teenslib
Your Friendly Nonbinary Librarian
Alex, they/them, Children's Services Librarian in Chicago. I mostly post about books and libraries.
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I was once on a train late at night when a man walked purposefully down the aisle carrying a large sledgehammer and muttering angry threats, shortly after which the train made an unscheduled stop, so I can see it.
@amtrak-official why you need police
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Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.
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Do you guys remember how kidnap fantasies were popular on wattpad because young girls and queer teens were both made to feel shame at the thought of their own sexualities, so the fantasy of being kidnapped totally against their will was a way for them to engage with a romantic or sexual fantasy without feeling morally in the wrong for doing so? Added bonus that the fantasy involved being whisked away from repressive environments like home or school, right?
Finding out that Bram Stoker was in a sexless marriage and that scholars believe that he very likely was closeted gay puts the entire book into perspective as to WHY it reads EXACTLY like a self insert wattpad Dracula kidnap fic:
“I TOTALLY love my wife and would never do anything that an upstanding Good Straight Working Man wouldn’t do but oh nooo, big strong man with broad back and strong enough arms to carry me back to bed like a princess trapped me and claimed me as his, completely against my will 👉👈 But he protects me against the bad evil sexual women (who I assure you, I am TOTALLY sexually attracted to, as any straight man with a choice would be) but trust me, I do NOT want ANY of this. What’s that? The Count is not capable of feeling love? Would be a shame if I had the special ability to change tha-”
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MY FRIEND GOT PUBLISHED IN MCSWEENEY'S
In McSweeney's again with these unhelpful mnemonic devices you should avoid memorizing:
“Points are three, then feel free. Point is one, flee and shun.”
Remembering which end of a fork to bite down on.
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I think this must be a mathematical error? Or maybe some interlibrary loan books I requested were listed at an exceptionally high replacement cost? Because I've only lived in Chicago for a little over a decade, and our backend system says I've saved more than $123,000.
unsung benefit i think a lot of ppl are sleeping on with using the public library is that i think its a great replacement for the dopamine hit some ppl get from online shopping. it kind of fills that niche of reserving something that you then get to anticipate the arrival of and enjoy when it arrives, but without like, the waste and the money.
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I'm back in Children's Services at a different branch and going through their stuffies and puppets to see what animals I can pull together for There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. There's a set of farmyard animals that includes a donkey, so now I'm considering adding a new verse:
There was an old lady who swallowed a donkey--
That crazy old honkey, she swallowed a donkey!
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Recommended reading for comics readers, required reading for comic creators and critics.
Scott McCloud’s incomparable “Understanding Comics”.
I swear you can open this book to any page and it’s amazing.
(ps it’s actually a digital image of a printed copy of a drawing of a painting of a pipe)
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The way you change your immediate reactions to things is that you catch yourself having an uncharitable/bigoted/overly judgmental thought and you catch it and replace it and then you do that a hundred times a day for your whole life and eventually one day like five years later you realize that you think differently now and you’ll always be working on something but that’s how life goes and that’s fine.
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I found an extremely dope disability survival guide for those who are homebound, bedbound, in need of disability accommodations, or would otherwise like resources for how to manage your life as a disabled person. (Link is safe)
It has some great articles and resources and while written by people with ME/CFS, it keeps all disabilities in mind. A lot of it is specific to the USA but even if you're from somewhere else, there are many guides that can still help you. Some really good ones are:
How to live a great disabled life- A guide full of resources to make your life easier and probably the best place to start (including links to some of the below resources). Everything from applying for good quality affordable housing to getting free transportation, affordable medication, how to get enough food stamps, how to get a free phone that doesn't suck, how to find housemates and caregivers, how to be homebound, support groups and Facebook pages (including for specific illnesses), how to help with social change from home, and so many more.
Turning a "no" into a "yes"- A guide on what to say when denied for disability aid/accommodations of many types, particularly over the phone. "Never take no for an answer over the phone. If you have not been turned down in writing, you have not been turned down. Period."
How to be poor in America- A very expansive and helpful guide including things from a directory to find your nearest food bank to resources for getting free home modifications, how to get cheap or free eye and dental care, extremely cheap internet, and financial assistance with vet bills
How to be homebound- This is pretty helpful even if you're not homebound. It includes guides on how to save spoons, getting free and low cost transportation, disability resources in your area, home meals, how to have fun/keep busy while in bed, and a severe bedbound activity master list which includes a link to an audio version of the list on Soundcloud
Master List of Disability Accommodation Letters For Housing- Guides on how to request accommodations and housing as well as your rights, laws, and prewritten sample letters to help you get whatever you need. Includes information on how to request additional bedrooms, stop evictions, request meetings via phone, mail, and email if you can't in person, what you can do if a request is denied, and many other helpful guides
Special Laws to Help Domestic Violence Survivors (Vouchers & Low Income Housing)- Protections, laws, and housing rights for survivors of DV (any gender), and how to get support and protection under the VAWA laws to help you and/or loved ones receive housing and assistance
Dealing With Debt & Disability- Information to assist with debt including student loans, medical debt, how to deal with debt collectors as well as an article with a step by step guide that helped the author cut her overwhelming medical bills by 80%!
There are so many more articles, guides, and tools here that have helped a lot of people. And there are a lot of rights, resources, and protections that people don't know they have and guides that can help you manage your life as a disabled person regardless of income, energy levels, and other factors.
Please boost!
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every holocaust memorial day, i always ask people to keep romani people in their thoughts, but this year i’d like to clear up some misconceptions that i see every year w/ a psa
romani people are not white. we’re south asian (from northern india), and each subgroup has a unique racial makeup of asian/white/etc, in different amounts. this is also why we vary wildly in physical appearance/skintone
we still face oppression. what we face, especially in europe, can still be constituted as attempted genocide, as we’re forced to live in hazardous conditions or to give away our children, be sterilized, etc just for the crime of being roma
the ‘g slur’ isn’t just an american issue. the reason some european roma prefer the slur is because, in many countries, there is no term for roma that isn’t a slur, and it’s either the g slur or the literal translation of the n word. i’m romanian, and if you used the slur in my hometown, you’d get slapped, since we just use ‘roma’.
we live in every continent across the world. some of the largest romani populations exist in south america, predominantly in brazil. they are no more and no less roma than their european counterparts, and they, like romani in asia, africa, etc all face unique challenges and oppression.
we’re the largest ethnic minority in europe, and yet have almost no political power, no land ownership power (in some places, we’re forbidden from owning land entirely), etc. with very few reputable charities- a lot of us reject charity by principle, as well as there being a general lack of education about us- the best thing you can do to help romani people is to just spread information, and help individuals when you can.
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