come across an interview with her. Or Labour paid to promote it into my social feeds - can’t remember. Anyway, here’s her full Securonomics pitch. You can decide for yourself if it’s the radical change humankind so desperately needs in the face of the Metacrisis. Or if its just a tiresome re-packaging of (old) New Labour ‘Third Way’ ideas as part of the cycle of wannabe Ministers clawing their way to political power.
I’m going to try my hardest to do a shorter News from the Vestry next week. Let me know what you think is the optimum length. I mean I know ‘it depends’. But I’m thinking ten minutes as the usual maximum length is more than enough. And really I should keep aiming for less that five. Or would you like them to be exactly 23 minutes?
Have a wonderful week.
Jon Xx