Tony Stubblebine

CEO @ Medium. Early Twitter user, like really, really early. Some people call me Coach Tony. Partner is Sarah. Dog is Eloise.

Medium: https://coachtony.medium.com

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npub1lu828ffrx0pgj6kn7dppknn5qfy0yz5m9qg35vl8gwyuzm26j6vquumnj4

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[email protected]

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nprofile1qqs07r4r553n8s5fdtflxssmfe6qyj8jp2djsyg6x0n58zwpd4dfdxqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsr9mvnw

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npub1lu828ffrx0pgj6kn7dppknn5qfy0yz5m9qg35vl8gwyuzm26j6vquumnj4

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Last Notes

2026-04-29 02:04:38 UTC

New post about how combining AI-assisted writing tools with morning pages has changed my productivity system. The morning pages are transformed by AI into a todo list, which then becomes a day-long journal. It's mindfulness meets productivity.
https://medium.com/p/48a7c76af7a1

2026-04-26 14:13:39 UTC

The thing about the WHCD shooting is that the Straight of Hormuz isn’t going to be open this year and the Epstein Files still haven’t been released.

2026-04-20 21:47:00 UTC

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it’s been consistently good enough to work from. AI generated summaries of your own writing for your own use are pretty useful because you don’t get fooled by mistakes.

2026-04-19 19:56:59 UTC

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This is the prompt I use:
Make a task list of any things that I said I needed or wanted to do in the current note plus any unfinished tasks from yesterday's journal. Format it as a task list. If possible, write the tasks in terms of first step followed by the goal. It's ok to guess at the first step.
#writing #morningpages #productivity #promptengineering

2026-04-19 19:56:19 UTC

I've been typing morning pages for 17 minutes every day. Then I added one AI prompt that turns them into my daily todo list. Now I do them every day. Self-care sticks when it feels productive.

2026-01-29 20:04:28 UTC

This is what we said inside
@npub1j4h…rnsr in order to give space for people to participate in tomorrow's national strike.
https://media.me.dm/media_attachments/files/115/980/175/931/014/257/original/c9a08756cbc4b22e.png
https://media.me.dm/media_attachments/files/115/980/176/304/177/448/original/effc5fd990047453.png
https://media.me.dm/media_attachments/files/115/980/176/707/256/019/original/c22387c4cd895d33.png
https://media.me.dm/media_attachments/files/115/980/177/211/145/202/original/4731b864bb0639af.png

2025-11-11 19:05:24 UTC

This is the most useful reaction I've seen to 37signals moving off the cloud to dedicated servers.
#aws #cloud
https://medium.com/@tobrien/leaving-the-cloud-isnt-for-everyone-b6520d55c41f

2025-11-11 19:04:47 UTC

Gotta love the art behind a good reframe or spin. This piece on prosperity theology is excellent in that regard. Turns out words can mean anything!
#religion
https://medium.com/science-and-critical-thinking/jesus-said-help-the-poor-evangelicals-heard-buy-a-lake-house-77478b1a4d1d

2025-11-11 19:03:59 UTC

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Trains run on time. Talked to a lot of locals about healthcare--it's both free and if you want to pay out of pocket, cheap. One of our expat friends paid $250 for an MRI just because she wanted the peace of mind. Streets are clean.
Mostly though, it's a special feeling to be surrounded by people that are healthy, educated, and doing well.

2025-11-11 19:03:34 UTC

There's the red pill and the blue pill, but what's the pill where you visit Europe and see everything they get for their higher taxes?

2025-08-28 15:43:12 UTC

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this is my first.

2025-07-13 01:24:33 UTC

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Me too! We think we can be a partner to you for a long time.

2025-05-30 03:42:16 UTC

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well it was before my time and I've never once heard the perspective of the pro union side. So I can't speak to it fairly and probably shouldn't even if I could.

2025-05-29 01:03:01 UTC

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there was never union busting, which is illegal, and we continue to care successfully about following employment law.

