Warm, clean laundry

Like this young person didn't even know about goddamn Gutenberg which is a SHAME. I linked to it and they went "aw yiss time to do a theft" and I was like "I mean yo ho ho and all that, sure, but. you know gutenberg is entirely legal, right?"

Project Gutenberg is a gigantic collection of books that are in the public domain.  You can read the books through the site or you can download them in various formats so you can get the format you prefer for your eReader of choice.

It is free. 

It is legal.

I was reviewing the list of the top 100 books downloaded yesterday and I saw a fair few that I had to read for college classes - so if you’re a college student and your professor assigns you to read Plato or any number of older works, check here before you buy a copy.

If you look at the first reblog from me I also recommended a few other resources, most of which were from www.archive.org, home of the Wayback Machine! They run openlibrary.org, where you can check out ebooks of some public domain titles! They even have the Bone series by Jeff Smith!

And archive.org itself has all kinds of public domain media including music and movies! For Dracula fans, here's a radio show adaptation of the book, starring Orson Welles! And here's a 1920 movie adaptation of "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring John Barrymore, the grandfather of Drew Barrymore!

lots of writers and publishers are prepared to waive future profits for entirely petty reasons

because of this the entire works of Philip K Dick [petty writer who found himself with lots of hangers on during his life] and HP Lovecraft [his publisher - who was his wife and hated him] became public domain on their death

Sherlock Holmes entered public domain this year, it's always worth checking because you can save a fortune

book is old because it’s in

the public domain

LibriVox has free public domain audiobooks.

Public domain works in the US are:

Anything published (in the US) from 1927 or earlier (this number goes up every year for quite a while), and

Anything published between 1928 and 1963 that wasn't renewed, and

Anything published before 1989 without a proper copyright notice.

(Don't go looking for things in that third category unless you've studied a LOT about copyright law. Mostly that covers things like "weird little newsletters" and "self-published booklets" and sometimes fanzines. But most publications have a copyright notice in them.)

There's also some oddball exemptions here and there; copyright law is a tentacled mess. But those are the basic guidelines. (Except for audio. Audio has its own set of rules. It's weird.) (I mentioned tentacles, did I not? Double the amount of them you were thinking of.)

There are a lot of works from the 50s and early 60s that were not renewed, especially short stories published in magazines.

I like the idea of beach druids raising up the flotsam of their ecosystem as a living compost heap.

Link to the gay porn library of Alexandria.

Do you have any quick-and-dirty book/fic binding methods a terrified-of-failure novice could use to bang something out to get over the first collywobbling step of Actually Doing The Thing? (this may be something I've been meaning to ask for ages)

yes! I absolutely do! in my opinion the best quick-and-dirty bookbinding method is a no-glue pamphlet: you don't have to mess with glue or measuring or cutting anything, all you need is your text, some paper, a needle and thread. you can use the same needle to punch holes if you don't have an awl.

this is going to be a little long but that's because I'm going to write out some fairly detailed instructions for an A5 sized pamphlet. If you don't want detailed instructions and think you can glean the necessary info from photos, just skip to the photos! I've also linked tutorials.

for preparing the text to printing, in whatever software you use (word, libreoffice, gdocs, whatever) make sure your document is set to page size A5. make it look readable. then save as/export that document as a straight-paged PDF. now go to the bookbinder JS tool (https://momijizukamori.github.io/bookbinder-js/), and upload the PDF. source manipulation: none printer paper size: A4 display unit (you can ignore, or choose cm if it gives you anxiety that it automatically displays points) printer type: select single-sided or duplex accordingly* rotate paper: ignore flip on long side: check if you are printing duplex and if your duplex printer flips the paper on the long side page layout:  tick folio page scaling: original page positioning: centered ignore the rest flyfleaf: ignore signature format tick: standard signatures. in the length drop down, this depends on the type of pamphlet you are doing. for folio i generally find 4-5 pages per signature a comfortable thickness. if you have 6 whole A4 pages you can still do that as a single signature or you can split it into two signatures 3 pages each. wacky small layouts: ignore this signature info click the generate preview button to see what your PDF looks like imposed! I love this step especially when I'm doing quarto (A6) or octavo (A7) sized books generate output - click this to generate an imposed PDF

for A6 and A7 sized books the instructions are much the same, except for these you make sure the page size is A6 or A7 in your software, and then you choose quarto or octavo instead of folio. for signature length drop down I keep signature length to 1 for octavos typically and 2 for quartos, as this still refers to sheets of paper, and for octavo 1 sheet of A4 paper will turn into 4 smaller sheets in one signature once folded and cut.

