Bibliovore on the Loose @mosylu - Tumblr Blog

I hope you get your favorite food this week and your favorite drink and your favorite 2k dollars

I'm sorry there's no magic in this post I'm just talking. I hope good stuff happens to people online I hope good things happen to all of us

tinstol

I think people should be allowed to bitch about how misbehaving kids are annoying in public and their desire to not have to deal with them on a day out without people acting like it’s a crime against children and mothers.

“But they have a right to be in public!” So do I. Don’t interfere with that by making a public space unpleasant for everyone else.

“They’re just kids, they have to be in public to learn how to behave in public!” And some parents are not teaching their children how to behave and actively encourage bad behavior. That’s the issue, that’s why people get annoyed. They won’t learn if you never enforce proper behavior.

And parents, think of the fucking workers who can’t leave when your kids are screaming and running and have to clean up their messes. People deserve to be able to make a living without being forced to smile while dealing with your kids cause problems. Think of the disabled people who have to deal with your kids running in the way of their mobility devices and the people who get overwhelmed by your kids screaming.

Mothers, you are not being oppressed by people thinking your kids are annoying. You are not being banned from public life, you are pushing others out by not reining in your kids. Don’t talk about community and social contracts when you don’t consider the needs of others.

tucsonhorse

Having just reblogged a post that is on its surface similar to this one, I feel I need to push back on this one. Parents with children are regularly kicked out of and barred from public spaces that are theoretically for "everyone". There are many, many more places where parents with children can and will be kicked out of because they're "making too much noise" than there are places that will tell someone who complains that they have to deal with it. And since you brought up disabled people, this is even more isolating for disabled children, especially those with cognitive and emotional disabilities who struggle more with volume regulation and loud outbursts.

You justify complete exclusion of children with "some parents are not teaching their children how to behave" as if that's anything other than blatant discrimination that I bet you wouldn't support if it were any other group. Mothers ARE being pushed out of community and social life because of people who think children are annoying, there is all kinds of researching that has found this to be the case. Motherhood in modern society is hugely isolating, in part because of the forcible exclusion of children from so many public spaces. If your idea of "community" only has space for silent children who behave perfectly at all times, then you are excluding parents, ESPECIALLY mothers and especially low income and marginalized parents who are less likely to be able to afford child care.

And before you try to brush me off with some shit about me being a whiny parent or never having experienced sensory issues, let me clarify for you. I do not have children and have no interest in having children. I work as a customer service person in a public setting where I am regularly surrounded by lots of noise from children and families, and where I am also tasked with keeping the volume level down. I am autistic and cannot stand lots of loud noise. And yes, I have asked parents to remove their children due to noise. I have also told people who complained that the child in question was speaking no louder than they themselves and so would not be removed and gotten to deal with the significant rage that person responded with when I dared to apply rules equally and give children the same rights as any other human being.

experiment41

are bots making communities now??? some of the ones i get recommended feel like it

experiment41

like the admin of this one is deactivated and at least 95% of the members are bots

lohboh

can you imagine you wake up one day in a dark room chained to a radiator with your phone at 1% and you unlock it and find that you've been added to this community

shin-zaibatsu

The first thing you do in that situation is open Tumblr?

lohboh

Where the hell else would I post about being chained to a radiator, fucking Bluesky?

myjetpack

My latest books cartoon for The Guardian's books pages.

Many more here: www.theguardian.com/profile/tom-gauld

wholesome-animal-images

@wholesome-animal-images

cruising-frog

i did need to see some flower cows, now i shall share it with the moots :)

softlyfiercely

i love how weird kids are. they make up the most bizarre stuff when left to their own devices and it's never what an adult would naively predict a kid would do in their imaginative play

my friend's 5 year old recently got a toy veterinary medicine set - it's super cool, like one of those mini play kitchens a lot of kids have, but it's set up to pretend to be a vet (it's this thing) - it has stuffed animals and things to weigh them, give them medicine, take x-rays, write on their charts, etc.

so this kid, who is five and to my knowledge has no experience in the administrative bureaucracy of modern healthcare, puts a stuffed pig named Piggy on the exam table. she pretends to draw blood from Piggy using a fake syringe, and the blood goes into a toy test tube vial that she calls "the resulter"

i'm playing with her, right, so i'm like, awesome, what are the results of Piggy's blood test? and she says "we have to send it to the scientists." so we send the vial to the scientists (put it in her bedroom) and when we get back to the vet playset i'm like awesome what did the scientists say? and she says they have not gotten back to us yet

so she rolls her eyes, exasperated, and says we have to call the scientists. she pretends to call them. apparently, they tell her that Piggy's blood test is "at the bottom of the list" and "we have to WAIT." she frowns. we wait a bit longer and call them back. they tell us it will be a while! she says we should go ask the scientists in person so we go back to her bedroom and she inquires at this imaginary lab, at which point the scientists yell at her and tell her now they will make us wait even longer!

keep in mind she is 100% directing this play. she is making all this up. she is fully in control of this game, and she has decided that what we are going to pretend is that we are dealing with this exhausting nonsense, not actually treating Piggy.

finally the blood tests come back. they are inconclusive. the scientists do not know what is wrong with Piggy. the little girl walks back to the stuffed pig on the exam table, sighs deeply, and says in a very serious voice "we can never help you."

i'm obsessed with this kid. when given complete control over a make believe scenario, instead of becoming the heroic rescuer administering effective cures, she is instead a beleaguered vet making multiple calls to an overworked lab only to be left unable to help her patient.

