Dracula's blog: Reasons My Solicitor Is Crying
29/6, 10:00 PM - He wants to go outside, where there are wolves.
29/6, 10:01 PM - I opened the door to demonstrate that there are wolves. Now he wants to stay inside.
DEAR READER

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blake kathryn
Cosmic Funnies
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"

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JVL

@theartofmadeline
Not today Justin
Stranger Things
Today's Document
Xuebing Du

oozey mess
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

Love Begins
KIROKAZE
dirt enthusiast
RMH
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

Product Placement
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@book-lore
Dracula's blog: Reasons My Solicitor Is Crying
29/6, 10:00 PM - He wants to go outside, where there are wolves.
29/6, 10:01 PM - I opened the door to demonstrate that there are wolves. Now he wants to stay inside.
Happy May 3rd to all those going on a business trip to transylvania !!
Guys it’s Dracula Daily Eve, everyone make sure to leave out some paprika hendl for our good friend Jonathan Harker!!
We’re winning.
I found his bio on societyofpresidentialdescendants.org and it was so delightful I had to copy paste the whole thing:
“Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave it to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale (BA, 1977), and was trained to be a museum curator in the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (MA, 1980). A decorative arts curator at the Newark Museum for thirty-seven years before he retired, Ulysses has never stopped writing for the sheer pleasure of it. Aside from books on Victorian furniture, art pottery, studio ceramics, jewelry, and the White House, Ulysses created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel, appeared in 2012. His most recent novel, Cliffhanger, was released by JMS Books in December 2020.
“Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of 45 years. They have two grown children, adopted in 1996.
“Ulysses is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant. His late mother, Julia, was the President’s last living great-grandchild; youngest daughter of Ulysses S. Grant III, and granddaughter of the president’s eldest son, Frederick. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City. He is also on the board of the U.S. Grant Presidential Library and Museum at Mississippi State University.”
And frankly, the novels sound like they slap:
Desmond was nominated for a Lambda Award.
“With his husband of 45 years.” You kids don’t know ... they got together before AIDS, at the peak of the Gay Glam Life. They stayed together as their generation died around them, and made through it to the point where they could marry and have a legal family. He looks like a chipper preppie who never had a serious thought or care in the world, but it took *incredible* determination, commitment, and also luck to get here.
having now read the first of this man's vampire books, you can absolutely tell that he cares a lot about historical furniture because oh my god he really wanted to tell us about all the historical furniture in this vampire's house. material culture as foreplay. seduction via theses about chairs
Is it bad that I feel slightly bad that I keep coming to the library to use its quietness and its desk space and its pleasant atmosphere for writing but I never check out books?
Why would you feel bad? You’re using the library for one of its intended purposes. The desks, WiFi, space etc are LITERALLY there for you to do exactly what you’re doing AND each time you go in you add to the foot traffic numbers that prove hey people are coming in to use our stuff mr. government so keep funding us.
Confirmed by another public librarian. One of the stats we track is "WiFi usages"
That is, we track number of sessions/devices using it over time.
The library is not about snooping on what you're doing with that WiFi. Libraries respect privacy.
We literally have a door counter at my library. Congratulations, you just added to our statistics.
I think it's a bit sad that with more and more public spaces vanishing, people are feeling bad about not "buying" stuff to "earn" their time at a library.
A library is like a park, you're allowed to just. Exist in it.
I check out books every 4 weeks, when the learning period from my current books is up, but I go much more frequently with my kid to just sit there and read to them, and that's okay. In my school days, we'd go and do our research for presentations there, just reading, never checking out.
A library is a space to just exist.
So a year or so ago, we added some new desklets at our library, in areas where we noticed that people gravitated to but didn't have the right furnishing to use them in the way they wanted to.
The first few weeks of having the new furniture were absolutely filled with excited librarians whispering to each other, "Look! Someone's using the desklet in the back corner!" and "casually" walking by to enjoy the sight like wildlife researchers who had successfully baited a particularly elusive rare bird. Nobody cared if those people checked anything out or not. There was a need! We saw the need! We filled the need! Hooray!
WE PUT THE THING THERE TO BE USED. USE THE THING.
I started listening to the cree radio station because its the only one left in my range that doesnt play alberta separatist ads now and those make me see red like some sort of bull, which is not safe while im behind the wheel of a vehicle going 110
Why haven't they told me about the cree all-purpose radio station sooner. They play everything from the 50s to today. Half of their ads and one of their shows is in cree which I do not speak a lick of but thats fine, they play banger music. They give me local news updates that arent dripping with UCP cocksucking. They tell me about things that affect a demographic I otherwise hear very little about by virtue of being a white guy in alberta.
We are holding hands. We are learning about other cultures. We are listening to 60s rock and roll and then an elder will tell us stories about his youth. I am enamored. I am in love.
