#take my online database class

[onlineexamhelpers-tutor]

[faeriekit]

Faeriekit's big fat library post: what is a public library for?

Things almost any public library will do:

Let you borrow books. (Specialty libraries and archives may not permit you to borrow delicate materials. You may be able to look at them nevertheless, but you dont know until you ask.)

Allow you to put items on hold! (Want us to pull a book or hold it for you? We'll set it aside under your name as soon as it's available!)

Allow you to join in for programming (may be as simple as kids storytimes, or as complicated as academic lectures. It's usually cooking classes and knitting sessions though when the budget gets short. We love outside presenters though, especially locals.)

Inter-library loans (don't have a rare book? We'll try to get it from another library!)

Things your library will PROBABLY let you do:

Let you borrow other forms of physical media, such as DVDs, Video Games, audiobooks, CDs, etc. (This may cost you extra depending on library policy.)

Let you borrow magazines! (It's not like you're paying for a subscription, unless you're me and you like mail. Let us get them for you.)

Print/fax/scan (depends on the tech available in your library; for instance, it costs your library money to maintain a fax-specific phone line, so they may not do fax. Again, price may vary.)

Access online databases! (Ah, Ebsco. We meet again.) (But sometimes there's some cool stuff. Genealogy databases, kids' encyclopedias, all kinds of cool stuff)

Borrow ebooks and eaudiobooks! And maybe even emagazines! (Despite what people say, Libby is NOT the only service that allows your library to share ebooks with your device. There's like five I can think of off the top of my head, and your library has to pay to play. Ask which service your library offers directly so you can get the good stuff)

Put up/look at flyers. (Good for sharing public information! I just used one of our advertised services to apply for low income housing. Love library wages...woo...)

Let you volunteer! Need something to add to your resume? Need wo build up some real world work skills in a low pressure environment?Spend some time with us!

Let you use public computers! Check your email or watch yt vids or apply for jobs. Up to you.

Play with board games or puzzles as long as you're there. They may even have a swap for people to trade!

Things your library MAY have to offer you:

Makerspace (cool tech that lives at the library you can use/pay to use, such as tools, 3d printers, etc.)

Borrowing cooler tech to take home (WiFi hotspots, single-use tablets, and other cool tech)

English courses! Learn with peers!

Borrowing actual tools! (I had one library card that let me borrow hiking stuff like tents and navigational tools and sewing machines and other cool stuff and they will not renew my card because policy changed and no I'm not crying—)

Museum passes (hey! Sometimes you can get into a museum for free or for cheap!)

Book requests (hey. If you tell the library to buy a book, we may just straight up buy it! Why not? It's a guaranteed circ!)

Social worker/social work help (depends on if your library can cut a deal with an organization that has social workers)

Paperwork help for seniors (I don't know how this works because our town handles this one.)

Notary public services! (This one's just straight up like. My boss.)

Tutoring services! (We have kid volunteers AND a paid online service subscription to a tutoring site. Not bad.)

Certain streaming options! (Movies and television right as your fingertips! Or. Well. You know.)

Home delivery for housebound folks! (This one again depends on staffing, resources, money, etc etc.)

Book purchase! (No, really. Sometimes there's old books for sale, or donor books for sale, to help keep libraries running.)

And, of course, sometimes your local librarians are geniuses and come up with things I haven't even thought of. The moral of the story is, libraries do a lot of things, but the majority of them, as you can probably tell, depend on size, budget, physical resources, and local support. If you are interested in any of these services, please reach out to your local library; even if they don't offer these services specifically, making your interest known tells the library what sort of things people are looking for in the community, and may even affect financial decisions down the road. The thing I would like to emphasize the most, however, is that you are likely already paying for these services in the form of tax dollars; if you do not physically go and find out what services you are entitled to, you will never be able to take advantage of them.

Call your local library today to find out the specifics!

[rebeccathenaturalist]

So. ID apps. Do I use them in my classes? Yes, but only iNaturalist, because you get an additional layer of verification by actual human beings rather than just the initial algorithmic suggestions. And, more importantly, I stress again and again and again that apps are NOT to be the only tool you use, but need to be used in conjunction with field guides, online groups, and other tools, which we also discuss in class. This is especially true if you're planning to eat anything you pick.

