#my library is in danger

[scuttlebatt]

How would someone go about keeping a dragon from trying to climb their bookshelves ... anybody know? Asking out of pure curiosity of course

[elkian]

Not to go "let me learn you a thing, tumblr" in 2024 but I only recently realized this isn't as common knowledge as I thought so:

As someone who grew up a mile away from a bat bridge (a bridge that a bat colony lived under) I need people to understand the deal with grounded bats. All around that bridge are signs reading "do not handle grounded bats".

Short version: it's about Rabies. (World Health Organization, Wikipedia)

(If you handle ANY wild animal you need to tell a medical professional immediately. Don't handle a wild animal unless absolutely necessary and if you must, please use gloves and tools and throw away anything you can't sterilize completely.)

Bats are usually seen either 1), flying, or 2), sleeping. They can crawl, but you're unlikely to see a healthy, happy bat just chillin' on the ground. If you get a bat roosting under your roof/nearby tree/etc., you should alert animal control and leave the bat alone. If it got lost on its way home then it'll fly back once it's done sleeping. This happens sometimes. If not, you absolutely do not want to be handling the bat, see below.

As mentioned, healthy, happy bats do not usually chill on the ground for long periods of time. If there is a bat on the ground and it does not want to get off the ground any time soon, it is time to call animal control.

There's a number of reasons why the bat may be grounded, and one of those reasons is rabies. It's not a 100% guarantee, but it's not a gamble you'll want to be taking.

Rabies is 100% lethal without medical intervention.

Any wild mammal interaction carries a risk of passing rabies. They don't have to bite you, either- scratching you with claws they've licked or drooled on, or open cuts on your skin coming into contact with fur they've groomed, carries a risk! This is also bad news for your pets, which may in turn pass rabies to you.

I'm not going full PSA on this (so to speak) because I am not a doctor but if there is any, any chance you have come into contact with a rabid animal, you need medical help. Not "I can't afford it so I'll sleep it off", not "some vitamin C should be enough", your options are 1) seek the aid of a medical professional or 2) die horribly. Even the extremely rare cases of people surviving without rabies shots, they did so with intensive medical care anyways. Rabies is lethal, and it's contagious.

Don't handle grounded bats.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Outdrawn

f/f contemporary romance

two cartoonist who’ve been rivals since uni, and now have competing webcomics online, have to work together on the relaunch of a cult classic at the comic press they both work at

they both struggle with art-related physical and mental health issues, and complicated families

[crow-n-tell]

Over the weekend me and my sister did this game where she’d name a bug/fruit/whatever and then we’d create characters for them along with little stories.

Oh! And bottom two characters are Celeste (Lunar moth) and Maude (stink bug) and they are in love :)

[centralkvetchmonolith]

Thinking about the cunty little wine bar and Rae and I going "whICH MEANs" to each other like the poem about not needing to be Good to be loved and Kat and Emma signing about cute people

About Kat telling me which beer I should order at the diner and being so so right and so so her. About Emma seeing me when I needed to be seen & hearing me when I needed to be heard. About Rae handling three consecutive Tranny MeltdownsTM and then doing what it needed to have its own calm (I am told that holding it firm and loose & just leaving it to listen to music was Enough; I must trust Rae, rather than the twin gnawing dreads that I was over- or underbearing).

About that conversation in the dark when I cried and was held and saw hope in the words of my lovers. There was a lot of other stuff wrapped up in five days but those are the bits I'm thinking of rn.

[mariana-oconnor]

The library "request" option has given me too much power. BRING ME THE BOOKS! BRING ME MORE BOOKS! I WILL HOARD THEM* LIKE A BOOK DRAGON! MORE BOOKS! MORE!

*before returning them on or before the date shown

[trainingdummyrabbit]

i cannot fucking believe this man. all his riffraff and the Moment he learns about angela being a machine its "wait for real? i dont care about that, but youre going to be in so much danger; you dont know how the city works? heres everything to know about what to look out for when you get out of here okay, be careful." LIKE... COME ON....

[blood-injections]

ubiquitous mother of the desert, gentle archetype of death. take me by the hand and leave me with my mask when you guide me home.

[system-architect]

my new guy; theka, the servitor! this isn't technically his actual body, just a hologram

[smug self-assured asuran krewe boss voice] yes you can grant our AI office manager executive control over the entire facility. it should definitely also serve as the jailer for the violently rogue other AI we inherited from the other krewe we subsumed. yes i absolutely want you to remove any kind of learning limiters from it and also not give it any lines of code that would make it forcibly power down its cpu tower if left to its own devices without any living interaction for a long period of time. what do you MEAN "that could be dangerous?" or "what if something happens to us and leaves our entire facility abandoned with a supermassively overpowered AI guarding it and it goes insane"? why would any of that happen? it's just a computer. do you want to get fired? i am very smart.

