duboisproposal

[duboisproposal]

Also- if its 'extra important' even if only to a select few- torrents are a possibility. But yeah- private archives are important and precious and the only real possibility of owning media or having information in a space not controlled by capricious actors that control the cloud.

i encourage people to start archiving. whatever amount you can do. get a physical hard drive.

documentation of political events (both sides)

resources & information that you access online (don't bank on it staying up forever)

your important documents, photos, etc.

moments of humanity (ex: just saw a video of a nyc subway wall covered in hopeful sticky notes after the election)

culture you want to preserve (ex: like how ppl saved vines back in the day to make vine compilations when it went away!)

your medical records

what will you NEED access to if it's no longer available online?

what will you WANT to show future generations from this historic time period?

this was always important with the fragility of the internet but especially now 💕

[duboisproposal]

Hey, the ACLU is getting people to send letters to your Reps to have Congress pass the No Kings Act.

This act would make constitutional amendments to ensure that even sitting presidents are held liable for their actions. That NOBODY is above the law.

Their goal is 150k messages sent and at the time of writing this they're about 2.1k off from that goal!

ACLU gives you a prefilled message that you can edit to send to make the process easier, and will send it out for you.

This only takes a few minutes!

[duboisproposal]

not a narrative - freewriting about freewriting

Oh lord I feel like writing words. Recently I warned her that writing is hard narrative structure is hard. Finishing stories is hard. We start full of wind, sails stretched, lines taught, a clear line to the horizon, open water, wind at our backs. And then it gets messy and we have to change tack. We find ourselves in the spray of metaphors and vague impressions and then what? Where is the ship going? Why this metaphor? The lines to the sail, the lines that make up each paragraph, oh so clever, but do they signify anything? Sound and fury, and gassy stomachs and the idle lines uttered by idle poets and idol poets. And before long we are just playing with words but we aren't imparting much meaning. it's not going anywhere. it's a ship of fools. the coast line is rocky, the wind changes as each part of the chain of islands cuts off and shapes the gust. We try to remember what it was we were trying to see, what was that shimmer on the horizon between ocean and sky? Where are we going with this? So what's shiny? What appealing treasure is our boat travelling adventurer seeking? What gleams in our imagination? A voyage of self discovery - a adolescent curiosity about abandoned places and unseen vistas? A scientific excursion, a discursion in a life full of luxury and opportunities to find small off the beaten path cabins on abandoned Atlantic destinations? Who are we? Where are we going? And in the construction of fiction, those things are abstracts- the dark traveller, the dark night time, the road, the changing landscape- tropes and cinematic backdrop to get us to our arrival point. We turn the corner together around the point of land, the sun sets, the boat gently slides against the beach (because in fantasy you can beach your boat and not have to anchor or worry about damaging the hull). I wonder what other would be authors would make of the experience of sailing and how they would write about sailing and ocean travel metaphors. These whimsical lines about the process belie that I don't know how to pick a course and write. I look at the last sentence I just added and like an algorithm, I wander back and forth picking out the course- I know that this tack can arrive somewhere but it feels so unwieldy and random- like I have to go out of the way just to get anywhere. Narratively speaking- I must meander through metaphors and whimsy and impressions to craft a moment for the listener and the writer to share. And it drives me slightly mad because I like the terse stories that know where they are going, but also I like getting lost and seeing where the next sentence and the next piece of the story feels like. Frustration and joy in equal measures. The desire to create and the desire to be succinct, complete, finished. An anecdote or a mood. There was a tumblr post that moved me "if you write moments that you aren't sure what they mean or where they fit into a plot, you are still valid as a writer"- that there was some power in the capturing descriptions of momentary minutiae.

So what is the idea or thing I want to write about? The above is what happens when I just move my fingers over the keys thinking out loud. Next step I guess is to take a narrative, write some of it, and then take a walk and then come back after assembling the narrative as I walk.

[duboisproposal]

Hi

this is a tumblr blog. It won't have much personality- more into reading than sharing. May post some odds and ends.

I'm a cis het progressive GenX anon from USA.

[duboisproposal]

Just in case