#archive your data

[titles-for-tangents]

This is just a thought and an observation about my dash in particular today, but for all the lovely posts about warm welcomes and camaraderie Tik Tok refugees are finding over on Rednote, I’ve not really seen a single post yet on archiving Tik Tok videos for posterity, lest we lose almost everything a la Vine.

Plenty of other social media sites now accommodate Tik Tok-length videos of course, like YouTube’s Shorts for example, but not everyone has or wants a YouTube account. The closest I’ve seen so far to the concept of backing up Tik Tok videos onto another site is that Mark Zuckerberg is about to have a rather rude awakening when he discovers that no, not everyone wants to keep uploading their content to the shitty social media company that is so bad at managing data and misinformation they are literally responsible for political coups in India. What a concept, Mark; maybe not everyone wants to flock to or right back to Instagram’s Reels.

Yes, the fact that mass exoduses can and will happen is having CEOs pants-shittingly scared out of their wits, because at the heart of it the idea of social media and the internet in general being a thing to profit off of instead of the internet being a public utility has always been a flawed goose chase from the start, but that’s kind of a red herring here.

What will likely happen is that plenty of TikTokkers (is that a word?) will make copies of their videos and upload them to Red Book in much the same way plenty of artists re-uploaded their art to BlueSky once they migrated from Twitter. Plenty may find it economical to move to a third site as well, like YouTube, if only to expand their audience. Not everything is going to be saved from deletion and/or becoming inaccessible, so I do expect many of my reblogged posts of Tik Toks to become defunct as many of my reblogged posts from Vine have unless they’re sourced from a different site like YouTube. Tumblr is likely to eventually accommodate Red Book posts though, so hopefully we’ll see some excellent Tik Toks archived over there soon.

My point is that while it’s great to face the U.S. government’s ban of Tik Tok with mirth and spite rather than fear, I’m not really seeing any urgency from anyone on tumblr yet reminding folks to back up their Tik Tok videos. Some of that is the nature of tumblr being a different social media site entirely, yes, but if this ban can happen as soon as Sunday, now is the time for TikTokkers to back up as much data as possible. There may be a short window of time after next Sunday (01/19/2025) before the site gets cut off from everyone entirely, but there’s no guarantee how long it will last and I expect there will be more than a few lawsuits fighting the ban in the aftermath.

So yeah - just a friendly reminder to anyone on here with a Tik Tok account to please back up your content before the site goes down and/or becomes inaccessible if you haven’t already. There are now years’ worth of information at risk of being lost, everything from music videos to captured moments of police brutality to educational material. There are also plenty of videos with misinformation and less-than-tasteful content too, but the point still stands. If you have the means and know-how to archive your videos, now’s the time to do it.

[reasonsforhope]

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

[melanodis]

you should draw plex charlie and merlot shooting the shit

merlot doesn't really like her all that much. he can see there's something abnormal about her. the way she moves, the way her eyes glimmer. he swears he can hear clicking and whirring underneath all the background noise of the mall.

[bubu0h]

How I Manage my personal AO3 e-library Archive

Download everything I want/hope to read in EPUB format. I try to anyways... if I notice I got too many tabs open on my browser, time to download If multi-chapter remember first to press 'Entire Work' and then 'Download'

2. I use Book Story (Android App) to manage the mess that is my downloads folder - this app is a great book database manager AND scroll reader with Big letters as well - The app has this fantastic feature that allows me put the books into 'Reading' 'Already Read' 'Planing' 'Dropped' categories; I move the books around and it helps me keep a visual tab on them - , plus if you like scroll reading this one is fantastic at that as well.

Periodically I update the BACKUP of the folder(s) were the copies of books live. KEEP A BACKUP OF YOUR BACKUP , if you mess around and don't got no backup is really painful and irreversible.

On my computer I then make a copy of my messy ass downloads folder from my phone into my computer. While looking at the visual information the app provides me I delete books that I 'Dropped' and I move 'Already Read' books into my computer E-Library Data Base (I use Calibre) that's my main book hub where I will quickly notice what books need covers and I take my time working to finding an image I like for the book , so I can recognize them books by just looking at the covers I am terrible at remembering book titles

If you are curious this is what Calibre looks like - this is just AO3

3. To read EPUB books I use Libera FD Is frankly the best reader I have tried because I prefer page turning. If you like scroll reading Book Story is much better option for scroll reading.

Libera FD can customize pretty much EVERYTHING and is very very feature rich ( it can be overwhelming) HUMONGOUS FONT SIZE , you can download any font you want to use, replace words if I want to , it has OLED dark mode for reading at 3 am, you can configure it so it reads to you (using TTS) , several reading modes including auto scroll and speed reading mode, and so much more; the dev(s) are still updating and adding functions to it is kind of amazing I am probably not using it to its full potential You can sort books by 'Genre' which is how the app recognize the tags from the website.

