Inside the Little Plastic Castle

( creepy images - mean students - lovely DWers )

I'm thrilled that Markdown simplifies formatting your DW posts has proved popular and helpful. I didn't explore all Markdown's features to keep it short. I regret that now. I'm drafting a "Markdown: the sequel" post with the remaining features. In a better timeline, I would have written "Markdown: the novel," integrating the sequel stuff in the first post. I want to maximize reference utility for DW users in the next decade. Three ways to do this occur to me, and I bet you have a better idea.

( Three possible plans and a poll )

Great reading today from three places.

On DW:

seperis makes me laugh really hard about living with bunnies

Bunnies can eat through anything. Even zip ties. Even dozens of zip ties. Even all the zip ties. That is how I ended up with baby bunnies in the first place. They can also jump under duress three feet at a run and two feet just because they're assholes. (One of my tiny psychopaths can do three and a half feet, catch himself halfway over the top of the play area, and shimmy over.) Rabbits also like access to small, comforting, dark spaces to hide and cuddle (each other, not me).

https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1041231.html
further background on bunny ownership: https://web.archive.org/http://seperis.tumblr.com/post/166559117285/the-bunny-files

On Granta:

Jillian Weise is a poet, performance artist, prosthetic-wearing ass-kicker. She delivers the Donna Haraway smackdown I've been waiting 20 years for:

When I tell people I am a cyborg, they often ask if I have read Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’. Of course I have read it. And I disagree with it. ( 286 wise words )

https://granta.com/common-cyborg/

I first encountered Jillian in her Tipsy Tullivan persona, as she excoriated AWP for their hostility to disabled writers:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/ucwfcyz-fipjq0u6v-fevomq/featured

To my delight, she was on one AWP 2016 panel, celebrating the 40th anniversary of her publisher BOA, reading several poems and a call to action/drinks. ( uncaptioned video )

On Captain Awkward
I subscribe to the DW captainawkward_feed

Cap addresses “Tips for staying positive when your body hates you.” from a PhD student dealing with sudden liver cancer. Cap wisely turns to the wisdom of disabled people, and offers lots of excellent suggestions.

What if I told you that you don’t have to feel positive or stay positive or be positive. Stay alive. Positive can wait.

[... snip ...]

Fight the idea that being sick is something you’re inflicting on others. You say: “I feel like I’m a drain on everyone around me and I can’t even contribute academically anymore.” This ableist framing is hurting you and other people.

Your worth is not based on how much money you earn, it is not based on how much research or scholarship you do.

http://captainawkward.com/?p=46182

I’ve just¹ learned that Ruth Badner Ginsburg, our brutally strong and smart Supreme Court justice, has a necklace she wears when she dissents from a decision the court hands down. This dissent necklace is a studded collar that stretches like a smile from one shoulder to the other, comprising 21 thumb-shaped wedges.

She wore it the day after the 2016 election.

You can buy replica pendants, earrings, tie clips etc., as well as stickers.
https://dissentpins.com/collections/dissent-collar/products/dissent-collar-sticker

Bustle has an illustrated article about RBG’s collection of “statement” accessories.
https://www.bustle.com/p/what-do-ruth-bader-ginsburgs-collars-mean-each-one-has-a-special-story-9288551

So I love oolong tea and I have exhausted all the vendors locally.

When I search online I get hundreds of results. Some are in India and China--the originators of tea! Cost is not my main criterion, but I don't want to throw money into the void.

I want a vendor who will actually ship what I ordered and that’s pretty much it.

Do you have a positive experience with an online tea vendor?

Dessa is fierce and smart and I love her music. She's a white rapper from Minneapolis on the DOOMTREE label.

https://www.dessawander.com/music/

( Links to two YouTube videos )

ETA: rydra_wong tells me Dessa is "half-Puerto Rican", not white.

ETA 2: I've now reverted my style so it no longer supports the "whispery" tags I describe below. I've frozen this post for posterity.

ETA: Ha! I thought I'd discovered a nifty workaround and instead I demonstrated how I didn't test something before I posted.

( in other words, never mind )

Let it be known that Tumblr did support awesome creativity! Particularly the 221B Baker Towers headcanon universe, where all the reboot characters are marginalized folks living in a poor housing estate. A delicious improvement on the class-bound glaring-white BBC version.

