Please help the family of a non-verbal autistic child (who has been losing weight because he only eats certain kinds of food, largely unavailable during this time) leave Gaza!

Can everyone who reads this PLEASE reblog it?!?!?  Libraries literally saved my life as a child!

Being abused at home, bullied at school and lost in the world, the library and all the books I could escape to the most amazing worlds, kept me alive!

I would walk to the library, and spend all day, from 10 am to 9 pm reading there!! I got special awards for how many books I read, I wrote little blurbs on why i loved the books (probably why I love to BETA and do ARCs) 

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Just hit the green arrows and the reblog!!!

As a 50 year old woman, the library offers me so much. Digital art pads to borrow, 3D printing, book clubs that are face to face (yeah, the introvert likes face to face because a moderator will stomp on anyone getting snarky)

New books in LARGE PRINT! I’m visually challenged and as much as I love my kindle, The feel of a real book in my hands will always be a beloved feeling!

Our library also has quarterly books sales of almost free books!! For 5$USD we get in a day early and can buy as many as we want. Anyone else has to wait and there is a limit for the first 2 days.

Also many, many libraries have inter library loan(it may be called something different). This means if they don’t have the item you want, they can get it for you. This may include photocopy/pdf of articles. This can also include along with books and DVDs, microfilm/fiche which is also a huge resource. Check around for libraries that are listed as depositories if you want to look at government documents.

Remember that many colleges and universities have open stacks for the public. You will likely have to pay a membership fee but you will get to stuff.

I love the library ☺

The library was one of my favorite places to go as a kid and I still live to go and just. Sit and read. Or do homework. The university I’m at has a massive 8-story one I love to just wonder around in~ Great places

Libraries are amazing places, we need to protect them to ensure their continued existence.

I used to wander about the fiction section in my local library, and choose books with the most interesting titles - I discovered two amazing authors that way

If you feel disconnected from your local community & want to find ways to get involved, seriously consider spending some time at the library. Go to some events! Organize a reading group!

Support your libraries!

Read banned books!

People who don’t learn can be more easily controlled and told what to think!

$50,000 immediately dropped into my bank account wouldn't improve EVERYTHING but boy it sure would be a grand, sexy little start to a good, happy life path, don't you think

Reblog for unexpected $$$ dropping into your Bank account.

uhh did i forget how time works or was the first post in december 2018 and the second in august 2018

Reblog for time travelling $$$ dropping into your Bank account.

Ok, I get it, you hate Biden

You want a cool, leftist candidate to vote for instead. Great, me too!

What is your plan to get some candidate you like better into power?

Who should we campaign for?

How do we raise money?

What races are important? What races can't they win?

And most importantly, how do we convince ~100 Million other Americans that you're right, and we should vote for this person?

You don't have a plan.

You say "don't vote for Biden" and refuse to provide any alternatives, so I can only assume you'd rather the people on Tumblr not vote at all.

I guarantee the fascists will be voting next year, and making sure that if they win, this will be the last election you get to vote in. Don't take it from me, here it is in their own words:

There's a 900 page plan about how the fascists intend to take over America.

So I ask again, what's your plan? Do you want to help Palestinians, or do you want to make sure that the last people who still believe in elections lose?

If your only contribution is "Biden is evil" and "both sides are the same" or "every American politician is evil" then I'm going to assume your intentions are to keep young leftists disillusioned and prevent them from voting, and I'll block accordingly.

Amen brother! I’ve been posting about Project 2025 for some time now.

If you and everyone you know don’t vote for the Democratic nominee we will literally be living in Nazi Germany circa 1933. Read their plan. Follow their social media. They are openly talking about deporting, jailing, and executing most of us. Think they won’t do it just look back to the summer of 2020 when Trump’s unmarked secret police were beating people in the secrets and randomly abducting people that they took to undisclosed locations to interrogate and torture.

If you want an unmarked, unnamed “strike team” grabbing you off the street in broad daylight, putting a back over your head, and taking you someplace you may never return from…then don’t bother voting blue. They’ve already done it. You’ll be “disappeared” and nobody will know what happened to you.

