Well, Still Salty.

I was cranky yesterday and I thought a good night's sleep would provide some adjustment in perspective, but unfortunately "spending yesterday not on tumblr" also offered perspective and got there first.

Up front: feel free to comment or reblog on this post (replies may be heavily delayed) but if you feel the urge to Like, I'm going to ask you to take one more step and go to https://www.tumblr.com/support, select "feedback" as the category, and enter a line or two about the new dash. It can be as simple as "Your new dash design is difficult to use and is driving people off the site". I'm not asking everyone to do it, but if you're going to Like this post, that would be a helpful action in addition. You can delete any response they send; no reason to expose yourself to the unique combination of incompetence and condescension with which they handle feedback generally.

Also up front: yeah, if I find somewhere else to go and go there, I will certainly let you guys know beforehand, I'm not going to just evaporate. I'll be broadcasting about Tumblr's replacement on Tumblr very heavily. But I can't deny that it is now an active goal of mine to find a viable replacement for this site. (More on this in a moment.) You will always be able to find me on AO3 as copperbadge, or via copperbadge@gmail.com. (More on this in a moment also.)

This kind of thing is why I refuse to fuck with staff now or ever; I don't trust them and I never will. Watching @wip respond to almost every complaint or suggestion with "but that would be really hard" is telling. Whoever is pushing blocks around at Tumblr wants a lucrative site that's easy to code, but lucrative is hostile to community and code is difficult by nature, and when the architecture of the meeting hall is hostile and cheap, people don't stick around.

I've been watching the site as every change made it incrementally worse, from a buggy post window that doesn't allow ease of editing to the new dash (which is the reason I'm writing this in a text window off Tumblr). I genuinely do not think I can use desktop Tumblr like this unless I can install something that will put it back the way it was, and roughly 40% of the content you guys get HAS to come through desktop. It's impossible to do on a phone or so time-consuming it's not worth it. I cannot code Radio Free Monday on a phone; it's a struggle to code it on a single-monitor laptop (I usually write it on my work computer, where I have two monitors). Even writing image IDs on the phone is difficult and something I rarely do. Tumblr is becoming an actively difficult place for me to make content, introducing friction left and right.

But where does one go? I've tried other platforms and they're either worse to use or they don't have the constituency. The problem with a lot of discourse around internet addiction is that it often points out how glued people are to their phones without asking what it is they're doing on those phones. I'm not addicted to social media; I don't doomscroll, I don't care what celebrities have to say, I don't find 140 characters useful or interesting, I don’t find most “funny” videos very interesting. I create a lot of original content for public consumption, significantly more than many social media users, and if that becomes difficult, then the site suffers more than I do. But it's undeniable that social media, and this social media in specific, is where my people are, and yeah, I like seeing you all every day. It makes it difficult to leave even when Tumblr is the best of a bad set of options.

It seems like a lot of the internet, lately, is the best of a bad set of options.

All that said, Tumblr forced a sudden, unwanted, and unchangeable reskin on me a day after I listened to a two-hour podcast about addiction while working on building a newsletter system for my author site. I spent the evening before this happened in contemplation of my relationship to social media and to my readership and how I might alter it to my benefit regardless of whether that's also to Tumblr's detriment. Their poor timing, I suppose. A lot of the theories advanced on the podcast were, to put it kindly, bunk, but one of the suggestions for people questioning their relationship to an activity was a dopamine fast -- removing something in your life that gives you quick but unsustained dopamine hits, so that you can take some time to level out and examine your behaviors. On the one hand, that's not at all how dopamine works; from the jump it's a bad theory. But on the other, pulling back from something you think may be causing you difficulty is generally speaking a good tactic.

Removing myself from Tumblr yesterday was an active process: because I have ADHD and often will forget something exists if I don't systematize my engagement with it, Tumblr is normally pinned to my browser, with the app on my phone's top screen. Removing the app and closing the window meant that while I occasionally reached for Tumblr, it was less frequently than I expected, and the lack of access reminded me why I wasn't there. I missed you guys, but I didn't miss getting distracted from work by my dash, or the pressure to respond to the volume of communication I receive through the site daily. I don't think my use of tumblr as my sole social media has been unhealthy, per se, but certainly yesterday felt both quieter and calmer after I walked away.

