Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
One Nice Bug Per Day
Today's Document
AnasAbdin
noise dept.
Xuebing Du
RMH
wallacepolsom
tumblr dot com
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Mike Driver
cherry valley forever
Cosimo Galluzzi
todays bird
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Origami Around
trying on a metaphor
styofa doing anything
sheepfilms
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
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@ajroach42
So, with all this discussion about how alienating comic book stores can be, here is a super anecdotal, but I think useful, list of ways stores can be more inclusive. Some of these can serve as signs of a welcoming environment for otherwise wary customers and others as advice...
Maybe the LP we talked about in our last post isn't for you. Maybe you need a cassette.
A cassette for you!
Look at that Space Squatch
There is a constant cultural obsession with the ‘father’ and ‘grandfather’ and ‘godfather’ of rock-n-roll. The patriarchal nature of our society has the musical historian ignoring even entertaining the idea that women have been involved in the formation of music, either in sound or subculture.
It is important to push back against white-washing and recognize that there existed rock-n-roll roots prior to Elvis Presley. Any cursory Google search will list the names of Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis, which still leaves something to be desired.
As Alexis C. Madrigal pointed out in a piece for Fusion, “Rosetta Tharpe was born 100 years ago today – March 20, 1915, twenty years before Elvis, a decade before Chuck Berry. And she could play the rock and roll guitar better than anyone, before anyone.”
(A great example of Tharpe’s guitar virtuosity is her song “Didn’t It Rain”.)
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was born on March 20, 1915 in Arkansas. She started playing guitar and singing at the age of four. Tharpe, by the age of six, was joining her mother as a regular performer in a traveling evangelical troupe.
Tharpe was heavily influenced by her mother, Katie Bell Nubin. Nubin was a singer, mandolin player, evangelist and preacher for the Church of God in Christ. The Church of God in Christ was founded by black Baptist bishop named Charles Mason. Mason was known to encourage rhythmic expression, dancing in praise and allowing women to preach in church.
Tharpe was not able to record until the age of 23. She recorded four sides with Decca Records. For these recordings she was backed by “Lucky” Millinder’s jazz orchestra.
These initial recordings for her were also the first gospel songs ever recorded by Decca. The songs included were: “Rock Me,” “That’s All,” “My Man and I,” and “The Lonesome Road”.
While Tharpe was deemed an ‘overnight sensation’, her recordings also caused a bit of a stir. Churchgoers were shocked by her mixture of gospel lyrics with secular music. While churchgoers weren’t happy, the secular audiences loved the music.
Tharpe was revolutionary in the sense that she performed gospel music in front of a secular audience and in nightclubs. She performed alongside blues and jazz musicians and dancers. This caused those within conservatives religious circles the fact that a woman performed guitar at all, let alone in secular settings, was frowned upon.
For all the external conflict, there is evidence to suggest that not all was well internally for Tharpe, either. It has been said that she may have had little choice in the material she was contracted to record with Millinder. Gayle Wald wrote in Shout, Sister, Shout!, “Rosetta and Millinder were increasingly at odds in 1943, as Rosetta itched to quit the big-band circuit and renew her career as a strictly gospel act. As Roxie Moore remembers, she hadn’t wanted to do light fare poking fun at old-time religion or worldly material like Tall Skinny Papa, but found herself bound by contractual obligations.”
Her 1944 record, according to Wald, has been credited by some as being the ‘first rock and roll record’.
Another component of Tharpe, a rock-n-roll godmother of sorts, was her bisexuality. Tharpe, who was married three times, was also known to have relationships with women. The blog Queer Museum quotes Wald in discussing Tharpe’s bisexuality, “Tharpe’s biographer, Gayle Wald, found some of the singer’s contemporaries who were willing to talk off the record about her bisexuality; one fellow musician claimed to have walked in on Tharpe and two other women in bed together during her ‘honeymoon tour’ right after her third wedding in 1951.”
Anil Vora, in “Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Bisexual Music Legend” for Bi Magazine, wrote, “Halfway through [PBS documentary Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother of Rock & Roll] we learn that Tharpe was bisexual and lived as openly as she possibly could in that period. Her close friendship with singer Marie Knight is discussed briefly after which the documentary respectfully moves on to other matters in Tharpe’s life.”