Here some visuals of Libera FD (I wrote in the ALT of pics, click on it)

Book Story is a neat app , less overwhelming and the UI is a lot more intuitive. It looks like this for me , you can configure the essentials to your preference. Is a fairly new app be patient with it (sometimes just give two minutes to cook) , it is still being updated. The dev is very active if you got suggestion or present bugs.

4. How to provide enrichment to glorious magnificent authors , that share their passion with us for free. When you open any ao3 .epub on either of these apps the links are underlined. I tap on the link it leads back to the original posted website page at the beginning of every book you get from A03.

Tap the link, keep it open in your browser and star reading.

Open a note taking app.

I usually take notes about my silly musings as I read, copy quotes and whatever else I want to leave in the comment section of the chapter I am on. Cut and paste and that's it. I load the next chapter in the website and then continue reading the next chapter on the reading app (I comment on all the chapters if I have something to comment, sometime I don't have anything to say so I don't . Figure it makes authors happy and i find it very fun. Sometimes they answer back it feels nice) remember to leave kudos and comments specially if you are rereading.

I use Quillpad (android app) the most important feature of any note taking app you choose, in this case in particular, is that it saves your notes automatically (I used some apps that didn't it was devastating losing all my notes like that. I though that as long as I didn't close the app it was fine turns out not - some you have to manually save - and sometimes it would timeout and gone , all my notes gone. With Quillpad I haven't lost notes)

I haven't taken the time to figure out if Librera has a feature for annotation that could be useful for commentary note taking

I think that's all I can think of sharing on this topic. I am open to questions and adding things to this post with visual aid and whatever I can do to help , do let me know.

Keeping a copy of books safe and easy to find KEEP BACKUPS OF YOUR BACKUPS

-Updated Nov. 11 , 2024.

[petiolata]

When your anti-bot algorithms make it impossible to use your website, you're defeating the purpose of having them.

When I first got this today, all I'd done was go to an author's page, find a work I'd finished reading (not on AO3) and bookmark it. Then did a wordcount sort on their works to see if they had any longfics.

None of that is an excessive amount of use, or an unusual way to use AO3 (other than the not reading fics on AO3 part, and I *really* hope that's not the "you're a bot!" trigger because I can't be the only person that reads offline for reasons of disability, preference, poor internet connection, whatever).

"Browse more slowly" what, am I supposed to throttle my internet and LARP as a fanfic reader in 2002? Relive the ole dial-up experience? Count to 10 before every click?

I probably wouldn't have bothered making a griping post for this but a friend mentioned having their Twitter account suspended yesterday because they were falsely detected as being a bot.

And it just makes me wonder--is that how Dead Internet Theory will kill the internet? Not by there being too many bots, but by all the real humans being blocked from using it? It's not hard to program variability into a bot--to make it not post at the same time every day, or to make its clicks randomized so there's not 5 seconds between every one.

It's ironically harder to do that for a human--who browses naturally and can't simply plug an RNG or different timer into their use. Who might post their art every day at 1230PM because that's when their lunch break starts and they're free to upload their morning doodles. Not because they're a bot scheduled to post every day at 1230pm.

[lynns-bonkle-blog]

Metru Nui Archives data log 36012: The Head

Log author: Spiritual Researcher Vizuna

The Head, as it wishes to be called, is, well, a head. Specifically the head of a Class-02 Toa, or maybe Class-03? I'll have to ask Surgical Director Gogot after I've finished writing this, then I'll put it as an addendum.

The Head was... challenging to deal with. It litters its speech with profanity (which, for professionalism purposes, has been expunged from this data log), threatened the lives of both me and my colleagues (though these threats appeared to be empty based on its lack of any limbs or weapons), and claims to have once been one of the few Toa to ever come from Xia, though as my... interview with it (and subsequent research) indicates, it is mostly lying about this.

The following is an audio-to-text transcript of my attempt at inverviewing The Head:

Vizuna: Apologies for taking so long. I couldn't find my archival tablet, so I had to borrow the Chief Archivist's one. Now, how did you get into this state? The Head: Wanna find out, [EXPLETIVE DELETED]? Vizuna: I admire your attempts to threaten me, but they won't work. Answer the question, please. The Head: Ran into an... old friend, see. Tried to kill me, but couldn't finish the [EXPLETIVE DELETED] job, not for lack of trying... Vizuna: I see. What do you mean by that? The Head: Eh, it'd take too [EXPLETIVE DELETED] long to explain, and I'd have to repeat myself. Especially since you [EXPLETIVE DELETED] Le-Matoran don't even seem to remember what [EXPLETIVE DELETED] colours you're meant to have. Vizuna: Why y- [SLOW INHALE] I am not a Le-Matoran. I am a Bo-Matoran. You should know the difference; you are... were a Toa of Air. Right? The Head: What the [EXPLETIVE DELETED] are you talking about? How would you know that? Vizuna: Your eyes are... red, but now I look at them, they're not... they're not the same as... The Head: Yeahhhhhh, now you're starting to [EXPLETIVE DELETED] get it. Vizuna: ... This interview is over. I need to check something.

