#so like. what would i even do there artists please make a cohost instead of fucking twitter clone number 302934920.4

[welcometoteyvat]

stop telling me to go to other social medias what if i killed all socmed ceos and then myself

[sylvyspritii]

My response to Cohost shutting down

(the following message is copy pasted from my Cohost blog to here) "As someone who has paid for Cohost Plus for almost a full year As someone who has paid for 4 weeks in the Artist Alley As someone who made essays trying to convince my fanbase of 10000 YouTube subscribers why they should use Cohost instead of Twitter, Bluesky, and Tumblr I am disappointed

I feel like all of my effort to support the one modern social media that had principles, the one modern social media truly designed with user mental health and avoiding addictive black patterns in mind, are in vain

With the death of Cohost, where will we go now? Bluesky? Copying Twitter isn't a solution when it copied all of its problems with it Tumblr? The moderation team is transphobic and untrustworthy Twitter? You must be joking Pillowfort? There's no one there What else is there? What else is there that has the principles and design philosophy of Cohost?

Cohost, it was Cohost that i wanted to support with all my heart, which i did, but it was not enough I understand this is how it is, and that there is no other way But at least a little "thank you" to your financial supporters would have gone a long way to make this feel less painful I feel disappointed, and i don't blame the Cohost team specifically, but i do hope that the Cohost team at least understands that this hurts a fuckton, we wanted Cohost to succeed so badly

Burn all popular social media to the ground at this point, the good ones never survive, even when you give them money every single month for Cohost Plus, even when you pay them extra for Artist Alley, and i was even considering purchasing merch, but what is the point now?

Good luck to the Cohost team in finding new jobs And to all fellow Cohost users; please let me know if any worthy alternative shows up, i would love to be there

Goodbye, and may you all have a good life"

[talenlee]

Towards a Cozier Internet

Towards a Cozier Internet

The number one priority of Google is keeping your attention on Google. This is not a controversial position, it’s not a conspiracy theory. The priority of the systems that relate to that create an intention towards things like a search engine, or gmail or whatever, are all just functions in the name of keeping your attention on Google. They want you looking at them so they can make sure your attention is where they can monetise it, through advertisers.

This command of attention is prime: even just being a trustworthy source of search information is secondary to the command of attention in the name of making money. I’ve talked about the form advertising takes, in that its job is not to sell you products, but to sell advertising to the people who buy advertising, and anything you do is incidental to that goal. This drive towards the retention of attention and serving the needs of advertisers is so all-consuming that Google literally does not care if people paying for their services use them for exploitative harm, like how in 2022, an advertiser made a malware fake version of widespread software package OBS. Google would happily put this above searches for OBS proper, because they paid for it.

Simply put: Google’s not great.

Neither is Twitter, a service I’ve been using pretty much constantly for nine years. In June, I’ll get a notification about my ten years on the site, even though based on the way the API is behaving, the last post I made to it was February 22, and that was something a blog software was handling. It was, for the latter part of its presence in my life, doing a very bad job of what I wanted it to do. What I wanted Twitter to do was give me an audience who I could direct to things I thought were cool; instead, it mostly became about screaming, and demanding why you weren’t also screaming.

I’ve stopped using them, sort of. I still use gmail addresses, because I’ve been using them for over a decade now, but I don’t use gmail’s web interface (and never really have). I’ve stopped opening twitter, and I don’t post on twitter. I eased out of twitter by checking it, occasionally, you know, seeing what my friends were tweeting about, see if I needed to check in on them. Then a bit more, a bit further along and what I saw people tweeting about was mostly about how bad twitter was, or how much This Guy Over Here Sucks.

It made it easier to stop paying attention.

The result of this is that the internet I’ve been using, mostly, is now the internet of things that replace those typical functions. Mastodon is part of it, and so is Cohost, smaller, more indie services. Particularly, one of the things that I have to deal with is a non-google search engine. This time, I’m using DuckDuckGo — which is really quite good!