Another piece, entitled “Black History Month 2014: Sister Rosetta Tharpe”, discussed the idea that her marriage(s) were a ‘sham’, “Although married a number of times, Tharpe was at least bisexual; many close friends have described her as a ‘secret lesbian,’ living out the sham marriages to protect her career and personal safety. In every other way she was a determined, outspoken woman who pushed musical boundaries, spreading joy on her own powerful terms – she so deserves to be celebrated.”
Rock-n-roll has a diverse history, full of diverse people. Understandably, the narrative of cisgender, heterosexual, white (and sometimes-secular) does not have room for folks like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, but that doesn’t change the fact that her music had an impact. She was a bisexual Christian black woman from the southern United States who played blues, gospel and rock-n-roll. It makes me wonder who else is hidden in the ignored annals of the history of the music we all love.
In case you hadn't noticed
We're back!
After shutting down quickly in 2016, Analog Revolution is back from the dead to rock Ellijay, GA once again.
Find us in person at 12 North Side Square in Ellijay, inside Mountain Town Antiques, or at 131 N Main St (inside Ellijay Coffeehouse)
We're releasing a cassette tape, pretty much every week for the rest of the year (including ones that you can get as part of a monthly subscription) over at cassettesfor.me and we're releasing LPs and EPs on vinyl, tape, and digital.
Plus! our zine has returned. Volume 3 issue 3 is out now, and issue 4 is in the works. Hit us up if you want a copy.
We're back, babes.
Our first LP release, HURLY BURLY AND THE VOLCANIC FALLOUT - GIANT ROBOT JETPACK \\ THE NEW CLEAR LAWN CHAIRS - VOTED MOST CHILL IN HIGHSCHOOL is out! It's shipping now. This record means so much to me. It's a split. Double A-Side, two covers. The Chairs' side was recorded in 2014 or 2015 (it's hard to say, Jon says "I'm 19 years old" and "Now I'm 20 years old" in the same song, the lyrics to which were written they day he recorded it.) It is a snapshot of the metro atlanta music scene of that era, an ode to the majesty and shame of Swayze's Venue in Kennesaw, GA.
It was also one of the first releases Analog Revolution put out as a DIY label, way back when. We released it on cassette and CD. Now it is once again available on cassette, and for the first time on LP. Now, In the time since, Jon of the New Clear Lawn Chairs has gone on to join Michael Cera Palin, which is admittedly a very different jam from Voted Most Chill in Highschool, but you may know him better as their bassist.
The other A-Side is Hurly Burly and the Volcanic Fallout's Giant Robot Jetpack. It features coverart by Will Dover. It was the first album recorded at the Ellijay Makerspace, shortly before we officially opened to the public. It features the co-founder of Analog Revolution, Ryan Stoyer, on bass, and the current AR person at AR, Violet, on vocals and guitar. You may also know Violet from her work in Doctor Deathray. You may not know that Hurly Burly and the Volcanic Fallout played the Analog Revolution kick-off party. ~10 years ago, before we opened our record store, to coincide with the release of the first issue of our Magazine, Hurly Burly and the Volcanic Fallout played a secret set under a bridge in an abandoned go-kart park in an undisclosed location.
Both of these bands have been with us since the beginning (or before!) and I am so thrilled to be able to bring them both to a wider audience via this Beautiful Volcanic/Nuclear splatter LP (produced by Physical Music Productions in Nashville)
You can get the record now on Bandcamp.
I've been working on this for a while, and it's the first of 3 big releases due out in the next few months, and the first of 6 LPs we have planned for this year. I *can't wait* to share this music more widely
‘‘ Queen of Kings ‘‘ #collage by Frank Moth
//
Taking the reigns for centuries to come, from kings unworthy of understanding the world’s collective memory.
//
Find it in prints and other great products below:
https://www.redbubble.com/i/poster/Queen-of-Kings-by-FrankMoth/127462445.E40HW
https://society6.com/product/queen-of-kings7536508_print?curator=frankmothsku=s6-25413920p4a1v45
DIY MEDIA
I wrote this in 2015 and updated it slightly in 2017. These ideas are central to all the work that I do.
Comcast (through merger with GE/NBC/Universal), Viacom, Disney (who now controls most of Newscorp/Fox’s media), CBS, and Time Warner currently control 90% of American media. This media oligopoly is more dangerous than we often give it credit for. These five companies exert incredible power over our modern political landscape. (They are responsible for things like the DMCA, and the TPP, EME, and today’s Net Neutrality decision, in addition to our ever increasing copyright terms.)
