Random Wanderings

[my-midlife-crisis]

No children are allowed in the Library of Congress.

It's not that kind of library.

In other words...

You are being lied to

again

[madenthusiasms]

Everything published in the US is copied to the Library of Congress; appropriateness for children is not a criteria. Published under copyright is.

In order to read something in the Library of Congress, you must, in order:

1) Be 16+ years old and in possession of ID such as a driver’s license or passport to obtain a LoC card

2) Make an appointment to go to a reading room

3) Know what it is you want to read and which library building it is in so you can fill out a request form when you arrive.

So the chances of a “child” just stumbling over something “inappropriate” that was “put” there by the choice of the head librarian is 100% impossible.

Leavitt seems to believe that if she wears a big enough cross, God can’t hear her breaking the commandment against false witness.

[guerrillatech]

[liberalsarecool]

Look at this tool. What a pathetic edgelord.

They are called earned benefits. Cutting $500 billion from your money when you need it is asinine.

Would you accept cuts to your bank account? It's the same logic: it's your money.

At this stage, Musk could destroy all social security payments and end Medicare, and these mindless, unserious Republicans would let Musk steal all their money.

[liberalsarecool]

We need to end this madness. #MedicareForAll

[s-n-arly]

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

[astrodidact]

[aenariasbookshelf]

See that picture above? That’s a close up of my great grandmother’s immigration papers when she first came to the US back in the early 20th century. But my great grandma’s information isn’t the important part here. The important part is that line in the middle there about how they arrived in the country.

And how ‘stowaway’ is a legitimate, valid option to select.

So yeah. They absolutely just showed up, and that part of immigration history needs to be talked about a lot more.

[drek-odradek-deactivated2022031]

REMINDER THAT TRAVEL VISAS AS WE KNOW THEM TODAY WERE INVENTED IN THE 1930S TO KEEP JEWISH REFUGEES OUT OF COUNTRIES THAT DID NOT WANT AN ‘INFLUX’ OF THEM, THEREBY FACILITATING THEIR GENOCIDE :)))))

read What is A Refugee for more history. Educate yourselves.

[mariacallous]

[mitchipedia]

The American housing crisis is a theft, not a shortage

Economics From the Top Down: Since Reagan, the US has been on a massive policy of redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich.

By returning this stolen money, the US housing crisis would evaporate. No, I’m not kidding. If the United States were to undo its experiment with rampant inequality and return the distribution of income to the levels found in 1970, the housing crisis would disappear.

via

[jbhemlock]

This is the thing that a many people don’t seem to realize: The current economic situation - some might call it a kleptocracy - didn’t just happen. It was deliberately set up this way, over time.

There’s a housing crisis because we allow hedge funds to buy up homes and become landlords. If you own a pet and have lamented the rising cost of taking them to the vet, look and see if your local vet was bought out by a hedge fund.

The current state of the economy can be changed. We’re not talking about rewriting the laws of physics here. You don’t have to simply accept that things are the way they are.

[my-midlife-crisis]

[my-midlife-crisis]

[posttexasstressdisorder]

I approve this message.

[backtonormallife]

[liberalsarecool]

Republicans do nothing, stand for nothing.

[silverfox66]

Adobe is going to spy on your projects. This is insane.

[audacityinblack]

For general graphics: use GIMP For vector graphics: use Inkscape For drawing and illustration: use Krita For print and web publishing and design: use Penpot For PDF authoring: use LibreOffice For PDF reading and form filling: use Okular

All are free, open source and cross-platform. None use AI.

[liberalsarecool]

Tax wealth. Tax the rich. Dismantle inequality.

[depsidase]

[chososbabymomma-deactivated2025]

As someone who lost their father to cancer I feel this is very important to share. Please vote in 2024, and vote for those who care more about the people rather than bullshit politics.

(I don’t typically talk politics or world affairs but this hit me hard.)

[allhailthe70shousewife]

The GOP has big plans for your future. Are you going to let them do this to you?

Vote for Kamala Harris. Vote True Blue Democrat down ballot.

[lierdumoa]

Kamala Harris' career is a perfect guide for how to infiltrate a corrupt system and slowly change it from within.

She played the long game and made strategic compromises. She followed the rules, even the ones she didn't agree with, knowing that doing so would enable her to rise in the ranks and secure a position of power. And then whenever she managed to achieve a greater position power, she used her new power to change the rules for the better.

And I think it bothers certain leftists that Kamala Harris exists, because she challenges the story they've been telling themselves and everyone who will listen to them, that it is impossible to change the system from within, and the only solution is violent revolution.

Kamala Harris is living proof that there is a more humane, more deliberate, and more effective way to improve a broken system than simply waiting for it to destroy itself and hoping something better replaces it.

Her existence challenges the worldview of certain extreme leftists who would rather punish the system for its sins than try to improve it. They have become so resistant to having this worldview challenged that they are participating in a smear campaign against Kamala Harris. They are now promoting a false narrative that she's totally corrupt and morally bankrupt and she hasn't accomplished anything, just so they can continue evangelizing their false doctrine that corrupt systems are irredeemable, and the only solution is violent revolution.

I don't know what it will take to de-radicalize the leftists who've fallen into this ideological pit where they value ideological purity over actual real-world progress.

Kamala Harris is not perfect, and that's actually a point in her favor.

Because perfect is the enemy of good.

We don't need our political leaders to be perfect. We need them to do good.