10/10 no notes. kids are amazing

derinthescarletpescatarian

I used to watch a toddler and this one time she decided that my arm stretched across a doorway was a magic portal to other lands. My arm was a boom gate type of thing that had to raise up to let her go through the portal. I was like, cool, we're gonna go on adventures in some imaginary world full of stuff she likes.

Nope, she spent an hour troubleshooting and repairing the gate, which was broken in multiple ways. We never activated it.

libraryogre

My eldest was about 5 when they concocted a story about a mercenary who took over a country of farm animals and made them attack a country of dinosaurs.

The chicken air force did not fare well against the pteranadons. The dinosaurs took over the farm animal nation and exiled the mercenary.

leebrontide

Younger people, one thing I want you to understand about Millenials is that, overall, our parents taught their daughters to aim for careers and employment, but they didn't teach their sons to keep house. This causes a whole lot of Situations.

sweaterkittensahoy

My brothers are my half-brothers; they spent summers and some holidays with us. I love my brothers.

Their mother picked up after them. They were not required to take plates the kitchen or do the dishes or anything like that.

My mother, who would tell you she is for equality, came home one day, sighed at the mess of dirty dishes scattered about, and said, "Gayle, help me pick up."

"Those aren't my dishes," I said. "I picked up my dishes."

My mother sighed again. "Just help me pick up."

"No," I said again. "I didn't make that fucking mess."

She never approached my brothers and said, "Boys, in this house, you take your dishes to the kitchen." She did not tell our dad, "Hey, tell the boys they need to pick up after themselves."

It was, "Gayle, pick up the dishes."

And when I refused because it was not my fucking mess, I got lectured about being difficult.

See also: My brothers--in a classic dick-move of all siblings--figured out they could pop the lock on the bathroom door and throw it open, and I would freak out because I was in the shower and trying to get five fucking minutes of peace.

Guess who got yelled at for being "unreasonable"? Not the boys. Because a lot of moms of millennial boys still said shit like "boys will be boys" when they should have said "Boys, if you got body-slammed on the concrete, I'm not taking you to the hospital."

gwydionmisha

It was similar for Xers. I spent a lot of time in my 20's teaching romantic partners and friends basic household skills and having to be really hard ass about them carrying their weight.

It is stupid and infuriating and I hate that the "Boy Mom" trend is setting yet another generation up for unfairness and domestic strife.

vaspider

Yep.

rhincodono

One time when I was in high school, my mum came home w/ groceries. She needed help bringing all of them in. Did she ask my brother who was already outside playing basketball? No. Did she ask her husband who was sitting on his ass watching TV in the living room? Nope. She walked past both of them, through the house, and into my room where I was doing homework and yelled at me for not immediately coming out to help her.

I have been told that I am "the last of the millennials" or that I'm a "gen zer" or that I'm "on the cusp" by so many different people that I am 100% convinced this is not a generational problem. It is a societal problem. And millennial parents are not immune to raising their kids this way just bc they're younger than x'ers and boomers. Same goes for gen z'ers and every generation after us so long as misogyny remains the bedrock of society that it is.

rockatanskette

My parents did a lot to teach my brothers to keep house but the one that sticks with me and drives me a little crazy when it runs up against social expectations is that when we were 13+, everyone was on the dinner rotation. We didn’t have to make anything fancy and we didn’t have to do it alone, but once a week, dinner was our responsibility.

When I tell people this, they always, ALWAYS, assume I have sisters. They say shit like “oh I’d love to do that, but I have boys” and when I tell them I only have brothers, “oh you must have eaten a lot of burned dinners then!”

Like, no. To both of those statements. Sure we burned stuff when we were younger but we all learned to cook before 13, that was just the age where it became a scheduled chore. You know who did burn everything? My MOM. My Boomer dad did all the cooking because my mum didn’t want to and he was the one to help when we needed it, though my mum did help with prep/chopping things.

Fast forward to now, middle brother can make the best risotto I’ve ever had and my youngest brother is vegan and makes almost all his own meals because his partner isn’t and he doesn’t expect her to make two meals so he can eat.

The worst part of this social conditioning is how bullshit it is. I know this is not ingrained, I know people are teaching their sons to be assholes, and I look at my middle brother in his immaculate apartment with tasteful decor that he picked out himself and I look at my youngest brother who does all the clothes shopping for him and his partner because she struggles with it and it makes me want to just start biting people.