They collectively control so much of our political and economic landscape that it’s difficult to effectively understand, or begin to trace, the breadth of their influence. And that’s without stopping to consider how much the media we consume can shape our views. It’s hard to believe that the near constant coverage of President Trump in the months before the election didn’t influence his performance in the election.
We are constantly bombarded with entertainment and news media from these five companies, to the point that it is nigh inescapable. Even if the companies that feed us our news and entertainment were benign (and, don’t kid yourself, they aren’t), it would be nearly impossible to keep their biases out of our media. Simply put, we cannot afford to have such a vital part of our society controled by so few.
If we’re ever going to actually effect social change, we’re going to need to provide home grown, community alternatives to the media produced by the entrenched power structures represented by these mega-corporations. We need to hit them at their bottom line, which means creating (and consuming) compelling community TV, Film, Games, Prose, Music, and other art.
Many are already working towards these goals, and we should support them. Others are considering embarking on path towards DIY media. We must encourage and support them. As consumers, we must actively support the creators who choose to work independently.
See, it’s like this: When we buy stuff from major corporations, we transfer money (and therefore power) out of our local communities, and in to the pockets of CEOs and shareholders. When we make stuff, or buy stuff from our communties, that wealth (and power) stays within our communities.
Until recently, there were economic and logistic obstacles that prevented comunties from providing the same kind of Community alternatives for most kinds of media. Thankfully, this is no longer true.
Kids in their bedrooms can record and produce an album that sounds “professional” with a few hundred dollars worth of gear, or record an album that sounds “good enough” with a smartphone or a laptop and some free software. Countless news stories of the last few years broke on Twitter, or Facebook thanks to a citizen journalist and their smartphone. There have been many TV show style series released on the web, from amatuers and professionals alike.
People are making their own media, and that’s awesome.
For the first time in the history of mass broadcasting, anyone can reach an audience of millions. (Sure, at the moment, we largely rely on corporate behemoths like Google and Facebook to do it, but the DIY Tech movement is well underway with decentralized services like Mastodon going strong, and new platforms being developed every day.)
The products of modern hobbyists can rival and surpass the output of media conglomerates both in terms of quality and consumption in nearly every field. In fact, with the exception of a couple of NPR or BBC endeavours, most successful modern podcasts/audio dramas are community-centered productions.
Make Something!
At this point, I feel like the act of creating media outside of the control of a multi-million dollar corporation is a radical act in and of itself.
Media controls our perception of reality. Current media companies are monopolistically huge, and thanks to modern copyright law they exert undue control over the figures of our modern folklore
Studies have shown time and again that when people experience fiction about people, they identify and empathize with those people.
We experience the world through our media. We use it to contextualize and understand our environment. When the most popular TV shows and Movies are about renegade cops and violent vigilantes that take the law in to their own hands, we internalize and normalize that.
We have to control our own media.
The bit I mentioned about copyright before is why the Creative Commons foundation is so important. Copyright reform might be a defining battle of our age, but we can skip it by embracing CC.
I currently view independent media production and distribution as among the most significant and necessary acts of protest available to regular folks.
This was the message Punk was supposed to teach us, before it got co-opted by shitty white supremacists, and people so afraid of teenage girls that they burned down the whole institution.
We gotta make our own stuff, even if it’s garbage. But beyond that, we gotta support one another when we make stuff. A lot of Punk (and a lot of late 60s/early 70s Jazz) was recorded on potatoes, basically. It was of “low quality” compared to the output from the major labels of the era.
But it was also radical and revolutionary, and some of it unquestionably changed the face of modern music.
So, what I’m saying here, is don’t worry if your stuff is “good.”
Make it. Get it in the world. Share it.
Support One Another!
So, what can you do? You can make things. You can consume things. You can seek out independent media, and support it (by paying the creators, and spreading the word.) You can get off Facebook, and join something community run.
Right now, the DIY media community is just beginning to stretch it’s legs. We have found what appears to be a viable funding model through services like Kickstarter and Patreon, though these are not without fault. We are building the communication channels needed to enable solid Content Discovery (though this is still the largest problem facing the community today.)
So, consumers of media, I encourage you to intentionally seek out experiences that weren’t designed by one of the major players, and support community creators financially when possible.