Now, those who don't know about Matoran mythology may not be aware of Shadow Toa; powerful, illusiory constructs that a Makuta can manifest, though very little is known of them, as they are rarely used.

The only source I have access to that describes a Shadow Toa is an ancient text, written in ancient Matoran, which contains the following passage that I have partially translated into modern Matoran, with any words that have multiple definitions having both listed: "Be Toa's eyes as the setting suns, moreso than capricious Le or [steadfast/durable] Fe, armour dark, then ally is Toa not; for is instead illusion from cruel Kra. Only ceases after confront truest [self/friend]."

Translating this fully into modern Matoran is difficult due to the ambiguity in the grammar and certain words having multiple definitions, but I gave it a try because why not: "If a Toa's eyes are bright red, moreso than the pinkish-red of a Toa of Air or the reddish-orange of a Toa of Iron, with dark armour, then they are not an ally; they are instead an illusion from cruel Shadow." The next section is a bit more ambiguous; it could mean "It immediately ceases to exist when it is confronted by its true self", or "It can only be killed by a close friend", or maybe some combination or rearrangement of those. Maybe something else. Who knows?

But what I want to note is that part about red eyes and dark armour. The Head has eyes that match that description perfectly, and while it lacks any armour or a mask, the metal it is made out of does look darker than usual, at least compared to what I've seen from the few Toa I have met, which makes me wonder if The Head is, in fact, a Toa of Shadow.

Before I move onto the next section, I also need to address something interesting that last line. Both interpretations point to Shadow Toa being based on existing Toa; "truest self" could refer to the one that it was recreated from, while "truest friend" could refer to another Toa who is particularly close to them. Which means that The Head could have been based on an actual Toa from Xia, though I didn't want to deal with the Xian council's excessive bureaucracy just to access a list of registered Toa with no clue which one The Head was copying. This will come up again later.

Getting back on track, since I had an example of a rare phenomenon in my possession, I decided to try giving it a soul-scan to see what I could learn.

Souls are a form of elemental and life essence, generated in the cerebral crystals (also known referred to with the more casual term "brainstalks") of most beings and transported throughout the body via elemental conduits. Souls also what give eyes, cerebral crystals and heartlights their distinctive glow, though the actual colour of said glow comes from the surrounding protodermic biomineral that those components are made out of, which tints the otherwise blindingly white soul-light; even De-Matoran and Toa of Sonics, with their white biominerals, have their soul-light filtered slightly to make their eyes, cerebral crystals and heartlights glow to a lesser degree than if they were isolated.

Souls are comprised of six different "pieces", which affect the shape and appearance of the soul and the being it belongs to; they are Unity, Duty, Destiny, Light, Darkness and Element. The first three obviously relate to the being's connections to the Three Virtues; Light and Shadow have unknown purposes at time of writing, though it appears to have some correlation with the being's personality, as Matoran destined to become Toa usually have higher Light, and Makuta naturally have higher Darkness.

So I put The Head in the soul scanner (it tried to resist, but the most it could do was try to bite my fingers), activated the scanning mode, and went back to my office to water my plants and rearrange my tablets while I waited for the scan to finish.

As soon as I saw the results, I knew that I had to download them to the archival tablet so I could include an image of them here, because they would have been too bizarre to be believable, but it also undoubtably proves my hypothesis of what The Head is.

The Head somehow has 0 Unity, Duty, Destiny or Light, but its Darkness is so high it caused an overflow. This thing is (was?) definitely a Shadow Toa.

Now that I had this evidence at its true origin, I was ready to re-confront it, along with a secret weapon...

The Head: Oh good, the [EXPLETIVE DELETED] finally decided to give me the attention I [EXPLETIVE DELETED] deserve. Vizuna: Yeah, yeah, let's cut to the chase. I know what you are. The Head: [EXAGERRATED GASP] Oh noooooo, you managed to [EXPLETIVE DELETED] figure out "what I really am". You guessed it earlier; I'm a [EXPLETIVE DELETED] Makuta, and I am to be [EXPLETIVE DELETED] feared! Vizuna: You're a Shadow Toa, based on a Toa from the island of Xia. You were struck down in battle, but managed to survive as a damaged head due to not being defeated properly. The Head: Wait, how did you f- Vizuna: A combination of ancient writings, and a summary of your soul's construction. And to further prove it, I brought this. The Head: A [EXPLETIVE DELETED] mask? What's that going to do? Vizuna: It'll let me know who'll get the privilege of shutting you up for good.

