Oh I see... you think this has nothing to do with you? And you select, I don't know, that boho chic cowboy core getup for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you're different and alternative. But what you don't know is that that style is not truly bohemian, its not Western, its Native American. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that it was Southwestern tribes who originated the "Western" silver & turquoise jewelry, and the rug patterns used for horse saddles. And I think it was the Plains and Woodlands tribes wasnt it? Who beaded their tanned hide jackets with florals and fringed edges & beaded the brims of their hats & added Eagle feathers. And Soon Navajo Saddle blankets started appearing in four major saddlery catalogues, then filtered down through the runway, to the department stores, then trickled on down to the tragic internet trend where you no doubt fished it out of some White owned store. However, that fashion represents millions of dollars and countless styles appropriated traditional Indigenous fashion, and its sort of comical how you think you've made a choice that exempts you from a legacy of colonialism when in fact, you're wearing a fashion that was selected for you by the Native people of Turtle Island.
I just realized bc of several ppl pointing out that the character holding the belts in the background really (& accidentally) adds to the point since its obviously modeled after Southwestern Native American silverwork
The entire Bohemian aesthetic was founded on racism and cultural appropriation.
Let's start with the term Bohemian, meaning from Bohemia (now modern day Czech Republic). In mid to late 19th century France, Bohème was what they called the Manouche and Sinti in a similar manner to how the British isles called my people "gypsies". This is because similar to Gypsy (which means from Egypt/Egyptian), France thought we came from Bohemia (a little closer to the truth than Egypt but still off the mark).
So the (white gadje) artists in the 19th entury were like look at those Boheme how free they are like us! See we're bohemians too! All the while stealing our culture, using racist, oversexualized and exotified caricatures of us in their art and operas (like La Bohème and Carmen), and denying us the right to just exist as our own people in one place. We don't travel because we're free and wander whereever we travel because we are legally denied the right to exist anywhere. Anyway, then in the 50s and 60s, the Beatniks and hippies were like "we're just like those 19th century Bohemian artists". So they decided to add Black, East Asian, and Indigenous American culture to their cultural appropriation sludge. Which is why there's so much Native bead work, dreadlocks and "braids" and romani dress coding and shit like "gypsy soul" in the aesthetic.
And the thing that makes calling the hippy aesthetic Boho/Bohemian extra disgusting to me is... there were actual Bohemian Romani. Do you want to know what happened to them? They were wiped out in the Holocaust. An entire vitsa (tribe) that was genocided and we use the term for fashion and aesthetic.
Please just call it the hippy or nomad aesthetic, cut the racism and appropriation out, or best of all let it die.
i hope they never stop using floppy disk icons to indicate saving your file. doesn't matter how obsolete they are it's like honouring someone with a portrait on your currency
being anti ai is making me feel like in going insane. "you asked for thoughts about your characters backstory and i put it into chat gpt for ideas". studies have proven its making people dumber. "i asked ai to generate this meal plan". its causing water shortages where its data centers are built. "ill generate some pictures for the dnd campaign". its spreading misinformation. "meta, generate an image of this guy doing something stupid". its trained off stolen images, writing, video, audio. "i was talking with my snapchat ai-" theres no way to verify what its doing with the information it collects. "youtube is impletmenting ai based age verification". my work has an entire graphics media department and has still put ai generated motivational posters up everywhere. ai playlists. ai facial verification. google ai microsoft ai meta ai snapchat ai. everyone treats it as a novelty. every treats it as a mandatory part of life. am i the only one who sees it? am i paranoid? am i going insane? jesus fucking christ. if i have to hear one more "well at least-" "but it does-" "but you can-" im about to lose it. i shouldnt have to jump through hoops to avoid the evil machine. have you no principles? no goddamn spine? am i the weird one here?
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.
