Paid Subscriptions Note

Restarting paid subs in advance of this week's monster Thai cave rescue piece.

(This email is going out to free subs too, though only for mention of the second thing.)

Just two quick announcements:

1. I’ve had paid subscriptions frozen for ages, as the consistency of output just wasn’t there to justify them. But I’ve been back in the saddle for a bit now, so will be turning them on again concurrent with releasing a big piece later this week (likely tomorrow). If anyone would like to move to a free subscription instead (totally fine!), please do so now to avoid getting charged in the next billing cycle. Though I’m also happy to reverse payments through Stripe later for all who ask! Your support through to now is deeply appreciated either way.

2. This next piece is a long-teased, long-delayed first instalment of a lookback at the Thai cave rescue of 2018, and in particular the saga of Elon Musk and his mini rescue submarine. Though telling that story properly involves setting loads of context, so the whole thing is some 10,000 words plus footnotes, serving as a raw window into the rescue that’s never been available in one place before. Given the length, you’ll find a robust TLDR summary at the top.

This piece has consumed a big chunk of my life and focus for the last 5+ years. My research partner and I have invested well over 1,000 hours into reconstructing the rescue end-to-end, mostly for the goal of highlighting how future rescues and future coverage of rescues could be improved. Having at least this chapter of it off our backs will be an enormous relief, and I very much look forward to getting back into a more regular cadence of much less sprawling investigations.

My deep thanks to all who’ve stuck with me along the way. I’ve played with different formats lately (eg. daily posts vs longform features), and am eager for all feedback on what y’all feel gives you the most value.