I get incredibly frustrated by how ID apps are often touted as all you need to identify animals, plants, and fungi. (I've even seen them described as "a Master Naturalist in your pocket".) Yes, it's nice to have a convenient tool on your phone that allows you to take a picture of something and get a suggestion of what it is. But that's all it is--a suggestion. iNaturalist, Google Lens, PlantSnap, and other apps are incapable of critical thinking and observation skills. All they can do is take the visual, temporal, and location data that you give them and churn up suggestions based on whatever they already have in their databases.

Nature identification is a detail-oriented skill that takes time and practice to learn, and if you want to do it right there aren't any one-step shortcuts. Can an app potentially narrow down the possible species you're observing? Sure. But YOU still have to be the one to do the actual work in determining whether the species the app has suggested is the one you're looking at in person or not; you CANNOT just take the app at its word, because apps can often be wrong.

And this is even more the case when we're talking about edible mushrooms, many of which have lookalikes. (Trying to figure out which Little Brown Mushroom you have can be an exercise in frustration, to say the least.) While there are a lot of people getting into foraging who are willing to do the actual work needed to determine a given mushroom's species, there are unfortunately also those who just want quick and easy answers without a lot of effort, and those are the people who are going to go no further than the app's results. The articles that promote apps as the quick and easy answers these people want aren't helping, either.

By the way, I am ALWAYS happy to help people find resources to help them with identifying various beings in nature. I'm also fine with taking a look at photos and giving my perspective on what something may be (though, again, don't use me as your only source.) While I do teach foraging, I am first and foremost a nature identification instructor, and I want to help people go about learning the life forms around them correctly (and in the case of edible species, safely.)

[izicodes]

Hi! I’m a student currently learning computer science in college and would love it if you had any advice for a cool personal project to do? Thanks!

Personal Project Ideas

Hiya!! 💕

It's so cool that you're a computer science student, and with that, you have plenty of options for personal projects that can help with learning more from what they teach you at college. I don't have any experience being a university student however 😅

Someone asked me a very similar question before because I shared my projects list and they asked how I come up with project ideas - maybe this can inspire you too, here's the link to the post [LINK]

However, I'll be happy to share some ideas with you right now. Just a heads up: you can alter the projects to your own specific interests or goals in mind. Though it's a personal project meaning not an assignment from school, you can always personalise it to yourself as well! Also, I don't know the level you are, e.g. beginner or you're pretty confident in programming, if the project sounds hard, try to simplify it down - no need to go overboard!!

But here is the list I came up with (some are from my own list):

Personal Finance Tracker

A web app that tracks personal finances by integrating with bank APIs. You can use Python with Flask for the backend and React for the frontend. I think this would be great for learning how to work with APIs and how to build web applications 🏦

Online Food Ordering System

A web app that allows users to order food from a restaurant's menu. You can use PHP with Laravel for the backend and Vue.js for the frontend. This helps you learn how to work with databases (a key skill I believe) and how to build interactive user interfaces 🙌🏾

Movie Recommendation System

I see a lot of developers make this on Twitter and YouTube. It's a machine-learning project that recommends movies to users based on their past viewing habits. You can use Python with Pandas, Scikit-learn, and TensorFlow for the machine learning algorithms. Obviously, this helps you learn about how to build machine-learning models, and how to use libraries for data manipulation and analysis 📊

Image Recognition App

This is more geared towards app development if you're interested! It's an Android app that uses image recognition to identify objects in a photo. You can use Java or Kotlin for the Android development and TensorFlow for machine learning algorithms. Learning how to work with image recognition and how to build mobile applications - which is super cool 👀

Social Media Platform

(I really want to attempt this one soon) A web app that allows users to post, share, and interact with each other's content. Come up with a cool name for it! You can use Ruby on Rails for the backend and React for the frontend. This project would be great for learning how to build full-stack web applications (a plus cause that's a trend that companies are looking for in developers) and how to work with user authentication and authorization (another plus)! 🎭

Text-Based Adventure Game

If you're interested in game developments, you could make a simple game where users make choices and navigate through a story by typing text commands. You can use Python for the game logic and a library like Pygame for the graphics. This project would be great for learning how to build games and how to work with input/output. 🎮

Weather App

Pretty simple project - I did this for my apprenticeship and coding night classes! It's a web app that displays weather information for a user's location. You can use Node.js with Express for the backend and React for the frontend. Working with APIs again, how to handle asynchronous programming, and how to build responsive user interfaces! 🌈