But that's a temporary relief, because you are my community, and not only do I not want to leave my community, it's a resource for me. One of the reasons I do things like Radio Free Monday and the weekly Hug on Saturdays is that I try to make sure that resource is reciprocal. Leadership involves service. Leaving would be easy in the short term, but in the long term, leaving my community without having another place to meet it, or another community to go to, would be harmful to both of us. I'm already someone who isolates, and while I have a strong brickspace circle of friends, they fulfill sometimes different needs.

Though I do appreciate the wild vote of confidence from the comments to my last post telling me people would come with me where I went. That means a lot to me. I will attempt to make it either unnecessary or as painless as possible. Just know, I see your faith and friendship and I appreciate it.

Sometimes at my old job I'd be in very tumultuous meetings where a lot was discussed and not much agreed on, and the most useful thing to me was always to say, "What are our next steps? What would you like me to do because of this meeting?" So what are next steps, all this being the case?

First, I'm going to be off Tumblr, mostly, for another couple of days, because clearly I need the break and a few days won't matter too much. Again, I will be back either to continue on the site or to let you guys know, at length and volume, where I'm headed. The former is much more likely.

Second, I'm going to be actively looking for both a widget I can install to reset the dash (recommendations welcome, I currently don't even use xkit) and a wholly new platform that's a realistically viable alternative. Even if the dash gets reset, the shitty post editor is here for good. Attempts to source alternative platforms in the past have taught me that it needs to have a mobile-friendly site or an app, a similar structure to tumblr, and a reasonable chance of actually attracting users. That's a heavy venn diagram unlikely to be fulfilled anytime soon, but I'm now invested in finding it, instead of just passively waiting for it to happen to me (as Tumblr did when it pulled me off LJ).

Third, I do have an email newsletter in the works! I'm just wrestling currently with setting up how people sign up for it. This wasn't meant to be "my main broadcast platform"; it's meant to be a once-monthly email to share book news, targeted at people who aren't on socials or who just really love content from me, I guess. :D The plan was for me to assure Tumblr users that it was not extra content, just select content repackaged into a digest. But it will be one way to ensure that if I'm moving around outside of Tumblr, you'll know about it. I hope to have a link to a signup page soon. (I'm....dealing with some code issues.)

Fourth, I'm going to be combing through the last ten years I've spent here and pulling anything I think is of value into an archive. For now everything will remain here as well, and I'll let you guys know if I think that's going to change, but it's clear that this space is moving only one direction, towards a place I can't exist, and when/if it crumbles I want to have already evacuated what's important.

So there you go. I'll possibly be posting sporadically (the Saturday Hugs are queued six months in advance so that'll happen) but if nothing else and if not sooner, I'll be back full-time next week starting with Radio Free Monday. I appreciate your patience and your kindness in the meantime!

Me: Maybe I'll check my activity page before I close out of tumblr!

Activity page: *pops up a window over top of all the other visual clutter, including two frames that already scroll separately, requiring yet another click to access it*

Me: Absofuckinglutely not.

Ah, thanks for the advice! I went to support and entered a perhaps aggressively simple ticket. Transcript follows; I've bolded my speech to set it apart from the responses.

Me: Please put my dash back the way it was.

Response: Hello, there.

We often test new ways to make Tumblr better. It sounds like your account may have been selected to experience a test of one of these improvements.

Thanks for your patience while we work on this! You may see your Tumblr experience return to normal as we continue testing.

We regularly collect feedback to pass along to our development teams. And while we may not implement all those suggestions, the discussion around them is what drives us to make great things.

If you'd like to start a conversation with us and the wider Tumblr community around your ideas and opinions, you can now send us an ask or submission on our Work in Progress blog: https://wip.tumblr.com

Me: How do I go about setting up my account to be unselected for this testing and all future testing?

Response: Hi again,

The testing is randomly selected, and only certain percentages of our users at a time.

There isn't a way to opt out of tests like this at this time, but that is definitely something you could submit as an idea to WIP!

Me: Is there literally nobody at Tumblr who can reset my dash back to its previous appearance?

Response: Yes, that's correct.

Since this is a test, this may go back to the original configuration, but it may also stay this way as the new experience.

