Rowan Oats

a crown embroidered in yellow, with red text underneath: Carpe Instrumenta Productionis

update

📈 @lilyisthatyou.bsky.social is blowing up, go listen to her now to get in on the ground floor so you can say you were there when she made it big

a photo of a wip embroidery of a yellow crown, referenced from a 1905 newspaper.

sometimes you gotta do something that makes sense

"hey rowan you haven't been online much lately, what are you up to"

oh nothing much, just freehand embroidering a graphic from a newspaper from 1905.

Title: Gender Census 2025. Text: If you can't easily put yourself into just one of these two boxes, you are invited to take part. Illustration: Two boxes, each with photos of relevant dictionary pages.

The 12th annual international Gender Census 2025 is now open until at least 30th August 2025!

survey.gendercensus.com

It's for anyone whose gender (or lack thereof) isn't described by the M/F binary. It's short and easy, and results are useful in academia, business and self-advocacy.

if you call and they hang up on you, call back and immediately say you want to escalate to a supervisor because you were just hung up on. you don't even need to say any other details, just that you were hung up on and need to escalate

A new petition spearheaded by prominent German journalists and game developers has gathered over a thousand signatures in the first day. Like other emerging protests, it aims at payment processors to take the pressure from store fronts selling adult games.
www.gamesmarket.global/en/business/...

worth reading article; wrapup at the end also includes actions to take to push back on this blatant anti-queer censorship. not to downplay the importance of having platforms for NSFW (a hugely broad category) but SFW queer and trans works have been hit by this (anything marked with "adult themes").

A photograph of the Nobel Prize Museum at Stortorget, Old Town, Stockholm.

A photo of The Obelisk outside the Royal Castle, Old Town, Stockholm

A photo of Riddarholmskyrkan, Riddarholmen, Stockholm

A photo of Old Town, from Riddarholmen, Stockholm

it was Hot and Windy and I've never felt more alive

I went to Stockholm (my home, my love, hopefully my grave) for the first time in two and a half years yesterday, (undiagnosed) autistic burnout is a hell of a thing

after a very frustrating call with Visa (US+CAN), I was told that Visa would like inquiries relating to using their bargaining power to destroy adult media to be sent, via email, to

askvisa@visa.com

they asked. to be sent. emails. you know what to do.

personally i think when communicating with businesses like The Card Companies you're better off roleplaying a frustrated customer who wants to spend money. you are just a normal fuckin guy and who are they to tell you how to spend your money? it's a free country. you're an adult with income.

lysistrata, but for labor in general

Not a movie but I read Not Without My Daughter when I was ten.

PSA FOR AMERICANS if you sell things internationally DO NOT USE UPS they are a menace and a scourge and the worst fucking delivery service I have ever encountered in my life.

USPS is fine. DHL is a pain in the ass but if you really have no choice, okay. UPS doesn't know other countries exist.

As far as the great experiment that is the United States is concerned we have just about all the data we need and to put it in scientific terms EEEYIKES

VALID STIMMING TECHNIQUES:
- tapping/drumming
- singing
- recording a solo metal album
INVALID STIMMING TECHNIQUES:
- bank robbery
- fleeing the scene
- driving to the canyon
- gunning it to the edge, only to skid to a stop a few yards back
- thinking that prison could be cool as like an experience

Flash Gordon's Bones Malock: "Hhh. Only think I hate more than somebody cashing in a marker is the idea of backing out on one. Alright, Spaceman... let's go find your girl."

Bones Malock, under captions reading: "Bones Malock spins a rope they've made from strips of their clothing. The moment is now."

Bones Malock and Flash Gordon. Flash: Okay... wait thirty seconds, then give me a distraction. Bones: Got just the thing. Flash: Do NOT blow the place up. Bones: You're the boss.

Happy Nonbinary People's Day, you gemstones. A year or two back we introduced FLASH GORDON's first enby, the outlaw lawman Bones Malock. Having known and loved a lot of nonbinary people, I knew the truest way to represent you was as a unsettling desert pirate with a lightning sword

Some tape peeling of a quick portrait study I did today. Done with gouache and colored pencils, I feel like I kind of understood how to not get muddy colors a bit

#art

And even these mechanical printers who threaten to make learning a base and vulgar thing - even they must depend on the manuscript over which we scholars have bent with that insight into the poet's meaning which is closely akin to the mens divinior of the poet himself; unless they would flood the world with grammatical falsities and inexplicable anomalies that would turn the very fountain of Parnassus into a deluge of poisonous mud.

Been reading 'Romola' by George Eliot from 1863 and this jumped out at me:

gay king #zoro

A comic drawn in pencil by Emma, meant to look like a Penny Arcade strip. Gabe and Tycho are holding video game controllers and sitting on a couch(???). Tycho: i never understood why gamers aren’t on board with the whole SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR thing. A band of hardscrabble underdogs with colorful hair fighting a massive, corrupt system — isn’t that every FINAL FANTASY?” Tycho: “maybe we’ve just been playing by the rules of masculinity for too long. Since childhood, we’ve had to fall in step or face swift, brutal reprisal — the kind we now gleefully pass on as if it’s ’our turn.’” Gabe: “did you ever notice the weird seam that runs up the middle of your nutsack? Like the plastic molding on a shitty Happy Meal toy? What’s the deal with that?” Tycho: “that’s from when your dick was a vagina.”

a comic about vibleo granes (originally posted 6/23/2016)

I've had scoliosis surgery twice, once to put in bone grafts/titanium rods and again later to *remove* the rods because they uh. Unhooked themselves from my spine. A thing that Does Not Happen.

When NPR left Twitter, traffic dropped by only a single percentage point.

niemanreports.org/npr-twitter-...

happy birthday!!!!

Tumblr screenshot Username skymachine Post: tutant meenage neetle teetles

On the whole, the internet has been a compounding series of catastrophic mistakes, but there have been occasional, brief moments of transcendence

An illustration of the cast of Taskmaster series 19. From left to right: Fatiha El-Ghorri, Jason Mantzoukas, Mathew Baynton, Rosie Ramsey, and Stevie Martin.

Taskmaster season 19's squad is a fun batch.

I've been listening to @totalusrankium.bsky.social on American Presidents all week while I ping pong between projects and it is Illuminating.

(I'm only on Monroe, don't spoil the ending!)

I don't like complaining online but between this and Everything Else I think I have the right

there's been construction in the building for what feels like years and I only slept four hours bc it was hot last night and this morning I was going to do the dishes and shower before running an errand so I don't have to be in a construction zone all day every day but the hot water doesn't work