Hi, I’m Nick. There’s a small chance you know me from Twitter, and a somewhat less-small chance you know me from the essays I’ve left scattered around the internet. Or maybe we met in an abandoned Serbian slaughterhouse many years ago. In any case, I hope that you’ll enjoy The Floater.
The name of this newsletter may or may not be interesting to you, but here’s a quick explanation anyway:
The floater is the weirdest, most delightful shot in basketball. Unlike a straightforward dunk, floaters come from bizarre angles. They take unusual trajectories. They always look like they’re going to miss, until they go in the bucket. Floaters are beloved by the short, the small, and the (relatively) unathletic. Sometimes they make you laugh, and sometimes they make you question your sanity.
That is more or less the vibe of this newsletter. Each Thursday, I’ll be lobbing up an oddball essay in the hopes that some of you will find it interesting. One week you might get a short piece about leftist politics. The next could be several thousand words about the misery of following the Minnesota Timberwolves. Or maybe it would be something about the scam of scuba diving certifications, or the magic of house cats.
The Floater is completely free, now and for the foreseeable future. Right now, I wouldn’t pay for the privilege of reading it, so I see no reason why anyone else should. I hope at some point in the future that will change, but that’s a story for a different day.
Clever readers may note that “floater” is also a nickname for a buoyant turd. In the event this newsletter turns out to be shit, I figured that would make telling the story of its failure more amusing.
On that note, I hope you’ll consider signing up. What you’ll find in The Floater is too strange to exist elsewhere.