Thankful for archive.org

One weekend per year devoted to being thankful doesn’t seem unduly burdensome. Today I’m expressing thanks for archive.org. Especially given the recent American tendency to rewrite history in accordance with current #Science/religion/belief/etc., where else would would we be able to find evidence of just how bad things were in the bad old days? (though the evidence might not be complete; see Web publishers can delete stuff from archive.org)

archive.org enabled at least the following blog posts here:

Harvard University attracted a bit of attention when it hosted a theatrical performance restricted to audience members of one skin color earlier this fall. Emboldened by the federal judiciary saying it was okay to discriminate against Asians, the school apparently decided that Massachusetts General Law, Section 98 did not apply (“Discrimination in admission to, or treatment in, place of public accommodation… Whoever makes any distinction, discrimination or restriction on account of race, color, religious creed, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, which shall not include persons whose sexual orientation involves minor children as the sex object, … in any place of public accommodation, resort or amusement, … shall be punished by a fine of not more than twenty-five hundred dollars or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, …”). The web page has been scrubbed from the theater’s web site, but it remains alive on archive.org:

We have designated this performance to be an exclusive space for Black-identifying audience members. For our non-Black allies, we appreciate your support in making this a completely Black-identifying evening. We invite you to join us at another performance during the run.

Proof of vaccination or negative test results required to attend.

A Facebook friend attended and wrote “I can now tell my grandkids that I tasted segregation first hand, just like my mom and dad.” He attached this picture that includes a sign regarding Harvard’s expressed commitment to “anti-racism” (which includes “we will not tolerate racism”) and a sign saying that prospective audience members with the wrong skin color should go elsewhere.

Note that the above-mentioned web page contains an admission that the theater is on stolen land:

A.R.T. acknowledges that its theaters are situated on the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Massachusett Tribe.

With a $53 billion endowment, Harvard apparently can’t afford to give the land back to the nearest Native Americans and then pay for a ground lease from them. If the rightful owners do show up to reclaim this land and Harvard scrubs its damaging admissions from the live pages, archive.org will be the dispossessed owners’ best friend.

Readers: What have you found on archive.org that the original authors/publishers probably wish had remained forgotten/hidden?

4 thoughts on “Thankful for archive.org

  1. I’m thankful that Archive.org lets you borrow the full text of both “The Closing of the American Mind” and “Giants and Dwarfs” both by Allan Bloom, published in the 1987 and 1990, respectively. There are some others I’ll mention later but hey, with dangerous and heretical archives of doubleplusungood material, let’s hope Archive.org don’t get wiped clean by the New Progressives.

    https://archive.org/details/AllanDavidBloomTheClosingOfTheAmericanMindSimonSchusterTrade1987/page/n121/mode/2up

    https://archive.org/details/giantsdwarfsessa00bloo_0/page/8/mode/2up

    It’s not Archive.org but “Slow Train Coming” (1979) by Bob Dylan finally appeared on YouTube this past August with every studio song, including “Gonna Change my Way of Thinking.” Previously you could only purchase the original tracks or watch bootleg videos of various live performances, which varied tremendously in terms of fidelity. Of course, when Dylan released this album there was no Internet, and he had no idea how effective it could be at limiting the power and freedom of thought. For Pete’s sake, he threw up his hands at what existed THEN, which was just a tiny foreshadowing of what we’re being treated to now. We’re really getting close to the Good Stuff when it comes to squelching people:

    “So much oppression
    Can’t keep track of it no more
    Said there is so much oppression
    Can’t keep track of it no more
    Sons becoming husbands to their mothers
    Old men turning young daughters into whores”

  2. I also appreciate and give thanks for Archive.org’s compendium of Boy’s Life from 1911-2015. It’s very useful for compare and contrast purposes, now that there are no Boy Scouts (but there are Girl Scouts.)

    At one time, Boy’s Life was a challenging read, written for adolescents then, but how many first-year college students now would get bored and not have the reading ability?

    https://archive.org/details/pub_boys-life

    https://archive.org/details/sim_boys-life_1957-12_47/page/6/mode/2up

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