[certifiedfantasyreader]

"Reading is so calming and good for anxiety "

Have you read the Throne of Glass series?

[sandboxscenes]

You've been challenged! (Pokemon AU)

A/N: This is an experimental piece that I wanted to try out because I was inspired by this Pokemon Battle featuring Delphox. This is a different take on a Genshin Impact Pokemon AU. This was done in conjunction with @xianyoon for their Extreme Bias Game. Special thanks to @floraldresvi for assisting me with the ideas for Thoma's section.

Characters: Lyney, Thoma

Genre: Mostly fluff, with hints of angst

Summary:

Pokemon and Genshin collide in this Pokemon style AU that answers the question: What would happen if the characters you encountered in Genshin Impact challenged you?

If you were challenged by them, what would be their in-game tagline when they challenged you to a battle? What would their title be on the game screen? And most importantly, what would be their character summaries?

In short, it positions the different Genshin Impact characters as in-game coded sprites.

Word Count: Lyney (277 words), Thoma (328 words)

You have been challenged by the House of Hearth's Second in Command, Lyney!

Tagline: "Let's give them a show to remember!"

Brief Summary:

Tricks, Illusions, and Magic galore! Whenever anyone takes a seat at Lyney's shows in the Court of Fontaine, they will be in for a magical time. Charming, charismatic, and talented are all words that describe the renowned magician. Lyney and his aforementioned magic shows are famous across the Fontanian landscape. But few know the man behind the spectacle.

Growing up, Lyney owes much of his present success to his upbringing in orphanage known as: The House of Hearth. His sister, Lynette, and his (adopted) brother, Freminet, also grew up there as well. While not much is known about The House of Hearth, it is full of unexpected surprises.

To Lyney, family means to the world to him. He will do anything to protect it. Second only to the "Father" of the House of Hearth, he is the one that will eventually be "Father's successor." Despite his young appearance, there is a reason that he is the second in command. Anyone who ends up underestimating him, regrets it.

For the Magician Lyney, he always wants to keep people on their toes. His Pokemon are the same way. Some of Lyney's trusted Pokemon partners include the show stopping, Delphox and Meowscarada. They also have some tricks up their sleeves as well.

Special Notes:

Lyney's interest in magic has spread to his Pokemon too. His Delphox is a bit of a magician as well - blink and things will disappear. On the other hand, his Meowscarada is ready for anything. It's able to adapt on the fly, like any good magician does.

-------

You have been challenged by the mysterious foreign fixer, Thoma!

Tagline: "Let me protect you. It's what I want to do."

Basic Summary:

Inazuma is a land of tradition.

However, Thoma himself has a very non-traditional skill set.

As someone with skills in cooking and cleaning, he enjoys using his skills to assist people whenever he can. His earnest kindness, his willingness to help, and loyalty have made him well liked among the Inazuman Citizens, despite their wariness towards foreigners.

As a foreigner, Thoma cares deeply about others. He knows what it's like to have people be wary of you due to things out of his control. As someone with a deep sense of duty and loyalty, he is not someone who forgets his debts or reneges on them.

Thoma's actions have earned him the nickname of fixer, as he is well-versed in the art of fixing problems. For someone like Thoma, resolving things peacefully is always preferable. Whether it's a small fight between children over toys to a fight between foreign and local merchants, Thoma would prefer if both sides could compromise.

But if things things escalate, don't be fooled.

When push comes to shove, Thoma's willing to do what it takes to protect himself and his family from harm. Once you have wormed your way into the heart of the foreign fixer, he will protect you until his dying breath.

For the mysterious Fixer, he is well-informed of any happenings going on in Inazuma. He has to be, due to the nature of his job.

With such a dangerous job, he needs partners he can rely on.

One of his trusted Pokemon partners is Talonflame. Talonflame soars above the skies of Inazuma, its keen eyes alerting Thoma to any potential issues that may arise within Inazuma. And for those conflicts that can't be fixed peacefully and require a 'forceful' touch, Thoma's other partner Blaziken, is there to help - both its master, its family, and the people of Inazuma.

[eddis-not-eeddis]

It’s spring, and I look exceptionally cute in all my springy dresses and for WHAT?

