progress2048

EDIT: Thank you all for the guidance! I think I've got a pretty good understanding now.

Hello all!

I'm very new to Dreamwidth (showed up with the latest wave of Tumblr ex-pats) but thinking about using it to post some of my media-criticism thoughts that I've been collecting in a private journal for the last year or so.

However, I want to make sure I can tag these appropriately, so I have some questions.

1. What's the etiquette for posting tagging discussion of a piece of media that paints it in a negative light?

On Tumblr, it's often considered rude to bash something in its main tag, so if I wanted to make a post criticizing the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I'd tag it something like #mcu hate so that it doesn't show up in the main #mcu tag where people are trying to enjoy their thing.

(I'm primarily asking because I have some quite critical pieces about Harry Potter.)

2. Does Dreamwidth allow users to block tags? Is this something I should anticipate when tagging entries?

On Tumblr I'd tag something like #eating disorder / to hide it from people who are avoiding that topic, including the slash so that the tag isn't searchable (on my own blog or in general). Is that a thing here?

I think that's all I've got for now, but I'll probably think of more later.

ysabetwordsmith

This year I'm doing Community Thursdays. Some of my activity will involve maintaining communities I run, and my favorites. Some will involve checking my list of subscriptions and posting in lower-traffic ones. Today I have interacted with the following communities...

* Posted "Tutorials" on

getting_started.

* Posted "Gaming" on

girlgamers.

* Posted "Ostara" on

goddessfolk.

* Posted "Birdfeeding" on

birdfeeding.

Current Mood: busy

soc_puppet posting in

newcomers

This is a reproduction of a post I already made on Tumblr, but with that platform's future once again uncertain, I figured it'd be good to copy over here, as well.

Together with figuring out what to even post, one of the things that sucks about moving social media and/or blogging platforms is not knowing if there will be enough activity for you at the new place. Be it from old friends, new friends, or interactive communities, there’s a lot of ways you could find activity at a new place, but finding at least two of those categories can be tricky in itself.

Luckily, Dreamwidth has a few shortcuts for you already!

Adding new people to your reading page and finding new friends:

addme: Straight up a place to find new “mutuals” on Dreamwidth, with no particular focus; a good place to start!

addme_fandom: Same as above, but with a specific fandom focus! Interested in a particular fandom right now and want more people to talk about it with? Here’s a good place to find fellow fans!

findingfriends: Similar to the addme communities but with a more in-depth approach, including things like posting style and what sort of interactions you’re looking for. Takes more brain power than the addme comms, but I imagine that the connections result in a higher level of compatibility.

Newcomers' Introduction and Friending Meme: A very in-depth adding meme, hosted by

newcomers! Includes a spot near the top for other platforms you're on, so it might be useful for finding Tumblr mutuals.

fandomcalendar: This is a community dedicated to announcing fandom events, which can include fandom-specific friending memes. (I’ll be linking this one again later, as well.)

Getting started on Dreamwidth:

newcomers: A community dedicated specifically to helping Dreamwdth newcomers find their way around on a new site! I believe it was launched around the time Cohost was being shut down, so a lot of the people there now are Cohost “refugees”, but it’s still a good place to start.

the_great_tumblr_purge: A community dedicated specifically to Tumblr refugees, started around the time of the new content restrictions in 2018. If you've got questions specific to being former Tumblr user, this might be a good place to ask them, though Newcomers is also happy to help.

dw_news: The official Dreamwidth news community. I highly recommend following this one and the next one, which will help you keep up with what’s going on around Dreamwidth. DW News typically only posts a few times a year, but maybe that’ll change if a bunch of new users come by...

dw_maintenance: Keep up with the mechanical goings-on at Dreamwidth! If there’s a planned site outage or if DW is updating code, you can find out more here; if there’s something funky going on at Dreamwidth but the site is generally still usable, it’s also a good place to check.

dw_advocacy: Want to know more about how Dreamwidth is fighting for our rights? Follow this community to keep tabs on what bad bills Dreamwidth and NetChoice are battling, and if there's anything you can do to help!

