shark vs the universe
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
Jules of Nature
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
JBB: An Artblog!
One Nice Bug Per Day
tannertan36
⁂
trying on a metaphor
Product Placement
izzy's playlists!
h
blake kathryn
Discoholic 🪩
occasionally subtle
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Janaina Medeiros
Not today Justin
sheepfilms
seen from United States
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@j-c-laredo
Casualties afoot as Sony merges Funimation with 2021-acquired Crunchyroll.
reminder that digital libraries aren’t owned, also why pirating digital content is a necessity
Yeah okay, I'll reblog that!
You all mocked me for maintaining a physical library, but I warned that a digital one was no guarantee.
Next they'll start editing and then deleting books they don't like.
yeah okay ill reblog that :[
I know this is going to make me sound pretensions but I have to get it off my chest. I feel an unimaginable rage when someone posts a photo and is like "this picture looks like a renaissance painting lol" when the photo clearly has the lighting, colors and composition of a baroque or romantic painting. There are differences in these styles and those differences are important and labeling every "classical" looking painting as renaissance is annoying and upsetting to me. And anytime I come across one of those posts I have to put down my phone and go take a walk because they make me so mad
In case you're curious here's what I mean.
Renaissance(distinct lines, stability and the individual man):
Baroque (bold, chaotic, dramatic):
Romantic(romanticize the simple hard working life):
Do you see the difference?
this post has re-wired my brain in the best way
I don’t like wading into Ao3 debates, but I want to give my professional opinion on Ao3 with regard to archives vs. libraries.
I am a professional librarian (MSLS) and I have worked in both archives and public libraries and a lot of the confusion and concern I see surrounding Ao3 is a fundamental misunderstanding of How Archives Work.
An archive is a collection related to a subject. That subject often a person but sometimes a field or concept or project. And the purpose of an archive is to keep everything. And I mean everything. I was going to say “short of biohazards” but since I know there’s a sealed R. Crumb Devil Gal chocolate bar in the UNC Chapel Hill archives, we really do mean everything.
When a collection of materials–which are usually unique and original and can be photos, manuscripts, letters, recordings (audio and/or visual), notes and notebooks, objects, published books, whatever–on and/or from the subject arrive at the archive, they are examined, preserved for longevity, accessioned and cataloged (added to the archive’s records), and added to the archive. You measure collections in linear feet. As in, once it’s all preserved and boxed and secure, you note how many feet of shelf space it takes up. And some of y'all on Ao3 have a lot of linear feet to your name (and I’m proud of you).
This is an archive: it is designed to preserve the original materials related to a subject. That is its purpose. Archives are how we have the original scroll manuscript of On the Road, for example, or the Lomax recordings of American folksongs, or Tijuana Bibles, or James Joyce’s loveletters to Nora.
Now you, a member of the public, can access some archives. Some are easier to access than others. The one I worked in was open to the public; good luck getting into the British Archives without a good reason.
So now apply this to Ao3–which is an archive both in name and in purpose. It is intended to preserve fan-created content long term. And this means everything, whether you personally like the materials or not. It is a repository for as much as possible.
And the “whether you personally like the materials or not” is important, hence why I mentioned Jim’s loveletters and Tijuana Bibles in particular. (RIP Jim, you would have loved pegging.)
If it’s made by fans and it exists, we should keep it to document the history and progression of fandom. That is the point. We have lost enough materials related to the subject of fans of media and we don’t need to lose any more.
The fact of the matter is that Ao3 is only one facet of the OTW, which preserves other fan-related materials (convention booklets and zines, for example). Somehow Ao3, an archive on the subject of fanfiction, has been divorced from the rest of the project, mostly by way of “purity culture” and panic over “dangerous” fiction.
The fact that you can go through an archive and find interesting information is the other side of archives. No, they shouldn’t be like the banker’s box of old letters stuffed in my closet. Yes, they should be organized and as accessible as is appropriate for the state of the materials.
