#archives stuff

5 minutes later :

I love creating alternate worlds. weird realities. places, fragmented and broken. like ours. Using my own internal reality as projection. This might not make any sense. This is an archive series. Oddball brands living parallel to us. This is the archives of ad agencies in a mirror dimension. Archival file: Southern Blood Whiskey

It all started with the idea of a snake-oil salesmen. I thought it might be funny to have a character sell pills and ointments and wild, scientifically discredited products.

Archival file: Uncle Ricks Remedies

I based the "rich annoying millennial millionaire" on a Paris Hilton / Alexis Rose hybrid.

Archival file: La Levre

Mar 18, 2026

Deep divisions over how Americans remember their past are coming into sharper focus as the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Judy Woodruff reports for her series, America at a Crossroads....

Alan Spears:

I think that there are people who are overly concerned about balance, because they're not seeing that we have had to come from almost nothing to get to a point where we have a minimum amount of information available to the public at these places about race, about labor, about women's rights, about the LGBTQ experience, and these things that are important, equally important, in American history.

Fighting has gone from being long-range, being hit by artillery as soon as they came out from those trees.

Judy Woodruff:

Back at Gettysburg, Alan Spears says the National Park Service spends years working on exhibits and public information at these sites, enlisting experts from across disciplines to make careful decisions.

Alan Spears:

What we have seen in the last 13 months is an administration that is willing to come in and say, well, we don't really study history necessarily. We just think that sounds wrong. We think it complicates the story. We think it denigrates Americans, and so we're going to take it out.

And so it's that arbitrary and capricious nature of the way these decisions are being made and the total lack of transparency that really bothers us.

Judy Woodruff:

Feb 20, 2026

The English-language edition of Wikipedia is blacklisting Archive.today after the controversial archive site was used to direct a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against a blog.

In the course of discussing whether Archive.today should be deprecated because of the DDoS, Wikipedia editors discovered that the archive site altered snapshots of webpages to insert the name of the blogger who was targeted by the DDoS. The alterations were apparently fueled by a grudge against the blogger over a post that described how the Archive.today maintainer hid their identity behind several aliases.

“There is consensus to immediately deprecate archive.today, and, as soon as practicable, add it to the spam blacklist (or create an edit filter that blocks adding new links), and remove all links to it,” stated an update today on Wikipedia’s Archive.today discussion. “There is a strong consensus that Wikipedia should not direct its readers towards a website that hijacks users’ computers to run a DDoS attack (see WP:ELNO#3). Additionally, evidence has been presented that archive.today’s operators have altered the content of archived pages, rendering it unreliable.”

More than 695,000 links to Archive.today are distributed across 400,000 or so Wikipedia pages. The archive site is commonly used to bypass news paywalls, and the FBI has sought information on the site operator’s identity with a subpoena to domain registrar Tucows.

February 6, 2026

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is now accepting applications for its 2026 grant cycle. But this time, it has unusually specific criteria.

In cover letters accompanying the applications, the institute said it “particularly welcomes” projects that align with President Donald Trump’s vision for America.

These would include those that foster an appreciation for the country “through uplifting and positive narratives,” the agency writes, citing an executive order that attacks the Smithsonian Institution for its “divisive, race-centered ideology.” (Trump has said the museum focused too much on “how bad slavery was.”) The agency also points to an executive order calling for the end of “the anti-Christian weaponization of government” and one titled Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again.

The solicitation marks a stark departure for the agency, whose guidelines were previously apolitical and focused on merit.

Former agency leaders from both political parties, as well as those of library, historical and museum associations, expressed concern that funded projects could encourage a more constrained or distorted view of American history. Some also feared that by accepting grants, institutions would open themselves up to scrutiny and control, like the administration’s wide-ranging audit of Smithsonian exhibits “to assess tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals.”