Online Quiz Game

A web app that allows users to take quizzes and compete with other players. You could personalise it to a module you're studying right now - making a whole quiz application for it will definitely help you study! You can use PHP with Laravel for the backend and Vue.js for the frontend. You get to work with databases, build real-time applications, and maybe work with user authentication. 🧮

Chatbot

(My favourite, I'm currently planning for this one!) A chatbot that can answer user questions and provide information. You can use Python with Flask for the backend and a natural language processing library like NLTK for the chatbot logic. If you want to mauke it more beginner friendly, you could use HTML, CSS and JavaScript and have hard-coded answers set, maybe use a bunch of APIs for the answers etc! This project would be great because you get to learn how to build chatbots, and how to work with natural language processing - if you go that far! 🤖

Another place I get inspiration for more web frontend dev projects is on Behance and Pinterest - on Pinterest search for like "Web design" or "[Specific project] web design e.g. shopping web design" and I get inspiration from a bunch of pins I put together! Maybe try that out!

I hope this helps and good luck with your project!

[isfjmel-phleg]

This is a personal post.

The problem is all I want to do is talk about books.

So they say become an English professor/teacher.

Except I don't want to talk about books to people who don't care

(I can do that anytime with all sorts of people in my life)

or force other people to Have Thoughts about books as a means to an end and critique them on it.

So I can't do that.

So I work in a library, where it's wall-to-wall books.

But the priority is online databases and catalogs and systems and regulating books and other materials to people.

And that's fine.

But if I want to get anywhere in this career field, I need a Library Science degree.

And since part of what I currently do is cataloging, the Practical thing to do would be to specialize in that.

But that means taking nothing but classes whose names alone are terrifyingly, mindnumbingly boring.

And I'm not crazy about taking classes that may result in being miserable.

(Been there, done that. Never again.)

And what actually looks interesting

(if I absolutely had to do this)

is specializing in Youth Librarianship, which has classes about things like:

literature for youth!

and storytelling!

and adult reading interests!

and graphic novels/comics!

Those are actually interesting!

I could get excited about those!

But I work at an academic library which doesn't need somebody who does that.

And I'm not crazy about working in a public library again because I'm bad with people.

And youth librarianship would means working with the public anyway.

So what this really comes back to is the fact that

all I actually want to do is talk about books.

But they don't pay you to do that.

Not without combining it with something that is The Horrors.

[sincerely-sofie]

Check-in for 01/28/24

It's been a while since I did one of these. Time to remedy that!

I've been doing well in my assignments, but due to some registration issues at the start of the semester I was unable to sign up for any web development or programming classes :< It's nice to take a break, but I'm really worried about getting stagnant in those skills, and maybe even losing what I've learned over time.

This is where a couple of new projects come in: A blorbo database and a tool for drawing pokemon from memory. These things are going to keep me avoid stagnancy and help me develop my web dev and Python programming skills, and I'm real excited to talk about them.

First up, let's talk about that tool for drawing pokemon from memory. I love drawing pokemon from memory, but it's a bit of a struggle to find tools online that work well for a solo experience when you're doing this challenge alone. So I made a program in PyGame to solve this problem, and I've actually already completed it! It was a great learning experience when it came to getting a taste of APIs, and PokeAPI really helped me do all the heavy lifting with it. I also ended up using ChatGPT to help me understand how to phrase my questions and the things I needed to research. This is the end result:

If you click "Get Random Pokemon", the program will provide a pokemon's name. The point of it is to draw the pokemon as best as you remember it, and then click "Show Pokemon Image" to see how you did. You will then have the option to get a new random pokemon, which clears the image from the window.

There's a lot of stuff I don't understand about how the program works--- APIs evade my understanding, and Tkinter is a dark art beyond my comprehension. But I was able to make a program that solved a genuine problem for me for the first time, and that's super exciting to me!

Now, for web development--- long story short, I'm making a website dedicated to cataloguing my OCs that's very much inspired by tumblr user @snekkerdoodles's personal site on neocities, which I regularly stare at in an effort to motivate myself to make cool things like it (everyone reading this should check his page out IMMEDIATELY and tell him how cool it is). Here's the screenshots of the WIP I'm chipping away at right now:

I don't have much to say about it, as the interesting stuff will really be the content of the pages, and I still have yet to finish the template page I'll be filling with my OCs' information. However, I can say that I'm very upset with the lack of proper teaching that took place in the first (and currently only) college web dev class I've taken. I spent an entire semester doing my own research to learn everything they were supposed to be teaching us. I'm still very peeved about that.

