Moved

(if you don’t have an rss reader yet just make a feedly account, it takes about one whole minute, if you decide to use a different reader later you can export your whole list, it’s fine)

i’m gonna use strikethrough to indicate the text you need to replace and also include examples of feeds that seem to work

A General Rule

on almost any website look for the icon that looks like this

that’s the button that means ‘the rss feed is here’

Tumblr

just add /rss to the end of literally any blog’s url, including tags

i.e. unpretty.tumblr.com/rss or unpretty.tumblr.com/tagged/original/rss

now you can Leave Tumblr Forever and still follow blogs until such a time as tumblr implodes in earnest

Dreamwidth

use username.dreamwidth.org/data/rss

i.e. gallusrostromegalus.dreamwidth.org/data/rss

WordPress

if it’s hosted on WordPress.com, just add /feed to the end of the url

if it’s self-hosted (i think around 20% of people who have their own website use wordpress to host it, i know i do bc it’s easy as sin) also just add /feed to the end the url

i.e. en.blog.wordpress.com/feed or kittyunpretty.com/feed

ArtStation

use username.artstation.com/rss

i.e. beccahallstedt.artstation.com/rss

Mastodon

just add .rss to the end of someone’s profile url

i.e. cybre.space/@kittyunpretty.rss

deviantART

use backend.deviantart.com/rss.xml?q=gallery%3Ausername

i.e. backend.deviantart.com/rss.xml?q=gallery%3Aarvalis

YouTube

this one’s a goddamn pain in the dick because you need to find the channel id first

in general youtube channels have a nonsense url like youtube.com/channel/abunchofbullshit

you have to take that last bit and plug it into youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=abunchofbullshit

i.e. youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCbpMy0Fg74eXXkvxJrtEn3w

Tapas

this is mostly handy for webcomics that were hosting on tumblr and crossposting, i think? i don’t know how tapas works for creators tbqh. anyway they’ve actually got a button at the top when you go to the comic page.

the one between ‘add to library’ and the paper airplane will give you the rss feed

LINE Webtoons

ditto wrt tumblr-hosted webcomics, and also having a button

the button to the left of the one that says +subscribe will get you the rss feed

Twitter & Instagram

these are the only two sites i’m including that don’t have native rss support, just because so goddamn many people have literally no other web presence at all for some reason

twitter used to have rss feeds but killed them, and i don’t think instagram ever had them. you have to use workarounds for these, and a lot of them end up getting killed, like TwitRSS.me. fetchrss seems to work okay but it costs money. if you pay for inoreader they’ve got built-in support for following twitter accounts but that’s not a practical solution for most people.

right now i use rsshub.app/platform/user/username

i.e. rsshub.app/twitter/user/dasharez0ne

Aw, I’m so glad you like them! I’m very fond of my little ones. 

Instagram is a little too close to the Facebook-Pinterest model that wants to link your brickspace and online lives as closely as possible, so I’m not comfortable putting the Cryptids on there. I have a personal Insta that I was using for a specific purpose, to surprise my parents with because Mum’s always like “I don’t have enough photos of you”, and my stepfather found it because Insta linked itself to my facebook, found him on my facebook, found his insta through his facebook, and then told him I was on Insta. Thanks, Insta. 

Yyyyyeah except they’ve already:

purged the ‘chronic pain’ tag

purged the ‘top surgery’ tag

made ‘trans’ tag inaccessible to non-functional

deleted a bunch of chronic illness blogs

deleted a bunch of chronic pain and chronic illness posts from blogs they’ve left (like mine)

This isn’t just about ‘oh no you can’t look at people fucking anymore’ (even though lots of sex workers are losing their means of supporting themselves). This goes a lot further, with a lot more chilling effects. 

Someone else reported a picture of a cartoon scorpion with a hard hat on being flagged as pornography. Tagging things as ‘queer’ or ‘gay’ gets them flagged NSFW. (Hey, guess what I’d been tagging my t-shirts, because they’re pride stuff? Oh right. Queer. Gay. Pride.)

