Why Do Anything If You Could Be Sleeping

Cute animals and the occasional comic

[funnytwittertweets]

[rozentias-deactivated20240103]

in the latest cyber-news: the internet archive has lost their case against 4 major publishing houses (verge article). they’re going to appeal, but this is still a bad outcome. the fate of the internet is currently hanging in the balance because 4 multibillionare publishing groups missed out on like $15 of combined revenue during the pandemic because of the archive’s online library service. it’s so fucking stupid.

for those who don’t know what the internet archive is, it’s a virtual library full of media. books, magazines, recordings, visuals, flash games, websites - a lot of these things either don’t exist anymore or cannot be found & bought. heard of the wayback machine? that’s part of the internet archive. it is the most important website to exist, and i don’t say that lightly. if the internet archive goes down, the cultural loss will be immeasurable.

so how can you help?

boycott the publishing companies involved in this. they’re absolute ghouls, frankly, and don’t deserve a penny. the companies involved are harpercollins (imprints), wiley (imprints), penguin random house llc (imprints), and hachette book group (imprints). make sure the websites are set to your location as it may differ worldwide.

learn to torrent. download a torrent client (i recommend transmission), a vpn (i recommend protonvpn - sign up and choose the area that’s closest to your continent/country), and hit up /r/piracy on reddit for websites. with torrenting, you can get (almost) any media you want for free in high quality, with add-ons such as subtitles, and with no risks of loss. i would also recommend getting into the habit of watching stuff online for free. the less you can pay to a giant corporation, the better.

get into the habit of downloading and archiving materials. find a TB external hard drive, ideally the higher the better. it’ll probably cost around $60 for 1TB and continue to go up, but they’re so so useful. if you can’t afford a drive, look for any GB harddrives or memory sticks you have lying around and just fill them up. videos, pdfs, magazines, songs, movies, games - anything you can rip and download and fit on there, do it, because nothing is permanent.

donate to the internet archive. this is the most important option on the list. the IA relies entirely on funding, and it’s going to need more to fight this case. whatever you can donate, do it. i promise it’s helpful.

and finally…

[charaznablescanontoyota]

cannot stress enough that donating to the internet archive to help them appeal this without going broke is the most important thing you can do right now. my day job revolves around fulfilling digital article and book scan requests at an academic library and a huge part of that is borrowing from other libraries that do controlled digital lending (incl. the internet archive!). copyright law is already hugely restrictive on what we can and can't lend, and we absolutely don't have the option to pirate anything for our patrons due to being a large academic institution. it's difficult to overstate just how bad this ruling could end up being for libraries that have digital lending programs, esp ones that rely on CDR for old/archival/hard-to-find texts.

[daniilune]

Dream of a Thousand Cats

[catscenter]

[stele3]

The witches have come to lay their claim.

[bunjywunjy]

a pair of mischievous goblins examine their new charge

[endisni-blog]

Ebony and Tenebrous were aghast.  “Did you hear what those fairies gave her? Beauty, grace and willingness to please? Bast’s tits, that’s a terrible thing to do to a kitten.“ Ten got up on her hind legs. “Never trust a flying thing that gives you a mouthful of glitter when you catch it. Come on, Eb, let’s give her our gifts.” “Like half a shrew? I tried giving her that, her dam shouted at me.“ “Quite right too,“ said Ten wisely, “it’s got be at least four weeks before she can manage the skulls. That’ll be my gift then. May you always be able to manage skulls. Big ones, small ones, beaky ones, mousey ones, any sort of skull.“ Ebony copied her sister’s pose. “And may you always catch the flying things. Then you’ll never be hungry, and that’s much better than fairy wishes.” *** Thirty years later, Alba was everyone’s favourite keeper at the zoo. Not only could she cure her colleagues’ headaches just by telling their skulls to give over, but she was the only person they’d ever know who could work alone in the emu enclosure…

[dragon-pdf]

YES THIS IS BEAUTIFUL

[bi-trans-alliance]

“LISTEN UP BIGOTS — AN ATTACK ON ONE OF US IS AN ATTACK ON ALL OF US — A QUEER NATION WARNING,” Queer Nation/SF, San Francisco, California, c. 1990. Via lgbt_history on Instagram. 

