Your Friendly Nonbinary Librarian

(One Birmingham, AL newspaper reporting on the contest said that, "New York has her Father Knickerbocker, Philadelphia her William Penn" and suggested that Chicago have a woman with windblown hair and webbed feet. However, they also wrote that "[Birmingham should have] a handsome young woman with a constitution of iron, hair of the blackest of coal, and eyes with the fiery glow of the furnaces," so I think the takeaway here is that throughout all of history, people without Hetalia will invent it.)

Anyway, the newspaper received hundreds of entries, and they chose as their winner a woman standing with feet apart and one hand on her hip, a mason’s square in the other hand, crowned with a phoenix rising from the ashes to reference the Great Chicago Fire. Most importantly, she had "I WILL" emblazoned on her cuirass.

The New York Times called this "a badly proportioned design and a swaggering pose" but Chicago didn't care (and maybe liked the swagger, thanks very much). The Columbian Exhibition moved ahead, and a lady crowned with a bird and flames, "I WILL" somewhere on her person, became as close to an official symbol for the fair as you could get---so much so that they brought her back for the 1933 Fair too.

(that 'Y' you see on either side of her was also the result of a newspaper competition around the same time, and is still found throughout the city.)

ETA2: we do use inches/miles in poetic ways ("he was lost in thought/miles away" or "his lips were a bare inch away").

You want to study abroad? Show us proof that there is a quadrillion dollars in your bank account. Oh, an average monthly salary in your country is $400 and you plan to work when you arrive? You can't do that, silly, a student visa only allows you to work 2 hours every third Wednesday, and if we find out that you're working a second more we will deport you.

You want to work abroad? Better be a programmer, then of course you are welcome. Doctor, scientist, white-collar or, god forbid, blue-collar worker? You can fuck right off, your visa application goes straght into trash.

You will have to prove that you can afford a guest, have some income and also usually take responsibility for possible deportation cost.

But if you really are inviting a friend over, they will give you a formal document you can send to your friend. Then the friend applies for a visa while attaching the Very Official document with it. They will get the Schengen visa and most probably will get it expedited too.

Washington Post is paywalling the article but it looks like Taylor Farms — a consumer bagged salad brand that also supplies produce to grocers and fast food chains like Taco Bell, Walmart, McDonald's, Chipotle, Burger King, KFC, and Meijer —may be at least one of the sources of the current cyclosporiasis outbreak.

So my trainer’s bf cheated on her. She broke up with him. He’s holding her stuff hostage until she agrees to talk with him. Which she refuses.

She trains; for free mind you; three college linebackers, a college wrestler, two martial artists, a body builder, and… wait for it…. a Navy seal. We’re gonna go get her shit for her.

Arrival:

So the super friends all jumped into one of the linebacker’s explorer and headed over to dude’s house. Ok the squad: you all know me, but the other martial artist is a little wirey hapkido guy, the linebackers are all giants (an estimated combined weight of I’d say 750-800lbs), the wrestler looks like an escaped gorilla, then the navy seal looks like your average guy but something about him is unsettling. Really unsettling. Unfortunately, the body builder had to work. Anyway, we send the Hapkido guy and the wrestler to the door first and dude answers, screams at them, and then slams the door in their face. Then the giant linebackers head over and they ring the door bell again. Lo and behold, he was much more polite, but still denied access. Finally, me and the seal join the fray. I casually make my way towards the front of the group, but the seal decides to CLIMB THE BANISTER. We all just turned and started at him completely shocked when dude answers the door. He looks at this weird mismatched group of relatively threatening individuals and one guy perched on his banister like batman. He was like “FINE. Go take what you’re looking for.”

Retrieval:

So we’re all walking through the house gathering what we think are her things and putting them into two boxes. Mind you. We are completely guessing. We didn’t even tell her we were coming, therefore we had no list of items.The only one really being productive was Hapkido, who was legitimately looking for stuff. The linebackers were just randomly picking up furniture, turning it over, and putting it back down. Just showing off how strong they were. In case the numbers game wasn’t enough, I guess they were letting him know they could break him if they wanted to. The seal was just shadowing dude in his own house. Walking behind him, not saying much, just being creepy. Then there’s me. Who was causing general mischief…. He said to take what I was looking for, that’s what I was looking for. Ahaha and the wrestler made a fricken sandwich. Because “you guys look like you have it under control, and I’m a sucker for egg salad.” We were in and out in 15 minutes.

Delivery:

So the autobots rolled out and headed towards homegirl’s spot. She was conveniently outside when we rolled up. We got out and she was like, how do you all even know each other. The truth is, we don’t. She sent us all an email once and didn’t blind copy us all. She vented to all of us about dude holding onto her stuff and we started emailing and that was that. We told her that we went to see her ex. “OMG what did you say to him?” Nothing. We’re not messenger boys. We’re delivery boys. And we gave her her boxes of stuff. She went through the first box and said that was most of her stuff. Then she got to my box and asked “Wtf is all that shit.” So I explained that I took all the batteries out of his remote controls, his deodorant, the light bulb out of his master closet, every pair of dress socks that I could find, the laces out of his running shoes, and all the toilet paper in the house. The guys just looked at me and kind of nodded like they were impressed. She then unexpectedly started CRYING and thanked us. So you have this group of meat heads all standing awkwardly with this weeping trainer. It was quiet for a second when the seal was like “So…. chipoltle?” And we all got burrito bowls.