To summarize this very rambling post I'm too sleepy to edit properly, I'm making a digital blorbo encyclopedia, and I finished making a little desktop app thingy, which means I need to summon a new programming project. I'm tempted to make it a video game... maybe I should turn back to that visual novel idea I had ages ago and boot up RenPy!

[auberylis]

MyArtGallery 20240526 Major Update

Rejoice, MyAG users, as i have done something i thought was impossible: made the darn thing Actually Work! It took me a bit, but the entire structure was rewritten to be much safer, easier to maintain, and such and such. The idea remains the same, and the database format didn't change, but the execution is about 98% less sloppy now. You can get it here for free; deployment to Neocities takes 10 minutes at most, after which you get yourself an easily managed online gallery - deviantart style, but all yours.

For starters, here's the updated look of the editor - it has tabs now, which is much more convenient. Moreover, the artworks tab allows filtering by group to quickly access & edit your stuff! The item moving procedure became much less flashy and more robust, too.

The entire editing process has been streamlined, and now it's even less clunky than before. What also became streamlined is the page layout: the editor and the default pages now use semantic HTML and same standard CSS sheets that my other projects (and the upcoming neomanager) use. They're readable, lightweight, easily cuszomised.

Better yet, the way MyAG renders your gallery has been improved drastically. I noticed that people were struggling to style the default MyAG page, but MyAG wasn't working with anything but its default page. Now, rolling your own pages that use MyAG as a component is super easy - by just importing necessary scripts and styles, and adding a specific class to some container like a <div> - MyAG will automatically find it and render to it.

The list of default properties available as "easy customisations" to style has been reduced to basic spacing, colours, and such - located in "myag_user/style.css" as before. I figured that instead of making a complicated defaults system for inexperienced users to keep being inexperienced, a short set of defaults and a more open-ended structure is better; new CSS can now be added directly and gradually to the user style CSS file, and will not be affected by updates.

JS settings system has also been changed, so that you no longer have to be manually merging your custom settings with the newly introduced ones on every update. Settings are declared by the main code, not exposed to you the user - but may be overridden in "myag_user/settings.js". As before, the only two mandatory settings are URLs to some Neocities file editor windows to make the update process faster; changing anything else is not required.

Finally, i updated the goddarn manual to read like an actual manual and represent reality. So now, deploying MyAG via the step-by-step guide Actually Works. I added a guide on how to integrate MyAG to existing pages, or make a page that uses it from scratch, omitting the default pageset. I hope it helps - but as always, feedback and questions are appreciated.

P.S. neomanager is on its steady way to a stable version! I had to make MyAG sane first before returning to assuring safety and reliability of neomanager - some crappy MyAG subsystems started influencing my design decisions in a bad way, and i had to get rid of them first. Soon(tm)!

[pouroverpaloma]

(putting this in your ask box instead of messages bc i'm sure this could be helpful to other people!!!)

how does one decide where to go for grad school? like for my program specifically but also in general??? i was thinking about my MLIS earlier today and looking thru the ALA database adn i got overwhelmed. thanks <3

Hi!! I've finally reached a conclusion, after thinking a lot, making it overly complex for myself, and throwing all that out.

First thing, APPLY FOR FAFSA. It's a pain but it's vital if you want to do any kind of work study or take out government loans. Similarly, make sure you check out the ALA website and see what scholarships you can apply for.

Then what I did, personally, was pick ten highly-ranked programs (according to US News and World Report) that appealed to me and make a spreadsheet with:

Price. The full price of what it would cost to complete a degree. Library school is very light on what you need to actually purchase (unsurprisingly), but you need to know ahead of time what the lump sum would be without financial aid or fellowships.

Program type. Do they offer in-person, online, or hybrid? If online, are classes synchronous (live zoom meetings) or asynchronous (video lectures and assignments)? I personally think synchronous programs are a LOT better for many reasons but hey, these all get you degrees

Interesting features. Do they have a specialization you think is cool? Do they have an on-campus museum or rare books library you could intern with?

Have you applied yet? I just make this a yes/no tick box to keep on top of what I've already done.

Are your letters of rec in yet? Same thing, just a tick box to keep track.