Things to do on Dreamwidth:

dw_community_promo: The official Dreamwidth community for promoting Dreamwidth communities! People will promote new communities here, as well as events going on in established communities. A good place to find out about new things in general.

followfriday: A place to share links to check out once a week. Did you find a cool community that you want more people to know about? Link it in the comments here! The host,

ysabetwordsmith, shares a themed post every week with posts, events, and communities related to said theme.

justcreate: A place where you can talk about things you’re working on. There’s a weekly check-in/reporting post, but sometimes people also organize body doubling sessions and other productivity-boosting things.

queerly_beloved: An anti-exclusionist queer space to get together and talk about all things queer, including intersectional matters. Hosts a weekly recommendations thread, but more and other content is very welcome!

allbingo: Do you like filling out bingo cards for just about anything? This community is for all things bingo cards, fandom related and otherwise! Put together a bingo card for making mood themes, post topics, or even bird watching (featuring your local feathered friends), and share your results!

Fandom things to do on Dreamwidth:

fandomcalendar: I linked this above, and I’m linking it again: Want to know about fandom events that are going on at Dreamwidth? This is a good place to do it! It’ll also fill up your reading page in a hurry; you might be surprised at how many events are going on at Dreamwidth, or are at least connected there!

fictional_fans: A community for all fans and fandoms. If you’ve got a post you want to make about fandom in general, or a specific fandom that doesn’t have its own community, this might be a good place to check out.

fandom_on_dw: Pretty much the same as above, honestly, but it’s good that there’s more than one place that hosts this kind of thing!

Anything else?

Search Interests: Individuals and communities can have lists of things they’re “interested in”. If more than one person has that thing listed, it may turn into a hyperlink that you can click to find other accounts with! You can also use the Search Interests function pretty much the same way. Simply type “cats” into the search bar, hit enter, and a bunch of accounts that have “cats” listed as an interest will pop up! Click through the various tabs at the top to separate accounts out into individual users, communities, and more.

The Latest Things Page: Literally the latest things posted publicly anywhere on Dreamwidth. There’s a list of commonly used tags at the top, if you want to narrow things down at all, but in the mean time, it can be pretty neat to see what J. Random Dreamwidth User just posted about! This is about the closest Dreamwidth gets to surfing random tags on Tumblr.

The Explore Tab: Useful links for Dreamwidth in general. In addition to linking to the Latest Things Page, it can take you to a random account, the FAQ page, and more! Worth checking out if you’re feeling lost.

Most Useful Communities list, as curated by

ysabetwordsmith; this has a lot of other options that I either didn't know about, or didn't feel like I had room to include; this post is already longer than I like to go without a cut tag or two 😅

The comments on this post: People in this community are pretty helpful, and that includes sharing their own suggestions in the comments! If you have something specific you're looking for, you might even ask for help here; who knows, we might just have a good lead for you!

And that’s all I can think of at the moment! This should help you get started at least, and help fill out your reading page a bit.

lassarina

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

soc_puppet posting in

newcomers

Hello again! With Tumblr's latest brush with implosion, it seems the tutorial writing bug has bitten me again. Today, I'm finally going to talk about uploading and sharing images on Dreamwidth!

Dreamwidth has given all users a certain amount of image storage to use: Free users get 500 MB, Paid users get 1.5 GB, and Premium Paid users get 3 GB.

There's two ways to upload images directly to Dreamwidth.

The first option has a fair number of steps, but it's the one I know the most about and the one I'm best able to help with.

( Option One )

The second option is to post an image by email, which I have to admit I haven't tried myself yet.

For Option Two, the first thing you need to know here is that it's possible to post to Dreamwidth by email;

silvercat17 wrote the tutorial I used to set it up, but you can also use Dreamwidth's official FAQ entries about it over here. If you post an entry by email, you can attach an image as a file to the email, and it will automatically be uploaded to Dreamwidth and included in the post! It won't necessarily have any particular title or description included, though, so you may want to visit Manage Images to edit that.