Hop on Bandcamp and listen to music that was recorded in someone’s bedroom. Seek out independently produced films on Youtube. Go watch something out of the Public Domain. Listen to a podcast. Enjoy some fanfiction. Play some Indie computer games (no really), or read some independently published novels. Actively and intentionaly spend even a small portion of your media budget on something that wasn’t produced by one of the big 5.
And Creators: Keep making weird, wonderful stuff. Every piece of media created outside the sphere of influence of the big 5 is an act of protest. Keep fighting the good fight.
The effects, while slow to start, will snowball. If we work together, and support one another, we can break the hold this oligopoly has on our media. We can take our culture back.
This episode features explicit language. Shouting into the Void is a science fiction television series produced by New Ellijay TV, about the
This video is hosted on a peertube instance, so Tumblr will refuse to embed it. I hate them for that.
Shouting into the Void S01E01
This episode features explicit language.
Shouting into the Void is a science fiction television series produced by New Ellijay TV, about the crew of Solar and Interstellar Telecommunications Ventures, and their experiences in deep space. It is a story of isolation, desperation, and the absolute bottom of capitalist exploitation.
We consider it to be a light comedy.
SITV stars Connor Dylan, and is based on ideas written by Andrew Roach and Josh Allen. It is available under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. The theme music is Teenagers From Outerspace by Connor Dylan and Andrew Roach. Buck Lyden is played by Connor Dylan. The as of yet unnamed captain is played by Bubba Bevins.
Shouting into the void will be released aperiodically until we run out of stories to tell. It's a big universe, and there's room for you to tell stories in the Shouting into the Void universe as well. If you'd like to, reach out to us for more information.
From New Ellijay Television
This is a lightly retouched version of the live stream from Jan 28th, 2023. See bellow for full details, credits, explanations, etc. This is
I suspect Tumblr will still refuse to embed peertube streams, so you'll have to click through if you want to see the video. I hate that, and I'm starting to resent tumblr for it.
This is the Lo-Fi Stream, recorded on a pair of analog tube cameras from 50 years ago and a single shotgun mic placed in the middle of the room. If you want a hifi version, with multi channel audio and HD, color video, it'll exist eventually in this same channel, but those things take much longer to produce.
Analog Revolution presents:
Crosstalk
The "The New Clear Lawn Chairs" Orchestra
and Hurly Burly and the Volcanic Fallout
live in concert at the Gilmer Arts playhouse.
This is the one year Anniversary show for the Ellijay Makerspace and I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate all we accomplished in our first year. Hurly Burly has been with Analog Revolution from the very first day, and The New Clear Lawn Chairs were featured in the second issue of our magazine. This was the first time I can remember seeing Crosstalk live, but frontwoman Helena has been a part of many of the things that led to the creation of the Ellijay Makerspace over the last ten years.
The show is full of surprises and heart and it made me cry. These are bands that have been performing, in one incarnation or another, for a decade or more, at least two of the bands were founded when their members were in high school. That was a long time ago, but it was really wonderful to be able to get them all back together, in the same room, to shout and share and destroy a giant volcano.
Look for a split LP from HBATVF and TNCLC out in March from Analog Revolution.
The small things Manifesto
This is a work in progress, a living document.
Small is good, small is all (The large is a reflection of the small)
small technology, small economy, small community
Many of the major technological and cultural innovations of the last several hundred years have served to flatten the world, eliminate or obviate distance, and bring us closer together as people. Printing, transportation, telephone, radio, television, home video, and the internet have each, in their own way, made our impact on the world bigger, and made parts of the world smaller.
But this came at a price.
Technology is not a net good, or even a neutral force. Technology is a Force Multiplier. It reshapes the world to fit the vision of those who design it, regulate it, and wield it. Oil companies poison our lakes and rivers, slowly boiling our planet. Facebook tracks everything we do online and uses that data to make us miserable. Disney owns an outsized portion of modern folklore. The FCC decides who gets to launch a radio station, and under what circumstances. Television turns reasonable people in to rabid fans of raving monsters, and turns raving monsters in to celebrities, politicians and thought leaders.
It does not have to be this way.
It is this way thanks to a combination of factors, most of which can be summarized as “The Profit Motive.” For some companies, making people angry is a surefire way to drive Engagement, and driving Engagement is a surefire way to make money. For other companies, the money lies in controlling our access to our own culture, gatekeeping who is allowed to tell stories, and when, and how. For these major corporations, there is no incentive to Help, to Improve. There’s no money in making the world a better place.