Then apply and see what comes your way! I got my MLIS from University of Illinois online, and I went to classes at night so I could keep working. It took me three years instead of two, because I was going part-time and taking summers off, but that didn't matter at all. I had a really great experience and I highly recommend that program. There are many other excellent ones, though!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

#20yrsago TSA OKs airport crotch-mauling https://joi.ito.com/weblog/2004/09/18/tighter-screeni.html

#20yrsago Haunted Mansion castmember’s remembrance https://web.archive.org/web/20040916234226/https://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_55663.asp

#15yrsago Teacher asks YA author if virtual visit can take place “with us being able to see you, but you not being able to see us” https://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/can-you-please-come-talk-to-my-class-but-not-look-at-anyone/

#15yrsago Britain’s postal-code database online at Wikileaks: produced at public expense, not owned by the public https://memex.craphound.com/2009/09/16/britains-postal-code-database-online-at-wikileaks-produced-at-public-expense-not-owned-by-the-public/

#15yrsago Working handcuff keys printed on a 3D printer https://blackbag.toool.nl/?p=940

#15yrsago Rich Seattle suburbs install ubiquitous surveillance cameras, cops follow all “suspicious” vehicles https://web.archive.org/web/20090922170058/http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009873854_medina16m.html

#15yrsago XKCD book is out https://blog.xkcd.com/2009/09/15/xkcd-volume-0/

#15yrsago Game economy credit-crunch: mismanaged bank freezes player accounts https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/08/virtual-bank-in-eve-freezes-accounts-due-to-deficit/

#10yrsago How your smartphone betrays you all day long https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/2014/07/30/how-your-innocent-smartphone-passes-on-almost-your-entire-life-to-the-secret-service/

#10yrsago Rightscorp cuts-and-runs as soon as it is challenged in court https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-internet-provider-refuses-to-expose-30000-alleged-pirates-140909/

#10yrsago Downvoting considered harmful https://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/disqus-icwsm14.pdf

#10yrsago 3D printed book of bas relief from Art Institute of Chicago https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:463657

#5yrsago Tolkien’s Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is probably a misogynist satire of women’s rights campaigner Victoria Sackville-West https://twitter.com/Quatr_us/status/1173211758833668096

#1yrago Greenwashing set Canada on fire https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/16/murder-offsets/#pulped-and-papered

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

[fuzzyfoe]

if pet hotel had little games and activities like neopets or club penguin puffle games, what would they be?

whatever would be within my skill level to program i guess

i think i would start out with a game where the pet is holding a basket beneath some trees and you have to catch falling fruit by moving the pet left and right. sounds nice and simple enough, and once i had enough of a variety of simple games i would then feel free to try and experiment with something more complex and take as much time as i need since the simple games are able to fill that space where something needs to be right now

if i made this a website-based virtual pet game like neopets and flight rising are, something that's gonna be tricky and would probably take me a long time is i would have to learn how to make an html5 application (which is what these games would be if this was the case, since flash is dead) that would be able to read pet information and user information from a database so the pet could appear in the minigame, be able to modify values like the amount of money the player has so the player can earn money by playing these games, and this database needs to be able to be read and written to by both these minigames and by regular pages like a player's profile page where you'd be able to see your current money balance, for instance. The only experience I have in regards to creating an html5 application is running the html dist Gradle command that libGDX has, which just converts all of your java code into javascript as its own contained thing when for this I would need to make something that actually has the ability to talk to other things. I would have to learn a ton of php in order to make this a thing as well, which I don't have a lot of experience with either.

If I were to turn the pet hotel into a fully-fledged automated and programmable game with my current knowledge and skillset, I think I'd have an easier time using libGDX and Java Swing to make it, and then people would have to download a jar file for it off of itch.io in order to play it. I feel like more people would play it if the game was entirely website-based because people don't really like to download things, which is kind of understandable, but learning web development is really hard and from what little I do know about it I'm kind of bad at it. I took a class where I learned how web sockets work in Java so I think I could be able to make something that connects online like this, but I would have to rent some server space in order to do this so the pet hotel would become something that starts actually costing me money to run if I did this. Also I already have a full-time job so the progress I would make on this would be pretty slow, and sometimes I struggle to muster up the motivation to even just make regular art during the time that I'm not working because my brain just kind of sucks like that. So for now i just run this thing that pretends to be a video game but is actually not because my brain prefers the instant gratification of watching youtube videos and playing video games that other people have already made instead of using that time to learn how to make a video game myself

[misophoniatroubles]

Helpful Accommodations for Misophonia (WIP)

Please note! You don't need to ask for, want, or get every single one of these accommodations. This list is so you can browse ideas and see what may or may not help you.

