announce comments

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+Title: Don't Read the Comments??
+Date: 2020-04-05 22:30
+Category: other
+Tags: meta, Python
+
+Historically, _The Scintillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought_ has not provided a comment section. There were two reasons for this.
+
+First, technical limitations, downstream of technical æsthetics. There are standard out-of-the-box blogging hosts—your [WordPress](https://wordpress.com/), your [Medium](https://medium.com/), _&c._—that are easy for anyone to use, at the cost of taking control away from the user, locking access to _your soul_ away on someone else's server, or, at best, obfuscated in some database behind opaque gobs of PHP. My real-name blog (started in December 2011, when I was much less technically adept) is still running WordPress, and I'm sad about it. In contrast, this blog is produced using the [Pelican](https://blog.getpelican.com/) static site generator from Markdown text files, [versioned in Git](http://unremediatedgender.space/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git)—simple tools I _understand_, producing flat HTML files that Nginx can serve. When I don't like something about my theme or my plugins, I'm not at the mercy of the developers; I can just fix it myself. The lack of a database meant forgoing a comment section, but that seemed like a small loss, because—
+
+Second, internet comment sections are _garbage_ and I don't want to be bothered to moderate one. I thought, people who are actually interested in replying to my writing can write a longform response on their own blog (please?—I'll link back), or on Reddit when I share to [/r/TheMotte](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/); and people who want to talk to me can find [my email address](mailto:[email protected]) (checked less often than my real-name email; I regret any delays) on [the About page](/about/).
+
+So I thought, and yet—first, the same do-it-myself æsthetics that make static-site generators attractive, make me cautiously open to the idea of a comment section that I can configure and host myself, rather than being held commercially hostage by the likes of [Disqus](https://disqus.com/). Second, perhaps some small consolation for never being a popular writer (I'm not prolific enough, and occupying too _weird_ of a niche), is that maybe _my_ readership is exclusive and discerning enough for the comments section to _not_ be garbage.
+
+So, as an _experiment_—no promises or warranties—I've set up an instance of the [Isso](https://posativ.org/isso/) commenting engine to host a comments section at the bottom of each indivdual post page.
+
+Don't make me regret this.

diff --git a/theme/templates/base.html b/theme/templates/base.html
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          ©2016–2020 {{ AUTHOR }} • <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/80x15.png" /></a> This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>.
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-          Proudly powered by <a href="https://blog.getpelican.com/">Pelican</a>. Theme modified from <a href="https://github.com/fle/pelican-simplegrey">pelican-simplegrey</a>. <a href="http://unremediatedgender.space/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git">Site source</a>.
+          Proudly powered by <a href="https://blog.getpelican.com/">Pelican</a>. Theme modified from <a href="https://github.com/fle/pelican-simplegrey">pelican-simplegrey</a>. Comments powered by [Isso](https://posativ.org/isso/). <a href="http://unremediatedgender.space/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git">Site source</a>.
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