Men can be better than this, I GREW UP WITH THEM. I SAW IT. The parenting described above is fucking bullshit and it can be unlearned. My mum’s Russian and my dad’s a Boomer and they unlearned it, which means anybody can.

this-is-trans-joy

You can’t call yourself a leftist if you hate children tbh, like you can choose not to have them or be around them, but outright hating the most marginalised group of people in the world who have absolutely no power or control over the most basic parts of their lives and bodies is a dangerous mentality to have and you need to grow the fuck up and get out of your edgy phase and start treating everyone around you like human beings, even the ones that piss you off.

this-is-trans-joy

Like the older I get, the more empathy I have for children. Imagine living on this planet for less than a decade and having to figure out every single thing from scratch, only for the people around you to treat you like a living doll and constantly invalidate your feelings because you haven’t learned how to express them beyond screaming at the top of your lungs, like you’d be having meltdowns in the grocery store as well. The least you can do is offer them some grace, everything is so fucking confusing and scary and overwhelming and they’re not able to communicate that properly and no one around them is explaining shit, and they are constantly at the mercy of whether or not the terrifyingly giant adults around them CHOOSE to be kind like genuinely put yourself in the situation of a child and tell me you wouldn’t also be freaking the fuck out.

The way society treats children is borderline inhumane, and you have the audacity to call them hellspawn crotch-goblins for screaming a little bit too loud or daring to be in the same vicinity as you.

this-is-trans-joy

I do also believe that hating children is a sign of underlying ableism, because most of the justifications of hating children comes down to “they’re annoying” or “they don’t know how to act” or “they’re gross” and if you are unable to treat people who lack social skills, who make loud or repetitive noises, who are incontinent etc. with basic respect and dignity, then what’s the difference between hating children and hating disabled adults that share the traits you find so irritating?

batmanshole

crisp glass of water moodboard

rifa

Hate how much A Little Treat has infested me. Any small discomfort and I'm immediately like oooo maybe exchanging money for goods and services will fix this situation.

ceylonsilvergirl

Sometimes

SOMETIMES

Going to the library can activate A Little Treat pleasure centers

Coming home with music and books and some movies, and paying zero dollars for it all

It’s pretty awesome

oberstein

You don't even have to leave the house if you use the resources the library can provide electronically (Libby, Hoopla, etc.).

rifa

Oh fuck yeah this is a library post now!!!!

official-library-posts

official library post

official-library-posts

I have a sorta friend that hates libraries because they are "pointless" and they would rather people be able to read informative books not some fantasy or romance, because they have no value libraries should only have important things not be a refuge to the homeless (where we are homeless tend to be in libraries which breaks my heart). I think what they say is treasonous because I grew up on libraries and they unfortunately seem to have no convincing in the matter. 'it could be digita"l or " they could buy it themselves books are cheap" and my least favourite " do you really need to read fifty shades of grey I see no importance in that shakespeare has more importance to society". Sorry for the length, I recently found your blog and love it libraries are kewl. :p

TLDR: A sorta friend hates libraries because they don't prioritise the important texts and I really don't know how to get them not.

here’s what i would say to your friend: libraries do have “important” texts, but they should reexamine why they perceive some texts as important and others as not. not everyone is going to the library to enlighten themselves with classics (heavy sarcasm in that) - some people want simpler or more exploratory texts that speak to their interests, reading level, or what they can handle as part of a busy life. in today’s literary crisis, any and all reading is important reading (plus, who decides what’s important and what’s not? who gets excluded when only certain people can write “important” texts?).

to the other point about homelessness, the modern public library’s purpose is twofold - to offer access to books and other media, and as a point of community building. homeless people are a part of our communities and deserve spaces where they feel welcome and safe. libraries are publicly funded and free so that everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status, have access not only to library materials but also to the building itself and the community it contains.

maybe your friend should get more active in their local library community and see all the amazing benefits outside of books that libraries have to offer :)

netnel

mudwerks

Bringing you more Bad Books and Immodest Pictures, your Impure Thoughts Stockpile was getting low.

radetzkymarch

komaedalovemail

i fucking hated your shoelaces this entire time

butterfirefly

for the uninitiated

emberphoenixisgoingtolivee

oh, i'll just go to the library for one book, and that's IT. just one. like this book here! that looks very interesting. i will take out this b- oh, but this book, now this looks very good too. ... it's unfair of me to choose :( i will just take them both, i can always renew them. now time for me to go and study- oh! what's this? oooh what an enticing blurb! i like this book too. my darling you shall go on the pile. everyone belongs. i can always renew them. and while i'm here.. ... i was looking for a book about- yes! this book! this is perfect! ohh i am so glad im not dead. now i have so many wonderful books. this is plenty :) i don't need anym- oh! look! another book... ... ........ .. . i can always renew them......