My friend the brilliant author Rachel Pollack is coming to the end of her life. She won the Nebula, World Fantasy and Arthur C Clarke awards. She is a world renowned expert on Tarot, and her books on Tarot are still regarded as the good standard. She created the first trans superhero, in Doom Patrol in '93. I will miss her very much when she goes. I am writing this at the request of her wife Zoe, to let her friends know that the end is soon, and to let the obituarists know too.

For a long time, when I'd read a comic with Lex Luthor in it, and he'd be... I dunno, conspiring with a guy who's super power is that he is mediocre at riddles, and maybe Solomon Grundy or someone like that, in order to launch their army of poison turtles into Metropolis, I'd scoff and say, "it's unrealistic that the world's richest man would waste his time and money on something that's only going to showcase to the world how incompetent he is."

I owe DC comics an apology.

“Thousands of Amazon warehouse workers across about 40 countries plan to take part in protests and walkouts to coincide with Black Friday sales” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-24/amazon-faces-black-friday-protests-and-strikes-in-40-countries

A few years ago, some lending firms began offering an “interest free” way to buy a home. Word spread in #Minnesota’s #Somali community.

But "contract for deed" or seller financing lacks protections for buyers. Until final payment is made, the seller holds the deed & can cancel the contract if the buyer falls behind. If that happens, the buyer forfeits all $$ they’ve put in. The seller could then evict the buyer after as little as 60 days.

By @lussenpop & Joey Peters

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-contracts-for-deed-put-families-at-financial-risk?utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

A friendly reminder that if you could see yourself enjoying a small comics/narrative art-focused social community like comicscamp.club, feel free to send me a DM and I can set you up with an invite!

Open to any creative people who like good stories and who are kind, supportive, inclusive, and good beans all around. Come join us at Camp!

🌲 ⛺ 💚🏔️ 🌌

Post.news has a business model. Not throwing shade here. Social Media is expensive but my employer would probably not let me take anyone’s money/points. I may have to delete my profile.

Especially during the holiday season, remember to be courteous and patient with those who are working. It’s the busiest time of the year for many of them.

It doesn’t take a lot to be respectful. ❤️

Ancient manuscripts, historic research, #comics!

In "How to Read an #Aztec Comic", @DrFeliciaLopez@twitter.com & @JordanCollver@twitter.com introduce, with comic book conventions, #logographic writings & the limiting effect of #colonization on understanding #Indigenous history:

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8cq5w8b2#main

School Library Journal's Best Graphic Novels of 2022 list is live!
https://www.slj.com/story/best-graphic-novels-2022-slj-best-books
These lists involve a *lot* of reading nominees, discussing what to keep and cut in writing and meetings, distilling books into annotations...
I'm proud of our group and the work we did, is what I'm saying.

I'm going to have to start having a more interesting life to fill all these social media apps with Good Content.

Just another friendly reminder for all those #ChildrensBook authors and #KidlitArt illustrators:

There is a new Discord Server specifically for the #PictureBook and #MiddleGrade community. Writers and Artists are encourage to jump in, as we can't know when entire platforms may disappear out from under us or what changes may happen in the future. Keeping and maintaining connections in a variety of ways only makes us stronger.

https://discord.gg/ewxrg2ma

Hope to see you there!

SUCH a cool experiment out of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab: https://archive.social

Allows you to capture a thread from Twitter and archive it in sealed PDFs to attest to legitimacy.

Could be enormously useful to journalists, archivists, etc, particularly with Twitter facing a perilous future.

I do worry that the general public will flock to the worst possible Twitter alternative to emerge, or that such will be the "winner" in all this.

Do yourself a favor and turn off all notification chirps on desktop Mastodon. Advanced view -- hit the three lines in upper right corner above Notifications column. Scroll and turn off "play sound" under every type.

Am also at the Hive because it’s another lifeboat

Reminder that I too have saved a seat on the newest lifeboat.

I wrote about a terrifying case of online harassment against a student reporter, that's torn a college campus apart, and the increasing threats student journalists are forced to deal with https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/19/student-journalist-harass-arizona/

Interesting piece. I'm on vacation and had no idea it was coming. So: The journa.host journalists server was created after I joined mstdn.social. I thought about following other journalists there but decided against it, mostly because of inertia. I also tend to resist journalists' pack tendencies and prefer hanging out with and talking to ordinary people. That's where the stories are. NYT says journa.host team hopes for Poynter to take it over. Not a bad idea. Free link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/style/mastodon-twitter-adam-davidson.html?unlocked_article_code=FIdYpXvJIzOOT8krhwST0je7RMvV75LAOmPb3cL-OlUbYKLnl_DNspiXznmceFefYfC8vIEMlQCFHInxzZMhvDQ1w7oPPNMCuXD1WPSpQED8ggnUvFRrZdo_0E7KOzAzTYMN3V9QgSLUK2e3LK2DC7r3JH1h9tO1Q4PHgZD8ZDttvbq7NqVVnohQLuiEFFfrnfc2VMmLKZL-OFv3TUENpeVvfo537CFU1jdgGPVj4rg7coqq10RnrHXcY2zCpSNoD2fil8w7KXJ72u_nKcsNmsZmW1tW6H48e3OgtyH5xSBdFRPJVBvdzGGFZzDeDESXI6FeO0VVYhRq50OueKRl-5HVxBo-RA&smid=share-url

I also don't think it is a serious solution to tell people, especially those from vulnerable communities, to just go find a server that respects them / allows them to criticize racism, etc.

People are joining Mastodon in good faith, but if they encounter these problems once, twice or more, it starts to send them the message they're not welcome here. It becomes a real brand problem and platform integrity issue.

This is a big problem for Mastodon.

Canadian journalist Erica Ifill just had her mastodon.online account suspended without explanation. She's been sharing stuff critical of Mastodon re: intersectional issues.

I get the decentralized structure and idea that each server has its own rules. But this Reddit-style moderation, where moderators with god-complexes make mysterious and arbitrary decisions, is going to cause people migrating to Mastodon to flee in droves.

https://www.presscheck.org/journalists/erica-ifill