You do not have to consent to autocracy. You can resist it.
use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.
use firefox or librewolf (open-source fork of firefox) instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).
use mega instead of google drive
get rid of bloatware
use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite
get free stuff with the help of r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH, r/piracy and r/roms
use trakt (for shows and movies), letterboxd (just movies), or TMB instead of IMDB (owned by amazon).
use storygraph instead of goodreads (owned by amazon).
use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions
use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp
make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge
use search for a cause, ecosia, or ocean hero to support the environment instead of google
use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)
use flashpoint to play archived online flash games
find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books
burn your music onto cds
use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe
use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, or tuta instead of gmail
remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X
remove bloatware on samsung X
use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta
use project gutenberg for free public domain books, and librivox for public domain books and audiobooks
use the seal app (android only) to download video and audio
use ellipsus instead of microsoft word or google docs
use mastodon instead of twitter
use peertube to create a network of small video hosting providers (disclaimer: not a 1:1 alternative to youtube)
use threema and signal for encrypted communication, on mobile and desktop
use qwant and startpage for secure internet browsers
use syncthing to securely transfer files between devices
learn how to jailbreak your kindle/ereader if you have one (wiki and video walkthrough)
use riseup’s email and VPN for secure communication (aimed towards activists)
use cryptpad and collabora instead of the microsoft office suite
use google takeout to export the data on your google account
use library extension to look for books on online stores and find them at your library
remove paywalls with removepaywalls
install the open-source adblocker ublock origin
install sponsorblock to skip sponsored segments on youtube videos
use bookfinder to look for the cheapest available listings of books, including textbooks
learn a language through mango (duolingo laid off some of its employees and now relies on AI translations) for free with a library card or through your school
edit photos with photopea
edit pdfs with foxit and sumatrapdf
download music with doubledouble
take notes offline and collaborate securely with obsidian
for android tv, use smarttube and cloudstream (ad-free, open-source)
change your OS to linux
changelog:
removed ground news (uses AI to summarize articles)
removed unroll.me (sells your data)
removed proton mail and drive (AI assistant feature, claims of CEO Andy Yen supporting Trump, please DM if you have proof I can add here)
removed NCH suite (only has very basic free features, puts watermark on anything saved)
notes:
this post blew up while I wasn’t looking (the end of my semester was hellish, and i recently came back from a 3-week family vacation). thanks so much for all the suggestions! <3
i included Ecosia because of their financial transparency. It’s physically impossible that they plant a tree for every search, but their profits still go towards projects including reforestation and solar energy. i view their actions as a net-positive
feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3
Alice please please bring Heinrich home with you.... let him meet Gwen..... tell him to be polite to her...... she will hire him as an external...... Alice teaches him to play Roblox so he can scare kids..... and work to balance the dphw....... please......
the average blockbuster carried about 3x as many films than that that are streaming on Netflix or any other streaming service, physical media along with piracy is more important than ever.
I thought this wasn’t true, because how could it be true? How could one small store have more movies than an online database? So I googled it.
I am surprised and depressed to learn it’s 100% true, according to google. A Blockbuster store was required to have a minimum of 7000 titles, but most averaged about 10,000. Netflix has 4000 movies. (And 1800 tv shows if you want to count those, but even included, it’s still less)
Now I’m even more depressed about the collapse of physical rental stores.
BONUS: They weren't beholden to Who Owns What IP Right Now. They got videos from everyone. You didn't have to pay separately for the rights to rent from the Disney Shelves and the WB Shelves and bler bler bler, and they only STOPPED having those movies when the tapes broke or someone never returned 'em.
friendly reminder that your local library will have lots of physical media and if they don't have what you're looking for you can most likely ask them to purchase it or order it from another library through interlibrary loan
Shoutout to Scarecrow Video- they have over 148,000 titles, most of which you can rent by mail. Rentals have been down in the last few years so they're asking for support!
My spouse and I are both disabled, queer, and native. We avoided one eviction but the possibility of another one is close. We need rent paid ASAP. Any help is appreciated. Rent with late fees is $2200.
www.paypal.me/jnwampler
Go to paypal.me/jnwampler and type in the amount. Since it’s PayPal, it's easy and secure. Don’t have a PayPal account? No worries.
Total is lowered to reflect the lost funds due to need to keep the web on.
This amount is for JULY. We are only surviving now because our landlady took a vacation at the top of July and didn’t give us a 30 day warning till 7/14.
This amount needs to be paid by then. Please help. This is absolutely critical.
*wakes up while being dragged by my ankles towards the lair of some horrifying creature and immediately instinctively tries to roll over and go back to sleep
theartofmadeline
romaincrisis
stormborns
dededos
snowghoul
vaporwave
