#left to rot in the pages of my browser

[pathologicalreid]

doctor and doctor | S.R.

in which you add a degree to your repertoire

who? spencer reid x fem!reader

category: fluff

content warning: i tried my best and the process described is pretty accurate to my graduate school but there might be some discrepancies. mentions of marriage and anxiety.

word count: 470

a/n: my brain has been rotting this finals week so i just needed some good academic validation fluff to write. i also got in a car accident this morning (I'm fine lol someone hit my car) so fluff was mandatory. hoping to get a lot of writing done over the school break.

There was an old joke that only five people would ever read your dissertation, you, your supervisor, your two examiners, and your unlucky partner or spouse who has to act as an unpaid proofreader for you. It was something you had heard for the past four years.

Of course, in your case, your boyfriend had three PhDs of his own and was more than happy to read through your dissertation, even though it was pushing five hundred pages.

The BAU’s jet had just landed after a three-day case in Georgia, and you had just hung up after talking with Spencer. You complained about feeling like a sitting duck, waiting to hear from your doctoral advisor to see if your thesis was accepted, and he told you he imagined it wouldn’t be long now.

You had been offered a teaching position starting in the new semester, but it was contingent on your dissertation being approved.

That all led to the email sitting in your inbox, you left your laptop open on the kitchen counter, leaving the email unopened, which is how Spencer found you when he got home.

“Angel?” He said, slightly alarmed, you stood still in the kitchen, watching your laptop like it was going to combust.

Pointing at the device, you took a deep breath, “I got the email.”

Hastily, he set his bag on the couch of your shared apartment before joining you in the kitchen. “Did you look at it?” He asked, leaning over and looking at the screen that displayed your still unopened email. You shook your head, “Were you going to?”

“What if they didn’t accept it?” You whispered, not moving your eyes from the screen.

He waited a moment, “Do you want me to open it?”

You shook your head again, “No, I’ll do it.” You told him, in a sudden surge of bravery, you leaned forward and clicked on the email. Automatically, the email popped up with a burst of confetti – an effect from your email browser recognizing the word ‘congratulations.’ You gasped and Spencer wrapped his arms around you, holding you tight.

It all faded away. The nerves from the past four years, because you had done it.

“I’m so proud of you,” Spencer murmured. “So, so proud.”

You twisted in his arms to look at the screen and read the email in its entirety. “My degree will be officially conferred on the next date designated by the university. Oh, my goodness,” you said, overwhelmed. “I really got my PhD!” You said excitedly, bouncing on the balls of your feet.

“So, when we get married, we’ll both be Dr. Reid,” Spencer said, glancing over at the email before looking down at you fondly.

Your smile spanned from ear to ear, “Yeah!” You said excitedly, the smile dropping from your face, “Wait, what?”

[sleepymarmot]

I haven’t giffed for a while, so making the previous post was a bit of an adventure.

I started this gifset in February 2021. Back then I ripped every frame and the gifs were too big for tumblr, so I had to delete every other frame by hand. It looked so choppy that I put the post on ice, and it got buried under other drafts. Evidently I found the post again months later but didn’t fix it and left it to rot again.

I found the post again this week and almost published in that state, but thought it’d be too embarrassing to post a gifset with every second frame in 2023. I then tried to remake it in proper quality. I discovered that I had one of the gifs ripped with every second frame, and had to re-rip it again (and remember how to crop them). For some reason, the new screenshots were brighter, so I had to use a different coloring for them. I also had to split that gif into two, but that’s easy.

The gifs were still way past the Tumblr limit, and I was on the brink of losing hope and shelving the post again when I realized that I can just reduce the number of colors. This is b/w! There are 64 and even 32 colors per gif in that post and it all looks perfectly fine. So my big problem from two years ago was finally solved. (Too bad this solution would not work with normal color gifs.)

The original version was also awfully slow. For the new one I started experimenting with frame delays since I’m unfamiliar with giffing every frame. At first I tried to abandon frame animation altogether and set the FPS on the timeline the same as original video, but that didn’t work (in two different ways). Then I realized that gif exporting ruins frame delays anyway, rounding them up/down to either 0.03 or 0.07. 0.03 looked perfect in my desktop image viewer but too fast on Tumblr in the browser. 0.05 looked too slow. Then it finally occurred to me to do the math, and 1 second / 23.976 fps indeed equals 0.04 (rounded). So I adjusted the gifs to have 0.04 as frame delay and it still looks wrong somehow, even though objectively it should be the best option.