It’s really, really cool to find stuff in an archive, I’m not even going to lie. I have done it before and I will do it again. And yet there are other items in an archive that I might not want or need or be interested in at all–but they’re still there. That’s the cataloging and accessioning: to keep up with what’s there, to stay “on topic” with collecting, and to be able to find things in that archive. Bless the tag wranglers who are doing the cataloging at Ao3.
The pearl clutching seems to come from 1. the creation of “dangerous” fanworks and 2. public access to those “dangerous” fanworks. These are issues of “purity culture” and opinions on censorship and should not involve Ao3.
Ao3, under the umbrella of the OTW, is a documentation and preservation project first and foremost.
Meanwhile: libraries.
We’re all basically familiar with libraries, right? A collection of materials designed to be used by the people who use the library. That’s the basics.
And that is not the same as an archive.
Library books, especially public library books, age like milk. I cannot tell you what a relief it has been to throw away dirty, smelly, stained, damaged, sand-in-the-covers books when a replacement comes in. I know there’s a Cult of the Book around here, but books are not all that inherently precious. The latest James Patterson novel is not a survivor of the Library of Alexandria (which was more of an archive anyway).
If a book is so rare that it cannot be replaced, it should be in an archive or a rare book collection and not a circulating library.
The first rule of libraries is “know your user population.” To use the example of public libraries, you need to know what books the people want to read (among other things).
Libraries, generally speaking, are more apt to adjust their collection to suit their users. A library in, for example, a prison is likely to have a lot of books on law. A church library will likely have a lot of religious books and, depending on the church, may not have any books by LGBTQ+ authors. These collections reflect their users (and also the controls or limitations placed on those users but I digress). A public library bookmobile taken to childcare centers will have a lot of children’s books. I have packed a bookmobile for that project so trust me on this one.
The news is full of challenges being laid against certain books in libraries–especially school libraries and public libraries. In some cases, the challenge may be valid. In most current cases, it’s really about exterting political and/or religious control over public institutions but couched in concerns about “the children.”
And, quite frankly, that’s what the “concerns” about what Ao3 contains feel like to me.
An archive with open and easy access to the public has been mistaken for a circulating library. A circulating library might adjust its collection to suit the wants, needs, and concerns of its user population. Ao3 is not a library. Ao3, Archive of Our Own, is an archive. It is designed for preservation and you, the user, can make use of its cataloging tools to examine the contents of the archive. It is not a circulating library. Things you don’t like or don’t want are going to be in archives.
What happens when the world’s knowledge is held in a quasi-public square owned by a private company that could soon go out of business?
Jesus, I hadn’t even thought of this, but of course.
This is something that historians have been warning about for a couple of decades. How much of our history was not just on Twitter, but on MySpace, on blogs and web sites that came down after a few years, on e-mail, on texts. None of that leaves a record. Once the file is deleted, the server shut down and scrapped, the backup disks decay into being unreadable junk, that history is gone.
Does anyone remember when Obama and Clinton each held town hall campaign events on MySpace? Good luck finding anything about those now other than some news articles that say they happened. How many business zoom calls have formal meeting minutes taken? We are not saving histories. We aren’t even writing letters. I’m as guilty as anyone. My art is online and kept in the cloud. I make my Christmas Card every year, but I haven’t printed and mailed one in over a decade. It’s all sent electronically. Meaning that a generation from now no one will remember.
So the problem is bigger than Twitter. We are now a couple of decades into an age that will not leave any detailed historical record.
That is not good.
In pseudo and acadamic circles this has routinely been called the ‘digital dark age’, I even wrote on the subject a few years ago but can’t find that article right now. [There is even a Wikipedia article on the concept] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_dark_age#:~:text=The%20digital%20dark%20age%20is,technologies%20evolve%20and%20data%20decay).
