To Boldly Go...Nowhere

Being abused at home, bullied at school and lost in the world, the library and all the books I could escape to the most amazing worlds, kept me alive!

I would walk to the library, and spend all day, from 10 am to 9 pm reading there!! I got special awards for how many books I read, I wrote little blurbs on why i loved the books (probably why I love to BETA and do ARCs) 

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Just hit the green arrows and the reblog!!!

As a 50 year old woman, the library offers me so much. Digital art pads to borrow, 3D printing, book clubs that are face to face (yeah, the introvert likes face to face because a moderator will stomp on anyone getting snarky)

New books in LARGE PRINT! I’m visually challenged and as much as I love my kindle, The feel of a real book in my hands will always be a beloved feeling!

🌝🍷

Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour is yours, almighty Father, forever and ever.

2014: classic. Nice.

2012: eats human skin

he said “so they fixed it, right? how did they fix it in the game?” and i told him the truth: they didn’t. they couldn’t control it. they had to reset the servers and roll them back to the time before the ZG encounter.

a CNN article recently referenced another “viral” event in world of warcraft: leeroy jenkins facepulling as a metaphor for the expedited reopening of businesses. what it fails to mention however is how the video ends. everyone who charges in with leeroy dies. he wipes the raid.

Those with healing magic would go into infected areas to see if they could save the infected or at least keep them alive through the disease. Those that couldn’t do that tried to warn players before they entered infected areas. NPC could be infected and have “no symptoms”; they could be asymptomatic carriers and pass it to nearby players.

The best part though was by the time Blizzard had finally come out and said “if you are infected, try to quarantine yourself so you don’t spread it!!” the player base was ALREADY DOING SO. The players had recognized the problem and worked together in myriad ways to fix it.

They also had negative reactions as well, another reason this was such a good example of a real outbreak. They had a couple people report healers or alchemists who were claiming to sell cures/treatments to the disease that ultimately would do nothing. They had a group of players that would hide in the mountains near cities and just pass the disease back and forth between themselves and then raid cities to infect them all over again. They had higher level players start rebelling on the servers. Saying it was an overreaction and if you get it you’ll just die and you can come back and be fine, etc. Since they could get the disease and survive, ie it didn’t do enough damage to them since they were higher level, they felt it unnecessary to care about whether they got it or not. They complained about not getting to play like normal just because this plague could kill lower level players.

ALL of these reactions, good and bad, were real enough to what we assumed a real life epidemic would play out that people started to use it as a model. And now look, we have proof that it was accurate.

However, what we needed to learn from it was primarily that it wasn’t reversible. The bad reactions and lack of care from the few players that weren’t cooperating made it impossible in the end to contain. The only reason it was fixed at all is the game had to reverse time, literally just delete their entire game log a few weeks and time travel weeks into the past to before the plague even began.

Think about that.

The reason no one believed it was a valid model is that it was a video game and thus the consequences weren’t permanent. “No one would act like that in real life.” But look at how we are handling this outbreak. Is it not eerily similar?

- Play Sporkle Countries of the World (and  countries by continent) quiz to identify the gaps you have in relation to basic geography. 

- See which regions you’ve struggled the most with, and open wikipedia overview for them. 

- Look up the countries you didn’t know existed. 

- Think of what do you know about histories, economics, geography, peoples, politics and cultures of the countries you see in the American news a lot? What do you know about China? Russia? India? Iran? And so on. Wikipedia presents a decent overview and can be a good start.

- Countries usually have state media, official websites, popular bloggers and independent news in English. It can help you raise awareness of the current issues the people face from diverse and different perspectives.

( thread link )

“It is with tremendous sadness to report, beloved feminist critic, author, and professor, bell hooks has died. She was 69 years old.“ 💔🙏🏾🕊🖤

If it troubles you, I highly suggest making your own complaints every time you see something like this.

Video opens with OP in a library. The text on the video reads, “Follow a disabled college student to class.” OP has light skin, is in a wheelchair, has headphones around their neck, and is wearing a mask and a short-sleeved pink dress with a long-sleeved white shirt underneath. They make the “hang loose” symbol with their hands and do a little dance.

Cut to OP outside with a brown jacket on. The text reads, “ADA violation #1”.

Cut to a shot of stairs leading up to a walking path and then to a building. The text reads, “My class is up there. Only stairs and no sign directing you to the accessible route”. Text changes to read, “Gotta take the long way”.

A sped up sequence from OP’s perspective moving to the accessible entrance. They press the button to open the automatic doors. They pass through the doors, press the button in front of the next set of doors, and pass through those.

A sequence of OP moving through this building and to the elevator, then to a ramp within the building. They arrive at a door. Text appears which reads, “ADA Violation #2. The button for the door is broken AGAIN.”

Cut to them moving outside in a parking lot. Text reads, “The only way out is so bumpy I almost tipped over multiple times."

Cut to OP pointing to a ramp. Text reads, “ADA violation 3. Ramp that’s too steep.”

Stop acting like this isn’t a community-wide issue that affects ALL trans people. Especially autistic trans people.

In her award winning(!!!) essay, Rowling explained that she believes autistic trans men and boys (like myself) are not mentally competent to consent to our own medical care.

We’re easily influenced, you see. Gullible. Liable to be led astray by militant trans activists, social media, and the glamour and popularity that comes with being transgender.

JK Rowling, outspoken feminist and champion for the rights of women, wants to deny medical autonomy to “girls” because she thinks we’re overly-emotional, frivolous, and susceptible to peer pressure.

She has spoken directly about her belief that autistic “girls”, especially, should not be allowed to transition because we’re intellectually incapable of forming, recognising, and articulating our own identities, and especially vulnerable to “social contagion”.

But, of course, the law doesn’t (shouldn’t) discriminate, and if autistic teens and/or adults can’t legally consent to treatment of gender dysphoria, we can’t legally consent to the treatment of anything. We won’t be able to access any treatment or medication without approval from a responsible adult.

The ability of trans kids to consent to their own medical care has already been the subject of a court case (Bell vs Tavistock). It was overturned on appeal, but one of the potential consequences of that specific case was that cis teens could have lost access to hormonal contraception without parental consent.

If Rowling gets what she’s said she wants, the knock-on effect may well be that autistic people in the UK lose the ability to live independently.