@hyacinthinium - Tumblr Blog

I want to work on something more elaborate but basically what I want to say comes down to this:

Too many people waste their time staying informed about things they'll never change while ignoring the vast amount they could - and that is only to the benefit of everyone they profess to be against.

My recommendations:

Block ads - they track and sell your data on and offline; they're whole goal is to further capitalism/consumerism

Get off of social media entirely (especially Meta platforms) or move to decentralized platforms; decentralized ones at least aren't optimized to keep you on them

Leave streaming platforms (Netflix, Spotify) limit or avoid endless content platforms (YouTube). They have a vested interest in you not feeling satisfied, tiring you out so all you can do is consume them.

When you do consume, switch to more free/low cost media from collective sources like libraries (books, DVDs, music, Kanopy or Hoopla) and direct from creators (indie books, zines, games, etc). This supports your community and cultivates valuing exchanges outside of commercial factors.

Learn about security and privacy issues - consider degoogling, switching to Linux, using a safer phone OS or downgrading your phone, infosec online, etc.

Mask as often as possible with the best quality mask you can afford. This is not as effective at blocking facial recognition as has been reported but it does limit spread of many deadly viruses and saves lives.

Create an archive and back it up of work you enjoy or find useful. Have ways to access it completely offline. Prepare for an internet that is controlled by autocrats or cut off entirely. Make it so you can share it with friends and family if need be.

When you're less influenced by tech and business oligarchies, you're better able to think critically for your own and other's benefits. When you value spending time and consuming outside of their reach, you aren't a cog in their machinery - spending that time feeding them content they can train AIs on and spy on you to sell you to others. When you care about privacy and security and take measures to protect yourself, you help others who have to take those measure to protect themselves because they're targeted - activists, marginalized groups etc - by making it less easy to flag those people. When you mask you protect yourself and others from disease while the health care system is getting attacked and dismantled.

These are meaningful and concrete ways of assisting others that are getting completely ignored in favor of more performative ways of "helping" or not helping at all. And I just...wish people knew it wasn't all or nothing.

The powers that be are trying to destroy services that were intended to benefit all of us so they can sell it back to some of us at a steep mark up. When you use NWS for your weather or NPR/PBS for your news and television, you care when they're gone.

You do not have to consent to autocracy. You can resist it.

effemimaniac

sorry for the delay in responding to your message. I was walking around the house with unclear intentions

madmonksandmaenads

I wish I could make white people(and not just white Americans) understand how diverse the pre-columbian Americas were. The history, religion, culture, politics was at least as complex as Europe's. There was the full gamut of religions, from monotheists to animists to ancestral religions. There were city building empires, village farmers, nomadic traders, and so many other ways to live. This is all just based on what we know, the fragments left behind and the stories of survivors of an apocalyptic plague. All this before the most extended campaign of genocide in history was waged in an attempt to wipe out those survivors.

Over 500 years spent trying to cut down a whole trunk of human culture.

Do you understand how much poorer our whole species is because of it? Can you imagine where art, religion, and science would be if we still had these vast bodies of knowledge? The stain of the colonial project will never be fully washed clean. We owe more than just the land to those we stole from. We owe them a whole future, a future that could have been brighter for all of us. If only greed and fear weren't allowed to rule this land.

ot3

no hate to op at all im screenshotting this for the sake of Making My Own Post instead of adding a subjective contradictory opinion to theirs. but i just can not relate to this way of thinking at all. when something everyone has told me is really good turns out to be really good im overjoyed. i think its awesome when things are good and they get attention for being good. the other option is that only bad shit ever gets popular and that would be a dark reality to live in indeed... the joy i get from being a contrarian hater is always a consolation prize for not getting to actually experience something good, which is always my main goal. i consider this an important part of the hater's ethos

markovchaingang

libertarian jesus is fine with the whole betrayal thing because judas was simply acting in his own rational self-interest but suddenly becomes agitated upon hearing he got sold out for less than market rate

roko-wt

Anthy sketch 🌹🏰

#rgu #so pretty....

toddsolondz

i’m like a clown that no one hired or pays

explodingsilver

I've seen some posts trying to make fun of former gifted kids by comparing them to former student athletes who insist that they could have gone pro if not for a specific injury, and those posts always backfire, because my reaction to them is "You're right, we should treat former student athletes with more compassion than we currently do"

self-loving-vampire

I went from being very physically active to getting the "your body doesn't make energy properly anymore" disability so I can completely understand the grief that comes with circumstances outside your control destroying parts of you you were once proud of and locking you out of the life you could have had. It's not a good feeling.