And those are the basics of uploading images to Dreamwidth! Culturally, Dreamwidth users tend to either share larger images as a thumbnail, or to put them under a cut (Dreamwidth's "Read More"), but otherwise this should cover what you need to know.

But maybe I'm wrong about that! Feel free to ask any questions in the comments of this post, and I'll do my best to clear things up (and then edit the post to include the information). You can also check Dreamwidth's official Media FAQ and see if your question is answered there.

Edit: With thanks to

teres for the help!

I'd also like to note that you can share images on Dreamwidth that are hosted elsewhere, but not all image hosting sites have the same positive attitude that Dreamwidth does about NSFW art. If you do a lot of art and not all of it is NSFW, you may decide to host your SFW art elsewhere, and save your Dreamwidth storage for the stuff you can't host elsewhere.

ysabetwordsmith

Earth's changing climate is harming crop diversity exactly where the security of global food production needs it most

A new study warns that if global warming surpasses 1.5°C, vast regions could lose critical crop diversity, heightening the risk to worldwide food security.

Researchers predict that about one-third of global food production may be in jeopardy due to higher temperatures, underscoring how climate change is expected to reshape agriculture, especially in vulnerable low-latitude countries.

You know what? I think they're barking up the wrong tree here. Humans have done FAR more damage to the foodstream than climate change has so far. I'm sure climate change will get around to that, but it's late to the party. Humans have already discarded many traditional crops because they don't lend themselves to commercial growing, drastically limiting the typical diet.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

dorchadas

Congratulations,

mabown and

alainamwhite!

Quality due to spoooooooooooky lighting.

The whole family received an invitation to the wedding, including Laila, but for obviously hospital-related reasons not all of us could go. We discussed it among ourselves and decided that I would go as the family representative, but it did mean I spent quite a bit of my catch-up-with-friends time explaining just why it was that my family wasn't there.

ping816 officiated the wedding, which consisted mostly of the vows. I admit that I was expecting some kind of reading, especially when

alainamwhite showed up in a black wedding dress, but there was not.

ping816 read the ritual about marriage being a sacred bonding of love,

alainamwhite recited her touching vows about how

mabown taught her that its okay to be excited for your passions and you don't need to try to lock in to some concept about what being an adult is like,

mabown protested that he had to follow that and recited his own vows,

ping816 pronounced them married, and they processed out. It took maybe fifteen minutes. Straight to the point--the bonding of two individuals in holy matrimony.

After we left and waited for the reception room to be prepared, I mostly chatted with

shane.suydam and his wife

meaghan.figg, and later with

kati.smith.211, mostly about our respective children because that's what parents do when they meet up. It was mostly talking about Laila because everyone was worried about her, so I gave an update on her condition, mentioned that she was scheduled for surgery on Monday, and that the doctors were hopeful that the surgery would really help.

meaghan.figg offered to buy us dinner when we all got home, which was extremely kind of her--Mishkan did something similar for us when Laila had her spasms--and I'll definitely take her up on that. Otherwise, we drank the extremely strong drinks that the bartenders mixed up and when the doors opened, we went in.

I did learn that

shane.suydam and his wife

meaghan.figg live in my parents' town, about two blocks away, so we'll have to drop by next time we're in the neighborhood!

I was not seated with any of the aforementioned people inside, though I was seated with

MomoManLove and

johanna.jones.127, so they're who I chatted with while I ate the fish and drank the (delicious) wine on the table. I ended up dancing with

johanna.jones.127 as well, when she, starting with her boyfriend, went down the men at the table and all of them turned down her offer to dance until she got to me.

sashagee was surprised that I was willing to dance, too--after one of our first nights out she told me she had never dated a man who danced. Then I told her I had taken swing-dancing lessons during the swing dancing craze of the 90s. Sadly, there were no swing songs at the wedding. The music during dancing was mostly pretty conventional, actually, which I was surprised about since the music during dinner was mostly chamber instrumental covers of horror movie songs.