, but,

And that’s the thing. Not going to pretend I’m not giving up a powerful search engine like this. If I want to, for example, reverse image search an artist? The Duckduckgo RIS isn’t as strong as the google one. It’s a bit clueless. It’s a bit confused about some things, and I think it doesn’t do a good job of telling famous people from random nobodies. If you search for names, it tends to look for a bunch of related names, as well, because – well, almost any given site with names on it has lots of names on it. It can be a bit weak in that regard.

And that means that my searches are a little slower. I don’t just get a first page of ‘probably what I want.’ I get a first page, where there’s a lot of ambiguity, but that ambiguity tends to feel reasonable. So let’s say for example I search up a short acronym, like, let’s say, BUD. Google has a history for me that figures I probably mean a Block Update Detector, and I’m looking into the history of Etho’s Lab, a youtuber I’ve followed for (goodness me) like twelve years. DuckDuckGo won’t prioritise that, so it’ll show me hey, that could mean this, or that, or the other, please be more specific if you want more specific results.

And that means that searches are much less immediate, but they’re also a little more thoughtful. Browse the first page, learn oh, right, I need to narrow this by putting in another term. Or I need to make sure it knows these two terms are linked, and it means that searches are a little more thoughtful.

It gets me thinking about the processes I get through on a daily basis. When do I need to do a dozen searches? When do I need to do things as quick as possible? Sometimes in class, sure (and now I think about it, it’s going to be funny if my students see me type in a search on DuckDuckGo, in the way of seeing a teacher with an off-brand soft drink or something), but largely, this pause, this care, means that when I’m searching the internet for something, I’m more likely to take a moment and be careful about what I’m hoping to see, rather than blurting a demand, then refining it.

It means I do fewer searches to get where I’m going, if I’m being thoughtful. If I’m taking my time.

It got me thinking about a simpler time of the internet, where you’d have a small grouping of tools for specific tasks. You didn’t have a big internet tube for getting movies and music and books, you’d have a single program you ran for music, and maybe an IRC channel of swapped information for anime, and another place for movies. It’s not like I’m saying convenience is bad, but it’s got me thinking about the ways that it’s okay to slow down, and be more deliberate.

Spend some time sorting your files, check your bookmarks. Get an RSS feed, and use it, go check things out in these divided ways. And do it because these divided up chunks of ways, the time between things, the time that slows me down, is stuff that reduces the tension. It makes me think more between things.

I’ve been thinking about what coziness feels like in the context of a digital space. What it means to try and replicate a pre-digital, disconnected but communally related space, in a digital connected space. And I think part of what gets me a little way there, is taking the time between things. Be willing to take a moment, be willing to breathe, be willing to care, and weirdly, part of that is about using a less convenient form of a thing.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media

[carriejonesbooks]

BAR HARBOR, Maine — “I love that you are doing this,” Erica Brooks, associate broker at the Swan Agency, announces as she approaches a table where Nicole Ouellette, owner of Breaking Even and Anchorspace, sits as she creates a computerized map of women-owned businesses on Mount Desert Island. The women are just two of many at the Women-Owned-Business Expo in the old gym at the MDI YWCA.

Behind them are various tables all featuring women-owned businesses. The range from financial planning to real estate, arts to mortgage services. Marketing materials, art work, drums, examples of their work decorate the tables.

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The women here will tell you that business ownership changes you. Every interaction, every solicitation, every success and failure, brings with it an experience, a toughness, a life lesson. And these women? They leave an impact on their clients, their students, their community. Those impacts? They matter. The sounds of the women are joyous and insightful as they talk and help each other set up.

Ouellette asks Brooks to sign up for a raffle of business books. All the books are written by women and stacked on the table, right behind an entry form and sign-up sheet. Brooks happily adds her name.

“I think this event attracts women who want a book with the word, ‘badass,'” Ouellette says, lifting one up that has that exact word in the title.

