Sharing this because I just found out about this and it blew my mind.
The short version of it is: The Wayback Machine is not the only backup/archive of AO3 content out there. It’s just the most user-friendly and immediately browsable.
What you’ll need: A browser for .sqlite3 files such as DB Browser for SQLite, an archive manager (e.g. WinRar or 7zip), good internet download speeds, and potentially a LOT of free GBs in storage space.
Not needed but heavily recommended: A download manager such as HTTP Downloader (so you don’t lose the entire download the second your internet stutters).
1. Click here to get to the archive’s files. It’s going to look something like this:
ao3_current.sqlite3 and ao3_old_files.sqlite3 are metadata files. The .zip files contain fic, most of them in simple .txt format. The metadata files tell you which fic is in which zip.
The “current” metadata file is recent backups. The “old” metadata file seems to be fics archived until 2020ish.
2. First, download either ao3_current.sqlite3 or ao3_old_files.sqlite3. Now launch DB Browser for SQlite, then File > Open Database Read-Only > open the sqlite3 file. Now click on the Browse Data tab.
3. It’s going to look like this.
4. The “Filter in any column” field can be used for keyword searches in, well, any column of this table. Be warned, it takes a while to update, give it time, it’s indexing.
5. Here I searched for all fic which gets a hit for the “Avengers” keyword (usually fandom). You can also search for a specific title, author, description, etc.
Let’s try to locate the first fic on the list. Click on the field on the left - row 1, column 1.
On the right you’ll see the full content of that cell. The most important thing here is the start - ao3_01. This means that the fic is located in ao3_old_files_part01.zip.
6. Download ao3_old_files_part01.zip and open it with your archive manager. It’s 5.5 GB. This will take some time.
7. There are multiple ways to find the fic within the zip file. Probably the easiest way is to use your archive manager’s search/find function to locate the fic by keyword - author is a good bet here, or title if it’s unique enough - and extract that. This way you don’t have to extract the entire archive. Be sure to add a wildcard operator (*) on either side of the keyword.
8. Extract the file and you’re done. Note: It will probably be in .txt format, and might be in one giant block of text. Just select-all and paste it to a proper word processor to restore the paragraph formatting.
+ I suppose if you’ve got like a free TB of space you could just skip the metadata step and download all the zip files and unzip them and use a command line search tool for keywords, too. This will work with keywords like title, author and fandom that are part of the file title. The metadata file just contains additional info, like character fields, description, etc.
This isn’t a perfect remedy, there are still fics that got deleted before they could get archived here. But it seems more complete than the stuff on the Wayback Machine on average.
It’s an underdog story about classism in which the folk hero (Johnny) is confronted by a powerful man (the Devil) who tries to exploit the hero’s perceived ignorance and inferiority by offering a great reward with impossible odds. Although Johnny warns him that looks can be deceiving, and that he’s going to regret the dare because Johnny is the “best there’s ever been”, the devil is blinded by his greed and arrogance.
The devil creates an awful cacophony of technically excellent fiddle playing that would be impossible for Johnny to replicate. It’s a trick.
But Johnny just grins at him and starts to play “simple” classic country fiddling songs - Fire On The Mountain, House Of The Rising Sun, and Daddy Cut Her Bill Off. He doesn’t rise to beat the Devil - he simply creates his own music from his home, in the style that he knows, and his love of it and the familiarity of the music make his “backwoods” fiddling more perfect than the Devil could ever achieve.
It is thus the devil’s pride, not Johnny’s, that allows Johnny to Bugs Bunny his way into a golden fiddle.
(In that sense, I do agree that it is the most American song: in a land of prejudice and inequities, great power lies - dormant but ever-present - in those we underestimate and attempt to exploit.)
Also people initially react to the devil’s part like “holy shit that’s badass” because he’s got electric guitar and bass and a whole backing band to make him sound good. Of course he sounds amazing. But if you drill down to the actual fiddling – and this is straight from Charlie Daniels – it’s not as technically difficult as what Johnny does. It’s fast? But it’s mostly just going up and down scales.
Here’s a good performance – the devil’s part starts around 2:00. Check out how long Daniels just stands there holding his fiddle while the guitar and piano carry the weight. I love that piano bassline but fiddling it ain’t.
It’s still an American narrative: if you can afford to hire a bunch of more talented people, you, too, can look like a genius. Doesn’t make you one.