*if you don't have a duplex printer you will have to manually turn the paper to print on the other side. I cannot be arsed with this so I bought a printer capable of duplex printing (I didn't have a printer anyway). if you already have a printer check what it can do as you might be surprised and go from there.

now to the pamphlets! you don't need a cover - I have one for the long stitch pamphlet but for the saddle stitch one I didn't bother and just made sure the first page had a title on it. you can always take a different piece of paper and print a cover on or or just use coloured cardstock and create a simple cover, but a cover is not necessary unless you're doing a long stitch pamphlet. all you need to do is to punch holes and start sewing. there are a few different stitch types below, I wouldn't say any of them are more difficult or easier than others, but they do look different so...pick one you like the look of and go from there?

pamphlet stitch (uneven number of holes) I haven't ever done a pamphlet stitch but here's a tutorial for how to do it: https://www.starpointestudio.com/simple-pamphlet-stitch-book-step-by-step/

saddle stitch (uneven number of holes) I realised that what I was thinking of as a pamphlet stitch is actually saddle stitch, as in this A7 pamphlet:

here's a tutorial for how to sew saddle stitch: https://www.bookbindingworkshopsg.com/saddle-stitch-bookbinding-tutorial/ here's a video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWHkY5jOoqM (sealemon has a lot of bookbinding tutorials and I know many people who like her videos, I used her tutorial for coptic binding way back when I first made a book but I can't otherwise vouch for the quality as I haven't used her videos)

french link stitch (even number of holes) in this one I used french link stitch which I typically use for thicker textblocks that i'm not planning to use tapes with as the french link gives it some robustness, I used it here because I had never done it before and wanted to try it out. I am planning to take these stitches out and re-sew this pamphlet with a cover now that I've found a suitable piece of transformer fanart to use as a cover:

french link tutorial. it's quite long but it has a colour coded bit towards the end that shows how the thread is supposed to link which i find very helpful to visualise: https://www.handmadebooksandjournals.com/bindings/french-link-stitch-binding/

here's a video tutoral from DAS bookbinding (he is my go to for techniques and he has the most soothing Australian accent as well, though fair warning not all of his videos are for beginners): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ZPdbaM-Ws

long stitch (even number of holes) for this one I used long stitch and I had a cover. this one is my favourite variation because I can make these pretty and simple covers and the stitch looks nice on the outside as well, so this one scratches the 'i want to make a book' itch for me.

here's a tutorial that also includes a how to on a cover that is different from my cover: https://lccprintmaking.myblog.arts.ac.uk/files/2020/06/Long-Stitch-Tutorial-A4.pdf DAS also has a video tutorial for long stitch but it's like three videos long, maybe watch it later :'D  here's one I haven't watched but seems decent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnignTL_wDQ

you can use saddle stitch for this kind of pamphlet as well, that's what I did for dozens of ships and hundreds of souls (https://ashmouthbooks.tumblr.com/post/681587080267202560).

Happy Pride Month! 🌈

This year’s LGBTQIA+ Pride Month roundup from JSTOR Daily brings together stories on queer history, literature, activism, archives, community care, and the people who built spaces where LGBTQ+ communities could thrive.

You’ll also find links to free scholarly research throughout, making it easy to keep exploring.

See the full roundup.

NEGLECTED MURDERESSES SERIES

Angelica Transome — so disposed of her infant brother that he was not found until many years later (Nether Postlude, 1889).

Miss Elspeth Lipsleigh — eventually succeeded in causing the death of Arthur Glumm in Towage Regis, 1892.

Nurse J. Rosebeetle — tilted her employer out of the wheelchair and over the cliff at Sludgemouth in 1898.

Mrs. Fledaway — laced her husband's tea with atropine in the spring of 1903 at Locusts, near Puddingbasin, Mortshire.

Sarah Jane (“Batears”) Olafsen — hacked to collops nineteen loggers between March 1904 and November 1907 in and around Bindweed, Oregon.

Madame Galoche — in May 1911 added a tin of insecticide to a potate purée Crécy aux perles at the soup kitchen she operated for the indigent of Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, Belgium.

