5 things makes a post

[sideways]

1) A tiny drabble in a not overlarge fandom received a sudden flood of guest kudos one night - as much as I'd like to flatter myself, that just didn't track :P A little investigation turned up quite a few folks having this problem, and it looks like there's a bot that's been on the loose for some months now. This Tumblr post contained some knowledgeable speculation as to what just might be happening behind the tech curtain.

2) Interesting article in The Conversation on compassionate conservation this week. It's a difficult discussion to have, not least because there tends to be a lot of strong feeling and values-based argument going on. At the moment I still see a place for culling, but I can't say I haven't brooded on how we design those programs, or whether there may come a time when we'll have to embrace whatever flora and fauna proves best able to adapt and survive in a degrading environment.

3) M is 30 today... disconcerting. Things seem to be going well in L.A. though - stressful and a lot of hard work, but he's making forward progress in the right places.

4) Anyone into picrews? I got great mileage out of this one, with a wider range of symbolic options available than usual.

5) I've been taking a hard look at my bookshelves and pruning out the ones I just don't see myself reading again. This of course means I am now free to pick up some new hard copy books, ho ho ho! Plan to nab all the Raksuras eventually, but I'm trying to space my frivolous purchases out responsibly.

Comments

[i_wish_to_remain_nameless]

That detective work about the ao3 kudos bot was interesting. Sadly I think the easiest way of solving the issue would be getting rid of guest kudos.
On the topic of number 2 I feel like a lot of the language we use when talking about invasive species is morally charged to the extent that it's actually counterproductive. Like we talk about invasives like they're evil and devious and ruin ecosystems for fun no one wants to consider that a species they like is invasive or how their pet cat might be disrupting the ecosystem (in other news indoor cats are better both for local birds and the cats themselves). I also think it's important to remember that nature can be really brutal even when an ecosystem is running smoothly. I don't mean that in an edgy way, just that you don't get ecosystems without suffering given how much of an ecosystem is a bunch of organisms eating each other to survive. I don't think that means compassion is irrelevant though especially since that's a probably a sizable part of what drives us to care about endangered species in the first place.

[sideways]

Getting rid of guest kudos would solve it, yep - one recommended remedy for authors is to memberlock new fics for the first 24 hours apparently, and you can memberlock your whole archive if you want it properly protected. But I'd prefer not to go that route if possible. It'd be a shame to restrict engagement so heavily like that.

Compassionate conservation very much runs the risk of getting anthropocentric, though at its purest it aims to reduce that - take out the human moralising from either direction and all you've got is some creatures succeeding at the expense of others as they have since the dawn of time. But animals can't easily recognise when they're overconsuming themselves into extinction either, and unfortunately we've modified the environment so extensively at this point that it's easier for them to do this than it should be! We wouldn't have the roo problems that we do if we hadn't shot all the predators and vastly increased the availability of permanent waters.

Loss is inevitable in nature, sure, but I think a lot of folk don't recognise the... full extent of culls sometimes either. It can be damn confronting.

I adore cats and they REALLY need to be kept indoors.

[i_wish_to_remain_nameless]

I mean I definitely think more humane forms of management are preferable. My feelings about invasive species (and I guess similar types of problems) are very complicated since basically they are just trying to survive and they can't possibly understand that their success is causing problems.
On the topic of the kudos bot I don't really care enough about the integrity of my kudos count(or kudos in general, I even turned off kudos emails sometime ago) to memberslock my stuff. That's a clever makeshift solution though.

[sideways]

I just wish we could do away with some of the worse poisons - but at the same time it's hard to deal with some animals in the quantity required to make a difference without them.

I do care a bit, haha! As much as I try not to get too into playing the numbers game, it's nice to know when a fic clicked with people.

[i_wish_to_remain_nameless]

I won't pretend I'm completely above caring about kudos, bookmarks and comments are just more informative metrics. I mostly view kudos as people who read this fic (or at least the first chapter). The actual reason I turned off kudos emails is because I kept being mildly disappointed that they weren't updates emails for fics I was subscribed to.

[muladhara]

I've been dinking around with a few picrews to make characters that conceivably could be for stories. I think I did one with that one you linked to, but it's been a few weeks now. I wish they'd been around when I was younger - I love putting them together and seeing what I can get out of them, and if it inspires anything in me.

[sideways]

They're a pretty incredible resource! Amazing how many artists are willing to just put that much effort out there for free when time was you'd be paying a commission for decent icon art.

[muladhara]

Absolutely! I can't believe they do it, and yet it exists.