Updating the Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence is considered to be one of the most important documents in human history. Not only was it the seminal document in the political formation of the United States, it also was arguably the first time that a nation was expressly formulated with an understanding of the essential nature of human rights, despite not living up to it. It inspired many more rebellions against tyranny around the world in places as far removed as Vietnam and Haiti, and continues to inform our understanding of the relationship between a people and their government.

However, while its syntax is beautiful, it also no longer rings true to everyone who reads it. This is both because of our updated understanding of who political rights should be applied to (all human beings), and because not every reader is familiar with the assumptions and meanings inherent in the eighteenth century English of its writers. I don’t think we should literally update a historical document, but I do think it’s important to be clear about what the Declaration means to us today.

Here is the language in the Declaration’s most famous section:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Here is my interpretation of the Declaration’s most famous section in the simplest language that can represent what it means to me in today’s context, and no simpler:

We believe that all people should be treated equally under the law. There are universal human rights including, but not limited to, the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Government exists to ensure these rights. Government’s only legitimate power comes from the people it governs. Governments that infringe on human rights or derive their power from a source other than the people, are illegitimate. It is the right and duty of people to replace such governments.

This is my personal interpretation of the Declaration. This is what it means to me today. And it’s how I will parse it for my children. Maybe I have some details wrong and I’ve changed some of its intent. But I think the spirit is right and I think the language will be very easy for them to understand and contextualize for the modern world.

Building a Local Newsletter

One year ago, I launched BTV Daily, a daily email newsletter that delivers news, events, top social media posts, and other items of local interest to subscribers in the Burlington, Vermont area. The newsletter is largely automated, although I write a short daily blurb in a section called “Dave’s Corner.” BTV Daily is a hobby, but one that I take quite seriously because it provides real value to its subscribers. I know this because for the one-year launch anniversary this week, I put out a subscriber survey, and I was impressed to find how many people really appreciate the newsletter.

This post contains details about how I built BTV Daily and how I’ve grown it from 0 subscribers to (a still fairly meager) 296 subscribers (as of today). Keep in mind that Burlington, Vermont is a city of just 40,000 people. Also, keep in mind that the newsletter is not (yet?) monetized. In fact, it costs me money. This is a passion project, not a business.

Generating Content

To see what a copy of the newsletter looks like, you can checkout the archive section of the BTV Daily website. The sections in the newsletter are Weather, This Day in Vermont History, News, Events, Top Twitter Posts, Dave’s Corner, Latest SeeClickFix Issues, and Quote of the Day.

Technical Setup

BTV Daily is generated by a Python script that runs via a cron job on a Raspberry Pi in my home. At 7:45 AM each day, the Pi connects to GitHub to pull my latest blurb for Dave’s Corner. At 8 AM each day, the main script executes. It calls various APIs to generate BTV Daily’s content, which is amalgamated into an HTML file that is passed to MailChimp to deliver to our subscribers. I use no images in the newsletter to decrease load time and avoid being marked as spam. I do make extensive use of emoji instead. Unfortunately, I still get erroneously marked as spam by gmail’s spam filter for some users despite the fact that this is a subscribe-only newsletter (I don’t manually add any users).

Weather

The day’s weather information is generated using the Dark Sky API. An avid reader asked me to include sunset time in it, and I think that was a very nice addition. Apple has purchased Dark Sky, but their API will keep working through the end of 2021.

This Day in Vermont History

I added this section about halfway through the year after receiving permission from the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation to use their database (which they sent me as a Word document). This was, of course, very nice of them. I wrote a script to reformat the database into a Python dictionary.

News

When I first started BTV Daily, I used the RSS feed of The Burlington Free Press to generate the news content. However, much of the content from them is paywalled, and users complained. So, I moved to the Bing News API, which Microsoft provides a Python library for accessing. I carefully calibrated the local sources to request stories from, the keywords to use to get Burlington specific stories, and other settings. I also added the NY Times as a source, so that when Burlington is in the national news, relevant stories will come up. This did lead to some Bernie Sanders political stories making their way into the newsletter even though they were not really about Burlington (sometimes stories about him will mention his hometown of Burlington in passing).