General

Being allowed to leave if you need to (In school, teachers are in charge of your wellbeing, so you will have to tell them beforehand or set up a signal you can give for when you need to leave. At most jobs, especially ones that are dangerous, you likely aren't going to be able to do this.)

Being allowed to wear ear protection without being reprimanded

Easy and accessible communication through text

Things that trigger you being removed from your enviorment (gum/food, a clock, something that has running water like a sink, etc.) (This is more individual but, if possible, ask. I got gum banned from my shop class because I got triggered while handling an electric saw.)

Education Specific

Taking tests and exams in a quiet room

A note-taker (Some universities have this as an official accommodation, they will provide who will take notes so you are free to leave and decompress if needed. However, you could also ask a friend to share notes with you! This is why we tell loved ones what we need support with.)

Recording lessons (Put the recording device near the front of the class, away enough from students that it won't pick up any sounds, but it may still pick up louder triggers like sniffs and coughs.)

Teacher's notes (This can be anything from the powerpoint file to a list given by the teacher of what they went over and what to study at home.)

Smaller Classes (This is less likely to be accepted, but asking won't hurt.)

Replace group activities with an individual assignment

Special classroom seating

Being let out of classes earlier so you don't have to walk through loud hallways

Eating in a separate area (Not all schools require students to eat at a specific spot but some do, and this is helpful! Even if chewing doesn't trigger you, being allowed actual time to rest throughout the day is good for you.)

Online classes (Many cost money, but there are some states in the US that fund public online education. I took Spanish online because there was no getting around not talking to people in an in-person class.)

Workplace Specific

Having a break time at a different time than other employees.

Getting a quieter keyboard/mouse

Communicating with other employees through text or notes so you can continue to wear ear protection

Not allowing food into meetings

Being allowed to record meetings

All scheduling should be put into an online database like a shared calendar so you don't have to actively hear it being announced and risk getting triggered

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

For many cooks, waiters and bartenders, it is an annoying entrance fee to the food-service business: Before starting a new job, they pay around $15 to a company called ServSafe for an online class in food safety.

That course is basic, with lessons like “bathe daily” and “strawberries aren’t supposed to be white and fuzzy, that’s mold.” In four of the largest states, this kind of training is required by law, and it is taken by workers nationwide.

But in taking the class, the workers — largely unbeknown to them — are also helping to fund a nationwide lobbying campaign to keep their own wages from increasing.

The company they are paying, ServSafe, doubles as a fund-raising arm of the National Restaurant Association — the largest lobbying group for the food-service industry, claiming to represent more than 500,000 restaurant businesses. The association has spent decades fighting increases to the minimum wage at the federal and state levels, as well as the subminimum wage paid to tipped workers like waiters.

The federal minimum wage has risen just once since 1996, to $7.25 from $5.15, while the minimum hourly wage for tipped workers has been $2.13 since 1991. Minimums are higher in many states, but still below what labor groups consider a living wage.

For years, the restaurant association and its affiliates have used ServSafe to create an arrangement with few parallels in Washington, where labor unwittingly helps to pay for management’s lobbying. First, in 2007, the restaurant owners took control of a training business. Then they helped lobby states to mandate the kind of training they already provided — producing a flood of paying customers.

More than 3.6 million workers have taken this training, providing about $25 million in revenue to the restaurant industry’s lobbying arm since 2010. That was more than the National Restaurant Association spent on lobbying in the same period, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service.

That $25 million represented about 2% of the National Restaurant Association’s total revenues over that same period, but more than half of the amount its members paid in dues. Most industry groups are much more reliant on big-dollar donors or membership support to meet their expenses. Most of the association’s revenues come from trade shows and other classes.

Tax-law experts say this arrangement, which has helped fuel a resurgence in the political influence of restaurants, appears legal.

But activists for raising minimum wages — and even some restaurant owners — say the arrangement is hidden from the workers it relies on.

“I’m sitting up here working hard, paying this money so that I can work this job, so I can provide for my family,” said Mysheka Ronquillo, 40, a line cook who works at a Carl’s Jr. hamburger restaurant and at a private school cafeteria in Westchester, Calif. “And I’m giving y’all money so y’all can go against me?”

