Support these data centers: SCHOOLS, LIBRARIES, BOOKSTORES

Happy National Library Week! 💙📚

Infowars/Onion combo logo in rainbow saying “I support the onion’s hostile media takeover.”

It’s finally happened. After 18 months. Finally, a media merger you can root for.

People should read.
I'm tired of people not reading.
Please, if you can, PLEASE, read! Read everything, but especially fiction! Read comics!
It will help you with empathy AND make you smarter.
Please, read.

Monochrome photograph featuring a sitting white woman holding a large camera to her eye, wearing trousers and short sleeved shirt, in an outdoor setting

''The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera'' Dorothea Lange, US photographer (1895-1965) #womensart

I remember this 😊

A viral dog rescue from 2016 is now immortalized with a statue in Kazakhstan. When a dog fell into the Sayran reservoir, bystanders formed a human chain to pull him to safety. The statue is a reminder of the value of unity, solidarity and collective action. 14/10 for all

I think that art is the one thing that nothing and no one can take from us

Look at all the most oppressed people throughout history—the one thing they did not do was stop creating

Not as slaves
Not in the death camps
Not when their cultures and lands were taken from them

Humans will always create

You know how in a library no one’s trying to sell you anything?

That’s how the internet was.

"To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now." - Fred Rogers

In loving memory of the beloved and forever impactful Emmy/Grammy-winning television icon, minister, advocate, and pillar of true human decency on his 98th birthday.

The way people pretend that Dune is the sole reason stories like Star Wars exist is just flat out wrong.

Star Wars was primarily inspired by Flash Gordon, Kurosawa’s samurai movies, and mythical tales about the hero’s journey. It probably would’ve existed with or without Dune.

my cat wakes up every day fully expecting an uninterrupted session of Cheese Time, even though Cheese Time has rarely occurred in her fifteen years of living because of her lactose intolerance and consequent diarrhea, and i wish i had this sort of optimism about my life

Speaking of agism...

I had to take my tuxie cat to an urgent care vet tonight for an abscess in his face.

The vet was 83 and has been practicing for 57 years.

He was so good and so gentle that my cat didn't even have to be sedated to get it cleaned out.

Experience counts.

Image is line paper with writing showing an English word followed by how it is written in the Cherokee language followed by how it is spelled and pronounced. The words are you are all beautiful and pronounced neehee neegahduh oohwawdoohee

Your Cherokee words for today.
The top word is English followed by how it is written in the Cherokee language followed by how it is spelled in English then how to pronounce it phonetically.

Pearl White

3/4/1889 — b. Pearl White, American actor, stunt person, #womensrights activist. The “Stunt Queen” of #silentfilms; one of the most successful early American film stars. Intl renown for “The Perils of Pauline” (1914), a role in which she performed her own stunts #WomensHistoryMonth #WHM #WomenInFilm

A deep red sunflower blooming against the backdrop of a rising sun redbud.

Here is a nice combination of colors that happened in my garden last year. Continue to be outraged at injustice and evil, but noticing appreciating, and looking forward to the little things that are not bad helps. 🌱🌻

Unclench your jaw.

Relax your brow.

Go get a drink of water.

See if you've taken your meds

Eat something.

Doesn't matter what you look like right now, i think you look amazing.

Because you do.

You're a wonderful person.

And have this. 🫂🖤 you did great today. You made it through

A happy magic frog that says poof. You are now untired and very happy.

I CAST WHIMSY ON THE SKYLINE

Three cats sitting in round beds, looking toward the camera

Two black-and-white cats cuddling together in a wooden bowl

A black cat and a white cat lying close together on a blanket

A black cat sitting beside a tabby-and-white cat, both looking forward

Happy Cat Day in Japan!
May all cats be safe, loved, and happy

Image is line paper with writing showing an English word followed by how it is written in the Cherokee language followed by how it is spelled and pronounced. The word is knitting and pronounced ahnuhskuh

Your Cherokee words for today.
The top word is English followed by how it is written in the Cherokee language followed by how it is spelled in English then how to pronounce it phonetically.

This really is a great picture:

This local Wolfdog joined an Olympic ski event and triggered the finish-line camera. This is Nazgul. He snuck into a cross-country skiing sprint this morning and raced the homestretch with some competitors before being escorted home. 14/10 someone get him a medal

I work at an indie bookstore and there’s a guy who orders hundreds dollars of books at a time because he’s worried that books will be abolished and he doesn’t want knowledge to be lost.

From Harry Bernstein’s 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship biography: “I have proven with all this that age need not be a barrier to a useful and creative life. I hope to be able to reach one hundred. I hope to write more books. But with all of this I will never lose the memory of the one thing that gave me the strength and inspiration to accomplish what I have done thus far, my wife Ruby. Memories are supposed to dim with the passing of years. But my memory of her grows richer and deeper each year. I can still see her as vividly as I always did, her lovely, oval face with the smile always on it, her soft, dark eyes looking up at me with such love in them. Her presence will always be there with me until I too am no longer here.” https://www.gf.org/fellows/harry-bernstein/

Ahead of Valentine’s Day, I’m thinking about this 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship bio from Harry Bernstein, who published his first novel at age 96, which was written shortly after the death of his wife of almost 70 years.

I’m crying, you’re crying, we’re all crying.

…far more common after the success of trapped-in-an-RPG stories like Sword Art Online and Log Horizon

A few series that could fit in this sub-genre are:

Handyman Saitou in Another World
DanMachi
Hero Without a Class
Weakest Tamer
Villainess Level 99

I could name more, but I’ll stop here ^^;

…get their stats read. And these types of series can be anything from slice-of-life to epic action

Like someone else mentioned, a lot of these stories started out as web novels that got turned into light novels and eventually got manga and/or anime adaptations

I think they became…

…that revolve around useless job classes/skills and leveling up what they have, or showing that their job classes/skills aren’t so useless after all

Sometimes the characters in the series can access stat screens, but sometimes they have to go somewhere specific like a guild hall or church to…

RPG Realist, if I had to choose. There’s a ton of anime that would fall into the RPG-style-world-mechanics + people-there-are-aware-of-said-mechanics pattern

Most isekai that have adventurer guilds work that way and so do a lot of “kicked out of the xxx’s party” type series

There are even series…

I’d say this is a pretty huge sub-genre in Japanese anime. Though, their genre labels work differently than ours. For example, “isekai” just means “takes place in a world that isn’t ours,” which is distinct from reincarnation stories, or summoned to another world stories

I think I’d go with…

“But I didn’t understand a word he said.” Guess what, that’s the experience of many immigrants when they arrive in a new country, including the United States. You get humbled. Then you work hard and start understanding. We could all use that experience