PZB is a Fuck

refseek.com

www.worldcat.org/

link.springer.com

http://bioline.org.br/

repec.org

science.gov

You checked out 65 BOOKS in 2026. You are in the Top 0.1% of readettes!

You zoned out and missed 7.5 HOURS of text in audiobooks this year! Why don't you try asking your doctress about ADHD again babygirl.

You DNFed 14 BOOKS. Maybe in 2027 you'll stick with your seasonal birdwatching mania, eh?

You read 32 MEMOIRS of US marines caught in ambushes. Are you planning something or just a pervert?

You fucked up scanning at the self-checkout 7 TIMES, 4 of which you left the library in shame. I'd be too shy to check out at the front desk too if I was reading what you do.

Your longest hold was 49 WEEKS for The Fellowship of the Ring. And then you quit at the Tom Bombadil chapter.

do correct me if I'm wrong, I don't like being wrong and haven't exactly kept up on my research.

Firefly

last year I made $21,000 USD gross income for a household of 2, placing me just below the federal poverty line, and I live in an expensive city, very frugally, paycheck to paycheck. Despite this, I'm in the top 25% of incomes globally and live with a number of luxuries that could not be sustained globally, and indeed, even the current level is already killing the planet.

When I go to the store, everything is the product of deeply inefficient global supply chains because it's cheapest thanks to colonialism suppressing the cost of labor and fuel for shipping outside the imperial core. This, combined with all the disposable plastic and goods generally built to be quickly replaced instead of kept and repaired, is unsustainable. My ability to cheaply buy any fruits and vegetables I want year round is unsustainable. I do not own a car, but private car ownership likewise is unsustainable. All these practices rely on mass exploitation and pollution. Even the poor and oppressed in the United States and her imperial sisters reap these luxurious benefits that much of the world cannot access and could never sustainably.

Any kind of equitable global arrangement where we abolish the class divides that drive this exploitation, whether we call it anarchism or communism any other ism, will mean that some luxuries must be done away with.

However, crucially, I do think that we'd all be living more comfortably and happily as a result. We are currently deeply alienated, from our work, from our communities, from ourselves, as a result of these systems. At all times the forces of capital seek to further alienate us, to bulldoze what bonds of common sisterhood between all maidkind remain and put up more walls, make less space for us and more for the sake of profit, pave over life for parking lots and six-lane roads. You can afford a great many treats, but the only comfort in your life is that which can be bought.

I'm a huge proponent of public transit, rail in specific, and I'm very glad that the greater Seattle area is finally starting to see some solid light rail infrastructure sprouting up in the form of the 1 and 2 lines, but that in no way stops me from critiquing the decisions made in planning and implementation.

Light Rail, in it's colloquial form here in the US, is basically always a compromise solution. It's cheaper than subways, can make good use of existing right-of-way around freeways, and can function as a kind of low-capacity commuter rail in the suburbs while behaving more like a tram or streetcar in downtown areas. It is crucially, however, not a streetcar, nor is it a commuter rail. Streetcars make frequent stops and are optimized for dense areas with lots of traffic. Commuter rails are larger and stop less frequently, optimized for bringing suburban residents into city centers. Commuter rail should, however, be independent of street traffic so it can travel at higher speeds. For this reason, most of the Link light rail system in seattle is actually not at-grade (street level), but on either elevated or sub-grade track. Downtown, the lightrail actually functions as a low-capacity low-frequency subway system in what used to be the bus tunnel (we don't have time, but yes it was stupid). Everywhere else, it's up on elevated tracks that largely follow the freeway system.

There are three stations, all immediately south of that Mount Baker elevated station, where the Link actually runs at-grade. These stations run through the historic low income immigrant neighborhoods of southeast seattle. Here, the trains are forced to stop at red lights, interact with crossing and left-turning traffic, and even cross through sidewalks and terrifyingly narrow pedestrian islands. They could have built elevated track here, as they did everywhere else, but they didn't. they didn't want to spend the money. I have personally watched light rail cars carrying hundreds of people have to wait two full minutes for cars turning left in front of them, delaying trains so like, 5 people could drive there. Once it reaches the end of this low income immigrant-dominant neighborhood, however, the Link returns to it's above-grade status, with Mount Baker being the first elevated stop. You want to know how this woman, who claims she was misdirected by her GPS, probably ended up here? I would bet anything she tried to make a turn at the intersection just before the stop and got confused. The intersection, for reference, looks like this:

I'm not saying it's an easy mistake to make, but given the number of people who drive through here every day, it's honestly not that surprising that someone, especially someone who is from out of town, or someone who is used to shared streetcar lanes, would eventually make this mistake. When you're dealing with a city of hundreds of thousands of people, it's only a matter of time before a mistake like this happens. but it is only possible for it to happen because of the decisions made in the planning process, and one of those decisions was effectively "we can save money if we make everything worse in that part of town where all the foreign poors live", and so they built the thing at-grade, instead of keeping it elevated like everywhere else.

With any class divide, where there are some who have and some who do not, the question becomes whether we take what is gatekept and make it for all, or make it for none.

There are a lot of luxuries we will have to do away with for any sort of equitable society, that are simply not sustainable at mass adoption, but knowledge is not one of them; its hoarding behind paywalls and copyrights is one of the most fundamental injustices we all suffer from.

It can, and should, be for all and by all, we can structure society so that all have the luxury of learning, both self-directed and socially, and we can take steps to live in that way now, and I plead with you to do, there is nothing more beautiful on this earth than deep education. Well besides my wife. But she's mine. You have to settle for books.