It will not be easy.
Most new technologies, but especially Digital technologies, experience a period between inception and corporatization during which they flourish as a result of a bunch of disparate people with distinct goals who Explore the space that the technology creates, often without regard for profit of any kind, or at least with some motivation beyond pure profit. Then there is, usually, a period of contraction and consolidation around the things that have made the most money (or, in the case of television, have had the most Regulatory support from the corrupt FCC) and you’re left with HBO/DISCOVERY, Disney, Facebook, and Joe Rogan.
But we can reject the profit motive!
Local theater still happens, in spite of the fact that it stopped being profitable ~100 years ago. Local music still happens, in spite of the fact that only 1 band in 100 is going to make their living making music, and significantly fewer than that are ever going to Make It. Small creators make video games in their spare time because they enjoy it. Hundreds of people work together to run free and open alternatives to major social media networks, funded out of their own pockets.
Ars Enim Mutare; Art for change
These things happen in isolation, from creators who make things because the want to make things. They toil, often in isolation, for little reward. This is a call to action for solidarity, and support and intentional creation. We can reshape the world, and support one another as we do it. We can opt out of activities that enrich corporations that seek to make us suffer or to destroy us. We can (and must) become our own media.
What are small things?
Small things are art, media, technology, and culture created by People who are treated fairly, for people who are treated fairly, shared freely and sustainably. There are no corporate overlords, no gatekeepers, no Web Scale Technologies, and no ways to get rich.
Why are small things?
Because, in a world where Creation and Communication are heavily commercialized, the act of Creating a Thing or building a community that doesn’t enrich our corporate overlords is a radical act.
Because big complicated communities and systems are hard to manage without the resources of a government or corporation. If we keep things at the Human Scale, rather than the Global Scale, we stand a chance of being successful at the Human Scale (that is to say, surviving and sustaining, building relationships, etc.)
Because 4 corporations control 90% of our news and entertainment media, three corporations control the vast majority of online communication, and no corporations give a single damn if we live or die. Too much power is consolidated in the hands of too few.
They buy off our politicians, influence who gets elected, write some of our laws, and ignore the ones that are inconvenient. They’ve rigged the game such that they’re the only ones big enough to play.
We, as individuals and small communities, need to work together.
We must carve a new path.
a Small Society
This is a political document, describing the intentions, motivations, and views of a small group of people practicing community scale creation. Following these artistic, social, and technological principles might help lead to more fair and just societies.
We live in an era of unparalleled abundance, unevenly distributed. The Abundance created from our labor, from our creation, from our communities, is stolen from us, bundled up and smashed against the abundance of our neighbors, and sold back to us.
They leave us with artificial scarcity, while they feast on the abundance of our labor. This Large abundance enriches a powerful few at the expense of a disenfranchised many. The few and powerful have convinced themselves, or pretend among themselves, that the abundance they steal from us is something that they create, and that it can Grow Forever.
This is, of course, nonsense. Nothing can grow forever. Indiscriminate growth is harmful and destructive, and the consolidation of wealth and power in to the hands of so few is both destructive and useless. Capitalism, in it’s current form, is a cancer that will consume and destroy everything
This large abundance goes to waste, and those who create it are forced to make do on the scraps that remain. Every dollar in the pocket of a billionaire, not being spent, gathering dust, collecting interest, is a dollars worth of food that is not on a worker’s table.
We do not have to accept this. In fact, we cannot accept this. We must reject the illusion of infinite growth, support one another, and embrace our small abundance.
Small Community
We are building a movement, but we are building a movement Made of People. Small groups of people form communities. Groups of communities form networks. Networks of small communities can accomplish more and make decisions faster than one large group.
We can and should care about our neighbors, our community members. We look out for one another. We tell our stories. We protect our community, and make sure everyone is fed and housed to the best of our abilities.
Small Technology
Big technology is extractive, oppressive, and a tool for indoctrination and radicalization. Small technology is technology for People. Human scale technology. Understandable, implementable, respectful. It does not spy on you, it does not steal from you, it does not seek to manipulate you.
Small Technology is a Big Topic that deserves more words than I’ll give it here.
Social media
Write a blog, start a newsletter, maybe use the fediverse. Whatever you end up doing, avoid Facebook and google wherever you can.
Communication
Send an email, run an element server, don’t let Gmail and Facebook control your communication.
