It's Right to Read Day, celebrating libraries, highlighting the relentless attacks against them, and encouraging folks to take at least one action to defend them! The American Library Association's data on the most banned books from 2024 is now out; after 3 years in the top spot GENDER QUEER came in at second on the list with George M Johnson's beautiful queer memoir ALL BOYS AREN'T BLUE at number one. If you haven't read it yet, please go pick up this book.
Unfortunately, instead of dying down, we are now seeing the book ban movement morph into an effort to defund and destroy ALL public libraries and ALL public education, as exemplified by the Trump Administration aiming to dismantle the Department of Education and placing all employees of the Institute of Museum and Library Services on administrative leave. The IMLS is an independent federal agency that provides grants to libraries and museums across the country. According to the American Library Association, the IMLS provides “the majority of federal library funds.” The IMLS says it awarded $266 million in grants and research funding to cultural institutions last year. This money goes to help staff, fund maintenance, and create new programs. If you are curious how the termination of this grant funding will effect the state of California, here is a press release from the California State Library. Please call your state governor and representatives asking them to demand support for the IMLS!
I also wanted to share some resources to help you talk about book bans/book challenges if the topic comes up in conversation. There are a set of really common bad faith arguments which book banners make, and I helped write up a set of responses for Authors Against Book Bans (much of this was also written and compiled by superstar author and AABB leader Maggie Tokuda-Hall). Below the responses to bad faith arguments are a list of resources you can contribute to, especially if you live in a blue state and don't have a current legislative battle over books and libraries in your own backyard.
What to Say When They Say What They Always Say: an Authors Against Book Bans resource
I haven’t read this book but I don’t think it’s appropriate for children!
Please read the full book before you judge it. Passages are often presented without context.
So you want kids to have access to porn?
No. And if that is a concern of yours as a parent, install browser filters such as Google SafeSearch on your children’s devices to keep them from accessing the wealth of pornography available to them on the internet. It’s already illegal to bring pornography into schools. There are robust safeguards– from laws, to industry standards in publishing and librarianship and education– to safeguard our children from obscene materials, as determined by the Miller Test.
What about parents’ rights?
Parents already have robust rights in their children’s education. When that means limiting access to certain books parents can do so; nearly all schools have policies to this effect. But what about all the parents who WANT their kids to have access to books? Their children should not be limited by what another parent in the community decides for their own family. And what if a parent wants to limit their child’s access to something that child would benefit from? What about the child’s rights? Children are people, not possessions of their parents.
If my taxes fund the schools and libraries, I should have a say in how they’re used.
Schools and libraries serve entire communities, not just those who agree with you. Libraries and schools have professional educators and librarians with PhDs who are trained to curate collections that serve diverse populations, not just one viewpoint.
LGBTQ+ books confuse kids or make them gay/trans. They push an agenda.
LGBTQ+ representation is not an “agenda”—it’s simply a reflection of real people’s lives. If books featuring LGBTQ+ characters are “pushing an agenda,” then books featuring straight relationships or cisgender characters are as well. Reading about something does not automatically change a person’s identity, just as reading about astronauts does not turn every child into an astronaut. Reading about LGBTQ+ characters can both help kids understand themselves and build empathy and understanding towards others.
I live California. Why should I care about book bans if they’re not happening here?
We are fortunate to live in a state where book banning on the basis of discrimination has been outlawed through AB1825, which passed in 2024. However, California has still seen numerous book challenges in cities like Huntington Beach, Burbank, Lodi, and Chico—some of which continue efforts to overturn these protections. While bans are worse in red states, they still happen in blue states. Book bans are about control—not protecting children. The people banning books today will censor other forms of speech tomorrow. The right to read is a fundamental civil liberty, and we should protect it accordingly.
How Can I Help from a Blue State? For the biggest bang for your buck, we recommend that you donate to the grassroots organizations making a difference in the places where the bans are happening all the time. All the ACLU chapters listed here are currently involved in lawsuits against book banners.
