house martin gathering mud

(photos by m.geven)

normal brain: playing pokemon B/W as a nuzlocke or efficient playthrough proves N right because you turned your pokemon into tools for your own personal gain

galaxy brain: playing pokemon X/Y without using mega evolution proves Lysandre right, because you are presented with a scarcity scenario with the mega ring and you use your strength to selfishly decide that nobody should have or use one

universe brain: Resetting pokemon D/P/Pt proves Cyrus right because you have full control over the game’s universe and can freely remake it in your image on a whim.

Going to the beach proves Archie right and not going to the beach proves Maxie right

Gävlebocken Gogoat

that is all

Jesus, I hadn’t even thought of this, but of course.

This is something that historians have been warning about for a couple of decades. How much of our history was not just on Twitter, but on MySpace, on blogs and web sites that came down after a few years, on e-mail, on texts. None of that leaves a record. Once the file is deleted, the server shut down and scrapped, the backup disks decay into being unreadable junk, that history is gone.

Does anyone remember when Obama and Clinton each held town hall campaign events on MySpace? Good luck finding anything about those now other than some news articles that say they happened. How many business zoom calls have formal meeting minutes taken? We are not saving histories. We aren’t even writing letters. I’m as guilty as anyone. My art is online and kept in the cloud. I make my Christmas Card every year, but I haven’t printed and mailed one in over a decade. It’s all sent electronically. Meaning that a generation from now no one will remember.

So the problem is bigger than Twitter. We are now a couple of decades into an age that will not leave any detailed historical record.

That is not good.

In cyber and academic circles this has routinely been called the ‘digital dark age’, I wrote on the subject a few years ago linked below. There is a Wikipedia article on the concept.

It’s thought this might just be a black spot of knowledge, there are organizations working to stop this — archival websites primarily, but these are not able to penetrate all these corporate gated gardens, where paywalls, sign up walls, and more block access to. There is an ongoing campaign by megacorps to shutdown as many archival sites as possible.

This coupled with the fallibility of hard drives, CDs (make sure to back them up! They only have a 20-30 year lifetime!), and more and there is a chance that even though there is more information than ever before, more primary and secondary sources than ever, we may become just a strange blank spot in societal and cultural history. Digital decay is a terrifying concept that we are already beginning to live through.

DNA Data Storage: A Solution for the Digital Dark Age? (2019)

hes still only a little boy

when cat does leg thing

I’m starting to suspect that the only way to get my fics written is to write them

That’s how they get you.

underrated part of petting a cat is when you reach over their head to scratch their back and they bonk their head on ur arm

that’s the stuff………………

What you can’t see is me with the controller panicking and yelling

this is so funny.

the nonbinary icon i did not know i needed

アローラロコンとヒスイゾロア