Storage
Syncthing and nextcloud work as well as dropbox, and don’t spy on you.
Distribution
Host your own website. Use wordpress or neocities or some other platform. If you don’t want to pay to rent a server, run something like yunohost on a raspberry pi in a closet in your home. It won’t be available 100% of the time, and it won’t be fast, but it’ll be Good Enough and you’ll learn a lot along the way.
Creation
Free tools for creation exist and are great. Look at Krita, glimpse, kdenlive, and dozens of others. All of the work I do is powered by free software.
Small Media
Make things because you like to make them. Share things because you want to share them. People have done this since the dawn of time. Members of the Arts and Crafts group the Roycrofter were self publishing zines in the 1890s using letterpress, Lainsville TV and The Videofreex were producing independent television with the first consumer video cameras.
You don’t need budget, you don’t need technology, you just need something to say.
Small things:
This is a list of things that are small. Not every thing on this list will conform to every principle of the small things manifesto, but they all have a similar flavor.
Zines and comix
By their very nature, Zines (self published, DIY magazines) are Small. They’re usually hand made. They’re usually distributed freely or cheaply. Go embrace Zines and Comix from your local book or record store.
The slow/small/indie web
The internet does not have to belong to Amazon and Google and Facebook. Projects like Gemini imagine a new kind of web. Projects like the fediverse (see Mastodon or Hometown) create an alternative to Twitter and Facebook. Tilde servers, and places like SDF provide a place for communities of tech enthusiasts to get together outside the control of a massive corporation.
Email is, outside of gmail and yahoo mail, still Federated and peer to peer.
Services like Peertube (which powers New Ellijay TV) allow sharing even videos from underpowered simple computers on home internet connections, and projects like yunohost simplify the maintenance and deployment for self hosting on simple cheap computers.
Podcasts
Most podcasts are Small Media, even if they don’t consider themselves to be. They’re independently produced media distributed using small technology (RSS). Corporations like Spotify and Apple and Google have attempted to gatekeep podcasts, but anyone can go to most podcast’s website and download and subscribe with any podcatcher.
Many podcasts lean in to this, distributing under an entirely open license.
Most podcasts start real rough around the edges, not only is that Fine, it’s also Good. Embrace imperfections. Reject perfection.
Music
Lots of small music gets made every day. Most DIY/Punk is small music, but to my mind there has never been a more perfect example of the Ethos of Small Production than All Hail West Texas by The Mountain Goats. Recorded on the internal mic of a boombox, it’s a Deeply emotional and absolutely perfect record that lives in, relishes in, its flaws. “Hail Satan, tonight.”
It’s not CC licensed, but it predates the entire concept, so I can’t fault it.
Principles of Small Creation
Scale and complexity are traps;
It doesn’t have to be scalable to 10M concurrent users if it’s only going to be used by 10 people.
It’s better to work okay every time than to work perfectly one time in ten
There is freedom in a lack of professionalism, in doing things incorrectly, and in doing things poorly
A lack of commercial prospects is not a reason to prevent yourself from Coding or Singing or Drawing or Writing for the joy of the doing.
We build things for people
Specific people, small numbers of people, knowable, manageable groups.
Include people
We strive for the things we make to be Understandable when they need to be understood; Usable (and useful), when they need to be used; Enjoyable, when they are meant to be enjoyed; Discoverable, so that they can be found.
Level editors! User Generated Content! Customization! Permision to remix and reuse and cover and sample and to do all the things.
Respect our audience (users, viewers, consumers, etc.) and our artists (coders, videographers, musicians, etc.)
Credit your collaborators
Protect the vulnerable in our communities.
Compensate people as fairly as is possible.
Don’t track users or harvest data
No “Proof of work”, if you hear the word “blockchain”, slap someone.
Do offer options for customization when possible
Try to build things that will last.
Consider the impact on your community when you no longer exist to provide the thing. How will The Thing outlive you, if it can outlive you?
Consider the impact of your work on your community, strive to do no harm.
Share, and make sure everyone else does
This means licensing clearly, and making attribution easy
We use CC-BY-SA for media and (a)GPL for software.
More permisive licenses are fine, more restrictive licenses aren’t.
“CC-ND” limits the ability for others to transform your work, perpetuating the worst parts of our current copyright system.
