This week, Res Ipsa hit a milestone in reaching 100,000,000 views on the blog. We have used these moments to give thanks for our many regular readers around the world and share our traffic data to give you an idea of the current profile of readers around the world. We don’t have a running data page, so these periodic posts let our community see the traffic profile of our blog.
As always, I want to offer special thanks to Darren Smith, who has continued to help manage the blog. I also want to thank our dedicated editors, Kristin Oren and Hartwell Harrison, who continue their amazing work proofing posts daily to remove my embarrassing typos. Finally, I would like to thank our regular readers for their continued support and contributions. This blog is a community, and this milestone is a testament to each of our daily readers.
This blog was created roughly 20 years ago during a family vacation to North Carolina. While staying at a beach house in 2007, I was on the phone with my editor at USA Today, who urged me again to join other columnists on their blog. I was entirely unfamiliar with blogs and resisted. As my family can attest, I am one of the most habit-bound, tech-challenged creatures on the planet.
Joining us at the beach that year were my wife’s family, who were already considerable figures on the Internet with great success in the areas of politics, academia, and business. When I got off the call, they called me into the living room and presented me with my new blog, which they had registered and designed during the call. Res Ipsa was born.
From that day, the blog seemed to take deep roots and grow steadily until it was one of the most visited legal blogs. I hear regularly from reporters, members of Congress, judges and others who follow the blog and it gives me a great sense of pride in the heterogeneous makeup of our virtual community.
So here is our current profile:
As of this morning, we have 23, 070 posts.
With over 400 posts, we also have over 1,612,200 comments. In the interest of full transparency, we are having a debate over what to do about trolls who are impersonating others in the comments, including false postings from me (I generally leave the comment sections for our community and do not post comments). This is obviously a small number of unbalanced individuals or paid posters who seek to bog down sites or disrupt discourse. There are no great options, which is why many sites have eliminated their comment sections. As a free speech blog, I have resisted that option, but we continue to debate how to address malicious trolls, but their increased presence is a sign of the growing influence of this blog.
We have also continued our steady rise on X with roughly 1.1 million followers. We have over 26,000 people who follow us on WordPress and by direct email (which you can subscribe to with the box on the right side of the blog home page).
In the last month, our ten biggest international sources for readers came from:
- United States
- China
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- Australia
- Germany
- Netherlands
- Russia
- New Zealand
- France
The top five posts in terms of readership in the last 30 days were:
- The Purge: Princeton Faculty Reach Perfect Zero in Support for Republicans
- Palestinian Activist Defaces Churchill Statue and Boasts About it in Court…British Jury Finds Him Not Guilty
- The Secret to “Sleeping Well”: A Response to Kevin Reddington
- “The Funniest Thing”: Academic Jokes About Celebrating the “Kirkiversary” by Assassinating Nick Shirley
So that’s the update. I cannot thank our regulars enough for their support of the blog. This is an expanding vibrant community and it is a great pleasure to see our community expanding around the world. I particularly appreciate most of our readers remaining civil and respectful to others.
It remains a great honor to serve as the host of this blog and to discuss issues that range from the world-shaking to the merely wacky. Thank you for coming by each day to check in and contribute your voice to our community.
Now on to the 1,000,000,000!
Congratulations! You do a fine job and keep me and all who read you well informed! Thank you.
Congratulations!
Darn! I was the 99,999,999th person to view this great blog. I’ll try again as we approach 200,000,000.
I am most grateful for this blog – so thank JT! Your writings have keep me informed and also enlightened! Thanks!
Congratulations Professor.
When reading a comment section, I skip over the ones slinging logical fallacies and personal attacks. Sooooo boring. If there are too many, I move on. Some comment sections have a like/dislike button that let you sort from most liked to most disliked rather than chronological order; that system often seems to help weed out the chaff.
I really enjoy this blog, but the comments section is a disaster. It is not yet as bad as, say, “Zero Hedge”, but it is usually unreadable within a few posts from the beginning.
One very simple change would be welcome: No one should be allowed to use “Anonymous” as their screen name. If a unique name were required, at least I could follow who was hurling childish insults at whom.
Ditto that. I use “Anonymous”, and I really shouldn’t, but I’ll continue to do so until a unique screen name is enforced.
Which brings up a question I have long wondered about. In the US, does our First Amendment right to free speech extend to anonymous free speech? It seems like people always assume it does, but I have long noted that newspapers won’t print anonymous letters to the editor. Is that because if a newspaper prints an anonymous opinion, they are legally liable if that opinion contains falsehoods?
Congradulations.
Congrats Professor and to your team for a great site.
At least half of them are Gigi complaining about President Trump. What a moron.
Or….It’s a CIA psychological operation program. Every text sent or typed captured, every word tracked to your IP address. Like rats in the lab, every day seeking another treat, rage fueled by the dysfunction found in every story. Data analyzed for determining when and how to steer the world for the loss of individual freedom.
Well deserved for a blog with penetrating analysis.
I also want to thank our dedicated editors, Kristin Oren and Hartwell Harrison, who continue their amazing work proofing posts daily to remove my embarrassing typos.
≠≠≠
Errrr… Please forward all future articles to my email, PRIOR to publication.
