About This Blog

Introduction

I've spent far too much time writing threads on Twitter, but with it sadly going down the drain, I decided I needed a new place to keep my writing (and to work on my longer-form writing). I've tried so many different options — WordPress, Blogger, Medium, Tumblr, Patreon, and Substack, but I had issues with each of them. Eventually, I settled on launching this Ghost blog, which is customizable, easy to use, has a decent rich-text editor with the features I want, supports an RSS feed, supports a newsletter, allows for private hosting at no extra cost, and allows me to have subscription tiers for folks to support me through. All this to say, I think I'll be committing to using Ghost more.

For those who've somehow stumbled onto this blog and don't know who I am, hello! My name is Wells Lucas Santo, and I'm currently a PhD student working on critical race and algorithmic justice. Pretty much, I think about the societal impacts of algorithmic technology and how race, gender, sexuality, and disability intersect with digital technologies more generally. Prior to returning to school, I worked in the non-profit education equity world, and before that, I worked in the tech industry. You can read more about me on my website as well.

Here are some of the sort of things I might post on here:

• Initial thoughts on papers and books that I read (#reviews)
• Essays on technology and society (#essays)
• Rants about the latest topic of the week (#rants)
• Personal reflections on my experiences with my PhD program, mental health, and life in general (#reflections)
• Goals, plans, and project ideas (#ideas)
• Stream-of-consciousness journaling (#journaling)

RSS Feed

Yes! This blog is now available as an RSS Feed at https://blog.wellssanto.com/rss!

It makes me incredibly happy to have this option for fans of RSS.

Newsletter Subscription Tiers

You can also receive select posts from this blog directly to your email inbox by subscribing. There are currently two subscription tiers: free and paid.

Paid subscribers will receive somewhat more behind-the-scenes content and writing that might be more personal that I don't necessarily feel is important for general, public audiences to read – a peek behind the curtain of my writing process and more internal thoughts. I'll also really appreciate the monetary support towards my writing, as a struggling PhD student!

Otherwise, the rest of the content on this blog will be free. I want to make sure that there aren't paywalls blocking posts that I feel are particularly important, educational, or informative. I won't send all my posts to the newsletter (since that would get too noisy), but I'll send out the main posts and updates that you might want to read.

You can always access content from both subscription tiers directly on this website as well.

Future Goals

• Customize theme so that it looks better and has a better archive page