It’s thought this might just be a black spot of knowledge, there are organizations working to stop this — archival websites primarily, but these are not able to penetrate all these corporate gated gardens, where paywalls, sign up walls, and more block access to. There is an ongoing campaign by megacorps to shutdown as many archival sites as possible.
This coupled with the fallibility of hard drives, CDs (make sure to back them up! They only have a 20-30 year lifetime!), and more and there is a chance that even though there is more information than ever before, more primary and secondary sources than ever, we may become just a strange blank spot in societal and cultural history. Digital decay is a terrifying concept that we are already beginning to live through.
@xkcd-for-that
This is exactly what I’ve been saying. It’s a loss of history. And, given how important it has been for activists of all sorts, it will be a loss for the future as well.
Star Trek yet again being accurate about future history (Picard saying “little is known about this era (the early 21st century) because much of the digital records are gone.”)
I think this article from The Guardian must have been one of the first, prominent ones to mention Digital Dark Age? It’s from 2011, and it’s entitled
Report warns of ‘digital Dark Age’ if digitisation is left to private sector.
Ten years later? You have this piece on The Atlantic: The Internet is rotting. From 2021.
The heading goes: «Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone.»
(I’m so relieved none of these links are down, because that’d be some ironic bs)
And since you know I have to be annoying about this, here’s the comic I made about preservation, called Memory Weaver.
I’m just adding this new link here, for those following this chain of events.
38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later
Babe, listen
Your fic isn’t a flop, it’s a cult classic. Only the coolest freaks like it, don’t worry about it, it’s great.
Two rules for creating anything.
1) Make it weird.
2) Make it with love.
watched the stalks of a lavender bush by the bus stop dip and sway from the sheer amount of fat little bumblebees on it and you know what. some things in this world are good
i'm the guy who writes the books that the protagonist in supernatural horror movies frantically reads somewhere in act ii. job's pretty easy. lot of "legends of vampires have recurred all throughout human history" and "demonologists agree that the quickest way to un-summon a demon is to trap it in a cursed object". no citations of course; they don't pay me citation money. i had to learn html back in the early aughts when everyone started seeking their supernatural info on websites they found via top search engines like FINDLER and WEBSIGHT but that's died down now which is great because i didn't have it in me to pick up css. currently working on a new book about horses that are evil. it's called HORSES THAT ARE EVIL in all caps so the protagonist can find it quickly to yank off the library shelf. it will be published 35 years ago.
Remind me later.
You know I think Dune was on to something when they destroyed all the AI
faraday cages are so funny to me. what are we gonna do about all this dangerous radiation? let's put it in a little dog crate. and it works
yeahh. can't melt my organs from in there can you? fuckig idiots
people are saying do it scared, but you also gotta do it alone. you'll miss out on so much you want to do if you wait til someone will do it with you. do it scared and do it alone.
me (scared & alone) out in the wider world trying to broaden my horizons:
but i stay silly! *←said in the most world-weary voice you ever did hear*
are you in a good headspace to receive my triple barrage hell nightmare skeleton attack right now.
Scrolled down the MF DOOM tag trying to find the mac and cheese image and I couldn't so anyway here it is literally one of my favourite images of all time
very important that you include MF DOOM's Villainous Mac and Cheese Recipe alongside this image
Just something to think about this Friday morning!!
Isaiah 64:6
We are all impure with sin. All our righteous deeds are nothing but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins sweep us away like the wind.
Most people think that somehow they are good enough and they deserve to go to heaven. They think that their good works will take them there, and reject the Salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We can never stand before a holy God in our own righteousness. When we repent of our sins and receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour, He will wash us with His precious blood and make us truly righteous. Only through the blood of Jesus can we enter into the presence of God. Every other attempt at righteousness outside of Christ is futile, and God will look at that kind of righteousness as filthy rags.
The above verse does not mean, our righteous acts are filthy rags, but our righteous acts apart from Christ are filthy rags.
In fact Ephesians 2:10 reads “For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” But the Bible is very clear, “ It is by grace you have been saved."