By the way, I had to carefully replace gifs one by one in the original post buried like fifty pages deep within my drafts, and not just because I didn’t want to make a new one: that draft is in the legacy photo post format, and I don’t have access to it for new posts anymore.

After finishing and uploading all that, I realized that I never cropped out the black border, and it’s quite visible at the edges of the gifs. But I already wasted way too much time to go through every gif again.

In the end, the only thing I had to redo from scratch was the final gif (now split in two). For all the others, I used the same psd, adjusted the export settings, then redid the frame delay of the exported gifs. The real time-consuming part was not the editing process itself, but figuring out what I needed to do.

All this was for an extremely simple gifset, by the way. The kind that requires no actual creativity or hard work, only a bit of technical know-how. If you know what you’re doing, and not blindly poking at the settings you’re not used to, it should take no time to make. I just want to share how much I’m overthinking everything. (And also to journal for my own sake, because this has been An Experience.)

[djappleblush]

"This fic is not abandoned," "Next chapter coming right up!" "Apologies for the cliffhanger; the wait will be worth it,"

advertised the fanfic author whose work was written in the 1500s.

[bubonickitten]

Hey, I saw an old post of yours about you finding a ton of dogs and bringing them home in Minecraft, and you mentioned that you were playing with mods. I was wondering if you'd be willing to recommend some good mods to me? Been playing with them for awhile but it's hard to find more good ones

I’m sorry it’s taken over a month for me to answer this – I’ve been using the mobile app way more than the browser lately and I always forget to check my inbox on mobile.

Anyway, I made a mod rec post before but it was almost two years ago and I’ve changed up my mod lineup a lot since, so here’s an updated list.

Right now I’m using Minecraft 1.12.2 and Minecraft Forge 1.12.2-14.23.5.2814. (Looks like there’s a newer edition of Forge, I just haven’t updated it yet.) Also some mods are dependent on other mods or require you to download additional resource packs/libraries/etc., so just make sure you check the requirements before downloading (probably goes without saying, but just in case).

I’m putting the list under a cut because otherwise this post will be an absolute wall of text. 

PERFORMANCE MODS

OptiFine: This one’s a performance mod that aims to boost FPS and improve the graphics.

NotEnoughIDs:This expands Minecraft’s ID limit for blocks and items, which is necessary if you’re using a ton of mods that add a lot of new content. 

CONVENIENCE MODS

Just Enough Items (JEI):This one is an item/block/recipe viewing tool with a search feature. There’s also a cheat mode that lets you just drop whatever item you want into your inventory.

Inventory Tweaks:This adds new options for managing/sorting your inventory (on your person or in storage chests) and some convenience features, like automatically replacing tools or item stacks when broken/depleted as long as you have more in your inventory (which also includes your backpacks, if you use the Backpacks mod listed below).

Multi-Hotbar:Just gives you 2-3 additional hotbars, so you aren’t just limited to nine slots and don’t have to constantly go into your inventory screen to move things around if there are more than nine tools/stacks you use regularly. 

JourneyMap: This one automatically maps your Minecraft world as you explore – there’s a minimap in the upper right corner of the screen, and it can be expanded to view the whole map if you want. It also lets you set waypoints (which you can teleport to), with an option to mark them with visible beacons that can be seen from the overworld. It also automatically creates waypoints when you die, so you can easily teleport back to where you died once you respawn.

Nature’s Compass:In-game biome finder, with teleport feature. Also works with biomes added by mods (e.g. Biomes O’ Plenty).

Find Your Way:Adds some new compasses to point you in the direction of various overworld structures (strongholds, mansions, villages, etc.). 

Backpacks: Adds recipes for backpacks. By default they’re 3x9 but by crafting and adding backpack pouches, they can be expanded. They start out brown but can be dyed. They can also be nested, so if you want a backpack within a backpack within a backpack, you can do that. Which I do. Excessively. My inventory situation is… hellishly recursive. But at least I can collect stuff forever before I have to go back home and stash it all.

Fence Jumper: A very simple convenience mod that lets players jump over fences. Doesn’t apply to mobs.

Survival Flight:This just lets you use Creative Mode’s flight mechanic in Survival Mode. Is it cheating? Probably, but it’s your Minecraft world and you can fly if you want to. 