Since it's a wedding and therefore there were dozens of people to talk to, I didn't really get to talk to anyone for very long, and a lot of what I did talk to people about was Laila, but it was really nice to catch up with everyone. I learned that

seloy had gotten married and ran into

smtemp for the first time since the Plague Years (she's moved up to Wisconsin). I got to see

kati.smith.211's five-year-old use up her energy by running circles around the table she and her parents were sitting at, proving that it's not just Laila. And I got to speak briefly to both

mabown and

alainamwhite and congratulate them on their wedding! It was a lovely night, though I always had a bit of worry about Laila in the back of my mind.

When I left, two women got out of the Lyft that I was getting into and one of them said:

"You look like an Irishman at an Italian club.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Music: Danny Elfman - Beetlejuice: Main Title

ysabetwordsmith

Today is sunny, less cold, with a light breeze. This is a huge improvement. :D

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did a bit of work outdoors.

The mower has been picked up for its spring tuneup.

EDIT 3/18/26 -- I picked up more junk from the parking lot.

I've seen a lot more sparrows and house finches, plus a fox squirrel.

EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 3/18/26 -- I started trying to unearth the edge of the sidewalk bordering the parking lot on the south side. It is exhausting, and must be done before the stump-grinder guy arrives early tomorrow. D:

EDIT 3/18/26 -- I hacked away at the east end of the sidewalk. There are still several feet of the middle buried.

EDIT 3/18/26 -- I continued hacking at the sidewalk edge.

EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did more hacking at the sidewalk edge. I think it's about as good as I can get it. There's a big patch in the middle that I couldn't clear due to roots and brush, but at least the edge is more-or-less visible at both ends.

I've seen a male cardinal at the hopper feeder.

EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

oursin

What I read

Finished Victoria's Secret - still slightly meh about it - could possibly have engaged a bit with a longer history of 'Monarch has favourite/s who are not Quite Our Sort', even if historically the gender issues in play here were different??? Also had a bit of feeling that QV was not entirely NOT treating John Brown in the light of A Very Large Faithful Dog devoted to her to which she was also devoted and which she insisted on imposing upon people who hated dogs.... Thought it was good on her awful childhood, though.

Clare Pollard, The Modern Fairies (2024) - telling stories about women telling stories, i.e. the precieuses at the time of Louis XIV, the stories they were telling and their stories and how those reflected one another.

Susan Ertz, Woman Alive (1935), my attention having been drawn towards it by a mention of its having been republished. I have a copy of the first edition, Ertz being one of the early C20th middlebrow women novelists in whom I have had an interest going back decades, but not sure whether I ever actually read this. It is sf Of The Period, in which someone is cast forward into The Future by sciento-psychic means, this is his account. And okay, is not (unlike a cluster from around the same time) about the dystopic crushing iron heel of fascistic misogyny, is about the dysoptic outcome of a war in which germ warfare has killed all the women. Except one who has survived courtesy of mad scientist neighbour's experimental process.

Points for her being a young women of education, character, and something of a backstory conveying a certain cynicism, but she still concedes to the agenda of marrying and going forth and having babbyz, though I think everyone is a bit optimistic that she will pop out multiple daughters and even so, we do not think this will Save Humanity. (Also, no-one seems to suggest she should have Plurality of Mates, surely that would be advisable?) But then it just stops with our narrator pinging back to his present day.

Most recent Literary Review

Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington (1988), which I really enjoyed and am now looking out for more of hers - think I have copies of some somewhere?

Robert Barnard, Death of a Literary Widow (1979)- everybody in it is a bit of a caricature, not just the American academic.

Emily Tesh, The Incandescent (2025), because I have been hearing well of it. Pretty good, but is it just having Read A Lot that made one character look like a honking parade of red flags?

On the go

I think I am actually giving up on I Am A Woman, I don't think Being A Sad Lesbian is enough to provide a rounded character? Maybe it gets better?

Nibbling at various things. Realise that it is 2 weeks to next Pilgrimage discussion and I do not want to read Honeycomb too far in advance.