[nevaehtyler]

26-year-old Jamarion Robinson’s grandmother Beverly Nixon said her grandson was bipolar and schizophrenic. Still got shot 76 (!!!) times. Would a white person get the same treatment?

The witness said he saw more than a dozen patrol cars at the complex where US Marshals killed Robinson on August 5, 2016. Why were there no behavioral specialist? Surely one of them would know how to interact with a bipolar schizophrenic better than the police.

I’m absolutely disgusted.

Here’s Jamarion’s mother’s GoFundMe in case anyone is willing to help.

#JusticeForJamarion   #BlackLivesMatter

[kingrudegyalchina]

Oh god ..

[ordeal-moved-deactivated2021020]

this is how much they’ve raised as of June 26th, 2020.

[jellyfishjulie]

ladies invented your favorite science fiction subgenres

Margaret Cavendish - Mary Shelley -  Emma Orczy - Catherine Lucille Moore

[ii----------------------ii]

need more WOC on this board

[jellyfishjulie]

You’re right!

Pauline Hopkins - Begum Rokeya - Octavia E. Butler

[ayellowbirds]

in other words, ladies invented science fiction, period.

[yijinheedo-deactivated20220316]

(x)

[val-ritz]

The problem with forcibly seizing the assets of, say, Jeff Bezos is that his net worth of $161 billion does not mean he has that in cash. That’s the worth of everything he owns, including stock in his own company.

And the problem with seizing THAT is that it isn’t real. It’s based on confidence and what people might conceivably pay for it. And if you just seize it, that confidence tanks. And then that wealth evaporates.

The problem with capitalism isn’t that there’s a bunch of old dudes sitting on hoards of cash. It’s that they’ve collectively created a system by which they have ludicrous social and economic power based on the PROMISE of hoards of cash. That don’t exist. They have created a social stratum in which debt is money.

That’s why the exhortation is to SEIZE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION, not GO GRAB ALL THE MONEY. Because the money isn’t real, and the need to go out and get it is blinding people to the fact that it doesn’t need to exist.

[wilwheaton]

(via x19a48u79x451.jpg (810×1080))

[paxamericana]

[fousheezy]

Angry reminder police testimony is used to lock people away for life (or even authorize the death penalty) and these pigs demonstrate they lie even without a reason

[twitblr]

Judge, jury, and executioner.

[eggsaladstain]

But imagine if you lived in a country where the color of your skin got you killed for driving, jogging, sleeping, yelling, parking, babysitting, sitting in a van, selling CDs, selling cigarettes, opening the door, walking at night, wearing a hoodie at night, holding a toy gun, lying on the ground, being homeless, being in a dark stairwell, holding a cell phone, having a broken taillight, exercising horses, having a bottle of pills, shopping at Walmart, holding a BB gun at Walmart, holding a phone in your own backyard, eating ice cream in your own house, and shopping, you would say, “That is a lawless country.” 

— Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj (x)

[whitepeopletwitter]

[aesthesiamag]

Harmonia (@honeiee)

Harmonia Rosales repaints classic artworks to show God is a black woman

Ahead of her latest show, New World Conciousness, the painter reflects on why we must reject the stale, pale, male traditions of art

[ithelpstodream]

[meltedsnowgirl]

i

[bakarilennox]

“OUR GIRLS AREN’T GROWN AT 5 & OUR BOYS AREN’T WEAPONS AT BIRTH.”

Read it again.

[bethofaus]

Heartbreaking.

[micdotcom]

Watch: Poet Porsha Olayiwola heartbreakingly reminds us all that black women’s lives matter too. 

[russula-nongrata]

“Men and boys are seen as the primary target of racial injustice,” AAPF associate director Rachel Gilmer told TakePart in May. “This has led to the idea that women and girls of color are not doing as bad, or that we’re not at risk at all.”

But studies show otherwise: Black women are killed and sexually assaulted by the police, and incarcerated at almost three times the rate of their white female counterparts. Yet news coverage of these cases are focused largely on the relationship between law enforcement and black men.

From the linked article above. None of this diminishes the importance of any Black Lives Matter protests or the lives of black men.

[swedepea]

Reblogged for the important infographic