Unfolding Pieces

I love all of these people.

Heyo it’s back to school time and here’s a research tip from your friendly neighborhood academic librarian.When searching for any topic on the internet just type in the word ‘libguide’ after your topic and tada like magic there will be several  beautifully curated lists of books, journals, articles, or other resources dealing with your subject. Librarians create these guides to help with folks’ informational needs, so please go find one and make a librarian happy today!!

this is the BEST advice, and there are so many options, both if you’re doing academic research, or just curious and looking for information!

It’s so interesting what you can find!

Dime novels, mystery & detective fiction, adulting (not academic, but still), D&D guide, citation libguides, comics, graphic novels, and manga, German language & literature, differentiating fake news, firefighting, body autonomy for kids and young adults, interfaith women advocates for social justice, cooking (nonacademic)/food culture and cuisine/food & cooking.

Thank you for excellent additions and very much agre ewith you that cooking libguides are the best!! Have you seen all the ones from the Culinary Institute of America??

Oh! Building on your notes I figured I should mention to everyone that most academic institutions with a library are going to have a page with the research guides the librarians have made for their patrons. This will include basic topic guides on things like how to use the library or how to create citations. There will also be subject guides for areas of study like philosophy or biology. As well as specific course guides to assist classes that are being taught like FM 114: Introduction to the Fashion Industry or BME6938: Nanoparticle Nanomedicines.

If any of y’all have started university totally check out the ones your librarians have put up! There’s a ton up to help you along your research journey. And if you aren’t at university check them out too!! Some of the resources won’t be accessible but there’s loads of information you’ll still be able to use and get to.

Hello, fellow academic librarian specializing in instruction! Many libraries also include guides orientations on how to properly utilize non-subject specific databases. Watch those before diving into your first research project so you understand the tools and features available to you to make your life easier. Many universities subscribe to ProQuest or EBSCO and there are MANY tutorials that will teach you how to use them in less than 5 mins.

Believe me, you will save yourself A LOT of headache with both LibGuides and orientations. Good luck and happy hunting!

women should lift weights because it prevents osteoporosis in old age and makes you a more capable person in everyday life please shut up about butts and waists and hourglasses i'm going to fucking kill

;___;♡♡♡♡

genuine question from someone who would rather chew their arm off than go to a public gym, and also doesnt have a lot of money: how do you safely get into strength training? are there youtube channels, apps (android), etc anyone recommends that makes it approachable and don't lean into diet culture / body shaming?

also the biggest thing that keeps me from working out is that I already have joint and spinal issues and moving the wrong way can fuck up a knee or a shoulder or my spine for days. I really don't want to injure myself, and have unwittingly done so before. resources that are extremely clear on exactly how to move and offer gentler / alternative ways to move for people with limited range are vital.

Okay, so this may not technically be strength training, but muscles are dumber than bricks and cannot tell the difference between your own bodyweight and actual weights.

So, may I recommend:

He runs a YouTube channel where he goes over how to work your way up to more complex exercises (for instance, his pull-ups videos start with using a door jamb and moving your weight back and forth) so it's good for easing yourself into things.

You also don't have to fork out for expensive weights and such if you don't want to/can't. Substitute with stuff you either already have at home or can get from the supermarket and build up the weight you can exercise with. 500 gram cans of butter beans then 750 gram bottles of pasta sauce. 1 litre drink bottle then your 1.5 litre milk bottle. 3 litre bulk-buy bottle of laundry detergent. Etc. One of my dogs weighs 13 kilos and I pick her up on the regular (to her delight). One weighs 16 kg and I pick him up too (to his consternation and mild disapproval). You don't have to fit out some fancy home gym before you can start strength training.

I second Hybrid Calisthenics, that's the program I use. It's run by one guy who's taken it upon himself to make exercising more accessible and it's completely free! Each exercise has different variations based on your ability and each variation is further divided into different levels of difficulty so you can work up to where you want to be. If you can't do a single push up for example then this program will help you work up to the point where you can, and if you're a master of push ups then there are more advanced body weight exercises you can tackle so you can keep moving forward in your training without stagnating. The routine offers a full body workout with absolutely no equipment required for the beginning levels. The only reason you would need to buy anything is if you want to work up to a full pull up, at which point you would need actual pull up rings

Here's his actual website which I feel is easier to navigate than the YouTube channel on its own and organizes things in a way that's easy to understand. He explains everything you need to know about the routine and each individual exercise has both a text description and a video tutorial

