stung by a bee while having a wee

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…

Moomin Wallpapers

amanda seyfried totally blew me away with her zipped-up performance of elizabeth holmes. i especially loved how much her physicality changed throughout the show. elizabeth was a weird person from the very start, and seyfried really embodied her stuttering, awkward energy. she’s like that the whole time, but the warmth and sincerity of her younger elizabeth melts away into someone cold, someone reading off a script. that’s what i liked the best about her performance, actually—it’s like you can see elizabeth reading off a script in her mind at all times. she comes preloaded with conversation (which is often blatantly shown to us through great montage sequences), but even in normal, everyday interactions, she is reading how other people expect her to act and she plays the part, laughing when she’s supposed to, reassuring, obfuscating.

design-wise, i loved how clean and bright everything was, especially all the glass in the theranos offices after they signed with walgreens. it looked the way elizabeth thinks: clear, concise, and straight to the point. it didn’t do anything fancy and i think that worked very much to its benefit.

Patchwork dressing gown c.1825