Sand

R: “Rudolph.”

M: “What’s your real name, Rudolph?”

R: “… Red-Nose.”

if you have a well funded library you might even have access to maker spaces that have 3D printers. or video/audio recording equipment. libraries aren’t these tomb silent homes for books any more. they’re community spaces. they’re full of life and things. 

- wifi hotspots that can be checked out for weeks so you can have internet on the go or at home

- CDs, DVDs, blurays including usually multiple copies of new stuff

- A tech lab with a 3d printer, computers for graphic design and game dev focus, VR headsets, and a soundbooth for recording

- Study rooms for solo or groups

- Printers, copiers, faxes, and scanners for just about anything you need taken care of.

- Including a new printer big enough to make giant posters, maps, and business-grade ads.

- A seed library, both floral and food-related.

- A computer lab programed to erase your data and reading history so you’re never at risk while visiting sites like domestic abuse hotlines

- Laptops pre-programmed with Adobe and Office software so you don’t have to buy them

- Monthly author visits

- Ebooks including comics on tons of various platforms

- Classes for those who want to learn how to or better their computer skills

- Art you can check out to hang on your wall for as long as it’s available, including the work of local artists who get paid for their art, especially if it gets popular and we want even more of their stuff.

- Monthly papers ranging from local newspapers to multi-national magazines on just about any topic you can imagine.

- We used to offer food and drink at a loss but You Know ©

- Notaries with extensive legal knowledge including renters rights, getting you in contact with immigration protection, and contacts with pro-bono lawyers.

- A connection with all the libraries in the state, so if we don’t have something, we can have it shipped to you within a matter of days.

- Books translated into multiple languages

- A donation bin for old books/DVDs/VHSes that often turn around and get sold for two or less dollars

- A food donation site for local food banks

- A “suggest a purchase” section on our site where you can support your favorite indie writers/musicians by suggesting their work if we don’t already have it

- We’re growing butterflies this year, and in prior years we hatched chickens! \o/

- An outreach program for the elderly and disabled who hand-deliver almost everything I’ve just mentioned

Caption: [Okay, so this is my Wooloo cosplay from 2019. Umm. I don't know if y'all can see the back. I made everything, even the resin pieces, the little clay hearts. I knitted those bows. Crocheted the headpiece and my bonnet.

https://ebooksforall.org/

When you get your grubby little gremlin hands on the ebook, look for a way to remove the DRM (digital rights management) software they've put in the book. Once you've done that, you can just return it, and the ebook is yours for as long as you like, legitimately gained, just on your terms. You can then use this ebook on whatever system you have, regardless of whether it's a kindle or a kobo or whateverthefuck.

My preferred method is through the excellent program called Calibre, which is a necessity if you have an e-reader of any kind. It's free and open source and extremely based.

Once you've downloaded Calibre, download a DRM-removal plugin. This article recommends this one, and all the instructions are in the articles.

Get your book from the library, download it, plug it into Calibre (which is as easy as dragging and dropping. my mum can do it without assistance. you got this bb), run the DRM yeeter, test it real quick just to make sure it's all good, then return your library book.

to be clear, this is a (hopefully) temporary solution, and publishers should absolutely stop being quite so greedy and limiting libraries to this extent. But, if you use this, you can help keep these books circulating for people who may not know how to do all this fancy stuff, and help keep books accessible in the digital age.

ARE YOU A VOID OR ABYSS PERSON.

She offered to renegotiate her contract at the point the decision to release on Disney+ was made, and Disney refused, that is what lead to the case.

The overwhelming majority of actors, even actor’s working for Disney are not millionaires, I know that because I am a jobbing actor, and I earn less in a year then either of my siblings, both of whom have office jobs.

When you get a film or television job, in addition to what you’re paid at the time you also get something that in the UK is called royalty fees, and in the US is called residuals. This occurs when the show or film is shown or licensed on another channel or network, almost always for a set period of time, although Netflix has started buying the rights to small indie films outright.

Royalty checks can be hilariously small. A friend I trained with once got one for £2.07 because their show had just been licensed to be shown on a Thai TV network, but more often they are a lifeline for actors. Most actors work minimum wage jobs in between acting gigs, and when you also have the cost of Headshots, Self Tape equipment, travel to auditions and lost wages whenever you have to take time off to prep and travel to auditions, you understand why equity wages are so high for individual jobs, because that one episode in a soap you got paid £800-£1200 for (minus 10-20% for your agent), could be your wage for 2 months and you would be considered a fairly successful working actor, even if it was your only acting job in that time period.

The case isn’t about a multimillionaire quibbling over how many millions she is being paid, although it’s likely that had Black Widow had a prepandemic release Scarlett Johansson would have been paid closer to 200 million than the 20 million she is being paid. Although Disney is pushing that angle hard so I fully understand why you’ve fallen into their propaganda trap. It is one of the very few opportunities for actors, screenwriters, cinematographers, directors, and all the other hundreds of creatives involved in the filmmaking process to challenge some of the status quo with streaming services and really ask questions about how royalties will work in the future.

There is a reason that the unions are backing the case and that’s because the other way around, breach of contract is a huge deal, there can be penalties of hundreds of thousands of dollars for contract breaches, often on jobs where you are paid a fraction of that, and believe me, Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Universal all persue those payments, and in certain circumstances even go out of their way to blacklist the artist.

If breach of contract is a big deal when actors and other creatives do it, it should be just as big a deal when studios do it, but it isn’t because Capitalism is rarely about rewarding artists and all about bottom line profit.