With Cohost Now Read-Only...

This is a reminder that dreamwidth is (as far as I can tell, intentionally designed to be) only a part of the wider internet. People may have divided out between places like Bluesky or independent websites, but you can still follow them on your Reading page here (which seems to be dreamwidth's equivalent of the "dashboard"). Just use RSS! RSS or Atom feeds can be applied to the Feeds page, which will give you a link to the feed's page (if it already exists) or allow you to create one (if it doesn't). A lot of former cohost-users have integrated RSS into their websites, and if they've moved to a different service you can also follow their RSS feeds if they're using Bluesky or Tumblr (although this only applies to Tumblr accounts that have a "site" associated with them, in the original form, because of Twitter-like changes which try to keep people on the service). If they're on another service without an inbuilt RSS feed, you can use RSS generator sites like Open RSS to make one.

One of the important legacies to carry on from cohost is that, if you don't want a corporate algorithm deciding for you what you're going to see and experience, you need to curate your experience yourself. Put the things you want to see on your Reading page actively, to give you things you want to interact with there. The Feeds page already has the top 1000 most-subscribed RSS feeds right there for you to look through, but here are some I've followed myself in case you're looking:

( Read more... )

This is sculpted marble.

This piece is called Aerei, and is by the contemporary Italian sculptor Fabio Viale. A profile in Yatzer states:

"For those who are acquainted with the procedure of working with marble, they surely know that this material is not easy to handle as it requires both mental and physical efforts by the artist from the minute that the idea is conceived to its realization. Despite its difficulty in handling there is a translucency in the material that gives any marble sculpture a visual depth beyond its surface and this evokes a certain realism in the works created. This is the case with Fabio Viale as his works do not seem to be created from bulky marble but rather seem like they have been created by lightweight styrofoam."

More of the sculptor's work is available on his website.

"Heart of the Cards" Ultra-Basic Solo RPG System

This is probably the one thing I made on cohost which I specifically want to carry on over. Almost everything else I did was more curation and commentary than anything - posting what other people had made or discussing things other people were thinking or feeling or doing. This, however, this is something which could actually be further developed (and I'm definitely still trying to further develop it).

It's a "minimum viable product" solo RPG system at the present moment, but it's a good structure to build on top of. Take a look if you'd like, feel free to use or modify as desired.

( Heart of the Cards )

"Grand Central Market"

Watch on YouTube

From the U.S. National Archive's YouTube channel, this is a 1963 film for the U.S. Information Agency (now defunct) showing operation of the Grand Central Market at the time. From the Wikipedia article linked above:

"President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the United States Information Agency on August 1, 1953, during the postwar tensions with the communist world known as the Cold War. The USIA's mission was "to understand, inform and influence foreign publics in promotion of the national interest, and to broaden the dialogue between Americans and U.S. institutions, and their counterparts abroad"."

What a strange and yet oddly-compelling little film. It's literally just "here's what a city market in the United States looks like," but with the change in the eras and our perspectives it's become something of a time capsule for what the U.S. wanted to show about itself to the world.