Like…that happened. And it took nearly a decade for the fandom spaces to recover and stabilize and to get to the point where LGBT content creators could host their content without being told “you’re not welcome here” and I’m just sitting here, watching as youtube demonetizes LGBT content creators, and Facebook flags up LGBT ads as “inappropriate” and now tumblr is going through the queer and gay tags and just mass blanketing it as inappropriate, while actual pornbots and nazis wind up in my recommended feed.

Like I am uncomfortable y’all. I am looking around at everything I’ve built and all the friends I’ve made and I know we’re all looking for the next safe space to jump to while hoping we don’t lose each other overnight like “the olden days” where you’d wake up and your fave blogger was just gone.

And usually it was because they’d drawn or written something as simple yet explicit as a kiss. It was just the wrong kind of kiss.

It ain’t over till it’s over, and this bisexual spoonie will be here until the lights go out. They’re going to have to come to my house and pry my phone out my hands to get me to stop shitposting. And hey, by then there will likely be new spaces to branch out into and cling to each other. It won’t be the exact same mind you, but fandom spaces and online communities have always been migratory in nature. We moved from fanzines swapped around in coffee shops, to coffeeshop AUs online. We’ll survive whatever the next jump is.

It’s just bullshit that we’re being forced to prepare to make the leap at all. But that’s what happens with corporate run sites in the end. Sadly.

But we’re not quite at doomsday yet, and even after the changes roll out on the 17th, we’ll still have a ways to go before the site is entirely gone. Hell, even LJ is still running….

*My computer quit as I was three-quarters of the way through this post, so please excuse any remaining bitterness that slips through. It’s my computer being an asshole and making me completely restart even though I had the post copied on my clipboard, not any of the wonderful participants.

I hosted the July 2017 Carnival of Aces (hosted by @asexualagendablog) with the theme Then & Now.

For anyone who missed it, a blogging carnival is a blogging event where bloggers chime in and all blog about the same subject. The Carnival of Aces is a monthly blogging carnival with topics revolving around asexuality. If anyone wants to host, it’s pretty easy and doesn’t take up much time! It’s easier to come up with a theme than you may think. You can sign up over at asexualagenda on wordpress! Just leave your name/blog link and the month you want to host in the comments! Volunteers always welcome.

Without any further ado, let’s see what people blogged about this November for “Then and Now”!

.

@mobydickbutt wrote about their personal journey and relationship with asexuality and coming out, as well as asexuality in media.

@demiandproud poignantly talked about their own sense of pride, coming out, and representation.

@thenoteswhichdonotfit shared their growth into ace seniority, what this means, and if it should really be a tangible concept.

@the-wandering-avarian discussed their personal perspective in watching the ace community change over time due to both inside and outside impacts.

Coyote on @theacetheist noted the change in online platforms for the ace community over the years and personal reasons for these changes.

@historicallyace expertly detailed the language of discourse over time and the conversations and events that would be healthier to give more attention to.

@acubedblog told of how time could personally make a difference in sense of identity and coming out. TW: ableist language

@Satsuma gave a nice breakdown of the history of asexual visibility/platforming and representation in media.

Perfect Number on @tellmewhytheworldisweird conveyed her story on how Christianity can impact one’s view of asexuality and inhibit self-acceptance.

@thearoacesafespace reported how asexual visibility, representation, and platforms have grown over the years.

Isaac on @heterogen imparted their view on how the ace community in Spain has grown.

@controlledabandon recounted their journey of questioning, doubting, and identifying their sexuality in timeline fashion.

@rotten-zucchinis relayed the discursive language of asexuality and how things change, the more they stay the same.

And, finally, I posted about exclusionism over the years from an unnamed attack to a named front, as well as the difficulty of coming out after so many years of pride.

1. Because your cat is able to see in ultraviolet light, your cat can see more stars in the night sky than you. Cats may even use these stars to navigate by.