Miss Emily Toastwater — smothered her father after evening prayers, London S. W. 7 (1916).

Mrs. Daisy Sallow — eviscerated her daughter-in-law with a No. 7 hook afterwards crotcheting, over the course of three evenings her shroud in snowflake pattern (1921).

Natasha Batti-Loupstein — pulverized a paste necklace and sprinkled it over a tray of canapés, Villa Libellule, Nice, 1923.

Lady Violet Natheless — strangeled the hon. Opal Gentian at Gilravage Hall on Midsummer's Eve, 1925.

Lettice Finding — shot Edgar Cutlet, whose mistress she was, during the interval of a touring repertory company production of Rosmersholm in Manchester 1934.

Miss Q. P. Urkheimer — brained her fiancé after failing to pick up an easy spare at Glover's Lane's, Poxville, Kansas, 1936.

⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓

The FBI cut the phone lines during the 1977 disability rights sit-in. Then they turned off the hot water.

They locked the doors from the outside. One hundred and fifty people were trapped on the fourth floor. Half of them used wheelchairs. The government assumed they would leave.

Kitty Cone was thirty-three. She had muscular dystrophy. Her muscles were failing, but her logistics were flawless. She knew how to organize people.

The federal government had promised to sign regulations protecting disabled Americans from discrimination. The policy was known as Section 504. They printed the promise on paper. Then they stalled. Without a signature, it was just typography.

The protesters entered the regional Health, Education, and Welfare building in San Francisco on a Tuesday morning. They took the elevators to the director's office. They brought sleeping bags and catheters. They informed the staff they were not leaving until the law was signed.

By sunset, the police surrounded the exits. Kitty sat near the windows. She organized the floor plan. She assigned committees for security and sanitation. She kept her medication in a small cooler.

According to federal memorandums released decades later, the strategy to end the occupation relied on medical attrition. The building was not equipped for long-term habitation. The FBI calculated that a population requiring ventilators, specialized diets, and daily medical aides would voluntarily evacuate if the environment became sufficiently hostile. They instituted a blockade.

The blockade went into effect immediately. No food deliveries allowed. No medical supplies permitted through the lobby. Guards stood at the main doors checking identification.

Kitty's muscles deteriorated faster under the physical strain. She couldn't walk. When the phone lines went dead, the fourth floor lost contact with the press. The government waited for the quiet.

Kitty dropped to the floor. She realized the barricades were designed for standing adults. The police had blocked the hallways at waist height. They hadn't blocked the linoleum.

The floors were covered in cigarette ash and spilled coffee. She dragged her body through it. She crawled under the barricades to reach the restricted elevator shafts and unguarded offices.

She carried notes in her pockets. She found a single working payphone the FBI missed. She called the local news desks. She called the mayor's office.

She crawled back. When her arms failed, someone pulled her by her ankles. The Black Panthers heard the news reports. They crossed the police lines with hot meals. The FBI could not stop them without a riot.

They shut off the elevators, so she crawled.

The occupation lasted twenty-five days. It remains the longest non-violent occupation of a federal building in American history. On April 28, the Secretary of HEW signed the regulations without a single alteration.

The protesters left the building the next morning. They went back to their apartments. The Rehabilitation Act regulations laid the groundwork for every accessibility law that followed. The HEW building still stands on United Nations Plaza. The elevators run on a schedule. The doors are heavy glass.

Kitty Cone: the woman who crawled under the barricades.

Source: Kitty Cone's oral history, Bancroft Library.

Verified via: National Museum of American History.

None of the signup methods require a password. It only takes email and birthday. Minimizing time on the signin or signup screen makes it harder for people quitting to avoid relapse.

"Characters" on the website will send messages "on their own" (prompted by the site) to try to invite inactive users back after as soon as 1 day of inactivity. This is likely to force FOMO, or make users feel more like they owe the bots a response. Unhealthy attachment stuff.

Account deletion is an essential part of every service that should go smoothly, right? Right? Wrong. It takes 1-2 weeks for a Character AI account deletion to be finalized, and account deletion requests have a high chance to not go through if you're not using the app.

Rephrasing: People leaving Character.AI are pushed to download the app in order to delete their accounts, if they haven't already. This makes it harder for people to quit and stay gone. Failing to quit an addiction makes it harder to quit successfully in the future, so this feels like a feature, not a bug. On top of that, the delete account menu reads like this: