Karlstack goes to Stanford

4 milestones

1. I just hit 5,000 Substack subscribers!

   

   The spike at the end, followed by the dip, is when I had an article go viral last month that briefly pushed me over 5,000. The reason it dipped back down is because I then deleted a few hundred subscribers (inactives, fake emails, etc.) in order to boost my email open percentage to 45%:

   

2. Some of you may have noticed the update on my Twitter bio; I've recently become a contributing editor at The American Conservative.

   

3. As part of my new role at TAC, I am moving to Europe next week.

   In Europe, I will be moving to a new country every month or so (don’t worry about the specific itinerary/countries right now, I will blog about the travels soon enough), looking for someplace to settle down (also looking for a wife). Longtime subscribers will know that I am extremely disgruntled with the state of Canada and believe that I can’t consider starting a family / putting down roots here. So I am leaving. The first time I “left Canada” last year, I went to Mexico with the intention of moving further south, but that was somewhat of a misfire; I discovered from this 6-month experiment that I am not a “South America guy”; I just didn't really fit in. I suspect that I am much more suited to fit in with cold, autistic Europeans than with bubbly, warm, extroverted Mexicans.

   The Taco Truck Delusion

4. Following my ongoing investigation into the EJMR hacking (article 1, article 2, article 3, article 4), I have been invited to speak at The Classical Liberalism seminar series at Stanford University!

   

https://cli.stanford.edu/seminars

When I look at the list of speakers in this seminar series, I am humbled to see heavyweight names I recognize like Chris Rufo, Alan Dershowitz, Roland Fryer, Joshua Rauh, Greg Conti, Heather MacDonald, among others. I admit that I can't help but feel a bit intimidated, I am the youngest and, by traditional metrics, the least qualified.

The first reaction I've received from a few other people is nervous apprehension on my behalf, comments like, "Definitely prepare for that…”. For some reason, economists seem to think that my master's degree from the University of Western Ontario doesn't quite stack up against a Yale professor with a PhD from MIT. People seem to think I am a sacrificial lamb being sent to the slaughter; meant to be trounced; meant to make EJMR look bad.

However, rest assured, I'm as well-versed in this research topic as anyone else in the world. I am a subject matter expert on EJMR, and given two months of preparation, I'm confident that I will prevail, for the righteous truth is on my side, and its weight will become evident. Truth is all I need. I am grateful to Stanford’s Classical Liberalism Initiative for giving me this chance to defend free speech in the face of this disgusting and heinous doxxing attack by Yale University, and I plan to do so in a professional, cogent, and courteous manner. I won’t let you down.

It's surreal; when I launched my Substack in 2021 I had zero subscribers and zero affiliations, and after toiling in obscurity for 2 years with nothing but delusions of grandeur, everything is finally starting to come together. The delusions are becoming reality. Here's to the next milestone, and to the next 5,000 subscribers. To me, this feels like merely the beginning of a long and promising journey.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support that journey. I am finally starting to gain some traction and make enough money to survive by bumming around in Europe rather than bumming around in Mexico, lol... it’s an upgrade, but it’s still barely enough to bum around Europe. Your support makes this possible, so again, thank you.