WORLDGEN/ITEM ADDITIONS MODS 

Quark: This one adds a lot of new features – blocks, decoration, mobs, automation options, underground biomes, recipes, convenience tweaks, etc. etc. etc. Main website with descriptions of all the added features can be found here.

Roguelike Dungeons: As the description says, “a mod that generates large underground dungeon structures which have a procedurally generated layout and loot.”

Actually Additions:Adds a lot of random stuff, check the manual to see the full list.

Chisel:More decorative blocks, including many new texture variations of vanilla Minecraft blocks. 

Biomes O’ Plenty: Adds over 60 new biomes to the world, with new trees, blocks, plants, etc. Works best with the creation of a new world, but you can make it work with an existing world with some extra steps (see the installation section here). It’s pretty simple, but you need to download an NBT Editor to do it (last time I had to do it, I used NBT Explorer). 

Terraqueous:New fruit trees, flowers, mineable cloud blocks, tools, etc. 

Natura:More new worldgen stuff. 

Ferdinand’s Flowers:Literally just adds A Lot of new kinds of flowers to the overworld and makes things very, very colorful.

Pam’s HarvestCraft:More crops, food recipes, etc. 

Fairy Lights: Adds recipes for creating hanging lights, string lights, etc. for decoration and lighting options.

MrCrayfish’s Furniture Mod: Adds recipes for furniture. Mostly good for decoration, but some are also functional (e.g. cabinets and refrigerators that provide storage).

MOBS/CREATURES MODS

Mo’ Creatures: Adds a bunch of new mobs to the game (passive, neutral, hostile, and tamable).Many of the tamable mobs can be used as mounts, such as big cats, wyverns, manticores, giant scorpions, elephants, komodo dragons, dolphins, manta rays, bears, and several different kinds of horse (including unicorns, winged horses, ghost horses, and fairy horses). The config files are straightforward and easy to edit if you want to tweak the spawn rates of different mobs. Note: The Forge page says that DrZhark’s Custom Mob Spawner is required, but when I was having trouble with another mod’s custom mobs not spawning properly, Custom Mob Spawner turned out to be the culprit. I removed it, and it seems like Mo’ Creatures is still working even without Custom Mob Spawner, and it takes far less time to load a world than it did before. 

Dragon Mounts 2:Tameable dragon mounts. I love them.

Ice and Fire:Adds new mythical mobs – dragons, sirens, cockatrices, sea serpents, etc. 

Doggy Talents:Your tamed wolves can Do More Stuff.

Wolf Armor and Storage: What it says on the tin. Wolf armor is very similar to horse armor, and chests can be added to wolves like they can be added to llamas.

DIMENSIONS MODS

Twilight Forest: Adds a new dimension, the Twilight Forest. The list of added features can be found on the Wiki here. Each new biome has its own boss (usually with a corresponding dungeon) to defeat (bosses can be defeated more than once since there’s at least one per biome and, like in the overworld, there’s more than one of each kind of biome in the world). It follows a progression system, meaning certain areas (and therefore boss fights) are locked until you defeat other bosses (e.g. certain biomes having a weather effect that renders it virtually impossible to traverse until defeating the boss and getting the item that will allow you to pass through the area). It can be a bit laggy but it’s still fun.

Advent of Ascension:Adds several new dimensions with their own biomes, mobs, items, bosses, etc. It’s fun but I don’t recommend it if you hate clowns because there is an entire clown dimension and even though you can avoid that, there’s also this one clown mob that spawns in the overworld underground, you’ll just be minding your business mining and suddenly BOOM creepy murder clown in the shadows. Also, if you’re using Mo’ Creatures, don’t use the Custom Mob Spawner because it’ll prevent Ascension’s mobs from spawning properly. 

Cavern II:Adds new cavern dimensions to explore, new blocks and ores, and a miner stats/progression system. It’s the successor to the original Cavern mod. One of my favorite things is the randomite ore, which drops a random item when it’s mined (which can include items added by other mods). 

The Betweenlands:This one adds a dark, swampy dimension with its own lore and survival challenges (e.g. you can only eat what you can gather in the Betweenlands and any food from the overworld rots when entering the dimension; there are new mechanics like food sickness, player decay, and tool corrosion that occur when spending long periods of time in the Betweenlands; etc.). 

Erebus:Erebus is the “dimension of the arthropods” and is exactly what it says on the tin.