To the person in the replies of the one ask saying “I’ve seen so many popular posts that say ‘op is a terf, this is just terf rhetoric’ so that proves that radfems are reaching people!” oh, how I wish I could be you. I’ve seen people claim it’s “terf rhetoric” to just say basic feminism 101 shit like “men have privilege over women.” Even when those posts explicitly mention trans women as included in the category of “women” (though as a trans person I def feel some kind of way about so many cis “allies” needing that kind of explicit acknowledgment in feminist posts!) I’ve seen people who are explicitly not any kind of terf or radfem and in fact regularly criticize them, harassed as “terfs” by people with axes to grind against them over unrelated issues, who take advantage of the fact that trans people are very cautious online and will often block suspected terfs without question. I’m very glad that you’ve been lucky not to see any of this but honestly you must be naive or new to Tumblr if you haven’t because it’s all over and has been happening for years. I’ve been told I’m transphobic myself (again, I’m trans) for not blocking a longtime mutual over a “terf” accusation — that was based on a “blocklist” made by an anti who is just calling all pro shippers in their fandom “terfs.” The existence of “terf” accusations alone does not prove those accusations are credible, it just proves that Tumblr hates TERFs (as they should) and has learned that calling someone one even without evidence is enough to ruin their good name (not so great). Anyway you’re not disproving anything the OP is saying as they acknowledged that TERFs are a problem with a lot of reach online, they were specifically referring to non-TERF radfems as being irrelevant compared to right wing Christianity.
Also if someone is claiming “this is just TERF rhetoric minus the transphobia” that’s a meaningless statement because transphobia is the main and only feature of what TERFs believe. Most TERFs aren’t radical or any kind of feminist anymore except to get people to sympathize with them, they believe things that contradict feminism and some (like Posie Parker) have explicitly said they’re “not feminists.” If someone is saying “this is TERF rhetoric minus the transphobia” that’s a great blinking red light that they’re full of shit, and it’s always been a feature of the people trying to claim that 101 feminist statements like “men are a privileged class in the same way white people or straight people are, yes not every man benefits from sexism or in the same way and men can support feminism, but as a class they benefit and are privileged over all women including trans women” is somehow “terf rhetoric.”
You’ve gotta use your critical thinking skills, read up on what radfems actually believe so you can learn how to spot and combat their rhetoric on your own. Tumblr won’t help you it will just confuse you.
> “Most TERFs aren’t radical or any kind of feminist anymore except to get people to sympathize with them, they believe things that contradict feminism”
It’s a mistake to assume they’re not radfems just because their beliefs are hostile to feminism and women. Bigots believe in things that shoot themselves in the foot all the damn time, as long as someone else’s foot is shot more, and earlier.
> “"If someone is saying “this is TERF rhetoric minus the transphobia” that’s a great blinking red light that they’re full of shit"
And this hasn’t really been my experience. Lots of crypto-TERFs post radfem shit with the overt transphobia filed off because it sells better, and in fact sells quite well. A lot of rhetoric around oppositional sexism and how men are scum etc. etc. goes largely unchallenged on Tumblr but sneakily sets up bioessentialism.
In my experience, that phrasing is a somewhat clumsy way of pointing out dogwhistles and couched language for rhetoric that sets up transphobia even if it doesn’t outright include it.
But back to the large point, as someone who’s been called “TERFy” for… not agreeing that a close friendship between two onscreen fictional dudes constituted groundbreaking asexual rep, agree that people have started slinging that around to the point of utter uselessness and simply being accused of being a TERF is immediately proof of nothing except the other person’s poor comprehension.
I understand what people mean by prison abolition, but what does it mean in practice to abolish the family? I've never quite got it - who is raising children? How does it work? I'm asking in good faith, I've just always been a bit embarrassed to ask anyone
Like positions that are “anti-work” or against “gender,” the thing being objected to is more detailed and specific than the range of meanings that can reasonably or semi-reasonably be assigned to the word in question (“work,” “gender,” “family”)—which is why these propositions and programmes can have a bit of a PR problem. And, as with all terms that position themselves against something (e.g. “anti-psychiatry”), the term “family abolition” can be taken up by people with a range of different positions who disagree amongst themselves on some issues. In general, though, no one objects to “people living together or being emotionally close to each other” or “children not being left to roam about at random and get eaten by wolves” or anything.