Up next

No idea.

oursin

Happy birthday,

james_davis_nicoll and

perennialanna!

ysabetwordsmith

Everyone needs contact comfort sometimes. Not everyone has ample opportunities for this in facetime. So here is a chance for a cuddle party in cyberspace. Virtual cuddling can help people feel better.

We have a cuddle room that comes with fort cushions, fort frames, sheets for draping, and a weighted blanket. A nest full of colorful egg pillows sits in one corner. There is a basket of grooming brushes, hairbrushes, and styling combs. A bin holds textured pillows. There is a big basket of craft supplies along with art markers, coloring pages, and blank paper. The kitchen has a popcorn machine. Labels are available to mark dietary needs, recipe ingredients, and level of spiciness. Here is the bathroom, open to everyone. There is a lawn tent and an outdoor hot tub. Bathers should post a sign for nude or clothed activity. Come snuggle up!

Current Mood: busy

myrmidon posting in

fandom_icons

Dune: Part Three (2026)
[ teaser trailer ]

[ here @

axisandallies ]

ysabetwordsmith

This is today's freebie, inspired by a prompt from LJ user My_partner_doug.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

lovelyangel

Carbon Copy Cloner 7 Task Window

Just before I went to bed last night I decided I needed to (finally) figure out how I was going to keep a local backup of my Lightroom photos and catalog. I put the task on the list for Tuesday (today).

( Backup Geekery, Below This Cut )

lovelyangel

Meier & Frank Garment Bags

I’ve been working in the garage, trying to identify old stuff to get rid of (to make space for other stuff). There was a box of garment bags, and I figured I didn’t need those bags anymore. And then I realized I might have a use for a couple of bags – so I opened the box. Old garment bags, indeed.

It was with a wave of nostalgia that I unfolded two Meier & Frank garment bags. These bags were provided for free when I bought some dresses at the department store. I think I still have the dresses, as well.

Meier & Frank was erased as a brand – and converted to Macy’s – in 2006. I can’t believe Meier & Frank vanished 20 years ago. Has it really been that long? I grew up with the department store and have a lot of fond memories. (Like... the air doors at the Lloyd Center... and the escalators at the flagship store downtown... plus the restaurants... and the Christmas displays.) I walk through Macy’s all the time – but I still miss Meier & Frank – a lot.

This is what it means to be an old Oregonian. (Yesterday, I was telling my friend Debbie about growing up with Miller Paint in Portland. I could go on and on... U.S National Bank of Oregon... Alpenrose Dairy... J. K. Gill... Hung Far Low...)

Can I really let go of these garment bags?

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy and cold. At least the howling wind stopped.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

Many of the plants that were sprouting have died from the hard freeze. :/ Some still look fine though. At least some of the sprouts in my jug and tub greenhouses have survived.

EDIT 3/17/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 3/17/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I've seen a large flock of sparrows and two male cardinals.

EDIT 3/17/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

oursin

Am still being harried by spam from those dodgy-sounding conferences of very little relevance to my actual interests, happening in v attractive places:

International Conference on Time Series and Forecasting (ITISE 2026) (wot is this even), Gran Canaria (Spain).

6th Current Issues in Business and Economic Studies (CIBES) Conference at the University of Valencia.

13th International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (okay, is brushing somewhere in the region of Stuff I Have Worked On?) in Kyoto.

But really, YOY?

A new twist on this has appeared via my shiny new academic email address: really weird journals giving themselves out as academic that sound totally synthetic -

Journal of High Speed Networks (not as far as I can see associated with even one of the less esteemed academic journal publishers):

a forum in which researchers from academia and industry can address a wide range of topics related to high performance networking and communication and report findings on concepts; state of the art, emerging standards and technologies; implementations; running experiments; applications; and industrial case studies. Coverage can range from design to practical experiences with operational high performance/speed networks including communication network architectures; evolutionary networking protocols, services, and architectures; and network security.

Is this actually edited by a chatbot?

