My whole life is being a Librarian now

Hi! My name is Forest, I’m a small town librarian and I love a lot of tv and movies

[snowy2989]

They are not as high-profile as the WGA, but I would like to bring everyone's attention to the imminent strike action by thousands of hotel workers in Los Angeles. They are set to go on strike tomorrow, July 1st, 2023.

More than 15,000 hotel workers are seeking higher pay, better benefits, and working conditions. This includes an across-the-board $5 an hour raise, as well as affordable healthcare and better pensions. They also are seeking a ban on the use of E-Verify, which is used to deny employment to undocumented workers and workers involved with the criminal justice system. You can follow what is happening at their Twitter.

[grapefruittwostep]

Time for Daine! And Kitten! They’re both precious babies and I love them!

[enter-the-bogman]

Reading through the Tortall books in publication order is funny because you start with Alanna “the village healing woman taught me all she knew” going off to become a knight, and end with Numair “world’s most powerful mage” as young Arram Draper first learning magic at the Carthaki university. Because of the 40 intervening years and five(?) different series further developing the Tortall universe, the magic system is now SO much more complex.  Arram is learning an elementally-based, heavily theory-dependent form of magic where conceptual power is applied to physical objects or energy constructs. His teachers make him develop skills in non-magical areas like juggling, jewelry making, and gardening so eventually they can safely guide him through complicated applications of magic. In comparison, Alanna complains that Duke Roger is spending too much time on theory in order to prevent her and her peers from learning “actual magic” and becoming his rivals. And then she throws purple light at things until they explode or she passes out! We also learn from Arram’s misadventures that most of “magic” is creating methods of applying, storing, and accessing power so the user doesn’t drain their own life force and pass out or die. Alanna uses NONE of these techniques; instead, she pulls her magic directly out of her own life force, thinks about what she wants it to do, and hopes she reaches that goal before draining herself. She even (sometimes) factors in the impact of magically draining herself of energy while attempting tasks that require both magical and physical endurance (such as when deciding how much magic to spend warming herself when making her blizzard hike to claim the Dominion Jewel.)

For one thing, this makes Alanna insanely powerful. In In the Hand of The Goddess, she breaks open Roger’s magically locked door (presumably designed by Roger himself– an immensely strong and well-trained sorcerer) by shoving her own magic into it until it MELTS. This builds an Alanna who decided magical theory was useless at age 12 because she has an immense access to magical potential energy, and who never learns the basic life-preserving models of magic usage that are taught in intro-level classes. She doesn’t have an interest in learning more sophisticated forms of magic, except in healing, which she cared about enough to learn non-magically. So when she heals, she uses magic as a guide or a supplement, rather than depending on it and then draining herself.  Since she isn’t attempting complex magic, most of the time the limitations of drawing directly from her own life force doesn’t impact her that much. The things she does magically all have much more efficient alternatives, but they require an understanding of magical theory and ability to store energy that Alanna never learned! If she wants to do larger spells, she just keeps feeding energy into it until it breaks or she does. 

The intervening series and Numair’s story makes Alanna’s simultaneously more and less believable. It now makes sense why everyone with even a slight understanding of Alanna’s type of Gift gets angry at times and tells her she’s using magic irresponsibly. (Before, we only understood Alanna’s side of the argument: “Well, I didn’t die and it worked, so calm down.” !!!) The fact that she never actually dies and only rarely is seriously harmed through her own magic use now requires some suspension of disbelief!

[hopeful-trekkie-deactivated2022]

James T. Kirk:

-Graduated in the top 4% of his year -was bullied by jocks -Is a history nerd -was so much of a teacher’s pet that he cheated on an exam and was commended for it -Was referred to as “a stack of books with legs”

Jean-Luc Picard:

-Spent all his free time drinking in pubs and playing billiards -broke more hearts than he can remember -started a bar fight that ended up in him being stabbed in the heart -likes to explore dangerous ruins of ancient civilizations for fun -wouldn’t even have become a starship captain if he wasn’t this much of a hothead

And yet people still manage to get it backwards???

[kalinara]

I think it’s a problem of First Officer, really.

Jim Kirk seems like a wild man because he’s standing next to calm, logical Spock.*  

Meanwhile, Picard seems stately and dignified because he’s standing next to Will “Any alien physiology is bangable if you just put some thought into it” Riker*.  

