Best outcome, next few years suck, trump gets out, dems and whoever gets in, rollback on all the bullshit
Worse outcome, next several years suck worse, trump gets out, republicans and whoever gets in, bullshit gets reenforced
Also Worse and really bullshit outcome, next several years suck, trump gets out, dems get in, but bullshit stays for a long time until a significant social and political change force hands - which while inevitable (something got to give) will also suck, but things will change but not as they were
Anyway, I had a good cry today about current times. A month ago, I had a minor epiphany that all we had to do is survive the next few years with the bullshit and just get trump out and get past this era and fix things and we will be - still hurting - but at least escape the worst of it.
But now, I'm not sure about anything anymore.
I'm sure you have heard about the Mastercard and Visa censorship, UK's Online Safety Act, USA's KOSA and SCREEN Acts, and so on. I have no words. This is disgusting, dangerous, privacy violating, destructive censorship that will strip many adult and child users of the internet and of their rights. This is not about protecting women and kids (hint: I'm AFAB, and I reject these censorships btw they don't speak for me), this whole thing is about controlling what information we can see, what can we buy, what can we make, and what can we say.
So, now that my grief for the current free internet is out of the way, let me say this:
If you have the means to do so, the money and time, I suggest becoming an archivist. Save as much as you can, learn how to do backups properly, join archival groups to keep track and save information out there. Especially of LGBTQ+ Rights and Culture, Civil Rights, Human Rights, and so on. If you have to sail the high seas, do it. Download a copy of your bookmarks (if you don't have any saved in your browser, start saving now), on articles use print then send to PDF to save a copy, maybe get something like Joplin, Obsidion, or other local notebook to save information as text and back that up, both through local storage and cloud.
Text docs are light, rendered text docs are a little heavy, images and videos get heavy quick. Backup your backups your backups.
You don't have to save everything, but at least small bits of pieces here and there if you could. Remember the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of data, two in different media, 1 offsite either in another location or on the cloud.
If it helps, here's something from my most recent journal entry.
The cost of data storage goes up, especially for cloud. There are other options.
As of 7/30/2025:
- Wasabi $7.00 per TB per month pricing as you go
- Backblaze is another option starting at $9.99 per month, Backblaze B2 Hot Storage $6/TB/Month
- Storj.io starting at $0.004/BG/Month ($4/TB/Month)
- CrashPlan Professional unlimited backups $7.33 per user/month
- Idrive.com $9.95 per month for Personal
- pCloud $9.99 2TB or $19.99 10TB - Lifetime $399 ($599) or $1190 10TB for life
- AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive - $0.00099 per GB - Warning, known to have expensive egress and additional charges.
I'm thinking about learning encryption, too, for more sensitive stuff.
I currently have a, unfortunately a basic and low paying, job and access to at least two survey sites that give me some small amount of pay. After getting a new tablet in Sept, I plan to get at least two 2TB drives, sort through the files I have either collected or made, back that up, and create and maintain my History Keeper folder for collecting a few snapshots of recent events. Then backup to cloud, something hopefully more secure than Google Drive (any affordable recommendations is welcomed).
