Blog

This is my bi-weekly “newsletter” delivered straight to your inbox with at least one guaranteed typo I’ll catch after hitting send! If email collectors’ items aren’t your thing, don’t hesitate to switch to the RSS feed or just bookmark loudpoet.com and check in now and then. You do you!

NOTE: Happy 5th anniversary to me! (This is the longest I’ve ever worked in one place and it’s a really weird feeling.)

_ONE

What is ‘rust out’ and are you experiencing it? | Kelli Thompson

The literal definition of rust out is to decay and become unusable through the action of rust. Rust out is a type of burnout that comes from not using your unique skills and talents at work, lacking learning opportunities, and ultimately, dreading the repetitive tasks at work that sap your creativity.

I’ve experienced what I consider burnout at several jobs in the past, but “rust out” is a new-to-me term. The jobs I’ve cared about too much are the ones I usually burnt out on — a little bit louder, Digital Book World, Library Journal — while I’ve had other roles that either weren’t terribly challenging or personally interesting enough, and “rust out” is probably a more appropriate description for those experiences.

Can you “rust out” on an industry, though? I’ve frequently wondered if it was time to move on from the publishing world, particularly over the past 5+ years, but whenever I look at opportunities in other industries — most of which pay significantly better than anything publishing-related! — I simply can’t imagine caring about any of them enough to even send an application. Finance? Pharma? Tech? I don’t even like writing about those industries, never mind actually working in them. It also doesn’t help that everyone is chasing an “AI” angle, so even the occasional otherwise interesting roles end up being non-starters.

While there’s nothing revelatory in Thompson’s advice, I do like and subscribe to the idea that you always have to advocate for your talents. I’ve been lucky over the years to have roles that were either designed specifically for me or notably revamped to leverage my strengths. It’s also an approach I try to take with anyone who works for and with me. We can’t always co-create our ideal roles, but if you can’t find a few aspects to tweak and make parts of the job more engaging, it might be time to start looking for another job before “rust out” leaves you unemployable.

__TWO

Big Ideas from a Small Stage: Indie Publishing Lessons from Case Sensitive | Linda Ruth

What struck me about these lovers-of-print was that the overriding note wasn’t nostalgia for the “good old days.” This group wasn’t pining for a return to mass-market newsstand dominance. They were makers testing a new logic: attention is scarce, and print, done well, trades on a different currency, in a place where editorial value, brand identity, and reader attention intersect.

I’ve been a staunch advocate (a Staun?) for print media forever, but the odds are increasingly stacked against the magazine side of the business and it’s difficult for me to be optimistic or enthusiastic about any of it. Barnes & Noble’s magazine aisle was my happy place for many years, but it’s become such a source of disappointment that I sometimes avoid it completely when I’m there shopping for manga.

Ruth does a good job of finding the right angle, though: “invest in craft, pair it with smarter distribution, and treat print as a platform for trust.” As the Internet rapidly becomes a roiling cesspool of AI Slop and misinformation — building on a decade-plus of greedy humans purposefully lowering the bar — I really want to believe there’s an audience who values craft, quality, and permanence enough to pay for it. Distribution, however, would still be a challenge.

My ongoing social reboot was partially derailed by our regional newspaper killing its print edition earlier this year, which was one of the last print subscriptions I still had. Most of my current interests are primarily served by pretty good online resources and communities, but there’s still something missing. Something tangible. I’m going to have to actively seek out print media related to my interests again, maybe starting with a few zines from Microcosm.

RIP Factsheet Five.

___THREE

How the DIY vision of Punk, Fanzines and Riot Grrrl Can Still Incite Writers in 2025 | Karren Ablaze!

You want to write? Then write; no-one’s stopping you. The outlay was even cheaper, pen and paper, an old typewriter, some Letraset if you were really posh. And there was no need to submit your revolutionary scrawlings to the old school gatekeepers — newspapers or publishers. Bands made their own records, so writers could produce their own newspapers or magazines — in other words, fanzines.

I didn’t know much about the history of punk, but I did know zines were a big part of it, so this was an insightful stroll down memory lane with Ablaze! that includes several familiar moments.

I didn’t really get into zines until the mid-90s, partly thanks to Factsheet Five and mainly from a “literary” angle. This was right before posting your writing online seemed to make more sense, but way before platforms like WordPress and Medium existed to make it easy. We created individual HTML pages on “websites” hosted by CompuServe, AOL, and Geocities and hoped to get listed on Yahoo! or some niche webring. (If not for having physical copies of my old zines, I might have forgotten this era completely by now.)

In late-2025, it might seem a little counterintuitive to be blogging about creating physical zines, but as I noted above, that might actually be the most “punk” move you can make. If nothing else, having something in print gives you a much better chance of preserving your work for your future self.

____FOUR

Bluesky’s CEO meltdown: How leadership continues to fail its most marginalized users | Nico Mara-McKay

In October 2025, that tension culminated in a public meltdown by Bluesky’s CEO, who tried (and failed) to “post through it.” Today, Black and trans users continue to see their posts suppressed or removed, or their accounts banned for challenging Bluesky’s increasingly irresponsible leadership. And, yes, I also explain the thing about the waffles.

As Twitter was imploding a few years ago, Bluesky “won” the Twitter-replacement lottery mainly by keeping the user experience as close to Twitter as possible, for better and worse. They manufactured demand by limiting new signups to invite-only, so early users had a honeymoon period that arguably was the real “echo chamber” critics would incorrectly whine about later, mostly because Bluesky was much better about enabling effective blocking than Twitter ever was.

I snagged an invite and claimed my account there shortly before they fully opened to everyone, but was pretty quickly turned off by the immediate rush to re-create Twitter’s pros AND cons, as power users seemingly hadn’t learned anything from past experience. Ever since they opened the doors to everyone, they’ve had a series of predictable missteps with moderation decisions and account bans, along with misleading messaging about their approach to “decentralization” (which, admittedly, only the hardcore nerds ever cared about) and how their funding might impact their priorities and future decisions.

This latest dustup is basically like when Musk did his 5th stupid thing after taking over Twitter that was yet another step too far, and yet another wave of users loudly complained — but most still didn’t leave. Graber knows this and is boldly calling everyone’s bluff, openly mocking the idea of a “poster’s strike” while effectively daring them to go somewhere else.

Unfortunately, most of the people who chose Bluesky over Twitter and Mastodon chose the path of least resistance and were followed by enough of their Twitter followers to get comfortable again, quickly forgetting the lessons of the past. (Hello, Comics and Library Twitter!) It’s another reminder that social media at scale is just an ephemeral data collection scheme, and you shouldn’t make any of these platforms your primary source of news, engagement, or connections with people you care about.

Since Twitter and Substack clearly weren’t enough, please let Bluesky be the last time y’all fall for this trick.

_____FIVE

Migrating to Blacksky PDS: Complete Guide | Blacksky Algorithms

Complete guide to migrating your Bluesky account to Blacksky’s infrastructure. Covers migration tools, step-by-step instructions, troubleshooting, and how to use Blacksky services without migrating.

I’ve been following Blacksky’s development with interest for a while, but recent events finally called for taking the next step, and I’ve officially migrated my Bluesky account to Blacksky. From the front end, there’s no visible difference; all of my follows, followers, lists, posts and media moved over — the latter two being a notable advantage over Mastodon’s migration features.

I’d first looked into doing it a couple of months ago and it seemed too complicated, but they’ve made it so easy now with step-by-step instructions and a literal form you fill out. Unless you have a custom domain like I do, it only takes 5 minutes to set it up, and then a little while longer for everything to move over. I had fewer than 800 posts, and it only took a few minutes to finish, but if you have a lot of posts, I’d wait until the end of the day to run it. (If you do have a custom domain, look up your DID on clearsky.app first and use that.)

And what if you’re not Black? One of the main reasons I ultimately migrated rather than bailing on the 91 people I currently follow there is because Blacksky is focused on building equitable solutions for online communities rather than faking neutrality while actually just building yet another Nazi bar.

“Blacksky Algorithms also operates two other PDSs that are open to anyone. These servers run on the same infrastructure as blacksky.app and are maintained by the same team, but are available for anyone to use regardless of background.”

If you’re on Bluesky and aren’t willing to give Mastodon a shot, I’d suggest checking out Blacksky. And if you’re not Black, everything else above applies to their other alternative, myatproto.social.

______BONUS

PS: If you’re reading this somewhere other than your inbox and would like to get it via email, sign up here.