Intellectual Property Is Bullshit — Upcycle This Website
like most of us, i'm pruning back my presence on the web so that i can better manage how and where my data flows and lives. with every corporation rushing to sell us out or harvesting our quips, personal stories, photos, and artwork to train some artificial intelligence model that practically no one has interest in and is all but certain lead to reducing the planet to one big power plant to feed them, the need to be more intentional when it comes to how we engage grows more crucial by the day.
exposur.es is project with the aim of creating a safe haven for artists—queer and trans people, sex workers, sex educators, and anyone else who has been the victim of censorship—to collaborate with each other and freely share their work in whatever form it takes. in its previous incarnation, it existed as an instance of PixelFed, or what some where calling an ethical dupe of Instagram. on exposur.es, artists are liberated from exploitation and censorship. at the moment, the project is taking new forms and might reappear less as a social media replacement and more as physical spaces to create, share, and learn together.
after my hosting provider deleted the entire instance without warning, i was pretty wrecked. i had put innumerable hours into maintaining the server and hundreds of dollars in fees. after the dust settled, though, it hit me that maybe it was an opportunity to liberate the project from the confines of the modern web and the played-out social media experience. i'll have more to share about what happened and where i envision the project going soon that you can find here.
the plain, uncomplicated, battle-tested Signal. there's not much to say about it. use it. get together with friends & partners to help each other ditch WhatsApp, iMessage, SMS, Telegram, or whatever other platform that is currently selling us out. and if you're on Android, use Molly (a version of Signal with some features which make for a smoother experience).
The link above should even open the app for you if you already have it installed and set up!
a decentralized messenger with solid security & privacy. it's about as smooth an experience as any other messaging app for the most part. since accounts don't live on one server the way Signal accounts do, it makes for a great backup for keeping in touch when AWS goes down again and the anonymity factor makes it one of the few messaging apps / communication platforms i'd recommend to organizers & activists—whether you're organizing something entirely above board (a.k.a. "legal") or connecting with someone who is in need of healthcare treatment which has recently been outlawed where they live.
email me and i'll send you my link!
my entire website is mirrored on I2P and reachable at byfrankmorrow.i2p.
"wait, i2p? is that like dot com or dot rodeo?" to be honest, for years, i asked the same question. lol I2P is similar to Tor in that you can't access websites without specific software which makes it ideal for creating anonymous websites as well as circumventing state & corporate censorship.
i plan to lean on it more heavily as more and more of the clearnet is made unusable by artificial intelligence or creepy surveillance.
if it's above 60°F, you'll find me on my bike, strolling with my camera trying to sneak some street candids of life in the city, or stealing borrowing a mug from a coffee shop to take to the park. maybe we'll cross paths—i'm always eager to meet new people!
you might also find me working on the local citywide mesh network or at a distro with some mutual aid outfits around town. maybe we'll end up shoulder to shoulder working on one of these community efforts together.
i'll admit that i'm not as active as i was in the so-called Before Times (oh how i miss dancing until the sun came up), but you might catch me lurking the streets in search of live music, a burlesque or drag show, one of those late-nite, group-ride bike parties, the occasional art gallery or coffee cupping, or, perhaps, at various sex-positive, body-positive, nudist-adjacent locales & events around the city.
my interest in some of the latter spaces, in particular, is waning though. what i once experienced as an underground, word-of-mouth scene built on trust and mutual respect has, like everything else, been captured by capitalism—monetary and social—and morphed into a clout-chasing social media content fodder factory of boring cishet people clinging to aesthetics of edginess or cis gay men—both of whom are tacitly queerphobic and ableist. they can keep their shitty, exclusive-as-in-othering SERF'n'TERF Fire Island parties... i'll take a mellow nude beach with real community or a weekend on a lake upstate with partners & friends every time i'm given the choice. here's hoping that we see more COVID-conscious clubs sprout up soon that aren't out kissing asses to get that grimy-ass venture capitalist money while simultaneously trying to franchise queer culture out like some Dunkin' fuckin' Donuts for play parties (if you know, you know).