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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1371 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for August 6, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

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  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I'm grateful for Substack's ability to show me the sources of traffic. As I've previously mentioned, it keyed me in to the fact that Gwern himself had archived me. I was quite pleased to see a few people independently share my posts on HN too.

But, sometimes it raises more questions than it answers. Why are my posts being shared via the Steam forums? Why Slack? Who is using their company comms or a gaming website to talk about anything I've written?? I wish I knew, but it's a mystery that I'm unlikely to solve. I even saw Localhost:1881 in there, which I strongly suspect shouldn't be sending me any traffic.

After writing the above, I went back to my most popular article, the one about the effects of psilocybin on depression. Substack has 800 views from LinkedIn, 15 from Microsoft Office, 2 from the Brave browser (?).

I hope someone can tell me what the fuck is going on here.

If mma.tv were still around and I weren’t banned - so like 6 years ago really, you’d see me share a link or two from there.

Most forums’ most active places are their misc. sub forums.

Localhost:1881

Substack is just processing the Referrer header in the HTTP request that browsers will send when users click a link.

So, someone has links to your Substack on a locally hosted page. Maybe one of our own viewing a locally hosted version of The Motte?

Hmm.. How would that work? If they're self-hosting, then are they executing all the server-side code themselves and also mirroring the content?

I mean someone working on the site’s codebase, presumably with all the necessary credentials.

It makes for very short iteration times to run dev code locally connected to the prod database. That’s how we work on the front end code at Meta.

But I have no clue how people work on the code here.

In the past I've known people who've made a simple HTML page with some links on it set as the home page for easy access from new tabs. Not sure if file:// would send a referrer, but a lightweight local-only server isn't crazy either. I doubt they know they're sending referrer headers.

Maybe someone is self-hosting something that takes, filters, backups etc content? Or some other kind of custom front-end?

Why Slack? Who is using their company comms or a gaming website to talk about anything I've written??

Slack is used for some like Discord with less stupid name or by people working far more than gaming and exposed to it as a primary real-time chat. Also, some companies have very relaxed policies, that would make USA HR department die on spot.

You can be a software dev in a small 100% male company in Eastern Europe that has a chat channel for sharing porn.

I even saw Localhost:1881 in there, which I strongly suspect shouldn't be sending me any traffic.

maybe someone self-hosts "to read" list?

Why are my posts being shared via the Steam forums?

Why not? You posted that Avatar tech stuff? Seems quite easily linkable to some gaming discussions.

2 from the Brave browser (?).

Appeared in some recommendations shown by browser?

15 from Microsoft Office

link in .doc document I guess

You can be a software dev in a small 100% male company in Eastern Europe that has a chat channel for sharing porn.

This is both mind-blowing and completely believable.

car repair workshop/factories may have posters with almost naked women - is it also something that would not happen in USA?

Thank you. That seems quite sensible

You can be a software dev in a small 100% male company in Eastern Europe that has a chat channel for sharing porn.

I suppose they need additional perks to make up for the low salary haha.

Rat-adjacent spaces have a soft spot for jaded psychiatrists with penchant for writing. I am not surprised.

During the great awokening, lots of niche forums moved to private groups on discord and slack. TheMotte is a rare space that has both open conversation and is publicly accessible. Goes to show how badly Reddit fumbled the bag.

Are you accusing me of being a worse version of Scott?

If you are, I can't fault you haha. I live in the shadow of giants, and try to grow in the space between their toes.

Is there anywhere to see which pages actually link to your substack posts?

Not that I'm aware of. In the specific instances of Gwern, X, HN and a few others, I was able to track down the original link manually, or using Google search parameters.

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