Better Nether:Some tweaks to the Nether that make it more fun to explore – new biomes, new mobs, new structures, etc. 

AbyssalCraft:New eldritch dimensions, mobs, biomes, items/blocks, etc. You do some inadvisable rituals, read some questionable tomes, collect some dubious artifacts, encounter things with lots of eyes and tentacles… oh and one time, when I was playing one of the earlier versions of the mod, Shoggoths invaded my home and killed all my horses and left a residue all over everything and I had to restore an old backup save, so. I recommend reading the wiki before you do any summoning rituals.

VoidCraft:This is an older mod no longer in development, but if you’re like me and get bored easily and download every new dimension mod you can find, have at it. 

The Aether II:This is the sequel to the old Aether mod (which also has a reboot for Minecraft 1.12, here). It’s still in development and I actually haven’t had a chance to explore the new dimension much yet myself, but it looks interesting. 

[waqasblog2]

GDPR - Let's all calm down a bit, shall we? - SEO, Content Marketing & Website Design

GDPR is getting to be like Y2K preparations.

It seems everyone is talking about it as if there will be Armageddon on the 25th May unless we all run around burning files and throwing hard drives off cliffs just in case the rozzers find someone's email address on them.

I was at a gin festival recently (great by the way, I'll tell you about it sometime), and people were talking about it at the bar.

Give it a break already!!!

Something more important than GDPR is happening on the 25th May, I'll be bothered about that.

What this article isn't

There is approximately one cubic gazillion of articles claiming to be the ultimate guide to GDPR, and I bet you've read a few and still don't understand them.

So, I'm not going to get into that here. This isn't a comprehensive GDPR marketing guide.

Instead, I thought what might be useful is a “cut through the crap” set of very short, succinct points that will give you some sort of idea about the whole process and what, if anything, you need to do about it.

Mostly, though, I'm hoping to stop a few people destroying their email lists because some guy in a suit said they should.

If I'm not compliant by the 25th May, will I be fined £17 million and sent to rot in jail?

NO!

Let me explain why:

There are consultants currently travelling the country telling everyone, usually on their first PowerPoint slide, that the fines that the ICO (the UK organisation that will implement GDPR) can punish you with are mahoosive; up to 4% of turnover or 17 million quid.

You can imagine that ACME window cleaning Ltd with two employees is positively quaking in its boots at this revelation, but it's nonsense.

In fact, the ICO themselves are getting a little hacked off with it.

I quote, from their own blog:

Myth #1:

The biggest threat to organisations from the GDPR is massive fines.

Fact:

This law is not about fines. It’s about putting the consumer and citizen first. We can’t lose sight of that.

Focusing on big fines makes for great headlines, but thinking that GDPR is about crippling financial punishment misses the point

GDPR gives the ICO more clout to punish people, yes, and it gives them the teeth to act when companies fail to follow the rules, but they're not going to be knocking on your door in the middle of the night threatening to take you to a cash point.

Last year they concluded 17,300 cases. 16 companies got fined. And none were fined the maximum available to the ICO.

The sort of companies that get fined are the ones that systematically or blatantly break the rules.

For example, ignoring people's requests to be removed from mailing lists and continue to email them on a huge scale.

The ICO wants to educate, so rather than throwing fines about willy-nilly, they'll work with the companies to ensure they're doing it right and help them stick to the rules.

Is it illegal to send marketing emails under GDPR?

Seriously, this is just nuts.

I've had more than one person say they're going to cancel their MailChimp account because they won't be able to email people anymore.

Let's make it clear:

But I need their consent, yeah?

Yep. Just like now. The important thing with GDPR is that they need to know exactly what they're signing up to.

You can't imply or assume consent anymore.

Make it clear what they're opting in to

When someone gives you any of their details such as email address, phone number etc., you need to make it really clear what it is they're opting in to and what you'll do with that information.

For example, if someone downloads an e-book from your website, you need to give them the option of also signing in to your mailing list. You can't just assume that because they've downloaded the book that they're also happy to receive your other emails.

To be fair, this has been a grey area for a while, but GDPR now makes it clear.

It's going to affect a lot of websites, for example, those that only let you read the rest of an article after you've signed up, but that's OK, they'll cope.

You probably can't just email them because they've bought from you

It's the same with online shopping.

You can send them transactional emails, that is, emails that are triggered by their purchase such as order confirmation, invoice and dispatch data, but you can't then start bombarding them with marketing emails unless they tick the box saying they're happy to have them.

