i hope that the discussion about student protests does not get reduced to "privileged rich kids faffing around at an ivy league school." setting aside that tenuous claim, over the last week, protests have erupted over the entire country. a few days ago, riot police beat, pepper-sprayed, and arrested NYU faculty shielding students; protests started at the university of southern california when the admin cancelled the valedictorian's speech; encampments appeared at the university of southern carolina, UT dallas, the university of maryland, the university of new mexico, IUPUI, virginia tech, the university of virginia, the university of illinois, the university of north carolina — chapel hill, the university of pittsburgh, uc berkeley, the university of michigan — ann arbor, MIT, emerson, tufts, the university of rochester, rice, swarthmore, the new school, vanderbilt university, with students arrested; students protested or walked out at miami university, northwestern, temple, the 5 claremont colleges: pomona, pitzer, scripps, harvey mudd, and claremont mckenna, stanford, washington university in st louis, students were arrested at ohio state, students were confronted by riot police at cal poly humboldt, after which they occupied campus, students were arrested at the university of minnesota — twin cities, after which faculty walked out; and yes, there are protests at the other ivies, most notably yale, with students facing mass arests after encampments, but there is also an encampment at brown, protests appeared at cornell, princeton faculty issued a statement of solidarity while students are preparing an encampment, and harvard banned the undergraduate palestine solidarity committee. there are thousands of students who are protesting for palestine across the entire country, facing harassment, arrest, and suspension in return

as many have noted, this 11-hour-old post is an incomplete list. the situation on the ground continues to rapidly evolve: harvard set up an encampment despite the ban; UT austin students are getting brutally assaulted by the police, prompting faculty to declare the first university-wide strike

"Don't use Libby because it costs libraries too much, pirate instead" is such a weird, anti-patron, anti-author take that somehow manages to also be anti-library, in my professional librarian-ass opinion.

It's well documented that pirating books negatively affects authors directly* in a way that pirating movies or TV shows doesn't affect actors or writers, so I will likely always be anti-book piracy unless there's absolutely, positively no other option (i.e. the book simply doesn't exist outside of online archives at all, or in a particular language).

Also, yeah, Libby and Hoopla licenses are really expensive, but libraries buy them SO THAT PATRONS CAN USE THEM. If you're gonna be pissed at anybody about this shitty state of affairs, be pissed at publishing companies and continue to use Libby or Hoopla at your library so we can continue to justify having it to our funding bodies.

One of the best ways to support your library having services you like is to USE THOSE SERVICES. Yes, even if they are expensive.

*Yes, this is a blog post, but it's a blog post filled with links to news articles. If you can click one link, you can click another.

Please, PLEASE use Libby. OverDrive. Hoopla. CloudLibrary. Kanopy. Flipster. Freegal. Transparent Language. Mango. Jstor. Your library would not offer it if they could not afford it, and we afford things by reporting the number of people who use that service, so if you don't use the service we can't afford it. It's a cycle. Keep it going, keep using it, and we'll keep providing because we'll be able to justify the cost to the bean counters in government.

Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

an article on the subject for the curious:

To the person reading this, I hope tonight treats you gently, and that tomorrow looks brighter. 

wow that's a nice inflexible honour code you've got there. i can't wait to see it broken under immense pressure, and you along with it.

Me, reading my scraps of fics in my notes app: oh, that’s good, I really like that. Someone should finish that.

Sometimes fiction doesn’t have a moral to the story. Sometimes fiction points at something and goes “Ever thought about THAT???” And you look at what it’s pointing at for a bit.

Listening to hozier songs like. WHO ARE THESE WOMEN!!!!!!!! I need to be loved this fiercely and deliberately

Story time: A (sex) trope conversation with my husband

Y'all want to hear about a hilarious conversation I had with B today?

Of course you do.

So B knew one of the fic authors I follow had posted a new work and I was planning to read it after dinner while he watched some sports ball. Afterward, he asked me how it was and I said, "Eh, kinda disappointing, but for me reasons not for author reasons––the writing was bomb, as usual."

And he was like, "How was it disappointing?"

I explained that the story started right off the bat with the "fuck or die" trope which I'm not typically into because dub/non-con isn't my jam. UNLESS the characters already have a romantic/sexual interest and especially if they are secretly pining for each other and then wracked with guilt in the aftermath for enjoying the circumstances before admitting they've been in love with each other all along. In which case it's

But that was not the case, here.

And B, bless him, was like

"...I think we have fundamentally different ideas of what 'fuck or die' means, can you please explain?"

So I did––gave him a couple examples like biological imperatives or heat/rut, pollen or potions, etc.

And he was like, "Ohhh ok, that is...not what I thought it meant. How did that become a fandom thing? Is that a trope in some major franchise?" he asks.

And I was like "My love. My heart. Are you familiar with STAR TREK?? PON FARR??"

and he was like "Why are you shouting I have no idea what you're talking about."

So then he got an education.

The man has only seen a few episodes of next generation and the more recent movies so had no clue about the deep and abiding fandom fascination with Vulcan biological imperatives. But boy howdy is he now aware.

@lap-tap-map author is Teddyweworl @lizhly the only place he'd encountered the terminology was in the context of porn he wasn't into --sounded like a situation where someone with a gun was forcing two strangers to do sex things, or the person in power was threatening their loved ones. @blogiamgoingmad the fandom definition? Oh, he said is sounded compelling/hot depending on execution. And like it would open a lot of doors for romantic/political/interpersonal drama. And he was clearly relieved that my definition was not his definition, lol.

As someone who grew up with "I'm not going to praise you for doing what's expected of you; that's not being good, that's doing the bare minimum" I want to encourage you to celebrate every little thing you can. Everything that takes energy and effort should be appreciated and you're allowed to be happy about trying.

— Vincent Van Gogh

- Vincent van Gogh

writing fics be like