I've seen most of the creative art and writing on 221b-baker-towers Tumblr

…but just in case…

The original art manip and headcanon post, safe on AO3

https://archiveofourown.org/works/428754

Tagged Tumblr posts https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/221b+baker+towers

And on the Archive https://archiveofourown.org/tags/221B%20Baker%20Towers/works

I've been browsing the "tumblr purge" tags at latest things (as you do) and have stumbled on two wonderful resources:

For Android Users: Close to a Mobile App with Hermit

https://bluewinged-songbird.dreamwidth.org/tag/tutorial

bluewinged_songbird provides the step-by-step, with pictures!

For all of us: If you're used to Tumblr, how you do it here

https://potofsoup.dreamwidth.org/tag/dw+how-to

potofsoup has, of this writing, fourteen step-by-step tutorials, with pictures!

I learned new things, even after being here since 1-May-2009. It also made me better understand how Tumblr works.

Columbia Journalism Review is a trade magazine for journalists. Maia Szalavitz's article on "What the media gets wrong about opioids" opened my eyes wide—

The “relatable” story journalists and editors tend to seek—of a good girl or guy (usually, in this crisis, white) gone bad because pharma greed led to overprescribing—does not accurately characterize the most common story of opioid addiction. ( a truer take and a link )

I used to keep all my fanfic on Dropbox: all my PDFs, docs, epubs, audio files and plain text notes there to access from my iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Pro.

(I'm just one person, so I don't have to worry about managing versions.)

I can't seem to do this with iCloud Drive. When I create a Project folder at iCloud Drive's root level, my iOS apps can't see the data there. The iOS apps all want their files to be inside their own app-specific folders.

Is there a way around this?

x-posted to Ask.Metafilter

Although I’m a chatty person, I sometimes draft and erase and draft and erase many comments because of anxiety.

It’s fine to comment with just <3 or listening or cool

All users get 15 icons, and I often switch mine up as part of my comments.

https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqcat=icons

If you have a paid account, you can create a Kudos button for your posts. Here’s one I stole from melannen

<br/>
<poll name='' isanon='no' whovote='all' whoview='all'><poll-question type='radio'>So, what did you think?<poll-item>Kudos!</poll-item></poll-question></poll>


Poll #20860
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 32

View Respondents

So, what did you think?

                
                View Answers
Kudos!
32 (100.0%) 

pearwaldorf

If @Pinboard were not actively trying to save the American republic I would beg him to help us figure out how to launch a fandom friendly platform that is inclusive of not just text, but visual and multimedia too
....
Um Maciej DMed me and said if fandom can get a consensus spec on what such a platform should look like, he'll see what he can do. So here's a doc. I've outlined what I want to see, but I'm sure I've missed stuff.
...
Fandom platform of the future - specs and features
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r-Wof6X0aPXjU15edcqukZjwqIiNfrbJFOwaYT48UMg/edit?usp=sharing
...
*wheezing* So, uh, the document has grown to 15 pages of feature requests/requirements. I haven't even given Maciej a link yet. Fandom is fucking amazing.

Minich’s essay captures the important idea of disability as a template for oppressive ideologies, while also addressing disability studies as a way of knowledge:

Thanks to sonia who provided these questions back when it was warm and sunny, and has waited patiently:

Rhea Ewing is a thoughtful and talented artist. They deploy oils, pencils, collage, as well as digital tools to capture how humans relate to nature. Among other subjects, Rhea's detailed illustrations combine beetles, butterflies, and human hands. I was thrilled to find their work at WisCon, and I'm delighted to support their work via Patreon. Rhea's print "Community" hangs in my living room.

Spend a happy afternoon exploring Rhea's art and writing at their site RheaEwing.com

As long as I've known them, Rhea has been working on FINE: a comic about gender. ( more about FINE )

Comprehensive Visual Dictionary of Wheelchair Types improving the search skills of all who seek knowledge in this field:

https://www.unitedspinal.org/types-of-wheelchairs/

Jocelyn Maffin researchgirlca is the British Columbia SCI Resource Centre manager. She skewers the well-intentioned “concept designers” who predictably spit out wheeled mobility devices we can’t use and can’t afford.

https://sci-bc.ca/wheeled-mobility/