If you want to pass through Proud Boy check points while driving your car don’t bother to vote blue. Texas has already authorized alt-right gangs and militias to do this.

If you want the Purge to become a real national holiday and you want to be hunted, raped, and murdered by sadistic alt-right thugs don’t vote blue.

If you don’t mind black people being openly beaten to death in public places in every community daily, without repercussions then don’t vote blue. The same for lgbt, immigrants, and anyone who isn’t an evangelical Christian or Protestant. If you Catholics think you’re safe just remember that you’re number two on the KKK’s hit list, even to this day.

Forget public education, healthcare, any kind of workers rights, or any public social safety net if you don’t vote blue and the RepubliKKKlans win.

Think I’m exaggerating? Watch a documentary or read a book about the Trump years. If they haven’t been banned where you live. Check one out at the public library while the libraries still exist.

When Don Jr is providing color commentary on your nationally televised public execution you won’t have to worry about me saying I told you so because there’s a good chance that I’d be ahead of you in the line to the gallows.

At this point I just assume everyone posting about not voting blue in 2024 is either a Republican plant or an unwitting accomplice.

I get it. Supporting Israel unconditionally is fucking stupid at this point, given the war crimes Netanyahu's regime has committed and continues to commit every goddamn motherfucking day.

Except Biden doesn't support them unconditionally. They keep pushing for cease fires. For humanitarian pauses. At the very least they're mentioning that Israel is murdering women & children (so that's why they need a cease fire).

You know who does support Israel unconditionally? Republicans.

You know who's going to be elected in 2024 if you sit home and prots Biden being on the ticket? Republicans.

You know how I know this? Because of all the people who Republicans convinced to stay home instead of voting for Clinton in 2016.

Wake the fuck up.

Getting Republicans out of office is the only way we're going to be able to accomplish anything because Republicans are the ones standing in the way of everything sane.

so it's that time of the month where I beg for money. for the new folks, I have back problems that prevent me from doing... most things, more things on bad days. if you can help me out by passing this around, or tossing me a buck or two, that would help me out a bunch.

you can also tip me via tumblr post, and I have a venmo that's also bixbythemartian.

I'm hoping to hit about $600 bucks, that should cover my bills and some groceries and stuff.

226/600

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

I knew about half of this when I started writing. It’s amazing the stuff they don’t teach you in school that you have to work out on your own. And look, all beautifully laid out for you.

These policies can help to improve the mental health of students

If the point is for the children to learn, then why wouldn’t you give them as many chances as it takes? What is the benefit of telling a child “you failed and that’s the end of it”?

I’m 25, and in my trade school, our tests aren’t judgement, they’re testing to see what we’ve retained, and identify what we’re missing.

If I weld a joint, and the CWI comes up behind me with a radiographic test for it and finds that I just laid hot metal on cold metal or it looks like a sponge inside, you know what’s gonna happen? You think they’re gonna give me a low score and tell me to move on? Fuck no. They’re gonna hand me a grinder and tell me to take it out and put it in right.

When there’s actual work to be done, we don’t leave it at the first attempt if that attempt was shit. We don’t leave a trail of “what’s done is done.” If it takes you four attempts, that’s what it takes, and next time it’ll take fewer because you learned how to do it right after the third time.

School, as it’s set up, with unforgiving deadlines and single attempt high stakes tests are building a shitty work ethic. It says “I tried once, and that’s all you’re getting.” It sets you up to leave a trail of cut losses and barely or unfinished projects as you scramble to get something, anything, turned in before the deadline.

And we wonder now why nothing works at launch.

This is one of many reasons why I think exams are worthless as a pedagogical method, and got rid of them from all of mine. They just don’t mimic any real world scenario.

In the real world, you can always look up and double check stuff. In the real world, if it turns out you were wrong you don’t just walk away and write it off, you go back and redo it. I think they encourage a useless and unproductive mindset. (To say nothing of the way they only test short term memorisation, not long term learning and understanding.)

