BISPACEDOTCOM

Las Vegas Strip, August 1971

Adjacent to the Sands was the Carousel Motel, a motel-store property and perhaps the ugliest structure on the Strip. For over 50 years it was positioned out of most tourist photos. 

Resources From The Leftist Feminist Philosopher

Google is so powerful that it "hides" other search systems from us. We just don't know the existence of most of them.

Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information.

Keep a list of sites you never heard of!

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

All links are trustworthy! Most go to The Internet Archive or YouTube!

Also, do not think of this as a list of every Jonestown documentary that has existed. There are still a couple that require certain streaming services to watch. These are just the ones that are the most accessible.

Jonestown: Terror in The Jungle (2018) - Co-produced by Leo DiCaprio, who may be acting as Jim in an unreleased film! This is a very comprehensive, well-researched piece, if not a little sensationalised. It is also split into parts to allow for more focus on the “before” aspect of Jonestown, which was quite the smart decision. (This was the first doc I watched! Yippee!)

Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple (2006) - Easily the best documentary there is about Jonestown, in my opinion. Detailed, immersive and with some truly gruelling survivors’ accounts, this is essential viewing for those who want to get into the case. Some of the information is slightly outdated, but it’s still worth a watch!

Escape From Jonestown (2008) - A CNN report which goes into detail about the survivors of the massacre. I haven’t watched this one in full, but it seems to be a fairly balanced report. Absolutely recommend this one if you want to know more about the survivors.

Jonestown: Paradise Lost (2007) - I’ve talked about this one before, and the re-enactments are not doing the documentary a favour. It’s not the best out there, but a retelling’s a retelling.

Deceived - The Jonestown Tragedy (1979) - Made less than a year after the massacre, this is one of the most intimate looks into the case there is. A quieter, more personal outlook in the immediate aftermath. Highly recommended.

De-googling Journey This post is partly due to the whole YouTube boycott/blackout going on due to the privacy invading (and frankly EXTREMELY DUMB) AI age verification. So, what I have succeeded in doing thus far:

1. Stopped downloading apps from Google Play: replaced with Github and F-Droid Basic repos.

2. Stopped using Google Drive for Fanfiction and Non-Fanfic writing: replaced with a partly online-offline system using LibreOffice (offline, Laptop), Ellipsus (supposed privacy centered cloud for writing), and Material Notes (offline, android phone). Libreoffice and (soon) Material Notes will be holding the "master" copies of my works as Ellipsus is purely a middleman for cloud syncing, I update my offline copies as soon as I can.

3. Partly stopped using Gmail: Use FairEmail as main frontend on phone, keep Gmail in secure folder (isolated environment) and only use Gmail browser on laptop.

4. Replaced various Google services with other open source options available on Github and F-droid. Using Fossify Calender and Contacts for local storage on my phone.

5. Stopped using Chrome (technically that was last year): replaced it with LibreWolf (laptop), Duckduckgo (mobile browser), and Waterfox (mobile browser). DuckDuckGo is the main search engine on all of them (if there are other recommendations, do tell.)

6. (Mostly) stopped using Google Messages on my phone: replaced it with Signal. Sidenote, I switched to this after the whole fiasco a few months ago, plus both google messages was risk of being downright BROKEN and my old online messenger, Viber, is so far corrupted with ads it's ridiculous. It was a change made out of necessity as well as privacy...

7. Due to recent events, I have replaced my patched YouTube apps with FreeTube for both Android and Laptop. I don't know how much longer I can hold out on this blackout, but even if I do go back on YouTube, I am not using the main app/site anymore. I'll be using Freetube for watching. YouTube will only be for cataloging videos via the almighty algorithm, to which I then either watch on FreeTube or "save for later" offline (I've been playing this game for a LONG time). This has and will continue to dwindle my screentime on YouTube. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a good (frontend) replacement for YouTube Music... a decent replacement is Kreate, but the podcast function is very... rough to say the least. Which is unfortunate since I primarily use YT Music for podcasts (I also patched this app so no ads, yipee).

8. Additionally, I've basically disabled all permissions on the main google app on my phone, only using it for the "Google Feed" option. I still get good articles through there, but I've trying to balance it with a self curated RSS feed and either opening articles in DuckDuckGo or saving to Instapaper.

9. I stopped using Gboard as my default keyboard: replaced it with Heliboard instead.

10. I plan on fully replacing the Google Drive suite with Nextcloud soon, but that involves a self-hosted server and intermediate networking... which is a large project as I figure out what exactly I can recycle/repurposed before thinking I need to buy things.

I've been debating on whether I want to try and root a phone to finalize a "de-google" and use a different OS, but I do not know if I want to accept the tradeoffs. So it's a final decision.

It's a little ironic I'm trying to de-google whilst using an android phone, but I still find Android much more flexible than iOS, and personally, I prefer the flexibility, plus the phone I'm using still supports SD cards and headphone jacks. But... it's, it's been a journey, and it seems like it'll be a long one indeed...

For anyone who may want to start, this de-googling list is where I started my journey: https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle

Besides being online and collaborative like GDocs, a few things I've liked about it so far:

It has a drafts feature, which you can use to track and merge revisions to your doc OR you can use them as sub-documents to store things like your bible--character info, notes, scenes, whatever OR you can break down your story into chapters

Strictly anti-AI, and wanting you to own your writing 100%

Has a built in writing timer, and a focus mode (Strips away the UI)

Aaaaaand….!! What's that...?

Oh yeah, snippet sharing:

and a built in export to AO3