“CC-NC” prohibits those who share your work from monetizing in any way. Including CC-NC content in a magazine or web page with advertisements is a license violation, this can quickly lead to unsustainable situations.
The licensing thing scares a lot of people off. CC-BY-SA means Share it with other people, credit me for it, and if you decide to make any changes or incorporate this in to another work, release your stuff under the same terms.
This lets us distribute Small Media through lots of disconnected networks, while making sure that anyone who wants to can find the creator (and pay them!), and ensuring that a company like Disney won’t swoop in and profit off of our hard work.
Know your neighbors
Physical or digital, get to know your community. Makes it easier to look out for one another.
We’re all real people, after all.
Make it quick, make it cheap, stop when you hit Good Enough
No one is going to be upset that your low budget, anti-capitalist disaster movie doesn’t have billion dollar special effects. Tell the story and move on.
Quick doesn’t mean “Go as Quickly as you can”, it means “cut out any steps that won’t help you finish the thing.” Don’t burn yourself out making a small thing! But also, don’t spend so much time polishing the thing that you never finish it.
Don’t give power and money to those that seek to destroy you, when an alternative is available
Disney, Comcast, Fox, Sony.
Provide community based alternatives to the things that major corporations create
We can make our own News, entertainment, social media, music, art, games, toys, clothes, and food at various capacities.
Support one another
If you can afford to pay a creator who made a thing you enjoy, do.
If you enjoy a thing, tell soemone about it.
If someone needs help that you can provide, consider helping
If you need help that someone else can provide, ask
Forget the social norms that prevent you from asking for help, or that lead you to disparage those who do
If you’ve got nice gear, share it
We help us.
Don’t let Gear stop you
Use what you have.
Nearly any cell phone can produce Good Enough video. Steven Soderbergh shot Unsane and High Flying Bird on iphones.
“All Hail West Texas” was recorded on the integrated microphone on a cheap, barely functional boombox, and it sounds like it. It sounds bad! It’s still a wonderful, award wining album.
Dozens of award winning documentaries were shot on the first consumer video cameras. These cameras produced some of the worst video footage imaginable. It’s fine, anyone who cares more about the Fidelity of your gear than about the quality of your work is missing the point.
Most of our gear is second hand and a lot of it is 10+ years old. Keep it out of landfils.
If you want to and can buy some gear, find something good enough, and stop thinking about it
There’s nothing wrong with using something nice, if you have it or have access to it, but Diminishing Returns are real.
It’s better to have a finished thing that’s lo-fi than an unfinished thing in perfect fidelity
Every dollar spent on gear, is not spent on the people involved, the sets, the costumes, etc.
Not everything has to be a Small Thing, but the best big things start small.
Sustain
Don’t burn yourself out
Take care of yourself and, if you can, help your neighbors
Other Small Things
People are always making small games, small software, small art. This is good! We’re going to compile as many small things as we can in to a regular feature in the analog revolution zine, and on our website.
Small Things are the next big thing.
Make something.
Find something someone else made, and tell your friends about it.
Lift one another up. Reclaim the future. Ignore the Megacorporations. Start something worth doing.
Sharing this again, because I believe it's important.
The Black Angel by Cornell Woolrich.
Norbertine von Bresslern-Roth, zebra finch, ducks, fantails, 1922. Cat, 1925. Crabs, 1926. Color linocuts. Source 1|2|3|4|5
The austrian lady was one of the finest linocut artists of the 20th century.
Bringing you more Bad Books and Immodest Pictures, your Impure Thoughts Stockpile was getting low.
This is the FUNNIEST SHIT I HAVE EVER SEEN
Reblogging for cultural enrichment
bout time I brought back the Laurel and Hardy flex tape-
From The Killers, 1946. A Film Noir Classic
I’m an archivist, behold my growing collection was of old photos mirroring timeless memes I’ve come across at various places I’ve worked.
OcTOHOBer Day 26 - Beam
#godzilla #rodan #skullcrawler #mechagodzilla #enterprise #captainkirk #spock #birdofprey #ink #watercolor #drawing #draw #illustration #art #artist #ゴジラ #モスラ #ラドン #OcTOHOber #OcTOHOber2021 (at Monterey Park, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CVd8OdHP8hW/?utm_medium=tumblr
A ZOORAY PORTABLE HEATER IN THE FORM OF A SCOTTIE
circa 1930
Bonhams
Battlestar Galactica (1978), “Saga of a Star World”
