General Stuff

IT’S BACK

ITS BACK 

This is one of those posts that you need to save and tag or you’ll never see it again for 84 years.

it’s from 2013 with 2.4mil tags how the fuck have i not seen it before?!?!?

Portals to hell? I haven’t heard that name in years

Okay I was like ‘surely that is fake’ so I looked the quote up and not only is it legit, the next bit of the letter is “if this Letter should be preserved, and read an hundred Years hence the Reader will Say “the Envy of this J. A. could not bear to think of the Truth”! [“]He ventured to Scribble to Rush, as envious as himself, Blasphemy that he dared not Speak, when he lived. But Barkers at the sun and Moon are always Silly Curs.” But this my Friend, to be serious, is the Fate of all Ages and Nations. And there is no Resource in human nature for a Cure.”

Well, you know. You can't expect the chimpanzee to have the same mature, grounded and self-deprecating sense of humour about it all that Jane Goodall has. That's asking a bit much.

if I just had the presence of mind and the wherewithal and the chutzpah and the bandwidth and the executive function and the energy and the mental resources and the spoons and the right attitude and the capacity and the gumption and th

Genuinely, one of the measures that's stopped book banning the most when districts implement it, is having the would-be banners fill out a form that demonstrates if they've read the book or not. Like where they have the summarize the plot and characters and do a mini book report and give a review. It stops them in their tracks. This is why in my high school, every time someone wanted to ban a book it ended up going nowhere. There was one where a conservative student wanted to ban the manga "Legal Drug" for having a marijuana leaf on the cover, then got the form that required them to actually read and either balked, or read it and realized it was not pro-drug at all. (The other one that reduces book bans even further is "requiring the would-be banner to be affiliated with this actual school in some way, either by being a student, faculty/staff or a parent of a child at the school" because the vast majority of bans are "activists" with no affiliation with the school who just travel around trying to do this in districts all over the U.S. IIRC a few years ago someone crunched the numbers and just 51 parents were responsible for all the book bans that year nationally. 51! In a country with 50 states, with over 300 million people total!)

Laws like this indeed do a lot to stop fascist book censorship. They can also help legally protect librarians from getting fired or harassed for keeping books on the shelves! Some states like Rhode Island have already passed these laws. If you're in a blue state, look up whether you have laws like this on the books. MAYBE your state is trying to get one passed right now, like New York's Freedom to Read bill. call your state elected officials to voice support for it.

You have to make them suffer or people freak out. Whenever I write a story where things are pretty chill, the discord is full of people tearing their hair out looking for the Secret Fucked Up Part that's festering beneath the surface and will erupt at any moment.

I mean tbf Derin that's bc you have a Reputation

I don't understand why! My stories aren't even all that fucked up! They're very stock standard scifi!

THE ANGELS DERIN. THE ANGELS ARE FUCKED UP.

In my defense I wrote that one a few months into lockdown.

english major macklemore: i read your granddad’s prose

therapist macklemore: i hear your granddad’s woes

coffee enthusiast macklemore: i drink your granddad’s joes

body mod shop owner macklemore: i pierce your granddad’s nose

pizza chef macklemore: i knead your granddad’s doughs

television network executive macklemore: i make your granddad’s shows

wildlife rehabilitator macklemore: i feed your granddad’s crows

blanket maker macklemore: i knit your granddad’s throws

sir mackle the more, knight of the great kingdom of seattle: i slay your granddad’s foes

rapper macklemore: i spit your granddad’s flows

really losing my patience for any 'feminist' statement to the tune of 'we need feminism because women fill a fundamentally different and necessary role than men and will be better at doing x y or z'. like actually i think we need feminism because it is an unbearable death of the spirit by inches to exist in a world where you are not seen as a fully realized human being because of a single cultural determination, and because a world that enshrines such things creates systems that are fundamentally sick to the core

i bring a sort of "this character is canonically malnourished and would gain at least a couple pounds during their hypothetical healing arc wherein they get better" vibe to the function that people dont really like

nature documentary but the narration is just weird enough to make you question it

“Some fish can walk out of water, so remember that next time.”

“You might think you’re safe, but horses are omnivores”

I know there's a particular idea of libraries that persists, and I imagine that's extra true if this site. But the reality is that 50% of my job is spent helping people with tech issues.

If you're going to be a librarian, you need to love books, yes, but you need to love people more. And, unironically, you need to love helping with the printer. Or at least not hate it.

and in fact you can feel totally ambivalent about books! the non-negotiables are really the people and their right to information.