PLEASE HELP!!

it pains me to have to come here & ask for help, but a fucking tree in my backyard fell on my house & is cracking the foundation. i'm being charged $2.5k just for people to come & save the room & i can't afford it. pls help me if you can.

the tree is in danger of collapsing and tearing down my room. it'll leave my house uninhabitable & i can't afford a hotel stay or repairs like that, so any help would be really great. ofc i wouldn't ask for anything for free, so i have commissions open!! dm me for details.

pp: https://www.paypal.me/birdsandivory?locale.x=en_US

i Know antipasto means appetizer but i still like to believe that it refers to pasta’s archnemesis

okay I’m running low on money and there’s a big bill I have got to take care of this week, I need $500 and I haven’t been able to find another way to get it. (my roommate and I own our home, but we need to transfer ownership with the trailer park.)

If you’re new, I have a back problem that prevents me from working, and I’m trying to sort that out but I’m currently unemployed. (it’s unlikely to be sorted in a way that allows me to work, I’m gonna try to figure something out, but I’ve been low key panicking for months now)

If you’re seeing this and you don’t know me, check out my pinned post- I’ve done a lot of writing of short stories in the past, some of them might be to your taste.

as always do NOT feel obligated if you don’t have any money to spare, you can help just by sharing this around.

https://ko-fi.com/bixbythemartian

I’m at 160 of the 500 I need! I appreciate everybody who’s helped so far, you guys are the best.

hey I’m still about 250 out from my goal! just trying to keep this circulating

The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Company (MCCPDC) is a registered pharmaceutical wholesaler and purchases drugs directly from manufacturers, bypassing middlemen to lower the price of more than 100 medications, it said in a statement.

For example, the leukemia drug imatinib is priced at $47 a month on MCCPDC compared to the $9,657 retail price.

MCCPDC CEO Alex Oshmyansky reached out to Cuban with an idea for a low-cost generic drug company in a cold email. It was launched in January last year. They were motivated in part by “Pharma Bro” Martin Shrkeli’s outrage-producing price hike of the lifesaving drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per tablet while Shrkeli was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. Cuban told Forbes last year the pricing for generic drugs was “ridiculous.” He said he decided to put his name on the company to “show capitalism can be compassionate and to send the message I am all in.” It’s not clear how much he had invested in the company.

—

Reblog to save someone an entire paycheck, or more, on the pharmaceuticals they need.

Gods, I want this to be true so badly.

It is true. Mark Cuban is doing this in part because he wants to run for President in 2024 if Biden doesn’t run again (Mark ran in 2020). He’s a Democrat and “I personally made medication affordable” will give him an immense edge. He’s far from perfect but this is a good thing he’s doing. Also he seems to genuinely believe this stuff, but either way, site’s up and operational and you can start any time.

just so people understand what a big deal this is, i ran some fast price comparisons. goodrx is an app that offers discounts on medications for which you have to pay out of pocket, whether because your insurance doesn’t cover them or because you don’t have insurance. if you don’t have insurance, goodrx is often about as good as it gets, so i’m using their prices for my comparison.

please note that prices are location dependent on goodrx—it shows you the options at pharmacies near your location. i’m in pittsburgh, pa; if you’re in a different part of the country and you try this, you may get slightly (or wildly) different numbers. 

fluoxetine is generic prozac. thirty 20mg capsules costs $12.80 at my cheapest local pharmacy. costplus has it for $3.90.

atorvastatin is generic lipitor. thirty 40mg tablets is $10.95 at my cheapest local pharmacy. costplus has it for $4.20.

omeprazole is generic prilosec. thirty 20mg capsules is $13.90 at the cheapest local pharmacy; $4.20 at costplus.

aripiprazole is generic abilify. thirty 10mg tablets is $17.73 at the cheapest local pharmacy (and $260.60 at the most expensive—and that’s with a discount, still, yikes); $6.00 at costplus. 

lamotrigine xr is generic lamictal xr. thirty 25mg tablets is $36.59 at the cheapest local pharmacy; $8.40 at costplus. 

maybe that doesn’t seem like a huge discount, but the goodrx prices change *all the time*—last time i used it to buy fluoxetine, which was in the last couple of years, it was $31. also, many people are on multiple medications, or have multiple people in a household taking multiple medications, and $5 off every prescription adds up real fast. 

this is an objectively fantastic thing and a huge deal, and i hope they’re wildly successful.