At this point, I ran out of audio-recording space on the tablet (sorry about that, Etoku; I replaced the memory module before returning it to you), but when I put the mask on The Head, it turned dark-grey, so I will be requesting access to the Xian council's list of registered Toa and looking for any Toa of Ice or Sonics.

Now, a lot of fellow spiritual researchers might hate me for what I am about to say, but I am going to destroy it, because there's a lot that we're going to learn from how it reacts to being exposed to its original

Artifact information:

Categories: Living, Supernatural

Current location: External Warehouse 7434-B, "To Be Destroyed" section.

End of log.

Addendum by Spiritual Researcher Vizuna: I went to ask Surgical Director Gogot about The Head, but according to the other surgeons in the dissection lab, he's currently busy; some slackers from Le-Metru somehow managed to get into the Mutagenics gallery, and he's taken the sole responsibility of dissecting what's left of them.

Addendum by Spiritual Researcher Vizuna: Ok, so it's been a week, and Gogot still isn't available; according to the off-duty surgeon who answered the door when I went to ask, he won't be available for at least a month, maybe longer, and since I didn't want to subject any... less experienced surgeons to The Head's nonsense, I will just wait until he's finished. In lighter news, I managed to finally get a copy of the Xian council's list of registered Toa, and I've had letters sent to the Toa that The Head was mimicking, as well as what the list claims is their closest ally, so hopefully they'll respond soon to... dispose of it. Also it means I won't need Gogot to ID the type of Toa that The Head came from.

[autumnalfallingleaves]

Anyway, if you think about it, Tumblr could be considered an archive on some level

[netscapenavigator-official]

I know this is an improper use of this meme format, but

I’m honestly tired of Tumblr Dot Com users trying to promote CDs, DVDs, and BDs are the best way to ��own your media” in 2024. They’re not. They never were. They never will be. (You stupid sluts.)

With the exception of M-Discs. M-Disc BDs, and the even rarer format (M-Disc DVDs), are adequate for archiving. In fact, it’s what they’re designed to do. But good luck finding some that won’t blow the bank. And they’ll most likely be 128 GB or less, so you’re still better off just running two cheap Walmart HDDs in parallel.

[trigunbookclub]

Will there be an archive for bookclub posts this year?

Hello!

Alas, I don't have the resources or know-how to archive posts myself. That was a very kind and thoughtful effort run by other folks! I can say for sure that all posts will wind up on @trigun-post-archive eventually (it's currently going back even farther and is currently in 2013--if you want a blast from the past, absolutely scroll for a bit, though mind the excessive stolen art lol--but it had gotten up through a bunch of old bookclub posts before then, and you can search through them), but I'm not sure if @trigunreferencelibrary has any plans for it! It's a lot of work and requires a bit of manpower, so I don't expect anything--but it's definitely fun to scroll through the older posts if you want to poke around!

[mishmash-webster]

FINALLY BREACHED THE 400 PAGE MARK ON ARCHIVING THE W2H DEV BLOG LETS GOOOOOOOO

[detectivehole]

i absolutely love playing with the data visualizations on citizen dj and creating what is to other people apparently auditory sensory hell but to me is the correct amount of noise anything should make. please try it

[ampresandian]

Yes I recognize that these options are not mutually exclusive. Please choose the option that is closest to your general relationship with fanfiction, on average. And feel free to tag options that overlap for you/anything I didn't think of!

[badolmen]

*leaves a comment on every single chapter of a fic as I read it* *author replies to every single comment with increasing giddiness and excitement*

This is good. I’m getting a good grade in fic reader. This is both something that is normal to want and possible to achieve.

[semi-sketchy]

Little reminder to refresh your data every once in awhile! This can be as simple as taking a folder and copying it to the exact same spot then deleting the original. (Don't use cut, that's a moving process.)

Refreshing your data helps prevent bitrot on rarely accessed files!

[sebastianthegiraffe]

So…that happened…

AO3 got data-scraped by AI, so I have now locked all of my fics, even my little private collection that’s not published in the main body of work.

Sorry if you read my stuff on guest-mode. However, if you want to make an account, let me know and I can send you an invite. Apparently that’s quicker than waiting for AO3 to do it.

Basically, if you have works published before March of this year, they have probably been scraped by this AI. Locking them now won’t fix what’s happened but it will make it harder for them to be scraped in the future.

(Fuck AI, honestly. I do not trust it, it scares the shit out of me)