Disengage is now available in an EPUB version, we're on the very platforms we're hoping to take down, I'm sorry and will do better next time, and more.
EPUB now available!
If you’ve been waiting for the EPUB version of Disengage, your wait is over. You can now download Disengage in EPUB or PDF format, or even read the entire text right on the website.
Disengage is engaged
After closing my Reddit account, I am now officially on zero social media platforms. But fortunately for me, I have a friend who enjoys social media. She’s running the Punching Up Press Instagram account, so if you’re on Insta, please join us and share! Also be on the lookout for a Bluesky account coming soon.
Want to be stealthy?
I know you do!
Since everything I do costs nothing for readers, I always need help with promotion. Please emailpunchinguppress@proton.me if you’d like me to mail you 10 Disengage postcards to scatter around “guerrilla marketing” style—in books at the bookstore, in Little Free Libraries, in news boxes, on the shelf at your local supermarket, wherever.
You can also download the postcard design here if you’d like to print and cut them yourself. (Clicking this link will automatically initiate a PDF download.)
Also: If you’re on any social media platforms, from Lemmy to Twitter, please share a link to the book, quotes from its pages, or details on your own disengage journey. My mission is to help more people reclaim their time, attention, money, and labor from the surveillance capitalist industry.
Should Disengage become a print book?
Last year I ran fundraiser to purchase close to 200 copies of On Tyranny, and volunteers placed them in Little Free Libraries in 15 states across the U.S. (You can read about that project here.)
I would love to self-publish Disengage as a print book and run a similar fundraiser to get the book into more hands. Through Barnes & Noble Press it would cost about $6 per copy. A lovely graphic designer has offered to handle the interior design for a low price, which I would pay out of my own pocket.
(As a published author I could approach my old agent about pitching Disengage to publishing companies, but I don’t want to charge anything for the book. Publishers frown on that kind of thing.)
My broad question to you is: What do you think of the idea of Disengage being in hardcopy format? Useful? Pointless?
Also, if I were to make this happen, how interested would you be in promoting the fundraiser on your social media, etc.? How interested would you be in donating to such a fundraiser? And would you feel about being one of the volunteers who places the books in Little Free Libraries near you?
Please respond at punchinguppress@proton.me to let me know...I want to take the temperature on this idea before I start spending time and money on it.
Updates and additions to Disengage
Proton folders...yikes!
In Disengage, I described how I moved my cloud storage from Box to Proton because Box seemed to “lose” the files within folders during upload.
Well, after a couple years of using Proton, I just discovered it has the same problem. I was looking for a tax document that should have been buried in a series of folders, and found that the final folder in the series was empty. So I did some digging, and yes—every innermost folder that I originally uploaded to Proton Drive was empty.
Luckily, I make it a habit to back everything up to a hard drive monthly, so the problem was easily fixed.
The lesson: No matter which non-Google cloud storage you choose, check to be sure all of your folders and files have been properly uploaded before deleting them from Google.
Mea Culpa on LibertOS: Avoid, avoid, avoid!
I’ve been deleting the mention of the UP Phone—made by a company called LibertOS—from all versions of Disengage. Although I did research every product in the book, something about the name “LibertOS” kept bugging me, so I did a little more digging.
Looks like I missed some huge red flags. An expert in MIT Technology Review calls the phone “right-wing affinity fraud,” and the article points out that the phone was originally called the RedPill Phone. The phone uses Elon Musk’s Starlink, and the company’s founder “is best known for founding the notorious private military firm Blackwater.”
Nope nope nope.
I want Disengage to be useful for readers of all political persuasions, since we’re all fighting against the same corporate overlords—but that news about LibertOS was over-the-top, just plain bad.
I apologize for including this company, and will be more careful in the future when researching products to recommend.
Disinformation makes you harder to surveil
In Disengage, I talk about using disinformation to obscure your tracks from data brokers.
I opened a few social media accounts with my real name, a professional email address, and a fake mailing address. (It’s an apartment number that doesn’t exist in an apartment complex that does exist.) I also signed up for a few survey sites and have been filling out surveys with false information about myself. My other self has many pets, likes to fish, and is a regular churchgoer. Their resume on Monster.com and LinkedIn boasts that they’re in the landscaping industry.
Now, when I ask ChatGPT to write a profile of myself, it gives the fake location. Small success!
The bigger win was “creating” two new people who live at my real address, developing personas for them, and subscribing to relevant trade magazines and industry websites. One of my personas just received a trade publication in the mail, which means the poor guy will soon be in all sorts of databases under my address.
(I know it sounds wasteful, but I selected industries I have friends in...so those trade pubs won't just be thrown away.)
I really want to love Tidal
I switched from Apple Music to Tidal with the hopes of getting my entire family on board. It works wonderfully streaming through my TV, and its mixes based on my favorite artists are spot on. Tidal also is also much nicer to its artists than Apple, Spotify, etc.
However, when streaming through my phone (a Pixel with GrapheneOS), the music occasionally skips like an old record. Apparently this is a known issue, and not just for Pixel phones. I deleted and reinstalled the app as suggested and it seems to have helped a bit.
My partner is going to sign up for a trial using their iPhone, so we’ll see if it has the same issue. I also plan to reach out to Tidal for more help since I really, really want it to work.
If you decide to try Tidal, your first month is free; that should give you enough time to see if it works for you, or to fix any problems (or cancel your subscription) if needed.
Own the things you pay for
As I was dealing with the skipping issue in Tidal, I discovered The Digital Packrat Manifesto on 404 Media. Author Janus Rose writes, “DRM and big tech's war on ownership has led me to make my own media libraries, and you should too.”
These days, it seems normal that you’re actually renting the music, videos, and books you pay for. But is it really? Is it normal to purchase media, knowing the company that provides them controls on what devices you read or play them, how long you have access to them, or whether you get to access them at all?
Unfortunately, Rose doesn’t go into detail on how she built/rebuilt her media library of MP3s, but I plan to research it and start doing this myself. Now I wish hadn’t sold my CD and DVD collections...but I know I can rebuild a library of music and movies that I control!
Thanks for reading. I hope to hear back from you—whether you want to disseminate postcards or have comments about the idea of Disengage as a print book.