We suggest:
Florida Freedom to Read Project: https://www.fftrp.org/donate
Texas Freedom to Read Project: https://www.txftrp.org/donate
Honesty for Ohio Education: https://www.honestyforohioeducation.org/donate.html
Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization (DAYLO) in South Carolina: https://patconroyliterarycenter.org/donate-today-to-pat-conroy-literary-center/
Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT): https://www.studentsengaged.org/donate
San Francisco’s Books Not Bans!: https://givebutter.com/booksnotbans
Coeur D’Alene Public Library in Idaho: https://cdalibrary.org/donate/
Let Utah Read: https://www.fundlibraries.org/letutahread
Tennessee ACLU: https://www.aclu-tn.org/en/donate
South Carolina ACLU: https://action.aclu.org/give/support-aclu-south-carolina
Southern California ACLU: https://action.aclu.org/give/support-aclu-socal
Fight for the First helps start grassroots groups all across the country: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fightforthefirst
EveryLibrary (is a national org, but they financially support many of the groups listed here, as well as AABB): https://www.everylibrary.org/donate
You can also call your state reps to express your commitment to protecting the freedom to read. Protections in blue states are just as contagious as bans in red states. The more of us who have them, the more states will follow suit. Use the 5Calls app do this, or find your rep here: https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/
And of course- if you are an author, editor, illustrator, cartoonist, translator, anthology editor, self-published author, please join Authors Against Book Bans! We could use the help! If you want to help recruit to AABB, feel free to print and pass out my recruitment zine at any literary event you attend <3
if you or someone you know might need it in the next few years, purchase plan b. the shelf life of plan b is 4 years, and we might not be able to access it as easily as we can now in the days ahead.
if you are larger/plus size: go online and purchase ella instead of plan b. plan b is less effective if you aren’t under 160 pounds.
if you can, purchase books that project 2025 is looking to ban.
mass deportations are starting. if you see ice vehicles or agents, yell ice raid and la migra as loud as you can.
if someone asks who you voted for, keep your mouth shut. they’re fishing for traitors.
if anyone, anyone at all asks about your neighbors or their legal status in the us, you know nothing. don’t be the reason that their family is separated.
if anyone asks about your religion or lack thereof, keep it vague. this administration will look for any excuse to persecute you.
your friends are trans or queer? for the next four years they’re not. don’t expose anyone’s status as a trans or queer person to anyone else, even if you think you can trust them.
did someone you know get an abortion? no, they didn’t. they were never pregnant.
in short, don’t be a snitch, and keep to yourself these next four years. we’ll make it through this even if it seems hopeless at times.
we can survive this. we’ve survived before, and we’ll survive again.
Ok so I was told I should make movie and book reviews. I have my doubts but I made a short fnaf review last night and I said id post it so here it is. Minimal editing cause tired.
The problem with the movie is it's just meh. Its predictable not in the way a horror tragedy is but in the way that a story that's been beaten to death is. They chose poorly for the pov character. They could have done the eldest Afton child, desperately try to track down their twisted patriarch and lay him low. They could have had a detective trying to link afton to the murders, they could have had the marionette, coming to life and trying and failing to stop her murderer, and then binding the souls of his other victims as either a last resort to stop him or as a desperate attempt to resurrect them gone wrong. She is a child after all. But instead they have the brother of a kid who got kidnapped from a random campground in a different state. It feels disconnected from fnaf, reduces it to just a set piece which is really sad honestly. And the custody plot line felt hugely unnecessary, like they wanted to make us care more about these characters that feel so disconnected from the story. In an attempt to make the story more appealing to non fnaf fans, it was made less appealing to fans. Other than looking for Easter eggs I was honestly kinda bored. Fnaf has such a interesting if convuluted method of storytelling and then the movie just feels like it expects the audience to be stupid and need to be spoon fed.
We need to start seriously treating the concepts of "obesity" and "weight loss" as a dangerous pseudoscience and I'm not kidding.
It's some shit that everyone thinks they can understand based on vibes but science just doesn't work that way. Real scientists have proved time and time again that it doesn't work how people assume. Many medical conditions where it's assumed weight is a "cause", something to blame the patient for, it's often actually a symptom.