[girderednerve]

i have once more Read a Book !

the book was jim morris' cancer factory: industrial chemicals, corporate deception, & the hidden deaths of american workers. this book! is very good! it is primarily about the bladder cancer outbreak associated with the goodyear plant in niagara falls, new york, & which was caused by a chemical called orthotoluedine. goodyear itself is shielded by new york's workers' comp law from any real liability for these exposures & occupational illnesses; instead, a lot of the information that morris relies on comes from suits against dupont, which manufactured the orthotoluedine that goodyear used, & despite clear internal awareness of its carcinogenicity, did not inform its clients, who then failed to protect their workers. fuck dupont! morris also points out that goodyear manufactured polyvinyl chloride (PVC) at that plant, and, along with other PVC manufacturers, colluded to hide the cancer-causing effects of vinyl chloride, a primary ingredient in PVC & the chemical spilled in east palestine, ohio in 2023. the book also discusses other chemical threats to american workers, including, and this was exciting for me personally, silica; it mentions the hawks nest tunnel disaster (widely forgotten now despite being influential in the 30s, and, by some measures, the deadliest industrial disaster in US history) & spends some time on the outbreak of severe silicosis among southern california countertop fabricators, associated with high-silica 'engineered stone' or 'quartz' countertops. i shrieked about that, the coverage is really good although the treatment of hawks nest was very brief & neglected the racial dynamic at play (the workers exposed to silica at hawks nest were primarily migrant black workers from the deep south).

cancer factory spends a lot of time on the regulatory apparatus in place to respond to chemical threats in the workplace, & thoroughly lays out how inadequate they are. OSHA is responsible for setting exposure standards for workplace chemicals, but they have standards for only a tiny fraction—less than one percent!—of chemicals used in american industry, and issue standards extremely slowly. the two major issues it faces, outside of its pathetically tiny budget, are 1) the standard for demonstrating harm for workers is higher than it is for the general public, a problem substantially worsened during the reagan administration but not created by it, and 2) OSHA is obliged to regulate each individual chemical separately, rather than by functional groups, which, if you know anything at all about organic chemistry, is nonsensical on its face. morris spends a good amount of time on the tenure of eula bingham as the head of OSHA during the carter administration; she was the first woman to head the organization & made a lot of reasonable reforms (a cotton dust standard for textile workers!), but could not get a general chemical standard, allowing OSHA to regulate chemicals in blocks instead of individually, through, & then of course much of her good work was undone by reagan appointees.

the part of the book that made me most uncomfortable was morris' attempt to include birth defects in his analysis. i don't especially love the term 'birth defect'—it feels cruel & seems to me to openly devalue disabled people's lives, no?—but i did appreciate attention to women's experiences in the workplace, and i think workplace chemical exposure is an underdiscussed part of reproductive justice. cancer factory mentions women lead workers who were forced to undergo tubal ligations to retain their employment, supposedly because lead is a teratogen. morris points at workers in silicon valley's electronics industry; workers, most of them women, who made those early transistors were exposed to horrifying amounts of lead, benzene, and dangerous solvents, often with disabling effects for their children.

morris points out again & again that we only know that there was an outbreak of bladder cancer & that it should be associated with o-toluedine because the goodyear plant workers were organized with the oil, chemical, & atomic workers (OCAW; now part of united steelworkers), and the union pursued NIOSH investigation and advocated for improved safety and monitoring for employees, present & former. even so, 78 workers got bladder cancer, 3 died of angiosarcoma, and goodyear workers' families experienced bladder cancer and miscarriage as a result of secondary exposure. i kept thinking about unorganized workers in the deep south, cancer alley in louisiana, miners & refinery workers; we don't have meaningful safety enforcement or monitoring for many of these workers. we simply do not know how many of them have been sickened & killed by their employers. there is no political will among people with power to count & prevent these deaths. labor protections for workers are better under the biden administration than the trump administration, but biden's last proposed budget leaves OSHA with a functional budget cut after inflation, and there is no federal heat safety standard for indoor workers. the best we get is marginal improvement, & workers die. i know you know! but it's too big to hold all the same.

anyway it's a good book, it's wide-ranging & interested in a lot of experiences of work in america, & morris presents an intimate (sometimes painfully so!) portrait of workers who were harmed by goodyear & dupont. would recommend

[belabellissima]

Things I meant to do today while stuck in the library for 5.5 hours:

1) Catch up on fics and comment

2) Finish next chapter of time loop

3) Finish next chapter of flicker!fic

Things I did instead:

1) browsed the shelves and found a book

2) finished the entire thing in a fugue state five hours later

[pinktinselmonstrosity]

GUYS I GOT A TATTOO!!!!

[frankenruth]

Had a nightmare for like the first time in soo long & I forgot how genuinely terrifying they were I’m like actually shaken up