Brooks agrees, laughing, and then even as the other women continue to set up, Brooks segues into something pretty poignant for early on a Saturday morning in a small coastal Maine town of only about 5,000 year-round residents. She starts talking about how real estate is her passion and how part of that is empowering women, two ideas which most people don’t immediately hook together. But after a negative life event, when she was able to buy her own house, she felt incredibly empowered.

“Financial freedom… equity in real estate,” she says. It means something to her.

Ouellette agrees, “I spent my entire twenties trying to get my friends to open an IRA.”

Owning a business for many of the women is about doing something they enjoy, a passion, a love, but it’s also about making money, supporting themselves, making connections and empowerment.

One of Ouellette’s businesses, Anchorspace, is cohosting the event with the MDI YWCA. Her business’s tagline is, “Where Downeast Maine gets to work,” where she hopes people will work smarter, healthier and together. One of her many passions is apparent at the Expo, it’s bringing people together so that they can support each other, shout out each other’s successes and hook them into new revenue streams and friendships.

“I’m meeting so many women, really cool women,” Elise Frank of Edward Jones says.

Surely that kind of joy and connection is both important for the women themselves as well as the community they work with. Maybe networking and friendship skills should be taught in schools as well as at home. Maybe learning to listen to a new friend should be learned when you’re learning your ABC’s and then again with a refresher course in high school. The world would probably be a better place.

That’s what is happening here.

The event is held at the MDI YWCA, whose mission is empowering women and promoting diversity. Throughout the three hours there’s a lot of happy networking happening. Women keep adding more and more names to the map of local women-owned businesses, trying to remember everyone and not leave anyone out.

“That seems impossible. There are so many… so many women,” one lady murmurs. “It’s pretty incredible.”

At the same time, new clients are potentially met, and friendships solidify.

The talk keeps turning back to certain themes. Mothers. Potential. Abilities. The desire to become something, to create something, and to reach their own best potentials. Liz Cutler, owner of ArtWaves. talks about her mother’s brilliance in mathematics and how she gave up a promising career when she became a mother.

“She was wonderful,” Liz says, but she also has to wonder how hard that was.

Becky Carroll talks about her desire to become more artistic like other members of her family, about exploring new talents . Women murmur about fitting in, striking out, holding each other up even while remembering their relatives who may not have had those same opportunities.

After three hours, the business owners say goodbye to Ouellette. Sherri Dyer of MDI Mortgage offers to help Cutler carry her paintings and easels out to her car. But before they leave, they join in a chorus of women thanking Ouellette for the opportunity.

“Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

It’s a chorus of appreciation for a kindness and an event meant to empower women, create friendships and promote each other. It’s a litany of thanks for an event the world needs more of, an event that’s about lifting each other up instead of pulling each other down, about community and opportunity, about learning more about your neighbors than you knew before.

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  Writing News

Next and Last Time Stoppers Book

You can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.

People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.

I’m WRITING BARN FACULTY AND THERE’S A COURSE YOU CAN TAKE!

I am super psyched to be teaching the six-month long Write. Submit. Support. class at the Writing Barn!

Are you looking for a group to support you in your writing process and help set achievable goals? Are you looking for the feedback and connections that could potentially lead you to that book deal you’ve been working towards?

Our Write. Submit. Support. (WSS) six-month ONLINE course offers structure and support not only to your writing lives and the manuscripts at hand, but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions: whether that be submitting to agents or, if agented, weathering the submissions to editors.

Past Write. Submit. Support. students have gone on to receive representation from literary agents across the country. View one of our most recent success stories here. 

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Moe Berg

The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?

It’s awesome and quirky and fun.

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  When Women Come Together Things Get A Little Bad Ass BAR HARBOR, Maine -- "I love that you are doing this," Erica Brooks, associate broker at the Swan Agency, announces as she approaches a table where Nicole Ouellette, owner of Breaking Even and Anchorspace, sits as she creates a computerized map of women-owned businesses on Mount Desert Island.