I LIKE BOOKS

 29, lesbian, writer, historian

[goddamnshinyrock]

I was talking about languages with two friends tonight, one raised Polish catholic and the other raised generically American protestant. I made an offhand comment about how it’s a shame English no longer has a familiar/informal ‘you,’ since thee/thou could be so useful, and then….

catholic friend: wait, but wasn’t ‘thee’ the formal you? me: no, it was the informal- that’s why it gets used in the King James translation of the bible- to demonstrate that one’s relationship to god was close and familial.  catholic friend, appalled: no, but using it to talk to God means it should be formal! God is so far above you- he’s- he’s- he’s GOD! protestant friend: that’s the whole point, he’s not far above you, he knows you and you know him.  catholic friend: but that just seems so wrong. you can’t just talk to God like that. you need- you need to be respectful, and formal, and that’s why you have church!  protestant friend: no, you should be on familiar terms, you don’t need intermediaries.  me: …….I…. I think we just replayed the reformation in real time. 

[bookishandslovenly]

wait till someone tells them about quakers...

[lifewithchronicpain-original]

Death of Trump’s 'Denial of Care' Rule Means Life for LGBTQ Patients

Two judges slowed, and maybe stopped, one of the administration's most dangerous efforts.

Can an ambulance driver turn away a passenger who is seeking emergency care for an ectopic pregnancy because the driver objects to the treatment on religious or moral grounds? On November 6, a federal district judge in New York answered with a resounding “no” in an order striking down a new regulation from the Trump administration that was scheduled to go into effect later this month.

The new rule would allow health care professionals to deny certain medical treatments or services to patients based on the provider’s own religious or moral beliefs — regardless of whether the patient could obtain the care from another provider. Thanks to the court’s ruling, however, this dramatic expansion of federal conscience protections cannot take effect anywhere in the country. (Read more at link)

[official-cisphobe]

here's a random word generator--whatever word it gives you is now the thing you are the deity of

[sheepgirlwizard-deactivated2025]

goddess of loop

[enby-ralsei]

God of bottoms

[bookishandslovenly]

Goddess of Regret :|

[womon]

“Trans women are willful women; women who have to insist on being women, who have to keep insisting, again and again, often in the face of violent and repeated acts of misgendering. Any feminists who do not stand up, who do not wave their arms to protest against this misgendering, have become straightening rods.”

— Sara Ahmed, “Living a Lesbian Life” (via coocoolah)

[vintage1981]

D.C. Fontana, 1939-2019

Star Trek Legend, DC Fontana The official Star Trek site has reported the passing of Dorothy Catherine “D.C.” Fontana, the legendary writer who brought many of Star Trek’s greatest episodes to life. Fontana passed away peacefully at age 80 on the evening of December 2nd, following a short illness.

As a writer, Fontana is credited with many episodes focusing on Vulcan culture and helped blaze a trail for female writers in sci-fi television. She is the mind behind The Original Series and The Animated Series episodes like “Yesteryear” and “Journey to Babel,” which introduced Spock’s father Sarek and mother Amanda. She co-wrote the Hugo Award nominated The Next Generation episode “Encounter at Farpoint” with Gene Rodenberry, and she continued to write for TNG and Deep Space Nine. 

Her last produced credit was an episode of webseries Star Trek: New Voyages, starring Walter Koenig.

[npr]

Over the past decade there has been a surge of interest in a novel approach to helping the world’s poor: Instead of giving them goods like food or services like job training, just hand out cash — with no strings attached. Now a major new study suggests that people who get the aid aren’t the only ones who benefit.

Edward Miguel, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of the study, says that until now, research on cash aid has almost exclusively focused on the impact on those receiving the aid. And a wealth of research suggests that when families are given the power to decide how to spend it, they manage the money in ways that improve their overall well-being: Kids get more schooling; the family’s nutrition and health improves.

But Miguel says that “as nonprofits and governments are ramping up cash aid, it becomes more and more important to understand the broader economy-wide consequences.”

In particular, there has been rising concern about the potential impact on the wider community — the people who are not getting the aid. A lot of them may be barely out of poverty themselves.

Researchers Find A Remarkable Ripple Effect When You Give Cash To Poor Families

Photo: Nichole Sobecki for NPR Caption: Denis Otieno and his daughter plant a cypress sapling purchased with money received from the charity GiveDirectly back in 2017. More recently, the charity teamed up with researchers to study the impact of cash grants on the wider community.

[thechekhov]

Having the “mom-friend override” seems great until you realize it’s actually a developed coping mechanism from years and years of putting other people’s emotional needs before your own. (:

[profeminist]

Why Many Native American Girls Skip School When They Have Their Periods

“They shouldn’t feel like they’re being punished for being a girl.”

“Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, S.D. ― Dominique Amiotte, 17, always makes sure to keep a few extra tampons in her locker. It’s not much, but it’s enough to encourage at least some of her struggling friends to come to school when they have their periods.

About half of Amiotte’s girlfriends can’t afford tampons or sanitary pads. As a result, when they menstruate, they’ll skip school for as long as a week. This can lead them to fall behind in class, contributing to the already abysmal graduation rates on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There are no official records on how many of the young women at the reservation’s 13 schools have felt the consequences of this issue, but individuals we spoke to say it’s an inescapable part of everyday life.

“It makes me angry,” Amiotte told HuffPost unflinchingly while seated in an empty classroom at the Crazy Horse School, where there are 70 girls enrolled in middle or high school classes.”