Body size is based on so many individual possibilities. genetics, upbringing, wealth, what type of food you eat, what type of work you do, where you live, etc etc etc. it is impossible to control for all of these.
I was a child born to fat, impoverished, labourer parents, and I grew up doing farm labour, gaining muscle - I will never ever be thin. It's just how my body developed. And no matter how much weight I were to hypothetically lose, doctors would still push me to lose more. Family would push me to lose more. Society would push me to lose more. It will never ever ever be enough. You will never be thin enough, there is no bmi low enough to satisfy them, there is no "progress" that won't just make them pity or shame you even more. Your personal circumstances aren't important to a pseudo-scientific practice, the variables don't matter that much, it must be a one-size-fits-all solution.
Every weight loss pill, every low calorie shake or meal replacement, every weight watchers frozen meal, it all contributes to the pseudo-scientific cult of thinness. Every ad that says you're not good enough, it pushes you to drop your critical thinking skills. We have created a world where people think shitting themselves into thinness using potions with untested ingredients is healthier than having some fat on their bodies. But it's not! That's absurd! You're sending your body into a constant state of gastric shock!! And one day, when you get bored of eating tasteless nutrient paste and decide to eat something with some flavour in it, your body will react with a starvation response and store every little bit of fat that it can, because it's so used to being fucking starved. Which sends people into a panic response, buying up more pills and trying to crash-diet and lose their meagre protective layers.
Your body stores fat because that's your reserve energy. Fat is protective. I thank my body every day for storing so much energy for me, fuck knows I need it! That's your blubber!! You are a large mammal. Your body is designed to keep energy in reserve so you can sleep and stay warm and keep your brain alive. You should research the human metabolic process. You should research the cow metabolic process. You should research bear metabolic process. YOU NEED FAT!
And just like so many other pseudosciences, fatphobia and all that it entails is deeply rooted in racism and specifically antiblackness. It is not a mistake that the ozempic-chic era is coinciding with one of the biggest waves of open, globalised white supremacy we've seen in decades. Whiteness needs to perform & police whiteness constantly, maintaining appearances is THE way to stay part of the ingroup.
You must commit to removing yourself from that ingroup. Do not allow it a single toe in the door. A pseudoscience, no matter how comforting and easy to digest it may be, is not your friend. It is feeding you lie upon lie upon lie.
hello, average tumblr user. your challenge is to name a canonically lesbian female character in the tags of this post. if you name a male character for any reason, you will be shot in the head. good luck.
“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
fundamentally dc is not interested in publishing marketing or popularising characters who do not fit the white/straight/cis binary/usually male binary and deep down every single white queer who complained about the boycott knows this. but you are all so disgusted about even the idea of sharing anything with people of colour and especially black people and this is why you would rather shoot yourselves in the foot than do anything to challenge their status quo
You know, when I've remarked that a lot of the responses to my posts feel like people are just plucking out keywords they think they recognise based on the shape of them and replying to what they imagine the post says based on that, the possibility never occurred to me that this is actually how many American schools are currently teaching kids to read.
Like, my assumption this whole time has been that when folks go "I misunderstood this post that says [thing] as saying [unrelated thing] because I mistook [word] for [completely different word that happens to start with the same letter]", that was a bit. What do you mean they're teaching kids a reading method that's tailored to produce this exact error?
Mississippi used to be at or near the bottom national literacy rankings and as I understand, their near meteoric surge in literacy rate ranking is almost entirely due to the fact that they largely still use phonics
And I want to emphasize here that the poor literacy is the intended outcome.
We've done the research on how to make a good education system and it's been put into practice irl via Finland, who has one of the best education systems in the world and it was built almost entirely using US research.
The lack of reading comprehension is the intended outcome
Nor is she a seductress in any kind of negative or manipulative sense - she has a mutual relationship with a powerful man who then breaks up with her, and afterwards she keeps protection against him in the form of evidence that the relationship existed. She HAS blackmail material, she even waves it at him threateningly because he treated her like shit, but she never even uses it.
