I agree that Dr Mehmet is an exemplary individual and Illumination and Illumination curated are excellent publications but there is a crucial point of difference here.

I am a regular writer for the Ascent and the standard it is looking for is much much higher and they publish a maximum of 10 or 15 articles a day.

The mission of Illumination and Illumination-curated is to support writers and that is something I admire about Dr Mehmet's mission. Kudos to the editorial team too!

Followers isn't the only metric when it comes to how much reach an article can gain through a publication.

With big pubs like The Startup, The Ascent, P.S I Love You, Better HUmans etc. they have a high selection bar and publish very less articles. This means that every article gets adequate reach instead of just being lost in a sea of articles!

Hope you get my point! This takes away nothing from Illumination. The missions and purpose are just different.