Read the full piece here

[mermaidghostplanet]

If you want to donate, these are the organizations mentioned in the piece:

Distributing Dignity

Lakota Kidz

Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation

[npr]

For nearly a decade, Diana Ramirez hadn’t been able to take a book home from the San Diego Public Library. Her borrowing privileges were suspended, she was told, because of a mere $10 in late fees, an amount that had grown to $30 over the years.

Ramirez, who is now 23 and stays in Tijuana with her mother, attends an alternative education program in San Diego that helps students earn high school diplomas. To her, the debt she owed to the library system was an onerous sum. Even worse, it removed a critical resource from her life.

“I felt disappointed in myself because I wasn’t able to check out books,” Ramirez said. “I wasn’t able to use the computers for doing my homework or filling out job applications. I didn’t own a computer, so the library was my only option to access a computer.”

In April, Ramirez finally caught a break. The San Diego Public Library wiped out all outstanding late fines for patrons, a move that followed the library system’s decision to end its overdue fines. Ramirez was among the more than 130,000 beneficiaries of the policy shift, cardholders whose library accounts were newly cleared of debt.

The changes were enacted after a city study revealed that nearly half of the library’s patrons whose accounts were blocked as a result of late fees lived in two of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. “I never realized it impacted them to that extent,” said Misty Jones, the city’s library director.

For decades, libraries have relied on fines to discourage patrons from returning books late. But a growing number of some of the country’s biggest public library systems are ditching overdue fees after finding that the penalties drive away the people who stand to benefit the most from free library resources.

From San Diego to Chicago to Boston, public libraries that have analyzed the effects of late fees on their cardholders have found that they disproportionately deter low-income residents and children.

‘We Wanted Our Patrons Back’ — Public Libraries Scrap Late Fines To Alleviate Inequity

Illustration: Connie Hanzhang Jin/NPR

[quoms]

Ohio bill orders doctors to ‘reimplant ectopic pregnancy’ or face 'abortion murder' charges

Ohio introduces one of the most extreme bills to date for a procedure that does not exist in medical science

A bill to ban abortion introduced in the Ohio state legislature requires doctors to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into a woman’s uterus – a procedure that does not exist in medical science – or face charges of “abortion murder”.

This is the second time practising obstetricians and gynecologists have tried to tell the Ohio legislators that the idea is currently medically impossible.

The move comes amid a wave of increasingly severe anti-abortion bills introduced across much of the country as conservative Republican politicians seek to ban abortion and force a legal showdown on abortion with the supreme court.

Ohio’s move on ectopic pregnancies – where an embryo implants on the mother’s fallopian tube rather than her uterus rendering the pregnancy unviable – is one of the most extreme bills to date.

“I don’t believe I’m typing this again but, that’s impossible,” wrote Ohio obstetrician and gynecologist Dr David Hackney on Twitter. “We’ll all be going to jail,” he said. [...]

In addition to ordering doctors to do the impossible or face criminal charges, House Bill 413 bans abortion outright and defines a fertilized egg as an “unborn child”.

It also appears to punish doctors, women and children as young as 13 with “abortion murder” if they “perform or have an abortion”. This crime is punishable by life in prison. Another new crime, “aggravated abortion murder”, is punishable by death, according to the bill. [...]

Ohio passed a six-week abortion ban last summer. The “heartbeat bill”, as supporters called it, banned abortion before most women know they are pregnant. Reproductive rights groups immediately sued, and the bill never went into effect. Abortion is legal in all 50 US states.

———

Parts of this might not even make it past the current Supreme Court but that's almost not even the point. Ohio is so thoroughly fucking gerrymandered these creatures can just say and do whatever they want without regards to whether even their base likes it, it's pure id

[clawmarks]

The yellow book - Copeland and Day - 1894 - via Internet Archive 

[whitepeopletwitter]

[vtmb2spoilers-deactivated202112]

Honestly my biggest criticism of a lot of "progessive/lefty" types is "you neither think nor care about disabled people."

Like I tried to watch some guy's series on anarchist communes and the whole time I was just like.... well that's great for you and all your physically abled, strong, young, healthy friends but you haven't mentioned at all what a person who say, can't move around without a motorized wheelchair is supposed to be doing in this commune where everyone takes a turn at heavy labor. Like I would hope you aren't talking about some kind of eugenecisit utopia of your own imagining but I have no way of knowing because you dont talk about disability!

[fathorse]

“I think that queer readers have trouble escaping into a world that doesn’t include queer characters, because we know that we wouldn’t be welcome there. In fact, SFF that create worlds without queer characters seem to suggest that we wouldn’t even be able to exist there: our existence is not conceivable in the context we are given. When we read a story that doesn’t include queer people, a world that doesn’t include queer characters, it comes with the nagging message You don’t belong here. Whether it’s a horrific dystopia or a silly space romp, that implication makes it difficult to “escape”, because the truth is, we’re already all too familiar with that sentiment.”

— “Why We Need Queer Escapist Lit” at The Lesbrary (via fuckyeahlesbianliterature)

[enoughtohold]

goodreads recommendation engine having an extremely normal one as always

[burgrs]

*petting my cat* please cure my depression cat: *prrbhbphr* me: thanks

[pizzapugss]

Fun fact!!

Cats don’t only purr because they’re content! When they’re sick, or when a kitten/companion is sick, they purr to help heal faster. So if you’re feeling down and your cat friend comes up to purr on you, it’s because they sense something’s up and they want to help you feel better!

[psychicbirdstarlight]

Imagine beeing an animal that literally has a build in ‘comfort my loved ones’ function and still have people think you are an asshole by nature.

[goawfma]

it was also supposed to be temporary 

[lolotehe]

I got shirts older than DHS, and they still fit.