HE HAS MY PRESCRIPTION ON HERE FOR $4.20.

THE CHEAPEST I CAN GET IT IN PERSON ANYWHERE IS $13 AND THE STANDARD PRICE FOR THE GENERIC IS $82.

TAMIFLU IS ON HERE FOR UNDER $4. IT’S AN ANTIVIRAL USED TO TREAT SEVERE CASES OF INFLUENZA AND REGULARLY COSTS OVER $100.

There is a medicine on here called Valcyte, it’s an HIV medication, he’s offering it for $100.20 which sounds outrageous (and I mean still kind of is but wait for it, wait for it) UNTIL YOU REALIZE ON GOODRX IT’S LISTED FOR $179 AS THE ABSOLUTE CHEAPEST PRICE I CAN FIND AND MY LOCAL WALGREENS SELLS IT FOR $1,009 FOR A MONTH’S SUPPLY.

This man is literally going to save lives. Jesus christ. I could cry.

i dont get offended at white people jokes even though im white because: 

my white friends that have reblogged this give me life

4. Sometimes I am a shitty white person and the jokes remind me to FUCKIN STOP

If ur white and like this post I fux with u

^absolutely

5. It’s hard to be offended when white people jokes involve bland food/tourist dads in socks and sandals/white girls in yoga pants obsessed with pumpkin spice/suburban PTA moms and other harmless and mostly true stereotypes while jokes about POC involve them being called thugs/criminals/slurs/uneducated/illegal immigrants.

i fucks with u heavy if ur white and you reblog this

6. They’re usually really fucking funny and don’t perpetuate stereotypes that will ever affect me economically, politically, or cause me any true harm, let alone create risks that “justify” my murder and/or death

Waits for my white mutuals to reblog😌

7. they’re usually spot on and relatable and often make me self reflect and change to make sure i am staying aware of my actions as a white-passing/raised person

I’m Asian but I do recognize the privilege that comes with being a model minority and while these jokes are not about me, they do remind me to check my privilege too.

I’m partially white, but I’m reblogging this still cause frik yea

8. Honestly? Usually they have excellent delivery.

eventually you realize you don’t want to die. you just don’t want to live the life you’re living. and slowly you try to create a life you want to live. just gotta start there.

no one needs to add “sounds fake but ok”, “no”, “well, not me”, “impossible”, etc. to this post. and i’d rather you not.

one day you think: I want to die.

and then you think, very quietly: actually. actually. I think I want a coffee. a nap. a sandwich. a book.

and I want to die turns day by day into I want to go home, I want to walk in the woods, I want to see my friend, I want to sit in the sun

I want a cleaner kitchen

I want a better job

I want to live somewhere else

I want to live

If your 90-year-old grandma, who had Alzheimer's disease, cancer, and COPD, got hit by a drunk driver and killed, and some jerk implied that we don't actually have to grieve her loss or reconsider public policy about driving while intoxicated because she had so many preexisting illnesses and was dying anyway, you would probably want to punch that person.

If your 6-year-old child, who was born with a congenital heart defect and had Type 1 diabetes, got salmonella at Applebee's and died, and some jerk implied that we don't actually need to reexamine food safety rules and health codes in restaurants because a healthy adult wouldn't have died of that salmonella infection, you'd probably want to do more than punch that person.

That's what all this talk about comorbidities and COVID sounds like to me. It sounds like a lot of people saying that the lives of all people who are not "healthy" (whatever that means) and who have preexisting conditions, autoimmune diseases, chronic illnesses, disabilities, or just plain advanced age just aren't worth caring about all that much. Sure, it's kind of sad when old people in a nursing home die en masse like they're in Flanders field, but it's not a big enough deal for me to accept even a minor inconvenience to my life, right?

It's disgusting, and I don't know how anyone can consider themselves a good person while also actively promoting or supporting eugenics.

Oh, at this point a lot of people have just stopped implying it and started outright saying it

It makes me want to punch them in the face even more