Have any of your friendships ever ended because you were always the first one to talk to someone and one day you stopped to see if they would talk to you first and they never did so you just stopped talking to each other?
Hey so I see this post a lot on my dash, and so I’m gonna take this moment to say something about it. When you are always the one initiating contact or hangouts with your friends, then it sets up a certain expected dynamic between the two of you. And so when you stop contacting them, they may be so used to you being the one who reaches out that when you don’t, they’ll assume it’s just because you’re busy. Or because you no longer want to hang out with /them/. So instead of just cutting off contact, talk to your friends. Let them know that you feel like you’re the one always making plans. You’ll be surprised at the number of them willing to make a change to help you feel more appreciated and loved. People can’t read minds. If you don’t tell them what you need or how you feel, then they’ll never know.
Ninety-nine times out of a
hundred, we don’t need to know that someone crossed the room, reached
for a coffee cup, turned sideways, took a step forward, or glanced to
the left.
Visual writers have an especially hard time with this
(writers who “see” their story in their head, and write down the images
blow-for-blow, as though narrating a movie).
There’s nothing wrong with
this writing process, of course. Just know that you’ll be more prone
to adding excessive, pointless movements to your story. Then, when
revising, ask yourself if they are important to the story (sometimes, it
*is* important that someone took a step forward!) and take out the ones
that aren’t. Or, better yet, delete them *all,* then put back only the
ones that have left holes in their absence. More on this soon!
There is a site called Gramunion that takes every single image posted to every single blog on this website and reposts it to its website, removing the original context of the images, including artist’s notes, requests to not repost artwork, and so on. The website does this as a way of “helping” you “Browse Any Tumblr Blog In a Structured Way!” (to quote their website).
We can all agree that this is garbage, right?
As a result of this website’s existence, I’m seeing more artwork posted to Pinterest and other websites, using Gramunion as the source.
I’d like to see if something can be done. Because no matter how many DMCA takedown notices I send to Pinterest, there will always be idiots who get my artwork again and again from Gramunion. I don’t want that, I’m pretty sure no-one else wants that for their artwork, so what can we do?
I think using this guide here we can send DMCA takedown notices to the website to get our art taken down. Here’s what the website says:
Let’s assume “Phil” sees his 1,500-word blog post republished on a
forum. His first step would be to issue a DMCA takedown notice to the DMCA agent
of the forum letting them know of the infringement. If the forum does
not take down the content, Phil would look up the hosting service for
the site using a “Who Is” domain search, and serve a takedown notice on
that company as well. Finally, Phil would serve notices on Google,
Yahoo, and Bing. If all parties comply with the notice, the offending
page would be removed by the host and delisted in the search engines.
The website also provides an easy-to-use template for sending a takedown notice. Seriously, it’ll take you about two minutes to fill out, if that.
I sent a DMCA takedown to Gramunion itself first. I tried looking up the “Who Is” stuff for the site, and it led to a site called “Name.com,” which would be the next stop if Gramunion refuses to respond to my request. (I sent Gramunion an email already last week, and they refused to respond.) I’ll keep you posted on how this goes.
If you’re serious about keeping people from stealing your artwork, then I highly recommend you join me in sending takedown notices to this website. Maybe we can eventually get it shut down.
So I checked Gramunion and it’s kind of uncomfortable. First of all, they have no permission whatsoever to repost Tumblr content. I searched if Gramunion is associated with Tumblr, there is none. Gramunion is only powered by Tumblr or in layman’s terms, they’re using a Tumblr theme.
Whatever the text is below the image (for example, link to the artist’s official website, support patreon, etc.) is cut out, allowing their art to be spread in other websites without actual credit to the artist.
Check if your art is in there and report if you must. Warn your favorite artists too if they don’t like their works reposted (unless they sign/watermark their works, but even that can be cropped out).
I already reported it in Tumblr (which you can do too, https://www.tumblr.com/support). But it would be nice to give them a heads up that one of the blogs using their themes are screwing with Tumblr artists and calling it “helping”.
Take this atrocity down, one report/reblog at a time.
korranews: nickanimation: Rocking out this Earth Day with a look back at production art of Toph Beifong, one of the toughest Earthbenders ever! Special thanks to the Nick Archives for digging up these treasures from Avatar: The Last Airbender! 🌎 … Continue reading →
I saw a sad facebook post from the gay bookstore back in Ann Arbor where I used to live about how they hadn’t sold any books that day so I went on their online store and bought a couple, and while you don’t get #deals like elsewhere online, I’d love it if y’all would consider buying your next gay book from them instead of like, Amazon.
Common Language is a great bookstore and while I’ve only been there once, I follow it on Instagram and really want to see it succeed!
Their most recent Facebook post (~9:30 PM, April 18):
A little update:
At last count we had 211 online orders over the last couple of days. We generally have a handful of online orders PER MONTH. And many days our in store sales are 3-5 books. In other words, this deluge is significantly more than we sell in a month. We are literally brought to tears by this outpouring.
About 80% of them have already been fulfilled and are on their way to you.
The other 20% require special attention (out of print book, book temporarily out of stock, etc.) or we need to pull together books from various sources. Some of you will be getting emails from me!
Our staff is three people and one dog. And while the dog is, perhaps, the world’s sweetest dog, he’s not much help in this task. The lack of opposable thumbs is a big hindrance to many bookstore tasks.
Mind you, we are not complaining. Having a surge which overwhelms our current resources is a great problem to have. Heartfelt thanks.
As I take a short break from fulfilling orders I wanted to share a few thoughts.
This is transformative.
We will be able to pay some bills which will steady the ship for a longer voyage. In our wildest dreams this surge would continue, we’d hire more people to handle the load, and the world would have a thriving honest-to-god queer bookstore.
But even if it doesn’t continue at this truly astonishing rate, having a regular flow on online orders would give the store a level of security we haven’t seen in a long time.
All of you did this. You made it happen. And you can be a part of making that dream come true. In fact, you can be the most important part of making that dream come true. You can be an ambassador.
It was, after all, an ambassador who made this happen.
When a friend talks about getting a book, steer them to us. Our mission is to create a safe space for LGBT people, a resource for a community, a place of equality for women, a place where black lives truly matter, a place where your gender is what you say it is, not what anyone else says it is.
C.A. Jacobs
C.A. Jacobs 