My income from my articles on Medium.com in November is down from October, even though I have more articles up.

This is what I was afraid would happen. The removal of “claps” as a determiner of income means that whatever gets opened the most gets the biggest share of the income. Writers with a small but enthusiastic following lose with the new scheme. The pages that get opened the most are the ones that appear on the homepage. The ones on politics, society, and culture that get listed there are mostly fanatically statist. (Edit: I should have added that some titles are clear cases of race-baiting. Edit 2: And outright racism at times. I just spotted an article, prominently featured on Medium’s home page, with the title “Lindsey Graham’s Hypocrisy is a Product of Whiteness.” I don’t know if the editors selected that article, or if it popped to the top because so many readers clapped it. Either thought makes me want to throw up.)

There’s a section on the homepage for writers I follow. It lists only four items at any given time, while the list of articles the editors are pushing is huge. Evidently Medium doesn’t want to encourage writers to build their own following.

I don’t know if I’ll bother posting any more articles there.

In more encouraging news, I’ve finished the first draft of The Magic Battery!