Introduction
Some of you may remember the post I made here about writing a zine together:
Well the idea is finally coming together initially as an online magazine / newspaper.
I have made a number of calls on Twitter for content and therefore here is an extended post of Submission Guidelines for anyone who is interested in submitting.
Below is a screen grab of the work-in-progress magazine!!
Submission guidelines
Submissions are sought from anyone in TPOT who has a blog, either of their own work or seminal work from other people, and from artists. Also included are guidelines for staff poasters.
Non-staff poasters:
You will be filling the “Tech” and “Library” sections of the magazine.
Tech
We are looking for blog articles 1-9 years old on any of the interests relevant to TPOT. We are particularly interested in anything that might be of help to others. Please submit finished work that you have already written.
This includes reports: exploration of philosophical investigations/ideas, results from meditation practice instructions, opinions on tested healing modalities, trip reports and the like.
Other themes could be art, architecture, poetry, ritual, anthropology, medical breakthroughs. Essentially we want to put together the best and the whole of our knowledge so far, from the esoteric to the scientific.
Submit the URL of your blog post from which we will gather the featured image and the first two paragraphs. We will then link back to your blog.
Optional: Please also submit your preferred author name if different from what is immediately obvious on your blog, your twitter handle and even an excerpt if you feel inclined. You can also choose up to two categories from the website you think it best fits into.
There is no word limit because we assume the content has already been written! Submit by emailing: editor@tpot.website
NB: Original writing especially for the newspaper has its own guidelines below.
Library
This section of the magazine is to immortalise all the written work, blog articles, websites and tweet threads that made us the poasters we are today. I’m thinking Meaningness, SSC, Paul Graham, Overcoming Bias, Ribbon Farm to name a few but sources from all over the internet are welcome. We also request links to any book reviews we have of seminal TPOT books such as Seeing Like A State and A Pattern Language. These will also be a copy of the first part of the article with a link back to the original post.
editor@tpot.website
Original Writing
People who want to write original content for the newspaper should pitch their idea to the editorial team on editor@tpot.website. Writers can also use this email address to request to be a staff Poaster (gives edit/posting access to the website).
Art & Images & Video
The newspaper is always hungry and desperate for images, particularly original non-Ai generated images. These can range from the most esoteric biro-on-a-napkin to memes to beautiful illustrations to photos of beautiful places or beautiful things.
Email editor@tpot.website with fairly high quality attachments of your images, plus the URL of your website, your artist name, your Twitter handle and any other names/links you want to be credited with. You may want to also embed your name into the image, since we won’t prevent resharing.
We may contact you in future months to include the images in a print version of the magazine (where we will be even more desperate for them!)
Video content is also welcome. We can link to your YouTube and we may well be creating original video for the newspaper. This idea is a work in progress so let’s feel that out together!
Staff poasters:
Guidelines
You will be filling the “Discourse” and “Peeps” sections of the magazine with opinionated and time-relevant original writing or summaries of other writing. It can be as short as an equivalent twitter thread of 3-4 tweets or as long as 2-3k words.
For shorter items staff poasters should blog original short articles on current internet/Twitter discourse, including controversy, wars, scissor statements, polls, cute animals, word-meaning changes, memes and beef. Staff writers can also flesh out the “Fashion”, “Obituaries” and “Weather” sections with commentary or simply screenshots of recent tweets. These posts can be fast and dirty to keep the content on the website fresh but they are utlimately ephemera, and unlikely to be of lasting significance. These can be posted without editorial approval.
For longer articles the topic might be about slightly more complex subjects to require the 2-3k words, such as, for example, an overview of the jhana debate. These are also very welcome and please alert an editor before posting.
Poasting Rules for those with logins
1 Strict Rule: All blog posts should have at least one category (Discourse is the default if you forget) and the author should restrict themselves to choose the best one or two categories, as this will determine where the articles show up on the website.
1 Request: All posts should have a featured image. Choose from our stock photos, use your own original images or make use of the AI button on the website (least preferred tbh).
1 Optional: Adding an Excerpt is optional but might make the article look better when it is posted to the website.
1 Non-Rule: Articles can have any number of tags. Tags can be the Wild West and you can add as many or as few as you like. In fact I would love to see a meta-game happen on the newspaper where poasters try to manipulate the tag clouds around the site in interesting ways.
Automation
One day we hope to automate new content coming into the newspaper so that it becomes a focal point and beacon to highlight all the new work the collective has been doing. If you’re a developer who can help with this, please reach out.
Thanks
Thanks for reading this far! This document will likely evolve as more people submit work, ask questions and especially after we launch the site. See you soon! xxx
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