Rather, anti-capitalist objections to “the family” tend to hinge on objections to:
parental rights, or “the special legal powers of parents to control major aspects of their children’s lives,” which function as “quasi-property interests” more than anything that is in the best interest of children (link explicitly relates to U.S. law). Parents legally control where their children live, whether and where they go to school, what information they have access to, what level of freedom of mobility they have, and what they may do with their own bodies, and are legally allowed to physically assault their children.
relatedly, the lack of legal autonomy that children possess (this is also often discussed under the banner of “children’s rights” or objections to “adultism”).
the positioning of “the family” as the only economic or social “safety net” in an economy and a society which provide no other one (creating an artificial “structural scarcity” of care). In a society which is otherwise dominated by “economic competition between atomized individuals,” the family must be relied on—and yet, for some people (whose families cannot or will not provide living space or financial support in an emergency; whose families are abusive and physically or psychically dangerous to be around or rely on; who will not receive help or emotional support from a spouse or family unit without making serious concessions on the level of their personhood being basically respected), the family cannot be relied on.
the way that the positioning of “the family” as the only safety net therefore constitutes economic coercion that works to keep people (especially women and LGBT, disabled and/or transracially adopted people) in abusive or exploitative situations, and that works to create incentives for working-class women (whose employment is generally less secure) to make themselves erotically desirable to men & disincentives for doing anything else.
the idea that housework, gestational labour & childbirth, and childcare are tasks “naturally” falling to the “mother” (“mother” as a “natural category”), such that the social, political, and economic nature of these tasks, and the economic and political discourses that mobilise the creation of our concept of “motherhood,” are obscured.
Thus the objection is to “the family” as a unit of social reproduction under capitalism—as a legal, political entity that structures inheritance, taxes, health insurance, &c., and therefore works as a sort of interface between the capitalist state and the individual.
So the programme of “family abolition” involves, firstly, the control of the means of production on the part of the proletariat (this is a communist programme—the point isn’t to remove the safety net of the family while keeping capitalism in place, but rather the idea is that without capitalism this ultimately abusive safety net ought not to be needed); and then the abolition of marriage as a legal institution; the abolition of parental rights; the putting in place of measures for the elderly and disabled to be cared for regardless of whether they have family alive who are both able and willing to care for them; the forming of social networks at will; and, depending on who you ask, the communal raising of children (which involves ceasing to privilege “parent” as a legal title automatically conferred upon biologically creating a child).
Obviously, children who do not yet understand things about the world including “causation” and “mortality” will need on occasion to be restrained from running blithely into the jaws of wolves &c. The argument is just that coercion of this sort should be legitimately in the best interests of the child; not performed by two people who need answer for their actions, up to and including battery of their children, in no way other than saying that they “plausibly believe this to be necessary to control, train or educate their child”; and walked back in measure as the child gains the ability to reason for themselves and assert their own desires.
Probably no one has a perfect solution 100% worked out—life is messy, and we don’t know what the future will look like—but having a perfect solution 100% worked out should be a prerequisite for noticing that the current situation is abusive and untenable.
“the abolition of parental rights; the putting in place of measures for the elderly and disabled to be cared for regardless of whether they have family alive who are both able and willing to care for them;“
Highlighting this section as a nutshell answer wondering what the hell family abolitionists think family should be replaced with.
Imagine that the state had no concept of a healthcare system. None. No hospitals, no public doctors, no emergency care. Instead it was simply understood (and to some extent legally supported) that a family should probably encourage one or two kids to study medicine and then take care of the family, and provide the basic fundamental need of “healthcare” to those in their immediate family unit. If your family didn’t happen to have a doctor then you’re expected to do the best you can anyway with what you can scrounge up of WebMD. If your family has a doctor but they’re an abusive piece of shit, tough luck? Unless they do something really egregious and you can prove it, they’re going to keep being in the position to provide healthcare to you. And even if you prove it and they get ousted as the family doctor, or you get transferred to a different family, there’s no guarantee that the family doctor there will be any better.
And this system is called “family doctors”, and when you say you want to abolish “family doctors”, people screech at you “So you think sick relatives should be put to the sword????”
That’s family abolition in a nutshell.
The long and short of it is that childraising/child care ought to be of a quality and realibility that biological parentson average cannot consistently provide. The fulfillment of such a major need should not be dependent on one’s luck or misfortune when it comes to someone’s highly variable “parenting skills”, without even accounting for whether they’re good people.
IDK where people got this idea that overseas shipping is particularly bad for the environment, but it takes less carbon to ship a small container of peaches across the Pacific Ocean than it does for you to drive your car to the grocery store to pick it up. Do you have any idea how many containers of peaches you can fit on a single cargo ship?
Of all the critical commentaries one could make about this image, “cargo ships will be the death of us” is the least accurate
How food is made is almost universally more important than where it’s made. Growing a shit ton of pears very efficiently in Argentina and then packaging that shit ton of pears very efficiently in Thailand is absolutely lower-carbon than growing and packaging them inefficiently, in small batches, in every town/city/region that wants packaged pears.