[ begin id: a screenshot of tumblr tags that read "#i started my mom lifting with me 1.5 years ago. it's improved her balance and strength so much #she has avoided falling 4 times and i no longer worry about her #she lifts heavy boxes with a grin of pride #i've been teaching her about how much it helps women to strength train and she LOVES it #when we started she could barely lift 3lb #she now wields 7lb dumbbells in each hand as of our workout today!! #her foot pain and back pain have improved SIGNIFICANTLY since she's strengthened her core #she was bordering on immobility bc of how much pain she was in w her arthritis and spinal conditions #today she can hold a plank for 30 seconds and do 10 pushups!!!!! #shes almost 60 and she tells me she wants to do this w me forever #i love her so much and i am so proud of her working so hard to strengthen her body #after 50 years of diet culture and her own mother telling her to be dainty and frail #she's strong and she isn't scared of falling or tripping #we do 5 min of balance work each day at the end of every workout :)" / end id ]

Post-Seine Javert be like

my English prof teaching abt cover letters today and me trying not to bring up the luke skywalker cover letter post:

@serialreblogger​ here you go:

The most difficult part of hiding a sword, I imagine, would not be in the actual hiding, but in squashing down the phenomenal urge to tell absolutely everyone that you *HAVE* a SWORD

Me as a super cool secret agent: (leaning in to a stranger on the bus) hey I bet you can't guess how many awesome knives I have right now

(In my head) Don't tell them you're an assassin. Don't them you're an assassin. Killing people is bad. Don't tell anyone you're an assassin

(Out loud) Hey does anybody want to see a dead senator

ITS BEEN THREE YEARS AND I SWITCHED COMPANIES SO I CAN FINALLY TELL THIS STORY

Okay so I was site security, right? And I was assigned two splits in my regular shift, all at different locations (which was, essentially, working 12.5 hours a day and only getting paid for 8, which I do not recommend) and on TOP of that I was also swinging a part-time position, so I was usually on about 6 hours of sleep and zero brain function

And I'm in between one location and another (by bus, because I cannot drive) when I realize OH FUCK ITS MY BEST FRIENDS BACHELORETTE PARTY TOMORROW

By the time I get off work everything will be closed and there will be no time in the morning, so I getcoff my bus a couple stops early and figure hey, pawn shops have cool weird shit, right? Great place for a neat gift, right?

And I walk in with just my backpack and my umbrella and proceed to buy a sword

And THEN i realize that it is about fifteen minutes until I'm due to punch in, and I have no time to stop by my place, and I'm a UNIFORM SECURITY GUARD, and I'm not allowed a fucking POCKET KNIFE and I'm about to bring a goddamn SWORD into a government building

So I just kinda. Jam one end into my umbrella and tie it to my backpack.

And it works. Nobody looks twice.

But for a solid four and a half hour I was stuck on patrol with a building full of very nice people making casual and professional small talk while I'm internally white-knuckling the insane urge to tell every person who comes up to me that HEY GUESS WHAT I SNUCK A SWORD INTO WORK DO YOU WANNA SEE IT

I did manage to keep a lid on it and get out consequence-free and the bride-to-be seemed delighted so it all ended up fine anyways, but I couldn't stop thinking about the concept of just the worst fantasy character ever

(The hole in physical security was managed later.)

Characters who are yellow coded not as in joy and optimism but, rather, yellow as in the first color the human eye will notice, plastered over hazard signs and school buses. Yellow as in a light so bright it burns. Yellow as in illness and disease, just waiting to infect. Yellow as deception, a cover up for something with teeth and claws and malice. Can anyone hear me

One of the things I think about ever so often was when a girl a year or two older than me mentioned in a group setting that she was well-liked because she was easily excitable and happy. Then, just matter of fact, she shrugged and said that meant she was also easily saddened and angry.

It was one of the biggest driving home points of the flip side and the roundedness of people. I really looked up to this girl, thought she was an angel (she was super outgoing and kind), but that eye-opener added respect to the teenage admiration. That's hard to admit in a group, especially when a teen projecting a specific image

Yellow is bright joy and excitement. It is also the flip side. And we should remember that everyone and everything is faceted and rounded. And I love this post for pointing it out.

this is going to be difficult -> i am capable of doing difficult things -> i have done everything prior to this moment -> this difficulty will soon be proof of capability

less "this is gonna suck", more "finally a test worthy of my skills"

By hanzarat.08

I recently had surgery, and at the time I came home, I had both my cat and one of my grandma's cats staying with me.

- Within hours of surgery, I wake up from a nap to my cat gently sniffing at my incisions with great alarm.

- I was not allowed to shower the first day after surgery, and the cats, seeing that The Large Cat is not observing its cleaning ritual, decided I must be gravely disabled and compensated by licking all the exposed skin on my arms, face, and legs.

- I currently have to sleep with a pillow over my abdomen because my cat insists on climbing on top of me and covering my incisions with her body while I sleep (which is very sweet but not exactly comfortable without the pillow). She also lays across me facing my bedroom door, presumably on guard for attackers who may try to harm me while I'm sleeping and injured.

