Welcome to Pirate Wires, an American media company writing at the intersection of technology, politics, and culture. Today, we launch our website, an independent home for our community and work. A few thoughts.

This company began as a single newsletter in the batshit crazy summer of 2020, back when rioting was effectively legalized, and the country lost its mind. Locked in my home by fools and maniacs, I watched San Francisco crumble, and read about it all in horror from prominent writers throughout the press who considered this not only normal, but necessary. I disagreed, and I realized fairly quickly I was not alone. As Pirate Wires picked up a large, loyal audience of smart readers, I hired a team of talented, courageous writers and editors to help me cover the stories I found interesting and necessary, and we launched a few more letters. Today, the company’s comprised of four unique verticals, spanning everything from business and science to local politics, with several more to come this year.

My decision to leave Substack wasn’t made easy. Their team not only built a fantastic publishing tool, but managed the incredible feat of maintaining a commitment to free expression in a world more hostile to the concept than at any other point in American history. I’m an investor in the company. I believe in what their team is doing, and I think their work is necessary. Still, my ambition for Pirate Wires is great, and strange, and very much my own. It was time to grow. Practically speaking, for everyone who first found us on Substack, not much has changed. If you’re a free subscriber, you’ll continue to receive each newsletter you’ve opted into on schedule, and if you’re a paid subscriber, your subscription will continue with no change in pricing. To manage your account, just sign into Pirate Wires with your email address, follow the instructions, and give us a shout if you have any further questions.

The promise of the internet was boundless information for every person on the planet, and the internet basically delivered. Our modern publishing giants gifted us a powerful chest of tools, and more knowledge, more evenly-distributed, than any generation in history. But from draconian political censorship to an historic, increasingly-unmanageable flood of bullshit, our de facto rulers in this world post-2.0 also now present us with a significant series of acutely 21st Century challenges. As power centralizes, we sail for the outskirts, and in all of this noise, my team is aiming for the signal.

Welcome to new new media. Pirate Wires lives behind a paywall, where it will remain. TANSTAAFL, in the first place. Nothing’s free, you goddamn commies. But our model is a tool as well. The kind of writing primarily designed to catch eyes on polarizing social media algorithms in search of cheap advertising revenue is the kind of writing that drove our country to the brink of collapse. Incredibly, that writing has also somehow managed to be boring. This is the nature of sameness in the era of cultural revolution. We are the counterpoint, the bizarre, the true. At least, according to me, and that’s all that I can promise you: Pirate Wires is the kind of media I always wished existed. Now it does, and I couldn't be more excited.

If you like what we’re doing here, you already know it’s because we’re the only ones doing it, and we couldn't without your support. As ever, thank you.

Subscribe, or die —

-SOLANA