themadhoneyguide.com

Monthly

The editor's note

Once a month, two or three paragraphs from Rukmini Shrestha on what we published, what we got wrong, and one thing in the research that changed our minds. No promotions, because we have nothing to promote.

We have sent it eleven times. The list has 4,180 subscribers and we have never rented, sold or shared it — the only people who see the addresses are the two editors who send it. Every issue is archived publicly, so you can read the last one before deciding.

Subscribe

One email a month. Unsubscribe from the link at the foot of any issue — one click, no questions, no “are you sure”. How we handle your address →

A phone showing an email newsletter, held above a kitchen table in morning light.
Issue 11. “What the rat studies actually show, and why we rewrote three paragraphs.”

Sign-up component — every state

The same inline form in all five states it can reach. Note that “already subscribed” uses neutral copy and no .inp.err, because the reader did nothing wrong — and the wording never confirms whether a given address is on the list.

Component spec
01

Default

One email a month. Unsubscribe in one click.

The baseline. Label visible, button live, no validation yet.
02

Invalid email

That address is missing a domain ending — did you mean shrestha.com?

Validated on blur, not on keystroke. The button stays enabled.
03

Already subscribed

If that address is on our list, it is already set up — nothing more to do. The next issue goes out on 1 September.

Resend the confirmation · Unsubscribe instead

Deliberately not an error. The wording never confirms whether the address is on the list, so it cannot be used to test whether someone is subscribed.
04

Submitting

Field disabled, spinner in the button, width held so the row does not jump.
05

Check your inbox

Double opt-in

Check your inbox — one more click

We have sent a confirmation link to tomas.kaya@example.org. Click it and you are on the list. We use this two-step process deliberately: without it, anybody could sign anybody else up to a publication about a poisonous substance, and that is not a thing we are willing to make possible.

If it does not arrive

  • Give it five minutes — we send from a small server and it is not instant.
  • Check the promotions or spam folder, and mark it “not spam” so the monthly issue reaches you.
  • Still nothing? Send it again or use a different address.

The link expires after 48 hours. If you do nothing, your address is deleted from the pending table automatically — we do not keep unconfirmed addresses.

Double opt-in is not optional here. Without it the sign-up is a harassment vector. The confirmation link lands on /newsletter/confirm, which is a real page with header and footer, not a bare white screen.

Where this component appears

Placement rules

End of every article

Inline, single field, one line of frequency copy. Never as a pop-up, never as an interstitial, never on a timer — if the writing was not good enough to earn a sign-up, an overlay will not fix it.

Footer band

Compact variant: label visually hidden, placeholder carries the field name, button reads “Subscribe”. Present on every page except this one, where it would be duplicated.

Safety articles

Suppressed. On a page about poisoning symptoms, a sign-up form is an intrusion. The emergency routing block sits where the form would otherwise be.

Someone unwell? Index