As, I suspect, is this one:

Invitation to Join Mesopotamian Journal of AI in Healthcare (MJAIH) Editorial Board. - there is in fact a website for the Mesopotamian Academic Press (I see they also publish Babylonian Journals of this and that.

Even without the complete mismatch to my actual realms of expertise here I am sceptical about this enterprise.

ysabetwordsmith

The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED. Thank you for your time and attention. Please keep an eye on this page as I am still writing.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "anything goes." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

Stuck for ideas? You can find prompts by ...
* browsing planned poems for Aquariana and the Maldives, The Big One, Broken Angels, Calliope and Vagary, Officer Pink and Turq, Pips and Joshua, or Shiv. (Some of these I've already done, so they're not all up to date, but others I haven't done yet.)
* browsing my Serial Poetry page for favorite threads or characters.
* browsing series with recently created landing pages: Artists of Destruction, Coracle Shores, Crystal Wood, Strike of the Thunderbirds, The Wandering (on the Serial Poetry page), Iron Horses, Peculiar Obligations, Not Quite Kansas.
* browsing my QUILTBAG list, Romantic Orientations in My Characters, Sexual Orientations in My Characters, Gender Identities in My Characters, or My Characters with Disabilities for favorites.
* naming a poetic form you'd like to see written.
* picking a prompt from my current bingo cards: National Crafting Month Bingo 3-1-26
* picking some from the Bingo Generator prompt lists.
* looking up fun tropes on Fanlore.
* choosing an unusual word.
* plugging a favorite topic into your search engine and choosing a picture that looks interesting.
* anything short. I could especially use short poems today as other prompts are likely to run long.
* standalone ideas, if you're a fan of that rather than series.

What Is a Poetry Fishbowl?

Writing is usually considered a solitary pursuit. One exception to this is a fascinating exercise called a "fishbowl." This has various forms, but all of them basically involve some kind of writing in public, usually with interaction between author and audience. A famous example is Harlan Ellison's series of "stories under glass" in which he sits in a bookstore window and writes a new story based on an idea that someone gives him. Writing classes sometimes include a version where students watch each other write, often with students calling out suggestions which are chalked up on the blackboard for those writing to use as inspiration.

In this online version of a Poetry Fishbowl, I begin by setting a theme; today's theme is "anything goes." I invite people to suggest characters, settings, and other things of any type. Then I use those prompts as inspiration for writing poems.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )

Current Mood: busy

dorchadas

Evidence of his foul presence:

2026-13-16 - Evidence of my bird nemesis

Or perhaps I should say...fowl presence?

A pigeon has decided that it wants to just hang out near our back door, in the rafters of the roof above our back stairwell. It's not nesting there, as far as I can tell, since there's no nest in our planting pots nor up on the rafters. It's just found its favorite spot and sits up there often, and of course, wherever a bird habitually sits, the ground below becomes a toilet. There's a ton of bird poop all over our back stairwell now and it's too cold for me to easily go out and clean it up.

I've taken to using a paintroller poll to just periodically go out and poke the pigeon when it's sitting up there in the hope that if I make staying near our door too annoying, it'll give up and hang out somewhere else. Watch this space to see if that happens.

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: The Mendoza Line - Lethal Temptress

davidlevine

The one-week Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop helps writers and other creators learn about space science. It's fabulous and it's FREE! Applications are open now for the workshop in July. https://www.launchpadworkshop.org/

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Reading

Couple questions about tagging etiquette

Community Thursdays

Finding Friends and Things to Do on Dreamwidth

What Are You Playing Wednesday

Uploading Images to Dreamwidth

Science

The Brown-White Wedding

Birdfeeding

Wednesday saw a HERON standing in the eco-pond!!!!

(no subject)

Cuddle Party

Dune: Part Three [2026]

Poem: "Who Once Knew Better Words"

Backup, Finally

Ghosts of Meier & Frank

Birdfeeding

Who DO they think I am?

Poetry Fishbowl Open!

My nemesis appears

Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop

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March 2026

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