All of us in support are unable to revert or alter these tests. The best way to be heard from our developers is feedback through that WIP blog.

Me: The WIP blog whose askbox won't be open again until next Monday. Useful. Thank you, you can close out this ticket.

As may or may not be evident, I was already having a shitty week and I find my dash currently almost impossible to look at or navigate. I wasn't aware I was nearing the end of my thermocline but apparently I am.

I've emptied my queue and I may not be here much for the next few days while I decide whether I want to be on tumblr at all. @wip here's that feedback support staff is so desperate for me to give you, since your askbox is open twelve hours a week.

NEW TUMBLR LAYOUT

DO NOT WANT

SO MANY COLUMNS

MAKE IT GO AWAY

Jesus I didn't even notice the constantly flashing boxes just above the start of the dash.

HEY PRO TIP @staff I AM NEVER EVER EVER EVER GOING TO WANT TO READ YOUR PICKS, WHAT'S TRENDING, OR WHAT NONSENSE CHANGES YOU'VE PUT THROUGH NOW

PUT IT BACK

With Red White and Royal Blue getting a lot of attention lately, it occurred to me that people are asking me about it because there's actually a thematic link with my work! The "random American falling in love with a prince" plot is well-known within the genre, so I didn't realize a lot of people excited for the film might not be aware of that, and might be looking for more content.

So I thought I'd make a little marketing post: if you like the idea of a prince in a gay love story, allow me to pitch to you the Shivadh Romances!

Fete For A King is a Royal Romance: Crown Prince Gregory has been elected king of a small European country, and needs a caterer for his coronation. Through a miscommunication, he ends up hiring Eddie Rambler, a Californian TV chef who hosts a show about diner food. Over the course of the two months leading up to his coronation, they have to set a theme and a menu, please Gregory's exacting dad, and figure out if the sparks flying between them are real or just a fling.

The book was so much fun to write that I've done three more since. Gregory's father Michaelis tries a second shot at romance with nonbinary podcast journalist Jes in Infinite Jes; Gregory's bff and head of operations Alanna falls in love and commits espionage with party-boy Jerry in The Lady And The Tiger; and autistic trans music teacher Caleb falls for bad boy frontman Buck over the course of the Eurovision song contest in The Twelve Points Of Caleb Canto.

You can read more about all of them at my author website here or find purchase links below. If you're on the fence, Fete For A King is available in its entirety as a free PDF here. No list signup necessary; just click the link and it'll pop open the PDF for you.

All of the novels are happy-ending and PG-rated, run between 50K and 90K words, and come with content warnings on the last page of each book.

Purchase Links:

Fete for a King: Paperback | ePub | Free PDF

Infinite Jes: Paperback | ePub

The Lady and the Tiger: Paperback | ePub

The Twelve Points of Caleb Canto: Paperback | ePub

A book of short stories set in this universe will be out in roughly a month, and hopefully the follow-up novel where Gregory and Eddie get married will be out by the end of the year. Thanks for reading!

I don't know what's going on at my local library but apparently we got some capitalist pigs up in the media section on the first floor.

Investigating, turns out it's a financial planning service and probably the address is just listed wrong, because definitely Capitalist Pig Financial Planning does not have an office inside the Harold Washington Library. Their google profile also turned up this gem:

Not gonna lie if I ever need investment help I may give them a call.

[ID: Two images; top image is a Google Maps close-up of the ground floor of the Harold Washington Library in Chicago. A pin in the lower left corner of the library simply reads "Capitalist Pig". Second image is from the Q&A section of their google profile and reads "Q: Are the people here capitalist pigs." The response is "A: Yes, can confirm" followed by a handshake emoji and a high-five emoji.]

Polk isn't angry I lifted the blanket off her briefly and let the warm out, she's just disappointed.

[ID: A photograph of Polk the tabby; she is curled up on her side, gazing up at me with huge, disappointed eyes. She is lying on a yellow duvet that is folded over to cover her, and is clearly irritated that I have briefly lifted the cover to bring you this photograph.]

For context, Anon is asking about saffron supplements' possible benefit for people with ADHD -- funnily enough, the saffron my mother gave me is culinary and totally unrelated. I've had it for about a year and just now got round to cooking with it.

