. . . @wion@writing.exchange

I like the looks of Commune Magazine, but, wow, subscription fees are 200% for Europeans? And it only goes up from there? That’s a bold subscription model. I better get a dwarf goat with that.

https://communemag.com/subscribe/

At least they’re making it cheaper for the people who need the messages most, Americans.

'I can only testify, right here and now, that poverty and authorship coincide, including authorship that comes with a kind of modest fame. I can testify that there is nothing romantic about it, only the very real life of compromises that Sandra Newman documents so well in this essay. I can testify that talking about and not talking about it can both eat away at you. There is no cure; only doing better and doing worse, only new wounds and a moderate form of relief.'

https://kottke.org/19/03/writing-and-money

Watching ‘Love Death + Robots’ on Netflix. Good stuff!

Media publishers, it’s bad enough your affiliated with third party ad-tech. But spinning it like your doing readers a favour with ‘personalization’ is a crock of stinky-poo.

Apparently there’s a Fedi-loving article in PCMag going around, but I can’t get passed the we-use-cookies-to-help-you BS. (Nope, sorry, ad-tech is definitely not helping *me*.)

For those who know about using robots.txt, is it possible to take some thing like this...

User-agent: Zealbot
Disallow: /

User-agent: MSIECrawler
Disallow: /

User-agent: SiteSnagger
Disallow: /

User-agent: WebStripper
Disallow: /

And write it like this instead? ....

User-agent: Zealbot
User-agent: MSIECrawler
User-agent: SiteSnagger
User-agent: WebStripper
Disallow: /

If so, I'm wondering why I see so many long-ass files that *don't* do it that way.

Eh oui.

'At public launch time, the creator has then been kicked off his own project by the funding venture capitalist, who wanted to take full control of the company (including the CTO position...!).

'Result: years with no innovation, no marketing, nothing, bringing the company to failure.'

http://www.volunia.com/

Looked like a cool project, too.

Okay, this answers the question about 'Allow'...

http://robots-txt.com/ressources/robots-txt-allow/

So it's an extension on the original idea, I guess.

Saw this in a #robots.txt file recently:

User-agent: *
Allow: /archives/article/1974/*

User-agent: ia_archiver
Allow: /$
Disallow: /*

User-agent: ia_archiver-web.archive.org
Allow: /$
Disallow: /*

I didn't know 'Allow:' was even a thing in this protocol. I thought to allow you just left 'Disallow: ' blank, or disallowed only a specific location.

Also, what does the '$' mean. More specifically, what does the following mean in combination?

Allow: /$
Disallow: /*

Looks like they need to drop a fair few of those anyway. Italian elections 2013? Brazil 2014? Etc. Come on...

I appreciate when feeds are broken down to an extent, to help get only what I'm interested in, but sheesh, this makes it too difficult to even decide and mess around with...

https://www.lemonde.fr/rss/

Be great if there was a 'create-your-own' widget, where you could select which topics you wanted and generate a single, personalized feed that way from one publisher.

I love when people have interesting names, not the usual boring religious gah. My name is relatively unusual when first and last are taken together, but it lacks... Je ne sais quoi.

Apparently I'm not alone in my vista, because I do see an uptick in unusual and cool names these years. I mean like one-of-a-kind unusual. I hope that trend continues.

Please people, name your kids some weird intergalactic stuff, and let's move on into the brave new world.

I like Qwant. I use it all the time. But they really need to integrate some form of maps into their results. They give you a return for everything *except* a map for the address you're looking up. That's like not giving you milk in your shake.

Zuckerberg: ‘Now that I have more money than even my great-grandchildren could use up in their lifetimes—made by lying to, cheating, and exploiting people—FB is going to focus on privacy.’

🤣

'While Google, Microsoft, and Amazon may put on a progressive air towards climate change and extol their own clean energy investments, they are in reality deep into the process of automating the climate crisis.'

https://gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft-and-big-tech-are-automating-the-1832790799

Another day on the spinning dung ball.