* Of course THEN, we get to the next layer, which is that Spock is the dude who told the Vulcan Science Academy to fuck itself, while Riker plays the trombone.

The Federation is a confusing place.

[dizzywithlove]

amazing

[sleepy-bebby]

Little bat sleeping in the Camas Public Library 🦇📚

[librarianproblems]

When you see *that* patron outside the library

[abitofoldparchment]

It’s so much worse when you run into them at the grocery store though…

[aichu-dechu]

[s-n-arly]

Apparently my favorite picture books as a child were written by queer authors.  This brings me joy.

[abitofoldparchment]

I miss the days when it was easy to post online and say whatever came to mind. It’s so much harder to find your people on the internet now!

Twitter is falling to pieces and there’s no easy way to join conversations on other websites.

How do the youths make internet friends???

[pfletcher]

Um, okay, well, you know, I think that’s great. Hold on. Wait. No… Yes. Yeah, I do. No, I think that’s fine.

[incorrectafcrichmond]

Roy: I'm not doing to well.

Keeley: What's wrong?

Roy: I have this headache that comes and goes.

*Jamie enters the room*

Roy: There it is again.

[weswardart]

[image description: Meme redraw. Trent Crimm and Ted Lasso makeout on a bench. Beside them, Coach Beard holds an umbrella over their head while ignoring them and reading his book.]

beard for best wingman, lol. happy valentines!!

[sarpedon]

ive worn heart shaped glasses for almost 4 years and they are just like my Thing and i love them so much and so often people will say shit like Oh Id Love To Wear Something Like That But I Could Never Pull It Off and like... babe no one can theyre heart shaped glasses u dont wear them to look flattering or stylish or whatever u wear them to make ur soul happy

[sarpedon]

stop worrying about whether u look Nice and start worrying about whether u look like You

[sarpedon]

i didnt articulate it well so i just wanna clarify. the point of this post was not "fuck the haters wear what you want" it was "fuck the idea that clothes and accessories exist to make you look good they should exist to make you happy"

[luntfontanne]

brb sending this to my entire history of science department

[junewild]

[thatguythatlikesmgsstayswinning]

I literally cannot comprehend this

[acesartemis]

[babyspacebatclone]

This is wonderful.

For people who can’t see the image for some reason:

It’s a “Dear Abby” column, published in 1995. The letter writer, “Not Looking for a Girlfriend in New Jersey,” identifies as a 53 year old male virgin with no interest in either women or men, despite coworkers having assumptions that his lack of a family means he must be gay.

This man expresses no concern about his situation (other than the presumed exhaustion at being continually misidentified), and suggests he was writing simply so other people could see that “a man who had no interest in sex” exists.

Abby blows it out of the ballpark with her response:

People who have no sexual feelings are called “asexual.” Since it doesn’t appear to bother you, it should present no problem. You are accountable to no one except yourself [emphasis mine].

Here we have the bastion of middle American, the “nice White lady with all the answers”, normalizing this man’s experience and literally telling him to ignore the haters. Pre Millennium. She even calmly supplies this man with the language to identify himself, since he seems not to have encountered it before; that must have been so empowering for him, to have a word for his experience and identity, and to hear that others shared it.

Everyone, you are valid, and your identity is accountable to no one except yourself.

[bladesrunner]

Ben Barnes as The Darkling SHADOW AND BONE | 1x06 “The Heart Is an Arrow”

[hjarta-deactivated20260124]

just learned that magnolias are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed before bees

[scienceoftheidiot]

They existed *before beetles*

[somethingaboutsomethingelse]

[spacedandelions]

Why is this sad? Why am I sad?

[ignescent]

https://xkcd.com/1259/

Bee Orchid

[sepdet]

This is how I feel about Joshua Trees. They and avocado trees produce fruit meant to be eaten and dispersed by giant ground sloths. Without them, the Joshua Trees' range has shrunk by 90%.

(my own photos)

Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.

Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would've penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you've observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.

You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:

The Trees That Miss The Mammoths - American Forests

Trees that once depended on animals like the wooly mammoth for survival have managed to adapt and survive in the modern world.