The supplemental saffron is something I heard about from a parent of a couple of kids with ADHD. She was having trouble getting their meds during the shortage, and she said she'd heard saffron could help, so she'd tried that. She said she'd seen some reduction in the hyperactivity more than she'd seen an increase in focus.

I'm skeptical of holistic and herbal treatments for medical conditions mainly because when something non-pharmaceutical works, modern pharma tends to co-opt it and turn it into medication very quickly. I was encouraged mainly because she wasn't a crunchy No Prescriptions parent, she WANTED her kids to have their meds, she was just trying to get them anything that'd help in the meantime.

So I dug around and found that a study had been done in Spain that seemed to indicate 30mg of saffron, as a once-daily supplement, has some kind of impact on ADHD neurology. It was a short study and a small sample size, but the nice thing about saffron is we know its long-term effects, so the only real harm is being out $20 for a bottle of 30mg pills. (It is tough to find 30mg saffron supplements that don't look like a cult is making and selling them, and herbal remedies aren't subject to strict QA controls, so the real risk is you'll get pills with Something Else in them.)

But I did some tinkering, and I found that the best application for me is to take the saffron with an Adderall, where it seems to act as a kind of boost. I take 10mg instant-release twice daily but occasionally I take 20mg in the morning, something the psychiatrist gave me permission to do. Saffron plus 10mg Adderall hits a really good level for me; 20mg Adderall is occasionally helpful; saffron plus 20mg Adderall is Oh Dear Too Much.

Ultimately there's not a great way for me to test it while accounting for the placebo effect, although being fair to me that's not something I've been super subject to in the past. I notice a subtle boost with the saffron, and when I had to refill it I deliberately went without for a few weeks to see if I noticed a decline. I did have a few moments throughout that period of "Jeez, has my Adderall stopped working?" but mostly it just felt like a slower, gentler onset of effects. I've also tried taking saffron without the Adderall on weekends, to see if it improved my focus; I'd do something like take the saffron but pack a couple of Adderall, decamp from my place to the library or a cafe, and do some writing. Certainly saffron alone doesn't have the "well, I felt that kick in" effect Adderall does, so I wouldn't want to depend on it alone, but I generally didn't have to take the meds to focus when it was just something mellow like writing.

I suspect results may vary, since I was diagnosed with Inattentive, not Hyperactive or Mixed, and the saffron is meant to work on the hyperactive aspect. But yeah, it seems to have an effect for me that I miss when I don't take it. It's in one of those weird inbetween situations where we have some research but not enough, so I encourage folks to research it, try it for themselves, and just be healthily skeptical and cautious when doing so.

They did, yes! Polk has a black collar with skulls, Dearborn has a brown tweed collar.

The idea was generally that I put the collars on when I knew I'd be out of the house -- if I was going to be at work all day, or traveling on vacation. That way if somehow they got out, someone would see them and know they're not feral, also have a way to corral them. But then I started working remotely, and I was just home all the time, so there didn't seem to be a point. Especially since while they didn't find them uncomfortable, they didn't like them, either, so usually Polk would taunt her sister into a fight, and then they'd kick each others' collars off during the fights.

I still have the collars, and I've been considering harness training them as well; the harnesses, not being breakaway, would be a little easier to use to restrain them so I can stuff them into a carrier if need be, although that wouldn't be the primary function.

In any case, it just seemed a little silly to keep the collars on when I was home all day every day, so I rarely bother anymore :) I'll have to dress them up sometimes and take a picture of them in their fancy collars!

Spending as much time as I do with obituaries really does get kind of bonkers. I was reflecting the other day that it’s not as depressing as one would think, because while they are all death announcements, they’re usually about what a happy and fulfilled life the person led. It’s not like you see many that talk about what a cranky, friendless asshole someone was. 

I read one the other day where the deceased had a passion for Dr. Pepper, and his last request, which was fulfilled, was to sit on his porch and have one final Dr. Pepper. That’s pretty delightful! And I’m always reading about people who loved cookouts and going to their kids’ ballgames and caring for their grandchildren and working at the community center. 

More and more, too, you see same-sex partners mentioned in ways you formerly really only saw with het couples. I’ve noticed it especially in the last two years, there are so many more than there used to be of “Her beloved wife and best friend” and “His husband of forty years”. 

