memorytales

[memorytales]

I am not immune to the power of a fancy little outfit.

[memorytales]

my favorite bit of "rich people are Like That" ephemera that I picked up from my Russian literature binge was from a noble character who was complaining about his serfs neglecting their duties, specifically the duty of staying up all night long slapping the pond water in order to prevent the frogs from croaking so that the nobleman could enjoy his sleep at his country estate with its adorable pond. whenever I hear wealthy people's complaints in this day and age the majority of it automatically filters to "the fucking serfs won't slap the pond anymore and it's honestly so destructive and cruel of them to deny me my beauty sleep like this" type statements

[memorytales]

”getting thicker skin” is great in theory but I think for some people “get better at handling your thin skin” is gonna be way more helpful advice. I have strong emotional reactions to criticism and they might never go away, but i can continue to try and handle each situation maturely and that’s the important part. Sometimes irrational feelings are chronic and living with them is better than trying to beat yourself up into not having them.

[memorytales]

I feel like there's two levels of chronically online. There's like, the variety where you recognize obscure memes and stupid drama and post constantly but have some sort of tether to reality and have friends in the real world and read the news from time to time, and then there's the kind where you genuinely don't realize that your political position or feelings about popular media are not just non-mainstream but actively fringe and that it's not emotional labor to pick people up from the airport.

[memorytales]

genuinely one of the saddest parts of this new era of the internet is how hard it is to rick roll someone now. with people's attention spans shortening so much, they wouldn't even get through the first few bait seconds before clicking off the video. like i saw a comment that ended with "btw i made all of this up" and the replies kept treating it so seriously because none of them finished the entire 4 sentence comment. and We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I (do I) A full commitment's what I'm thinking of You wouldn't get this from any other guy I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

[memorytales]

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…

[memorytales]

I swear I am going to start a seminar in How to Exist in Public. We do not block our coworker from getting their food out of one microwave while waiting for our food in the other microwave. We do not walk four carts abreast through the grocery store, nor do we park our cart next to an end cap and wander off to another aisle. We do not start making a left turn we will not be able to complete, thereby bringing the entire intersection to a screeching halt. We do not stop dead in the middle of the hallway to answer a text. We live in a society.

[memorytales]

My deepest darkest fantasy is that I collapse on the street and I am rushed to the hospital. They perform a bunch of tests and find out I am severely deficient in some kind of vitamin. Then I start taking the vitamin and I become the happiest cleverest person alive because all my problems were caused by this one deficiency

[memorytales]

friendly reminder that you're allowed to need people, in fact everyone needs people. needing the company of others does not make you weak. spending time with other people is how we learn and grow.

[memorytales]

directors using colorful or "impossible" lighting to convey mood and meaning and beauty my beloved. directors making night scenes impossible to see for the sake of realism my beloathed.

[memorytales]

poem, “there’s laundry to do and a genocide to stop,” by vinay krishnan (x). transcription in alt text

[memorytales]

the thing is that regardless of whether or not "it's cool and moral to send death threats to fascists online" is true, i absolutely 100% do not trust online communities to not immediately spread the definition of fascist to mean "person i dislike who i can accuse of being a nazi if you squint and look at it sideways" so it's better to just have a norm of "don't send death threats"

[memorytales]

one of the most challenging skills i've had to learn as an adult is the art of figuring out whether i'm proportionally annoyed with someone or just tired and overstimulated and looking for reasons to be pissed off

[memorytales]

i don't mean to sound ungrateful, but as a content creator on this site, there's a part of me that's like. they absolutely just stole my work.

i'm not, like, unaware that tumblr has been shuffling downhill for years now. sometimes i play with the idea of switching platforms, turning myself into the shark. i often get tens of thousands of notes - i could be "doing numbers" on a platform that actually pays me to do so. i could have statistics that i could use to sell myself, i could rebrand and make content pay-to-play and make brand deals. i could have the other life, i mean.

but i don't want to. i like the quiet nature of tumblr. i like that it still feels like i'm writing poetry, not like i'm fulfilling ad spots. i like the community, and that i can sometimes still take someone by surprise and write something that really speaks to them. i like the tags and reading things like oh of course it's fucking inkskinned i love you inkskinned you gay mess. my girlfriend recently told me that people tag things "inkskinned" because they assume it is similar to tagging "creative writing". that's wild. i made this word up when i was 19, and have always assumed people tag me in things so i read it (and i often do). i have nothing but love and gratitude for you all, for this tiny scoop of family.

and i haven't made any money off it. i had opportunities, and i turned them down. i could have sold this thing like a thousand times. i thought about moving my work elsewhere - over and over and over i thought about it. i weighed each option specifically. but my tumblr felt like ... it's for you guys, only. if you're still here and reading this, you deserve to do it for free.

tumblr has now, most likely, skimmed my work (and yours) in order to make money. i will never see a single cent for that violation. something about landlords, i guess - my work pays their rent.

i just lost my job on valentine's day, and am working on scrambling for solutions. i am writing this to a blog that they will probably scrape with AI. and like, what number to do you think it was? do you think it was only a couple hundred thousand? no way it was close to a million, right? my time, effort, energy - it belongs to someone else now. how many silver pieces for them to completely sell out their user base.

and it's kind of like - funny? when it isn't very-sad. because i personally don't know what to do, ya know? i might as well move to a different platform, where my efforts are ai-scraped but could eventually pay me. where i know my privacy is the cost - but it could result in actual money. anyway. i need to figure out how i'm paying for meds. i need to email like six people about COBRA benefits.

my work is powering someone else's AI. it will be a beautiful fabricated poem, made from words i've already said.

[memorytales]

i don’t mean to be political, but what if everyone had basic human rights

[memorytales]

the usa shouldn’t be the political and economic focal point of the entire fucking planet, actually

[memorytales]

I miss the way I viewed the world before I knew too much about it