Events

The newsletter links to Burlington area events from Seven Days, hopefully driving some traffic to this venerable publication.

Top Twitter Posts

I use the Twitter API to search for the top five tweets in the past 24 hours that have the most favorites that use hashtag #BTV or #BurlingtonVT. #BTV was unfortunately getting me tweets from non-Burlington sources, but I later discovered that the API has an option to limit searched tweets to a radius around a zip code. I use a 250 mile radius of Burlington and it works well.

Dave’s Corner

I write Dave’s Corner in a text file that is labeled by date in a format the script looks for. I can include HTML tags. I should probably put the work in to include markdown support. Occasionally, my wife will write a blurb and the section changes from Dave’s Corner to Rebecca’s Corner if the first line is “Rebecca.” My blurbs are usually observations about Burlington or my life.

SeeClickFix Issues

SeeClickFix is a tool for citizens to report local issues to municipal authorities. I have some concerns about the fact that people can be virtually anonymous on the site (they can act almost as a secret police). By exposing issues to the general populace through the newsletter, hopefully they are getting more scrupulous attention. I report the SeeClickFix issues of the last 24 hours via the SeeClickFix API. They are released under a non-commercial license. If I monetize the newsletter in the future, I suppose I may need to remove this section, or is it fair use?

Other APIs

I use the MailChimp API for actually sending the newsletter. I use the WikiQuotes API for generating a random local quote at the end of the newsletter. Unfortunately, the only non-political and non-controversial figures from Burlington on Wikiquotes are Ethan Allen and John Dewey. These quotes get pretty boring, pretty quickly.

Getting Subscribers

I got my first twenty subscribers through a Reddit post. I got another twenty or so subscribers by mentioning the newsletter on a Vermont email social network called Front Porch Forum. Several people in the one-year anniversary survey said I should post more about the newsletter on Front Porch Forum, but believe it or not the advertising rates on Front Porch Forum are exorbitant. And I don’t want to post regularly there without paying for advertising since that doesn’t feel right.

The rest of the ~300 subscribers have come through Bing ads, Facebook ads, Twitter ads, and word of mouth. I also tried a few physical advertisements on bulletin boards around the city. It ends up costing me about $1/subscriber when using Facebook/Twitter ads. I guess that’s my “customer acquisition cost.” Since this is a hobby project that I enjoy, I don’t mind that I’ve spent a few hundred dollars on it.

Keeping Subscribers

The vast majority of people who subscribe to BTV Daily stay subscribed. The numbers show that over the first year, about 80% of people who subscribe don’t unsubscribe. I try to be responsive to individual emails I get from subscribers. Several improvements to the newsletter have been a result of reader feedback. About 40–50% of subscribers open any given edition of the newsletter within 24 hours.

The vast majority of subscribers live in Burlington or one of the surrounding communities. Once in a while someone from out of state will accidentally subscribe and they will realize their mistake and unsubscribe. The most infuriating thing is when someone unsubscribes after being on the list for months and marks the reason to Mailchimp as “spam.” This happens rarely, but how can a newsletter that you personally signed up for and read for months be spam?

Looking Forward

I would like to add additional sections to BTV Daily. One section in particular that I am interested in adding is job postings in the Burlington area. I contacted Craigslist legal for permission two times, one year apart, and nobody got back to me. I applied to become an Indeed.com publisher almost a month ago and never heard back as well.

I would like to grow the newsletter to 1,000 subscribers (2.5% of the population of Burlington proper). I am thinking of showing a progress bar in the newsletter. Perhaps that would encourage subscribers to tell their friends. Or perhaps it would discourage them because they thought the newsletter had thousands of subscribers and it only has ~300.

If I reach the 1,000 subscriber goal, I may try to monetize the newsletter to at least cover its advertising costs by allowing people to place local ads. I would not be opposed to making a profit either! But it’s not my primary concern right now.

If you have questions or comments about the newsletter, feel free to reach out to me at newsletter at btvdaily dot com