Irene Adler is not a thief, femme fatale, or blackmailer. She's just a cool lady that wants to be left alone.
@delphi-star You do recall correctly!! She does not give a shit about that man! She's happily married! She tipped him for being a witness at her wedding!
If your Sherlock Holmes adaptation has a character whose identifying qualities are that she is a seductive criminal in love with Holmes, you have created a character that is basically the literal opposite of Irene Adler and you should name her something else.
She's also -- and I cannot stress this enough -- from New Jersey. IMO this is the single most important detail missing from all the adaptations -- IRENE ADLER IS FROM NEW JERSEY.
Please just once in my life I would like to see this adapted faithfully it would be the funniest fucking thing ever.
My ideal adaptation would be one where the king builds her up with the usual adaptation nonsense. She's a thief, a femme fatale, she'll seduce anyone!!!!
Smashcut to a New Jersey opera singer happily engaged to the most boring person you've also met (also from New Jersey).
hi everyone, its puppet! you may know it from getting terminated constantly and having to remake its dono posts a lot. sadly it has to aaagain.
so, puppets a homeless and disabled trans woman, and it cant work, has been couch crashing, and has been living purely off donations from tumblr as they keep terminating it. and now on top of that, it is living with its girlfriend, @phantomqueen10001001! while this has been great for both of us,, puppet already only has enough money for food for the next 1-2 weeks, and we both really need to eat. and so we would really appreciate if anyone could help!
puppet has a paypal here, and cassie has one here.
also, in august we are going to lose our current crash spot, and we need to look for another, but we're very disconnected in the city.. if anyone here knows anyone in seattle who needs a roommate or who could give us a place to stay for a while,,
we'd really really appreciate any help.
puppet loves you!! please reblog if you can to help us out, we could really really use it. ♡
Please everyone it would mean the world to me if you helped these two. They are the loves of my life and I care about them more than practically anything in the world. They are some of the sweetest and most loving girls I have ever known
If it helps inventivise girls who can to help provide housing, I can even provide some money as rent if needed
Please, help my girlfriends survive okay? We love you
Tumblr just nuked both of their blogs agian. This is a plain attempt to kill to homeless transfems who barely have a couch to stay on. Once again if anybody in Seattle needs some roomates or at least has a place to stay off the streets for a bit, or if you know someone like that, let us know.
ICE is attacking immigrants for now, but their goal is to subjugate all of us. Fighting for our neighbors today is a way of fighting for ourselves tomorrow.
Map the infrastructure that ICE depends on. Publicize their vulnerabilities. Popularize simple, reproducible ways to impose consequences every time that ICE inflicts harm on a community. Don't just react to their attacks—choose the time and place of confrontations. Take the initiative.
"If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name.
"If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own—which it is—and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night."
-James Baldwin, writing to Angela Davis while she was in captivity, November 19, 1970
[I.D.: A five panel black and white digital comic with a supplicant and a sage. The supplicant on their knees says "Oh, all-knowing sage, grant me your wisdom!" The sage, floating ominously says "Stop taking twelve Advil a day"
"Boo!" replies the supplicant. Then the sage takes out a box of Advil and a ox of Tylenol and hands them to the supplicant. "Instead, alternate between Advil and Tylenol. They work through different mechanisms, so they are safe to take together."
"Oh!" says the supplicant, now smiling. The sage holds up a finger, saying "Never go over the recommended daily maximum for any OTC drugs. Overuse of Advil can cause stomach and liver issues; overuse of Tylenol can damage your kidneys. Always speak to a physician before combining prescription strength drugs." End I.D.]
[ID: a two panel black and white comic. The sage dramatically says "the all-knowing sage does not make mistakes!" but then points to a hastily scribbled, sobbing artist and says "but the idiot drawing them does." The artist says "sorry!!!" while hunched over their desk. End ID]
The all-knowing sage is restricted by their medium and the artist is very very srry!!!!!!!!
PLEASE REBLOG THIS VERSION AND THANK YOU SAILOR-LAPIS-LAZULI