(Note: This is actually covered by PECR, which is additional regulation, that suggests that you can contact your customers for legitimate reasons. A reason might be you want to offer them something. Just make sure they can opt out, you’ll be fine.)

Again, this is a grey area that's being tidied up, but many shops have been doing this for years, it's no biggie.

You can't have pre-ticked boxes or confusing consent

Some stores are a bit naughty, and right at the bottom of the order form there will be a tick-box with a sentence next to it saying “We will occasionally send you marketing emails, but if you'd rather not be pestered, un-tick this box.”

You can't do that anymore, which is a good thing.

This goes hand-in-hand with tick boxes that aren't especially clear, for example, ones that give multiple reasons or say things like

“By ticking this box, you do not allow us to remove your email address from our lists or maybe email you on a regular basis. If you do not wish us to not email you regarding things like this and such, then dance a merry jig while smoking a peace pipe.”

You must make it easy for people to unsubscribe

It needs to be really simple and completely fool-proof.

Ideally, a link on every single email that says “Unsubscribe” which takes them to a page that says “Sorry to see you go, you're now unsubscribed.”

Maybe give them a question to ask why, but that's it.

Close browser, job done.

Some people grind my gears by taking you to a site which you then have to log in to first (i.e. reset password because I forgot it) and then choose a complex set of tick boxes before being released from their vice-like grip.

One click dude, no dick moves.

How about getting consent for emails again, do I need to do that?

In most cases, no.

I've had a flurry of emails from companies saying “Due to GDPR, we need to get consent to keep sending you emails.”

The only time you'd need to do that is if you got the email through nefarious means in the first place.

For example, if I filled out a basic contact form on your site and then you started emailing me.

That's wrong, it's always been wrong, and now it's even wrongerer.

But if I signed up via your newsletter sign-up form, you do not need to ask me again.

Honestly, you don't.

If you got consent in the past, you have consent now.

Also, there's still a grey area about business to business. It seems you don't need consent anyway for this (there are exceptions, stick to the basics and you'll be OK.)

Also (2), do you use a proper mail client like MailChimp or ActiveCampaign or Aweber?

Well don't worry about it, there's an unsubscribe button at the bottom of the email. When people click this, they're unsubscribed, and they can only get back on the list if they specifically ask.

All cool.

Are there any scenarios when I might have to get consent again?

Other than that, you're probably OK. I'm saying “probably” because I don't know where you got your filthy list from, and I don't want you using this blog as an excuse. If you were bad with data in the past, clean it up.

Should I email everyone to get re-consent anyway? Just to make sure? I'm scared…

Oh please, grow some.

Yes, of course you can. Send out that email.

What's your current open rate? 20%?

And click through rate? 8%?

So, just working this out on the back of a fag packet, if I had a list of 800, I'd end up with 13 left on it when I've gone through this utterly pointless exercise.

Stop it.

So what should I do?

If you're a huge company with lots of employees, go get yourself a consultant, they'll help you in exchange for some dollar.

There are different rules for large businesses, and you might have some work to do, so go do it.

If you're a small business, you need to follow some basic steps:

The first is to check out the ICO website which explains everything in detail, it's all you need.

If someone tells you something is “what you need to do”, then check with the ICO, they're being incredibly pragmatic about it all.

Secondly, don't lose sleep over it.

Thirdly, check your mailing list. This next bit is a bit in-depth, so I've decided to give it a new section.

How to make sure I'm not breaking the law and will, therefore, go to jail or have my house repossessed

If you systematically scraped email addresses from the web, typed them in yourself from the Yellow pages or in some way got your mailing list using nefarious means, then delete them all.

However, if you fall into one of these categories, read on:

Still with me?

Audit your mailing lists

Where they from? Can you split out all the ones that opted in via your sign-up form? Good, do that, tag them or add them to another list.

This is the list of people who absolutely, positively wanted to sign up. Good, we're done. Leave them alone.

Got some others you're not sure about?

OK, put those in another list or tag them “we're not sure” or something, we'll work on these guys next.

Send out an email

The mistake everyone is making here is emailing everyone and saying “you need to sign up again” when they don't.

If they signed up before, that's fine. They gave consent and therefore that consent passes into the GDPR era.

So let's just tackle the ones we're not sure about, and rather than asking them to sign up or not hear from you ever again, let's do it another way. Let's give them an option of opting out.