That's love. 🐈‍⬛🐈❤️

cats are so very unclear on what is wrong with us but they want to help

drew a constant mood on the mind

smartphone storage plateauing in favor of just storing everything in the cloud is such dogshit. i should be able to have like a fucking terabyte of data on my phone at this point. i hate the fucking cloud

this is gonna make me sound very Old Man Yells At Cloud but i just hate how many things in my life assume i will always have access to a quick, reliable internet connection and almost cease to function without it. Obviously certain things Have To Have An Internet Connection, but i want to be able to listen to music if my service is bad. i want to still watch movies if Netflix is down. i want to have a working map when i can’t get a cell signal. nearly every tech product these days bears the fingerprint of the extremely internet-rich places they are developed, high rent offices in Seattle, San Francisco, etc.. I think often the idea of the internet not being available is so remote to them it doesn’t even factor in to development. i remember when the Xbox One was debuted and Microsoft was almost mockingly like “if you don’t have reliable fast internet, then don’t bother buying this”, and there was such backlash they completely went back on so much of that. But now that attitude is just the tech norm.

No you're right and you should say it

Just because one of your chicken eggs hatched a fire breathing dragon people think you’re evil. But you’re still just a regular farmer trying to make a living while dealing with an overprotective dragon, heroes that want to kill you and fanatics who want to worship you as the new Demon Lord.

The thing you need to know about all of this, the thing that got me into all this trouble in the first place, is that chickens will sit on anything when they get broody enough. Anything. Duck eggs, goose eggs, turkey eggs, lizard eggs, egg shaped rocks, anything. Chickens aren’t smart. If it looks vaguely like an egg, they’ll plant their feathery arses on it and wait.

I noticed that there was a bigger egg under one of the broody chickens, when I checked. Of course I noticed, it was twice the size of the others. But I have geese. I figured it was a goose egg she’d found and stolen. It was about the right size, and I didn’t take it out to check the colour because that particular chicken gets very protective of her eggs. I’ve already got a scar on one hand from trying to get eggs away from her. I didn’t want a matched set.

That was a decision I regretted the moment I went out to feed the chickens and found a little blue-and-silver dragonet’s head poking out from under a very confused-looking chicken. The poor thing kept shifting around and looking under herself in a bewildered way, like she didn’t know what to do next. This particular chicken is a good mother, and she’s raised clutches of ducks and geese without any trouble – she’s even resigned to some of her children swimming – but this was too much. She didn’t object when I carefully reached in and fished out the little dragon.

It was so tiny, then. It fitted in my hand, with its little head peeking out one side and its tail looping around my wrist. Cute, too, with its big eyes and little snout turned up towards me.

That was when I made my second mistake. I decided to feed it before releasing it. Dragons are innately wild creatures, everyone knows that. They can’t be tamed. People have tried. The eggs are abandoned as soon as they are laid, and the dragonets hatch able to hunt, so they don’t even bond with their mothers. So just feeding it a little shouldn’t have been a big deal. It should have gobbled the meat and fled as soon as I loosened my grip on it and it saw the open sky.

It didn’t. As soon as I’d fed it, it fluttered up to a sunny window ledge and went to sleep. I went about my work, figuring that it’d leave in its own time.

By noon, it was sitting on my boot, squeaking pathetically. I wondered if maybe it was confused by the farmyard – they usually hatch in mountains, if the stories are right – so I took it back to the farmhouse with me and fed it again when I ate, then took some time away from the fences I should have been mending to walk it up to the hills. I found it some nice rocks, with plenty of lizards and beetles and suitable prey for something that size. It pounced on a beetle almost as soon as I put it down, and when I left it was crunching happily.

I hadn’t walked a quarter of the way back before something hit the back of my boot. The little dragon was holding on with all four claws, and when I looked down it squeaked pathetically. If possible, its eyes got even rounder.

Listen, you don’t make it as a farmer if you just let orphaned baby animals die. We hand-raise calves and lambs and ponies, set chickens to sit on abandoned eggs, or put them under the kitchen stove or by a fireplace. You don’t make a success of farming if you don’t value every animal. A good shepherd will spend all night looking for one lost sheep. So despite what was said later, it wasn’t just sentiment that made me sigh and pick up the little thing and carry it back to the farm.  I am a good farmer. I don’t let orphaned babies die just because they’re a little work.

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People think being self aware cancels out mental illness. That when you realise your thoughts or behaviours are irrational you just stop having/doing them

Instead what happens if you're extremely self aware and mentally ill is that you just think in a resigned kind of way "I'm being really fucking crazy right now" while being very loudly mentally ill

Sometimes you are able to tell the people around you "oh, you can ignore me rn. I'm just being extremely mentally ill rn. It will eventually pass" and then continue your erratic behaviour. But mostly it's just privately thinking: "well this is embarrassing but I can't turn it off so just gotta deal with it I guess."

It's infuriating honestly

This is incredibly accurate.