As asked with other comments:
- interactive commenting with notifications?
- video ad delivery for content gating?
- simple (to the point of obscuring the blogness) sign up and posting?
Show me a site doing this (with rss or without) and I'll be happy to evangelize it!
The point of RSS is that it works just as well when your site is just a static site that you hand-edit the HTML of and push to some cheapo VPS using FTP. (Or, more realistically for the HN crowd, when you use a static-site generator where your CI pushes the result to an S3-API-compatible object-storage-bucket fronted with an edge cache like CloudFlare.)
In such cases, there is no backend to do any of what you're describing. But it's still a blog.
Note that this backend-less approach is actually quite common with blogs; it's one large reason that client-JS-driven embedded commenting systems like Discourse are popular with blogs.
I certainly understand not wanting them! But I also deeply understand the money that can be made from them. And if that money is going to the owner of the content, rather than some larger corporate entity giving them a small cut, I'm very happy to support that paradigm (even if I, personally, would avoid as much video ads as possible).
Edited to add:
As far as write.as, I like what they've done! I just want more rich content, rather than just text. That's kind of RSS's deal, too. Only text, all the time (exceptions make the rule). There's value in sharing all kinds of content, rather than just text.
Interesting. With Hey Homepage I'm emphasizing image/photo feeds, because only text is a little boring. Providing video is a bridge too far for me now, but with some simple rules like no-autoplay it would be nice to add.
Regarding your request for (interactive) commenting allover this thread (just joking), Hey Homepage will soon enable simple and accessible commenting features (in the background based on simple email).
A second button on your website beside the "RSS" button that says "RSS but with fancy features." when you click on it, it is the same content on your blog but via a substack newsletter.
I believe that has all the features you listed as wants.
I am kind of half joking but people do have very specific ways they want to consume content even if it is the same content.
Show me a site doing this (with rss or without) and I'll be happy to evangelize it!