Lots of people in the notes have asked me to drop the radio station im talking about here. If youre in the Edmonton area the frequency is 89.3, and when we went on a trip recently we got pretty reliable signal all the way to Ponoka. If youre outside of it or international you can get the live broadcast at ravenradio.ca
They also have a retro hour at noon every day and do language lessons for allies
Playing a little bit of everything from the 50's to Today! Alberta's Best Rock
for easy access
@wingedflight
When you see a spider (and you can’t get someone else to deal with it), do you…
Kill it
Capture and release
Nuance
Friendly reminder that if you talk about how representation is important and how there's not enough diverse media, I implore you to seek out the media that already exists. And if you live in an area with a public library, go to see if they're available at your public library. And then go check them out.
As a librarian, it is demoralizing to see how low the circulation statistics are on lgbt+ books and books by BIPOC authors. I include them in displays and readers advisory, but people still don't check them out as much. Libraries only have a finite amount of resources, including space. We don't get a book then keep it forever. If not enough people check it out, we have to get rid of it to make room for more books. And when James Patterson Book #69 gets checked out 30 times in one year and cool, subversive Sci fi novel with a Black trans woman main character has never been checked out once, the librarian (me) has to make a hard decision.
If you're looking for something tangible and easy to do this pride month, look for lgbt+ books (there are millions of lists online that you can find. It's easier than it's ever been to find diverse books) and check them out from your library.
No time to read? Look for a short story or poetry anthology and just read as much as you have time for. Or just check out a book cus it looks interesting and read as much as you can. We have movies too.
As cool as it would be for me to just keep the books I want and get rid of the ones I don't, I have to listen to the community on matters of collection development. And the community tells me what books they want by checking them out and leaving the ones they don't want on the shelf.
If you think this doesn't apply to you because you live in a progressive area and obviously the books are being checked out, you're wrong. I once worked in a community with a large lgbt population. Those books were not getting checked out. If you want to tell me you live in a conservative area and your library doesn't have any diverse books, you are legally obligated to check the catalog before replying to this post. I currently work in a conservative community and we have lgbt+ and bipoc books. And if you still cannot find any, you are legally obligated to see if your library has a collection request form that patrons can fill out before replying to this post.
And we have another Library Goblin post to make! This time brought to you by the fact that a) September is library card sign up month and if you have one already, it's a great time to check to make sure that it's still valid and b) we are living in the timeline where a limited number of people are out there trying to ban a shitload of books based on no information. Also the person I reblogged this from and the OP are both great so let's get some more eyes on their posts and have a fabulous day of it all.
So obviously I have nothing to say but praise for the original post so what could I possibly have to rant about (other than a small but annoying group of people deciding they want to ban everything that they've never read because thinky brain gets hurty when feelings are felt)? Well, today's little goblin screed is something I have been seeing a lot of over the last few years and I am on a mission to try to help have a conversation about it. It's an issue that every books lover probably has and it's only gotten worse in the last few years as we factor in influencers and various other means of getting us to lean into the stuff that makes us feel better. Of course, I am talking about BOOK HAULS!
Now this is where I am going to pause for a second and reassure you that this is not where I get on your case and tell you that you should never buy anything again and capitalism bad and you should be ashamed and blah blah blah. We all know that capitalism is bad and this is just another facet of it. That said, we are all here in the same bad swimming pool and I don't think it's productive to try to punish anyone for doing what you are being asked to do at literally every turn, especially because we all know it can feel good to get a book. The problem is that we need to have a chat about when we start buying ten. Or seventeen. Or forty. Or when we arrive home with a negative bank balance and no idea where we are going to put the new books we have added to our home libraries. Book hauls can be exciting and fun and they do a lot to make us feel good about who we are supporting or what we can look forward to or how it's so thrilling to escape into the world of the books we just bought. The thing about this though, is that it opens up two important questions for us and I don't always think we are getting to the answers of this. (I know we are drifting from libraries here, but I promise I'm on my way back there. Trust the journey, friends. The ADHD takes us through the scenic route but I promise there is an end point on the way!)
The first question might be the most obvious one, but it's still important for us to ask: when are you planning to read these books? With one book you picked up, it's easy enough to decide that you want to read it right away or put it aside for when you are ready for it. And there's nothing wrong with this. I am a notorious mood reader and I will absolutely pick up a book I want to read but save it for a specific season or when I know I am going to want to dive into it fully. The thing is that these are easy things to do with one or two books. Ten gets a little more difficult. Forty is hard to figure out even where to put them, nevermind when you are going to take the time to read that much. Maybe that's forty poetry books and that will take you a week, but a lot of haul videos and posts are showing off full novels and non-fiction books. For someone who can speed their way through a book in a day or two, maybe this is nothing to them, but a lot of us aren't that way. There's a reason that most library loans are set at three weeks. The average person might be able to set aside enough time to read in a day to get through a book in that amount of time, give or take depending on what they are reading. If it's the Patterson junk that the OP mentioned, a lot of those readers are going to be able to get through it faster. If it's dense non-fiction, it might take longer.