2025-05-28 17:50:26 UTC

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Last thing, I often think people over estimate how political a site is, certainly their estimation of us.
In a normal world, Medium's sweet spot is non-content-producers documenting their lives, especially their professional lives.
That's just not very political unless politics veers into refuting the expert knowledge of 99% of scientists & economists.

2025-05-28 17:03:04 UTC

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I never got any sense of media agenda from Ben in the tiny bit of overlap or in the tales of company history.
But even if so, they have no say now and if based on other investments probably have a small financial incentive for Medium to fail.

2025-05-28 17:01:58 UTC

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Yeah, that all started changing over the last few years and I can give you an official update.
A) there are zero VCs on the board right now or with rights to appoint a board seat.
B) I took over in 2022 and Ben left before I had my first board meeting. Kevin had left long before that.
C) we did a full recap in April 2023 and at that point A16Z lost a lot of their equity position and lost all of their preferred stock (converted to common).

2025-05-18 15:05:54 UTC

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Also, FWIW, I did some work behind the scenes to help Mastodon.
1. Used the Medium founder's Twitter cred to get the press looking here, "Twitter founders embrace Mastodon."
2. Helped one of the Federation non-profits wrangle funding out of Meta.
3. Wrote a letter of reference for a key person to immigrate.
So we support where we can, just not on the tech side.

2025-05-18 15:03:05 UTC

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Regarding Medium implementing ActivityPub. I've lost track of my canonical post on this, but I just personally hate the use case. I get that this isn't universal.
I think social media platforms are separate communities with separate community norms and that syndicating from one into another is offensive.
If a Medium author wants their stories here they should create a post and wrap the link with some context.

2025-05-18 14:59:38 UTC

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But now I think it's shaken out fine. X, Threads, and BSky are going to be the big town squares. Mastodon will be smaller but the communities that are here will be stronger.
Thinking to our writers--big fish in a small pond is a good strategy for them. They'd all be better off looking for strong community.

2025-05-18 14:58:08 UTC

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We were (and continue to be) pretty targeted in what we do here because we aren't that big.
I'd say the main product goal was to bring Medium writers into the Mastodon community.
That was a time when there weren't any twitter alternatives.
Lately we've been seeing how it would all shake out. I knew that Mastodon was for sale for at least six months before it got announced and the lack of interest really paralyzed me wanting to be here.

2025-04-15 04:13:53 UTC

Medium is a home for the intellectually curious — people that are driven to expand their understanding of the world. And for curious people, diversity isn’t a threat, it’s a strength.
https://blog.medium.com/yes-to-a-diverse-community-3f72df3c2ff9

2025-03-24 13:51:48 UTC

The landscape of external traffic has flipped around in the last few years. Here's a viral post that slayed on Threads, and did pretty well on BSky, but didn't get anything from formerly important aggregators like Pocket.
https://media.me.dm/media_attachments/files/114/217/731/102/837/380/original/e24b76fe2c74c42d.png

2025-03-24 12:55:41 UTC

The WSJ basically runs an all day news ticker of ways Trump is bad for the US economy. Voice of the resistance?
https://media.me.dm/media_attachments/files/114/217/513/018/329/208/original/19be59787ffdb40b.jpeg

2024-08-21 19:05:07 UTC

My keynote from Medium Day. It was overall a pretty positive message but I also didn't shy away from what's broken on the Internet.
https://blog.medium.com/state-of-medium-c54d1706a9b4

2024-08-19 02:40:44 UTC

Do you remember when hover boards were a thing? I watched this guy board a flight on one in 2015.
https://media.me.dm/media_attachments/files/112/986/372/119/682/907/original/942b5858c1e933f2.jpeg

2024-08-17 17:59:41 UTC

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That's a weird way to display that but if you read it top to bottom, moving from monthly to annual drops the price from $60 to $50. That's our standard price. Then 20% off is $40. As displayed in the bill today.