2. Similarly, your cat can detect hidden bottles of tonic water far faster than you can. Some say that cats can also detect spirits unnoticed by humans. This means that, at least in theory, your cat could make a gin and tonic and bring it to you far faster than you could make one yourself. Of course, your cat will not do this. Your cat is not interested in your comfort.

3. Cats are able to see the tiny ghosts of unmade cakes, which float around warm places trying to get people to bake them out of purgatory. Occasionally, a kindly-minded cat may give them a good kneading in the hope of raising them to someone’s attention.

4. Cats can see themselves, even in the dark, on the floor, in the crook of the winding stairs. With their eyes closed, they can still see some part of themselves. Thus secure that they have been noticed by the most important being in the room, cats sleep like the despots of newly-formed micronations and have delicious dreams.

5. Your cat is also able to see the flaws in your theory. However, your cat is not interested in providing assistance to improve the theory. No, your cat just wants to sit there and look superior.

6. Cats are able to see the passage of high-energy cosmic particles through a room. Sometimes, your cat will attempt to act as a particle detector by leaping to catch them. The presence of any cat toy nearby is entirely co-incidental. Interestingly, the Square Kilometre Cat Array (SKCA) paticle detector is now in the construction stage somewhere South of Bogota and should be providing us with fascinating results about local astrophysical events very shortly.

7. Cats are able to see people who really need a cat sitting on them. Scientists do not know which criteria they use to make this judgement. For many cats, a person’s strong dislike of cats qualifies them for a particularly persistent sitting-on.

8. Cats are able to see the other person’s point of view, they just do not agree.

Lauren woke up one morning with the ability to delete any comment, from anyone, anywhere on the internet. An amazing power, of course, but one that Lauren knew had to be used carefully. She consulted friends, scholars, and the data wonks at her work to try and create an ethical code for her Deletion, but her studies took her to some dark places…and she may have accidentally, temporarily, committed a murder.

That escalated quickly.

Fortunately, her mistakes can be fixed by the UnDeleter, a woman named Eppie. Less fortunately, Eppie the UnDeleter is the most beautiful woman Lauren’s ever met, and she thinks Lauren is a walking dumpster fire. So goes true love.

But both Lauren and Eppie have a bigger problem: there’s another Deleter out there, and they aren’t nearly as worried about ethics, or making the world a better place. In fact, they’d like to Delete Lauren, if they could. Which means Lauren will need all the help she can get in taking them out first, including the assistance of her sidekick, a frying-pan wielding teenager named Tanya. But Lauren’s code of ethics, while blurry, is pretty clear on one thing: no more deleting people.

Which is going to make neutralizing another Deleter sort of difficult….

So, I talked about Don’t Read The Comments a few months ago; the book concerns a hapless Millennial lesbian granted singular magical powers over the internet. Now that it’s finished and the first draft has had a quick polish, I’m about to start editing it hardcore. And I’m going to ask for your help!

Many years ago I came up with the Extribulum process; Extribulum means “out from the threshing machine” in Latin. Essentially, I post an original novel, one chapter every few days, and you not only get to read it for free but also comment with suggestions, questions, and constructive criticism in order to help make the book better and more reader-friendly. Eventually, the book will be self-published through lulu.com in both print and ePub formats, and made available as a free PDF through Project Gutenberg. 

At one point I will especially be asking for thoughts and opinions from my Jewish readers, since there’s a one scene, not yet written, in which I want to explore Jewish viewpoints on the ethical question at the heart of the book.

Beginning this Friday, August 3rd, I’ll be posting a chapter to AO3 every few days, and linking to those chapters here and on Dreamwidth; you can also subscribe to the story on AO3, which will email you notifications when a new chapter goes up. I encourage you to come read and comment along as we go.

Mary Vaux Walcott was born in 1860 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Walcott is best remembered for her watercolor paintings of wildflowers. She would travel to difficult terrain in the Canadian Rockies in search of  flowering species to paint. Walcott’s work can be found in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.