RSS?

How would I subscribe to specific threads or get notifications when someone replies to me?

From this http://esreality.com/?a=rss it looks like you can only subscribe to news and articles unless I created an xml and fed it to an rss reader program? That seems like a huge hassle to do every time I post on this site.

There isn't, and likely won't.

If you bookmark a thread ("Mark"), you get a notification for all new replies, although I think it only lasts like 30 days or something from what I can tell.

huh? Mark it how?

At the top of the thread, just underneath the title, where it says the date and time of posting, there are a few options. One should be "mark", and it will add a link to your bookmarks on your own profile, and also it should send you a ESR notification every time someone posts a new reply in it (these notifications are limited to ESR, so you have to be logged in to see them). The exact details of these notifications remain unclear to me, because they seem to expire.