But also, even getting inured to the grief that bleeds through them, you do occasionally get caught in the ribs by one. Today’s was “The youngest of five, she is survived by three brothers and a sister”. The obits I read are usually for people who have passed from a terminal illness that generally doesn’t hit until you’re over fifty, but it’s a short life expectancy once diagnosed, and often their siblings, and sometimes their parents, outlive them. That’s always rough.

I dunno, I wasn’t really working up to a point so concluding this NOT on the “wow that obit was sad” note is difficult, it’s just all grist for the mill. Death is perplexing but life comes in infinite variety.   

Radio Free Monday

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday! Ways to Give: Anon linked to a fundraiser for a friend who has had some unexpected bills come up, and is having trouble asking for help himself because of anxiety; you can read more and support the fundraiser here. v-ahavta's childhood friend's mother recently had to be hospitalized for a perforated appendix; both she and her daughter are disabled, and are looking at a $250K+ medical bill. You can read more and support the fundraiser here. nivchara-yahel and rivalconga are disabled queer siblings with ongoing support needs; they are raising funds for help covering housing, food, and medication for chronic illnesses while one looks for from-home work and the other applies for SSDI. You can read more, reblog, and find giving information here. thatmangoka is raising funds for top surgery; you can read more and support the fundraiser here. Anon linked to a fundraiser for littlefluffbutt, who is facing homelessness with two daughters due to a predatory loan and support falling through; you can read more and reblog here or support the fundraiser here. merpancake's father recently passed, and she had to take some time off work while he was in the hospital; her bank account is now in the red and the AC unit in her son's room broke down and needs replacing as soon as possible. They're raising $400 to replace the specialized unit and trying to get back on their feet above and beyond that; you can give via paypal here and she is also offering art commissions at artcake. Recurring Needs: beatlesandbards and her partner are being forced out of their apartment with less than 30 days notice (illegally) after the landlord refused to treat severe mold damage and they reported him; they've filed a complaint for retaliation but that takes time, and they have to come up with cash for a security deposit and moving costs, and while still recovering from their car (a source of income through Uber driving) being stolen. You can give via venmo here. Anon linked to a fundraiser for Jamari Woodard, a young Black teen who was recently attacked by a white man and stabbed in the head with a tire iron. He is doing well but not out of the woods yet, and is going to need a lot of support, plus will be facing medical bills. The perpetrator has not yet been caught, but I understand the attack is being pursued as a hate crime. You can read more and support the fundraiser here. And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can post items for my attention at the Radio Free Monday submissions form. If you're new to fundraising, you may want to check out my guide to fundraising here.

I fired up the projector last night and the cryptids and I had a movie night in bed. They enjoy fixed camera bird footage and tool restoration videos.

[ID: two images showing my bed and the small projection screen at the foot of it, as seen from someone sitting against the headboard. In the first image, Polk the tabby is avidly watching film of a bird on a picnic table; in the second, Polk is lying in my lap while Dearborn sits nearby, both watching a tool restorer sand down a wooden crank handle on a lathe.]

Graphic design is my passion. :D Might adjust the title font or the background pattern color, but I'm liking how the "svichwurm" came out. Bless her mythical little heart.

I've uploaded the proof copy to Lulu and ordered a print of it. As of now I'm on track for it to go on sale on August 16th (Reclamation Day!) but even accounting for delays, it should be good to go by the end of August or early in September. Exciting!

[ID: A cover image for Dinner At The Palace, my new book of short stories; the title is in a very "diner menu from the 80s" style font, and below that it reads "The Shivadh Short Stories". There is a fuzzy, very light green patterned background, and below the title and subhead is the Welsh dragon, tinted brown-green to resemble the mythical Svichwurm from one of the stories.]

Get yourself a cat who can do both.

[ID: Two images of Dearborn the Tortie; in the first, she is lying on a brightly-patterned quilt on an orange chair, with her eyes very green because the pupils are super narrow in the sunlight. She looks like she's paying very close attention to something she's about to murder. In the second image, she is lying on a blue quilt on her side, head turned over her shoulder, looking up at the camera with wide dark pupils and an expression of extreme innocence.]