So what does that mean for our haul? If you come home with one to five books, that's a decent time commitment that you are looking at, though still totally do-able. I will be the first to raise my hand at this point and say that I normally have more than one book on the go too, so it's feasible to get five books in a single outing and still be able to read them in a decent amount of time. If you take up to two weeks or longer for a book and you've got forty to add to the pile, even if you read them two at a time, it would take over a year to get to them.
Again, this isn't to tell you not to grab something for later, but having worked in a library for a while now, I can tell you that there are so so many adults who are not taking the time to read. We've seen a lot of people coming back to the library more as they enter the news, but a lot of people coming to the desk are often there for other things, which is great, but they aren't necessarily reading much of anything. And having that many books doesn't mean you are, in fact, getting a chance to read them. In fact, if you are finding that you have been getting more hauls of books in the last few years, you probably haven't. This has become so prevalent in bookish circles online that people make memes about how they are going shopping for more books while the ones they got before it watch in envy as they go to the bookstore only to come home with the next stack of books that will go on their shelves to remain unread for years.
This actually brings me to the second question we need to start asking and that is: do we like what we bought?
Surely, we had to have gotten only the good stuff if we spent money on it, right? Surely, we thought about it and we knew exactly what we wanted and definitely didn't just buy it because it had a really nice foil leaf cover and we may or may not have heard it about it on BookTok... We've all done it. We've all been here and we've all had this experience of getting to find a book we heard about somewhere and gotten super excited about it only to find out that it was a dud. And with the rise of bookish influencers, it would be a miracle if someone hadn't had a chance to get caught up in the romanticization of the trip to the bookstore. And why wouldn't you? I mean that sincerely. Who doesn't like the feeling of being comfortable and who doesn't really enjoy the prospect of having a lovely reading nook with the comfy sweater and the tea mug and the perfect book on your lap and being surrounded by other books? It's a beautiful, comforting image and it's all the more enticing when we think about what's going on around us. It's beautiful enough that it has the power to compel us to buy more than we needed or even wanted in the hopes of it will feel like we were promised. You aren't bad or wrong for wanting these things, either. Again, we've all done it and that allure is strong enough that it had again developed memes and inside jokes that have attached onto the whole little treat culture.
And this is where we bring our asses back to the library and the lovely original post. Books are wonderful and it is comforting to have them around. I have a lot myself and I am not telling you to forego your own library of treasures. I would be lost without mine, I assure you of that. But a lot of those treasures recently were bought because of what I could find at my local libraries. I have books that I absolutely loved that I just had to have a copy of and I know that I will read them again. And I have taken out some that were so highly recommended on social media that I could barely wait to get my hands on them and I absolutely loathed them. And yes, what a great thing to be able to take a risk free chance on the subversive BIPOC sci fi novel with the trans main character! What a treat it will be to find your next favourite author who you are excited to support the next time you get a gift card.
The thing is that book hauls are trying to sell you comfortable lies and promises that will break the bank and leave you with a lot of books but only a fraction of them you may like and some of them that you might actively end up hating. The library will likely have all of those books and if they don't, there's probably a pretty easy way for you to suggest they get them. A lot of libraries are open to hearing from their community, as the OP said. And you tell them what you like and what you want to see by taking those books out and reading them. If you think they need something more interesting, tell them and help them find those books. And the best part of all of this is that when you do add to your home library, it's going to mean you are adding a book you know you like already.
But if I read it, why would I need to buy it? Here's my little life hack that can help you with that. A lot of times, I will get super excited about something I just found out about and like a lot of people, I want to get it into my brain IMMEDIATELY. Again, ADHD is a mistress that will take us on a journey at a moment's notice and sometimes it decides we need something right now and we really didn't. If I find a book that I want rightnowgiveitomealready and I am forced to wait for a hot minute for a hold, by the time I get it, I may realize that I didn't really want it after all. Or maybe it was totally worth the wait. If it's not new but I have it on the brain and I want to know if it's worth having in my collection, I straight up tell patrons to take out the books anyway. You don't know if you'll like it? Give a three chapters to catch you. You don't have to finish every book you take out of the library. We don't check on you for these things. You like it? Great! You don't know? Also great! You hated it? Perfect. The system works and you can leave that book for someone who does love it. And you never know when you will stumble on a book you might never have thought you would spend money on and find out that it's now one of your favourites.
So if you made it to the bottom of this essay, bless you and may every book you read for the next year be better than you thought it would be. And if you decided to skip to the end of the journey, I'll leave you with the TL:DR:
Skip the hauls and use your library resources. Everyone will benefit.
Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.
Further, some authors may never even find out the lawsuit is happening. The court's suggested notification scheme "would require class claimants to themselves notify other potential rightsholders," groups said, overlooking the fact that it cost Google $34.5 million "to set up a 'Books Rights Registry' to identify owners for payouts under the proposed settlement" in one of the largest cases involving book authors prior to the AI avalanche of lawsuits.
If you're an author, please use this database to see if you could qualify for that sweet GenAI lawsuit money.
Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.
I have never ever ever in my life asked someone to blaze my posts.
But if you want to throw me some pennies blaze this. I want ALL OF THE AUTHORS to know that they have the opportunities to get some sweet sweet GenAI lawsuit money.
Like to charge. Reblog to cast that Anthropic will have to pay out the ass.
-fae
Oh look, my book is in there. GIVE ME MONEY.
Tails and Toe Beans Square, a free feline-themed crochet pattern designed by Julia Hart on Ravelry.
Another rare knitting pattern! These Mothman socks are super cute and creative.
This free knitting pattern was designed by Emma Manos on Ravelry.
i hate to be that guy, but the idea that gender, sex, and sexuality are ontologically pure concepts that can be rigidly defined if we simply police our language enough (our english language, because of course) is—i cannot stress this enough—a total waste of time. you may as well spend your afternoons teaching a brick how to swim
I think the discourse about social studies education in the US overlooks the important demographic of people who forgot what they learned in K-12.
This post was mainly prompted by:
Having friends and acquaintances who went to the same kinds of schools I did (and were, in some cases, much more diligent and successful students than I was), yet now regularly say things that betray a deep misunderstanding of history or geography or politics; and
Personally forgetting significant chunks of the history/geography/civics that I learned in K-12, despite being interested in these subjects and trying to do well in school at the time, and only remembering them again after reading something for fun/career development or hearing my husband (a social studies teacher) talk about them. The forgotten information generally comes from fast-paced, intense, exam-driven classes and bad chronic illness times.
This is not a post about how social studies is boring or how people are weird/lying if they remember old curricula! Social studies is very interesting and many people remember old curricula very well!
I'm going to piggyback on the OP here and, as usually tends to be the case, I am not here to argue against their point. I think it would actually be a great thing for a lot of us to discuss what we learned in our formative years about history and culture and the things that make the world interesting, beautiful, terrifying and dynamic. And I think we would get some interesting stories from people about what they remember and what they would have to say about their experiences.
My experiences growing up were weird. And it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized why I felt like that. For years, I felt like there were gaps in my understanding of the world. Like whole parts of a mental canvas that I had nothing that filled those areas, not even a sketch of it. These areas were blank, stark white and left that way until I was an adult and I began to read more non-fiction books on wider topics. At some point, when that canvas started filling up with more sketchy details, I started to see that there were areas much larger than I would have imagined that were left blank. A whole world I knew nothing about and I grew up thinking I wasn't smart enough because I thought for sure that I missed things. I didn't remember anything. Because it turns out, I was never taught those things.
My canvas is getting bolder and more drawn upon now, and sometimes it's magical. There's a lot you can fill yourself up on in the world when no one tells you where to go. The weeds out there can hide some incredible things. But they can also hide that you grew up near a TB hospital that had been converted from a residential school. They can also recontextualize the fact that you didn't know the history of India, Trinidad, Ireland, Argentina, Columbia, Sierra Leone or so many others until you started reading about it yourself.
The point of this isn't to say that social studies teachers aren't doing what they can or that they should be taken to task for what I wasn't told. They have to answer to someone too and I'm sure that a lot of them are working to the best of their ability to develop and deliver great programs for their students. Teachers aren't the enemy at all. But it's worth it, sometimes, to wonder how full your own canvas is. To wonder about how big those blank spots were for you too. And you don't always know what to read to make them more colourful or fill them in. So we should talk about that.
i cant believe that there's still gamergate STANK on games that women enjoy. NASTY misogyny residue. stardew valley is in fact a video game. animal crossing is also a video game. so are otome games and dating sims and twee little cozy games. sometimes a bitch doesnt wanna play bloodborne that shit's hard
guys who mainly play 2k and fortnite will still be like oh youre not a real gamer for having 1000 hours in stardew. mother fucker you're larping as a basketball player
you will miss this in 40 or 48 hours. twitter will smooth your brain down like a river stone, and you will find yourself longing for a social media platform that hasn't meaningfully changed in a decade. you don't know I'm posting about you in real time bc Sarah has timestamps switched off. I'm not dead, Grant. Grant, let me out of the casket. Graaaant,
grant has seen the truth
”This is Bob”
over winter break i started making these silly (stupid) arcane comics and ive decided im going to finish them