Pulling the threads together

[dolorosa_12]

Some weekends are slow, sleepy, nesting weekends, and some weekends are socialising weekends, and this weekend was definitely the latter. Our friends notasapleasure and her husband, who were for so long our only local friends (and who ended up being our pandemic buddies, the only people we saw in person other than shop assistants for basically the whole of 2020), moved away last year. Visiting them is complicated due to the public transport situation (no direct trains, only buses), and we haven't seen as much of them as I would have liked.

However, this weekend, they came and stayed with us, arriving for dinner on Friday night, and leaving around lunchtime today.

The main purpose of the visit was to go into Cambridge (where we met up with another mutual friend, and one of his friends) for a beer festival that was happening across six different neighbouring pubs. I don't drink beer, but I'm perfectly happy spending an afternoon with friends in pleasant surroundings, and these pubs certainly qualify — most have nice outdoor areas, one of them had a roaring fire, and another was visited by two very friendly, very fluffy dogs. It was good to catch up with everyone, and just be out and about in one of my favourite parts of Cambridge.

Today I managed to get out to the pool for my regular 8am swim, and the town was shrouded in mist.

Much of the rest of my week has been taken up with adding a bunch of new newsletter subscriptions to make up for the impending Twitter collapse. I don't know why I didn't do this sooner — I much prefer longform writing, and newsletters are the next best thing to social blogging (I find that even if they have a comment function, they feel much more like blasts of information, or essays in magazines, and commenting feels intrusive). There are a lot of people writing great newsletters on a variety of interesting topics — I suppose I should do a roundup post at some point gathering them all together. What I'd really like to do is find a way to get a feed of each newsletter importing into Dreamwidth — I know this is theoretically possible for blogs hosted elsewhere, but I'm not sure if it works for Substack (or similarly platformed) newsletters.

We had a load of wood for the fire delivered at the same time as Friday's milk delivery, and this inevitably coincided with warm weather! I'm hoping the mist today is a sign of impending autumnal (or even wintry) weather — I can't wait for fires, and coziness.

Comments

[vriddy]

That all sounds like a lovely weekend! :)

Someone sent me a link to a substack essay recently so I got curious. I don't know if it's a setting that can be changed per blog, but for the one shared with me, adding "/feed" at the end of the URL seems to return a RSS feed! (https://blah.substack.com/feed). Hopefully that helps, good luck with your new setup :)

[goodbyebird]

oh that's super useful information <3

[vriddy]

You're welcome!! (And note that I didn't realise "blah" was an actual substack name, I should have been more creative with my example 😂)

[dolorosa_12]

Oh wow, that's actually extremely useful! Thank you so much!

[corvidology]

Sounds like a lovely weekend!

[dolorosa_12]

It really was!

[goodbyebird]

awww happy you got to spend what sounds like a superb weekend with your friends.

I've already decorated my tree and put out the holiday potpourri, so I'm getting cozy with it regardless of weather ;)

[dolorosa_12]

Ooh, that sounds so lovely! I need to get some more wintry candles — all the ones I have right now smell of flowers, whereas the time of year demands cinnamon and cloves!

[falena]

I have never been able to get into Twitter, the pace was way too fast for me, so I'm really not that bothered if it really tanks, but I'm sorry for you and all the other people who clearly got something out of it.

I am a big fan of newsletters, instead, and subscribe to a lot and would love for you to share any you find interesting and why.

Also you're a genius, it'd never occurred to me that I could add newsletters on here. I just tried and it worked with a substance one, got to see if other newsletter providers support this feature. I also need to figure out which of my newsletters it make sense to follow on here as opposed to in my inbox (I've got a dedicated Gmail address for my non-work related newsletters). The fandom ones I guess...mmm, I need to give a good think. Thank you for sharing this.

[dolorosa_12]

To be honest I'm not sure if Twitter did more harm to me than good — there were periods when it serious damaged my mental health. But this year for some reason I've found it really useful when it comes to breaking news — not so much informing me of news, but giving me the ability to confirm that a) something actually happened and b) I've interpreted it correctly. I'll miss that, particularly for news from non-English-speaking parts of the world. As a social space I won't miss it at all.

I'm still not sure how easy it will be to add newsletter feeds here — I really do prefer being able to read essays and blog-style writing in one single place, so if I can get it to work it would make my life a lot easier. I haven't had time to set things up, but I hope you've managed it.

[yarnofariadne]

Sounds like a lovely weekend!

I've been subscribing to a lot more newsletters of late, too; I've really been enjoying having such a variety of interesting things in my inbox. I'd love to hear your recommendations too!

[dolorosa_12]

It's funny how there seems to be a resurgence in popularity of longer form, slower writing.

When I've got a moment, I'll post the list of newsletters.

[chestnut_pod]

I would certainly be interested in your slate of newsletters!

I am very glad that you are enjoying your mists and mellow fruitfulness. Now, if the wintry weather does arrive, you will be all set for coziness.

[dolorosa_12]

When I've got a moment, I'll try to find the time to put together a list.

It's become a lot colder and mistier — yesterday the mist didn't lift for more than 24 hours.

[merit]

Email seems so much like... work. Which is probably why I haven't signed up for any newsletters. I mean I get why authors/other creators would prefer a newsletter to communicate but I'd much rather read when I'd want to rather than random emails.

[dolorosa_12]

Yeah, I'd prefer everything to be available in my Dreamwidth feed, to be honest, which is why I need to make an effort to figure out if it's possible. I don't mind reading newsletters in my email, but they feel less like an invitation for communication (i.e. through blog comments) and more like announcements, even though most have comments enabled.