I mean, the word efficiency is obscuring a lot here, Thailand is not a centre for a high tech ultra productive packaging industry. It does have a large population and extremely weak labor laws which means it is a pool of cheap labor.
Shipping things, especially perishable and delicate fruit, needs preservation technology and is slightly more complicated than just put it in the container. Doing this thrice, which significantly delays the whole supply chain and introduces more complex modes of failure in this case only makes sense in a world where there is extreme global inequality, so the “costs” are marginal compared to the benefits of exploiting third world workers.
Sure, it is probably not that bad for the environment to ship around the world, but this is not being done this way due to some kind of natural allocation of efficiency.
i’m aware that the sheer amount of climate anxiety that i have is not productive but it’s also being shoved in my face every 0.5 seconds due to the fact that i study climate science. imagine if you were going to be a civil engineer and engineers discovered that all the concrete in the world was going to disintegrate in five years at the stroke of midnight like a concrete y2k and your teachers kept emphasising the long term risks of concrete and why we need to stop building with concrete and manufacturing concrete and the government inducts new Concrete Transition ministers but meanwhile every new building is still being made with fucking concrete because everyone is adamant that the engineers will find a solution to the Concrete Crisis, even though the solution is to just stop using concrete because its going to lose all structural integrity in five years. and they tell you to keep studying concrete and work something out to make it stronger. no wonder we are insane
live footage
I studied climate science briefly before switching to biology/plant science and it’s fucking wild here too.
“Here’s mountains of data about species declining due to climate change, but maybe if we find THE RIGHT DATA it will FINALLY convince THE POLITICIANS to take action! Let’s keep looking!”
or
“Here’s a crop species cultivar engineered to sequester carbon in its roots in large amounts, pulling it from the air and storing it in the soil. If we replace all the crops with extra carbon-sequestering version of them we could make agriculture carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative and reverse the deposition of it in the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning!”
Academics I swear to fucking god. They’re good people, smart people, but they’re so fucking clueless.
•••• GOOD OMENS 2 SPOILERS (SOUTH DOWNS COTTAGE THEORY) ••••
Okay, this is something I’ve had in my mind since I finished watching Good Omens Season 2. It was one hell of an emotional ride. I absolutely loved it from the very beginning up to the end. And it certainly made me think a lot. And cry a lot too, obviously.
There is something that stood out to me, so here comes my silly little theory. (English isn’t my first language so I hope this makes sense to you).
We all know Aziraphale said “Nothing lasts forever” in response to Crowley telling him he cannot leave his bookshop for a position in Heaven. This made me raise an eyebrow. Left eyebrow to be precise, pure Crowley style.
I realized, since he was willing to leave his beloved bookshop that he’s kept for over two centuries behind just to be with Crowley in Heaven, he would also be willing to leave everything behind to move to the South Downs cottage with his beloved, once everything settles down at the end of Season 3. At least for me, from this point of view, that “Nothing lasts forever” makes perfect sense, as heart-wrenching as it was. It would mean a major step that could lead to that pleasant ending that’s actually been in the plans for quite a long time.
A few weeks ago, somebody asked Neil if Aziraphale and Crowley lived in the South Downs, and this was his response:
”Not yet”…
They don’t live there yet because that’s something that’s supposed to happen in the sequel of Good Omens that Neil and Terry had planned many years ago but never wrote. Season 3 would be that sequel, and we know that Season 2 was just the bridge to that destination.
Something I found on Twitter about the South Downs cottage from three years ago:
Unfortunately, the account of the person who asked him about it no longer exists.
I am also perfectly aware of the coffee theory that’s been circulating, and it’s safe to say I’m holding on to dear life to it because it also makes sense to me.
I do believe the coffee was spiked due to the insistence of the Metatron when he handed it to Aziraphale. You can really tell how Aziraphale unconsciously fights the effects of the coffee during those painful last 15 minutes of episode 6.
I do think he still had some reason left in him, and that he is definitely willing to leave whatever it takes behind just to eventually be with Crowley. Hopefully, in the South Downs cottage.
I hope this made a little sense, would certainly love to know what you think about this.
LAST BUT DEFINITELY NOT LEAST:
STREAM GOOD OMENS SEASON 2 AS MUCH AS YOU PHYSICALLY CAN - WE NEED SEASON 3!!!!!!!!
OP I need you to know that the South Downs thing is several decades old by this point and the person who asked about it originally (in person, no less) is @irisbleufic, whose account is perfectly alive and well
Why do you think it’s in so many of the pre-show fanfics.