You’re welcome 😁
Thanks Prof. Turley for a grand experiment in 21st century discourse. I would be happy to only post as a registered user (i.e. accountable for what I choose to say in public to fellow Americans). Seeing how this blog site is consumed by our enemy countries, I would NOT extend that courtesy. I personally don’t subscribe to 1st Amendment rights defined in the US Constitution extending to foreign nationals. I wish for the internet to be redesigned with national security against pernicious infowarfare (that means national borders) and strict law enforcement over cybercrime by moving to Trusted Actor Architecture (e.g., computer drivers licensing).
The perils of a borderless information infrastructure are yet to be maximally experienced. We’re sitting ducks for an Cyber Pearl Harbor, and nobody seems to give a whit until after it happens. Meanwhile, our best security infrastructure designers know how to redesign the internet for rule-of-law. Why don’t we have a national commission tackling this challenge?
Wow! Congratulations, Professor and team. Awesome!
Thanks for providing a good source of information and analysis – it’s a breath of fresh air these days!
Thank you for creating and continuing this amazing blog, Professor Turley. It is truly a tour de force, and a wonderful way to begin the day. I look forward to reading another of your terrific books this winter in snowy Upstate New York.
This is obviously a small number of unbalanced individuals or paid posters who seek to bog down sites or disrupt discourse.
That is a charitable way of stating it.
Suggestion: Require that commenters create an account to post, much like the majority of other blogs do, e.g. https://reason.com/volokh
Eugene Volokh is also a champion of 1A rights but the comments section on his legal block is far more civilized, i.e. commenters can mute users, creating an account minimizes one user employing scores of sockpuppets, etc.
The comments section on your blog has become a repellant to many of us.
Otherwise thanks for letting us play in your sandbox.
Thank you for the link. I created an account over there.
De nada.
I am still hoping to make it to SD in March 2027. The conference leaders extended the deadline for abstract submissions to January 19. My lab colleague and I are hoping to have respectable data by then to submit. Will keep you informed
Cheers
Sounds good. Keep me posted.
a man who claims to be a physician and scientist who does not know how to spell repellent?
who’s the real phony here?
Estovir
Are you really just a lab technician wannabe ?
King of the cut and paste ?
repellant
Also found in: Thesaurus, Medical, Idioms, Encyclopedia.
Related to repellant: insect repellant
re·pel·lent also re·pel·lant (rĭ-pĕl′ənt)
adj.
1. Inspiring aversion or distaste; repulsive. See Synonyms at hateful, offensive.
2. Resistant or impervious to a substance. Often used in combination: a water-repellent fabric.
3. Serving or tending to repel something, especially insects: a repellent spray.
n.
Something that repels, especially:
a. A substance used to repel insects.
b. A substance or treatment for making a fabric or surface impervious or resistant to something else.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/repellant.
Turley was too kind in characterizing your life of hell, which dovetails beautifully to a one of my favorite Catholic philosophers and soon to be canonized Catholic Saint, Bishop Fulton Sheen, so thank you for giving me that opportunity, Peter / Svelaz / Natacha / Gigi/ George / Sally / Wally / Esquire et al
Philosophy Of Life
….a normal person always works toward a goal or a purpose. The abnormal person looks for escape mechanisms, excuses, rationalizations in order to avoid discovering the meaning and purpose of life. That is the difference. The normal person sets for himself a target. …the abnormal person, however, is locked up within the barrel of his own ego. … But all of them were suffering from a want of the meaning and purpose of life. And not until they discover that will they ever be happy. In other words, the vast majority of people today are suffering from what might be called an existential neurosis. The anxiety and the problem of living….The answering of the question, what is it all about? Where do I go from here? Now how find it? I know what you’re thinking. Now you’re thinking, now he’s going to tell us to get down on our knees and pray to God. No I’m not. I may say that a little later on, but I’m not going to tell you that now. And why? Those who have an existential neurosis are too far away from that for the moment. I’m offering two solutions. First, go out and help your neighbor. Those who suffer from an anxiety of life do so because they live only for themselves. Their mind, their heart, each has been damned up. And all of the scum of the river of life makes of the heart and mind a kind of a garbage heap. And the easiest way out of this is to love people whom you see. If we do not love those whom we see, how can we love God whom we do not see? Visit the sick. Be kind to the poor. Help the healing of lepers. Find your neighbor. And a neighbor is someone in need. Once you do this, you begin to break out of the shell. You discover that your neighbor is not hell, as Sartre says, that your neighbor is part of yourself and is a creature of God.
https://voxarticulata.com/sermon/baf3801a-ddba-4e7e-952e-3d8625b5d3fb-philosophy-of-life-1955
you had to search real real hard for that one, didn’t you, Estovir, the holy one, the one who wants to preach and educate.
God bless your sick ego-driven soul.
https://www.askdifference.com/repellant-vs-repellent/
While I am relatively a newcomer, I have enjoyed reading your posts. It is a pleasure to have a neutral view on issues that affect us today while showing recurring ideological patterns from historical events.
As a non college educated person, I can’t figure out how I graduated from high school in ‘68, the majority of comments are also enlightening and have pushed me into new areas of learning.
Thank you
Neutral view ???
Turley???
The rest of the MAGA morons here????
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!!!!!!
Thanks for a good laugh to start the day.
Ahh, a post that is as simple as the thought process that went into it.
After reading the Turley hater below, Anon @11:41, I realized I should have said neutral political view. Free Speech is not and should not be political thus neutral.