Came across this art installation, Liza Lou's Kitchen, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC. It's a kitchen made of tiny glass beads, that artist Liza Lou did, taking 5 yrs. to complete, from 1991 - 1996.

My favorite part is the sink.

#my old phone looks like this on my shelf lmao #im too scared to touch it to throw it away #idk what trash this even goes into when its at this point

The pillow-shaped object here used to be the phone’s battery. It’s not a battery anymore. Now it’s a balloon full of corrosive, pyrophoric chemicals and hydrogen gas and it’s one puncture away from burning your house down. I am 100% serious. You should be scared to touch it.

But you gotta touch it, because you gotta get it out of your house before the pressure builds up to the point where the balloon pops. This isn’t going to happen soon – there is no need to panic – but it will happen eventually.

And, indeed, it doesn’t go in the ordinary trash. You put this in the ordinary trash and you’re gonna set the garbage truck on fire. Don’t do that to the garbage collectors, their job is hard enough already.

The first thing you need to do is get a fireproof container. The most common household item that qualifies as a fireproof container is a cast-iron cookpot with a cast-iron lid – often sold as a “Dutch oven.” Any other cooking container that’s unreactive, has a very high melting point, and has a lid made of the same materials will also work: enameled or stainless steel, Pyrex with glass lid, etc.

However: Do not use a pot with a PTFE-based non-stick coating. If the battery does explode, the fire will probably be hot enough to degrade a PTFE coating, producing toxic smoke. (Not that you should breathe the smoke from the battery fire either, but PTFE breakdown products are worse.) Do not use a pot made of aluminium or copper. The fire might even get hot enough to melt those.

Whatever container you use, you might have to throw away along with the phone, so don’t use your good Dutch oven for this. Go to a thrift store and buy a cheap one.

Once you have the fireproof container:

Gently pick up the phone and put it in the fireproof container. If possible, gently tape the phone to the bottom of the container to prevent it from bouncing around. Don’t put any padding in there, that’ll just make a fire worse if it does happen. Put the lid on and tape it shut.

Put a label on the container, something like “DEFECTIVE LI-ION BATTERY – FIRE HAZARD”.

It is now reasonably safe to move the container around. However, if the battery does explode, the container is very likely to leak smoke and get hot, so keep it in a well-ventilated area and away from things that will be damaged by heat. Don’t leave it exposed to the weather, either.

You need to find either a hazardous waste disposal site, or an e-waste recycler that will accept defective Li-ion batteries. I can’t help with that because I have no idea where you live.

However, your local fire department, if you have one, will probably be happy to help. Call their non-emergency number. Nothing is on fire yet, so this isn’t an emergency, but things that can easily start a fire are still within the fire department’s responsibilities. Tell them you have a phone with a bulging lithium-ion battery, you put it in a fireproof container, and you want to know how to dispose of it safely.

If the fire department tries to tell you this isn’t dangerous or it’s okay to throw it out in the regular trash (with or without fireproof container), hang up on them and write a cranky letter to your local government representatives, then keep looking for a proper disposal site.

"...You'll gain weight" 🚫

Wrong

Body negative

You need way more calories than a slice of cake to gain even one pound

"...You'll get sick" ✔

Correct

Sugar is good but if you eat too much you get stummy ache :(

Better when eaten in moderation anyway

Prioritizes listening to your body

"...Without me" 👀

Secret third option?

Encourages community

Get sick with someone you love

Word for today: wisdom of repugnance

18 years. this is enough time for the work to grow to adulthood and begin to care for itself

"The hat is customizable," he said, struggling with the velcro patch on the front. "If I need it, I have an ICE one too. I pick based off the business i walk into."

"Customizable is an important hat descriptor," I said. "what can I get you?"

"You wouldn't believe how offended people get these days," he said. "And I'm supposed to do something about it if you're offended? You chose to be offended!"

"We all have hundreds of thousands of decisions everyday," I said. I thickened my accent. "That's what my stepdad always said. But I can make one easier - we have a delicious Ethiopian roast available."

"Like if I told you you have a bull ring," he said, "because bulls have rings in their noses. Is that offensive?"

I laughed. "I've heard that before."

"It's a joke, but people get offended. Maybe you're offended."

I looked at him. I smiled. "You aren't trying to offend me though, right?"

Of course he was. I was being friendly and the friendlier I was, the faster he switched topics. He was saying anything inflammatory he could think of to see if I'd take the bait. After about 20 minutes of my redirecting and deescalating, he settled into a more normal interaction. He took up too much of my time showing me a product I'd feigned mild interest in to get him to stop talking about getting accused of inappropriate behavior at work. When we finally disengaged, he spent 10 minutes trying to catch my eye again. When he failed, he left.

There's this new breed of customer who insists on trying to incite political conversation through their clothing and, when that doesnt work, their snide little comments. If I owned my own business, maybe I would have given the guy the fight he wanted. But I work for a corporation and I love paying my bills so I deescalated.