Create an email something like this:

“Hi Geoff,

By now you've probably heard about GDPR and the new rules regarding email marketing and the correct way of getting consent.

Well, we're sure you were asked nicely if you wanted to receive our emails, but we can't be absolutely certain.

It might be that you downloaded something from us, or we met you at a networking event and you said it was fine, in which case, we're all good.

However, If you don't want to receive any more emails from us, then please click the button below to unsubscribe instantly from our list.

You won't need to do anything else, it's all automatic.

If you don't mind receiving our emails, then do nothing, but remember you can unsubscribe at any time.

Thanks for your time!

Keep this in mind

I'm not a GDPR consultant or a lawyer. This advice comes to you from someone who has read the documentation, but your situation might be unique/different.

However, there's no excuse for many in the industry to use scare tactics to get you to do something and propose knee-jerk reactions that might end up in your losing a significant part of your business.

As with everything, be sceptical of what you're told.

Investigate everything and then do what is right.

What if someone complains

Someone is bound to complain. There's been so much publicity about it, there will be people looking for companies to trip up so they can get the feds on them.

Don't panic.

If you're using a good email system (we recommend: ActiveCampaign) then all unsubscribes are handled automatically, you're safe, but if not, and someone requests to be removed from your lists – do it immediately.

As long as you're on the ball, delete people's data as soon as you're asked and be open about what you do with the data you keep, then you'll be OK.

Is this everything GDPR is about then?

Absolutely not.

GDPR is a huge deal for many companies and it covers vast swathes of regulation, that's for others to deal with.

I just wanted to clear up some misinformation about it that's doing the rounds at the moment and make sure that a bunch of companies that are doing everything right aren't forced to the wall by over-cautious consultants.

If you need more advice, find a good consultant.

There's one who reads this blog, he'll be in touch to tell me his contact details, as soon as he does, I'll pass them on!

This content was originally published here.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: A Graphic Memoir About Learning to Cope with What’s Left Behind

Kristen Radtke, Imagine Wanting Only This

At the center of Kristen Radtke’s graphic memoir Imagine Wanting Only This is the death of her uncle, with whom she is very close. The book begins when she’s a child, young enough to still be amazed by catching fireflies with her uncle, whose rare, life-threatening genetic heart condition is mentioned within the first few pages. But the majority of the story follows Radtke’s college and post-grad years when she is studying photography and exploring ruins and abandoned mining towns. Her black-and-white illustrative style often breaks with the traditional panel format for a mix of full-page collage spreads where the text floats in the white space of the images, creating an expansive landscape on the otherwise confining page, or utilizes the format of the medium in which her character is exploring — a sketchpad or letterhead as she writes to her friends, or a computer browser as she researches — layering in historical photographs when relevant.

At one point, in hopes of finding interesting urban landscapes to photograph, Radtke and her college boyfriend travel to the abandoned town of Gary, Indiana. There they discover the ruins of a church scattered with photographs in plastic bags covered with dirt. In the oft-parodied mindset of an art student, Radtke immediately says, “Let’s take them. For an installation.” Later, after doing some research on the site, she discovers that the photos were in fact carefully placed items in a memorial to another photographer, Seth Thomas, who was killed by a train while shooting near the site the day before his 24th birthday. Seth’s photos are all that remains of him — both literally and metaphorically — and the dirt they brushed off were his ashes, which his friends had scattered around the site. Radtke’s boyfriend is horrified by this discovery, shouting, “Kristen, you stole this guy’s memorial. I knew we shouldn’t have taken them.” But she holds on to the pictures. Seth’s photos and the death of her uncle are touchstones throughout the book, serving to illustrate parallel forms of decay and loss.

From Imagine Wanting Only This

From Imagine Wanting Only This

Whereas the literal linking of photographic remains and actual remains risks being obvious and trite, Radtke avoids this nostalgic notion of the photograph by contrasting it with a more modern one. In our hyper-documented age, most images are exchanged digitally and aren’t given the emotional weight of printed pictures. The excess reduces value: Why select the 10 best photos from a vacation when all 100 can easily be uploaded and shared to a Facebook album, or posted on Instagram as they occur? Radtke suggests that the compulsive sharing of images, this overwhelming desire to document, is related to the ability of these images to say remember and I was here. But as the abandoned towns and ruins she visits demonstrate, documentation does not deter decay; even what’s left behind eventually fades.

