Hello, my name is Karen Templer and I’ll be your blogger here at Collapse and Delight. ‘Live and learn’ is my motto. I value good intel, good writing and a good debate — anything to broaden my horizons — and my best skill, I believe, as an editor, photo editor, and all-around magpie, is drawing connections between things (be they words, images and/or ideas) and putting them together in ways that add up to something more. Which is what I’ll be attempting with this blog.

The internet loves people to pick a niche and stay there, but I’ve been down that path and can tell you that, for me, it’s where the terrible twins Boredom and Burnout live. Here, you might encounter posts about any of the many things that interest and/or concern me — creativity and literature; nature and climate change; our participatory dystopia; architecture, the notion of “home,” the housing market and homelessness; manufactured insecurity, aging/ageism and the beauty industry; consumerism, slow fashion, surveillance capitalism; democracy and equality…  — and particularly about the ways in which these (and other) things intersect or overlap. If I’m doing it right, where it goes will surprise me, and hopefully you, too.

If there’s one thing my years on the Internet have taught me, it’s the importance of being crystal clear about the thing I value most, which is diversity. Diversity of backgrounds, styles and perspectives, and diversity of opinion. It’s our differences, our variety, that make the world the fascinating place that it is. I can’t imagine anything more boring (or even terrifying) than a world in which we all look the same, think the same, act the same. What on earth would we even talk about? So I want to be clear that everyone is welcome here, regardless of age, race, religion or who you love, and I will also strive to present a wide range of viewpoints here. That is my pledge.

• For a little more background on me, and on the creation of this blog, see the 2024 intro: Everything Is a Blog
• I can be reached at karen@collapseanddelight.com

HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT C&D
• Use the SUPPORT links on the site to leave an occasional tip at your discretion or to sign up for a (sliding-scale) recurring monthly contribution. (Payments are voluntary and not tax-deductible.) There may eventually be some content that is available only to paid subscribers
• When you find something interesting here, please share it with your friends!
• Shop through the Bookshop affiliate links, details below

AFFILIATE LINKS
Book titles (where possible) will link to Bookshop.org, a certified B Corp. that shares the profit on book sales with independent bookstores. These are affiliate links, meaning that if you click them and buy the book, I’ll also get a tiny percentage of the sale. So that’s one more way you can support my efforts here, and indie bookstores in the process.

PRIVACY POLICY
I value your privacy and have implemented no tracking here. There’s no cookie for you to accept or reject; no Facebook Pixel in the pages telling the Meta corporation that you’ve been here; not even Google Analytics’ tracker, as I’m not interested in selling your “eyeballs” or information to anyone. Which is why I’ll need your support.
• This site is hosted by WordPress/Automattic Inc., a U.S.-based company, which collects anonymized data about site and page visits, when they happen and what country they originate from, and packages that into a built-in “stats” page that I have access to. For more on what data WordPress collects and how it is used, please visit https://automattic.com/privacy/
• To you use the comment box, you’ll need a WordPress.com account/login. When creating that or using an existing WP account, you are entering your name and email address into WordPress/Automattic’s database for the purpose of having your comment submitted to me and potentially displayed on the site — your email address will not be displayed on the site.
• If you submit a comment (which may come to me as an email as well as appearing in the content management system) or email me directly, I may reply via email.
• If you use the “subscribe” box on this site to receive post notifications in your email, you are giving your email address to WordPress/Automattic Inc. for that purpose and only that purpose. You can unsubscribe from email notifications at any time by using the link in the emails.
• If you make a financial contribution through the Support form, you are giving your payment information to payment processor Stripe, and the payment will appear on your account as KT STUDIO. I do not have any access to your payment info, only the amount paid — the payment is handled entirely by Stripe. (Also, Stripe and WordPress each deduct a percentage of the payment as their fees.) Payments can be viewed and managed after the fact through your WordPress account, and recurring payments can be canceled at any time.
• If you are outside the U.S. and visit or interact with this site, be advised that your data may be collected in the ways stated above and distributed across Automattic Inc. servers (wherever they may be) as necessary for the purposes described, which may or may not be in keeping with the data protection laws in the country you’re visiting from
• This site is not intended for anyone under the age of 13

COPYRIGHT NOTICE
This blog is the work of me, Karen Templer, under my one-woman business entity, KT Studio LLC. All content is written by me (no AI ever) and copyright Karen Templer/KT Studio LLC, except where otherwise credited.

THIRD-PARTY PAYWALLS: A NOTE
When done well, linking can be an art form, but it’s more challenging these days due to the rise of paywalls. I completely understand and support people’s right to be paid for their work (and same here), but it does mean I’ll inevitably be linking to things you can or can’t get to depending what you subscribe to, or whose paywall limit you may have already encountered in a given month. I’ll do my best to identify sources of links before you click them, as well as whatever I can do to get you access, such as using the New York Times’s Gift Link function (which makes the content viewable without a subscription for 30 days from the creation of the gift link). But there’s an extent to which that’s now just the nature of the beast.