While she is away in school, Radtke attempts to keep in touch with her uncle. An image of her empty living room with a splashy word bubble coming out of her phone says, “Hey sweetie, it went perfect, the doctors said I had no fat on my heart because I’m so big and strong.” The panel below that shows a cell phone open to a picture of her uncle covered in wires in a hospital bed, the “DELETE” selection hovering over it. “I didn’t like looking at it, the wires and tubes and orange goo on his arms,” her narrative explains. While she continues to hold on to Seth’s photos despite their molding and leaking, she does delete the unsettling picture of her uncle. Radtke explains, “I never connected the image to my uncle directly. His pain is something I have no concrete memory of considering.” After her uncle passes away, Radtke laments to her boyfriend, “I just can’t believe I deleted his message, and then he died later that day.”

From Imagine Wanting Only This

Radtke is certainly not the first to parallel an exploration of photography with that of death. Most famously, Roland Barthes did this in his seminal book Camera Lucida, in which the death of his mother figures heavily into his analysis of photographs as referents. But Radtke interrogates this established reading by contrasting the treatment of printed images and digital ones, extended further to contrast physical and digital detritus. One of the book’s most visually and emotionally striking moments occurs several months after her uncle’s death. While home before leaving to travel abroad, Radtke finds an old cassette tape of an interview she did with her uncle as a child. She climbs into a car (the only available means to play a cassette tape!) and puts it in. The visuals splice together her uncle’s words coming from the dashboard with her childhood self conducting the interview, as well as her present-day self curled in the car listening. Surrounded heavily by a solid black background and vertical lines, the images are stark and dramatic, successfully giving the impression of how startling it is to hear the voice of a dead loved one emanating artificially into a dark garage. Rather than over-determining this experience, she lets it hang as the final image of the chapter, asking: How do we cope with what’s left behind? How do we deal with the physical and digital detritus after something has been abandoned or someone is no longer with us?

After her uncle’s death, Radtke continues her urban exploration, seeking out more deserted towns and ruined buildings. While abroad, she watches the clichéd travel photographs pile up and thinks, Every city we visited afterward began to feel like the stock backdrop for some stagnant future. Instead of continuing in that vein, she decides, “Let’s go someplace more exciting. I want to go somewhere no one else I know has been.” At some point during this trip, she misplaces Seth’s molding bag of photographs, which she’s been carrying around for years. Then she stumbles upon a documentary about urban explorers that mentions Seth. Ruins are often born in the wake of stasis, she thinks. That’s easy enough to sense. Maybe being stuck is what killed Seth.

From Imagine Wanting Only This

Radtke’s memoir documents what’s often brushed aside as a “millennial” problem: the restlessness of staying still while simultaneously wanting to be rooted, to be present and known — to mark something as one’s own. Radtke expresses this sentiment while she is living in Iowa City during graduate school: “It was an easy place to feel you’d conquered. It was a whole new kind of ownership … I was never again going to live in a town of houses so filled by people that I knew. I didn’t want to sit still, but I didn’t want to lose anything, either.”

From Imagine Wanting Only This

The photographs degrade like the cities and buildings Radtke desperately seeks out, leaving behind only ruins, which decay like bodies after one has died. As she travels, visiting more and more sites of things that once were, her images bleed together — chests cut open to reveal hearts in the center of abandoned cathedrals, memories of her uncle merged with historical accounts of past residents — as she struggles to make sense of how something or someone can go from being so full to so empty. “And when you love and then cannot continue that loving? And when the walls of a heart designed for protection turn in on themselves? What can be made of the spaces that we cannot witness?” she wonders. Bearing witness, staking claim, and documenting life loom large. Recalling her travels to the Philippines and beyond, she explains, “There were a people nothing like us. These were a people who did not have what we have now. We forget that everything will become no longer ours.” Even our bodies.

In her final revelations of the book, she returns to this claim: “Who knows what will be significant when we have all moved on to whatever is waiting or not waiting? You will have touched nothing on earth.” Everything rots, decays, and disappears, despite the metaphorical significance and seeming permanence given to physical remains, just like the digital detritus carelessly left behind from years of trying to claim and provide permanence. In the end, nothing remains.

From Imagine Wanting Only This

Imagine Wanting Only This is now available from Pantheon.

The post A Graphic Memoir About Learning to Cope with What’s Left Behind appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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