Ms. Ronquillo is also a labor organizer in California. She said that she had taken the class every three years, as required, and that she never knew ServSafe funded the other side of that fight.

As workers have become more aware of how their payments to ServSafe are used, something of a backlash is developing. Looking ahead to coming battles over minimum wages in as many as nine states run by Democrats, including New York, Saru Jayaraman of the labor-advocacy group One Fair Wage said she was encouraging workers to avoid ServSafe.

“We’ll be telling them to use any possible alternatives,” Ms. Jayaraman said.

The kind of class that these workers pay for, called “food handler” training, is offered by ServSafe or its affiliates in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. But an online database maintained by the National Restaurant Association show the vast majority of its classes are taken in four large states where food-handler classes are mandatory for most workers: Texas, California, Illinois and Florida.

Other companies also offer this training. But restaurant industry veterans say that ServSafe is the dominant force in the market — to the point that some restaurant owners said they did not realize there were alternatives.

“ServSafe is very much the Kleenex” of the industry — a brand that defines the business, said Nick Eastwood, who runs a competitor called Always Food Safe. “We believe they’ve got at least 70%+ of the market. Maybe higher.”

The president of the National Restaurant Association, Michelle Korsmo, declined to be interviewed. In a written statement, she said the group had sought to protect both public health and the financial health of the industry.

“The association’s advocacy work keeps restaurants open; it keeps workers employed, it finds pathways for worker opportunity, and it keeps our communities healthy,” Ms. Korsmo wrote. Her group declined to say how much of the training market it captures.

As money flowed in from the National Restaurant Association’s training programs, its overall spending on politics and lobbying more than doubled from 2007 to 2021, tax filings show. The national association donated to Democrats, Republicans and conservative-leaning think tanks, and sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to state restaurant associations to beef up their lobbying.

During the Clinton and Obama administrations, the association was a major force in limiting employer-provided health care benefits. And though pressure from liberal groups has grown and workers’ wages have fallen for decades when adjusted for inflation, the group helped assemble enough bipartisan opposition to scuttle a bill in 2021 to raise the federal minimum wage for all workers to $15 per hour over five years.

The association had also won a series of battles over state-level wage minimums, though its fortunes reversed last year. Both the District of Columbia and Michigan moved to eliminate the “tip credit” system — where restaurants are allowed to pay waiters a salary below the minimum wage, on the expectation that tips from customers will make up the rest. That was the first time any state had eliminated the tip-credit system in more than 10 years.

Legally, the National Restaurant Association and its state-level affiliates are a species of nonprofit called a “business league,” with more freedom to lobby than a traditional charity.

Since the 1960s, their lobbying has focused heavily on the minimum wage — arguing that labor-intensive operations like restaurants, which employ more workers at or near the minimum wage than any other industry, could be put out of business by any significant increase in employee costs.

Fifteen years ago, they had just lost a battle in that fight.

Over the association’s objections, Congress had raised the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour. Former board members said they were searching for a new source of revenue — without asking members to pay more in dues.

“That’s when the decision was contemplated, of buying the ServSafe program,” said Burton “Skip” Sack, a former chairman of the association’s board. “Because it was profitable.”

At the time, the ServSafe program was run by a charity affiliated with the restaurant association. The association bought the operation, transforming it into an indirect fund-raising vehicle.

After that, state restaurant associations in California, Texas and Illinois lobbied for changes in state law.

Previously, those states had required food-safety training for restaurant managers, which typically was paid for by restaurants themselves. After the association’s takeover of ServSafe, lobbying records show, the state affiliates pushed for a broader and less-common type of mandate, covering all food “handlers” like cooks, waiters, bartenders and those who bus tables.

The three state legislatures agreed, in lopsided votes.

In written statements, the state restaurant associations said they were not trying to raise money. Instead, they said they worked with other groups seeking to reduce food-borne disease.

“This law was happening with or without our participation in the process,” said the president of the California Restaurant Association, Jot Condie. California legislative records show his association was the sponsor of the bill that imposed the mandate.

ServSafe soon had waves of new customers, which in turn generated more money for the association and its lobbying efforts. Today, Florida, California, Texas, Illinois and Utah all have similar requirements. John Bluemke, a senior vice president for sales at ServSafe from 2002 to 2010, said there was little need to pursue mandates in smaller states: “Once you did the big states, who cares about Nebraska?”

“If you’ve got a million people going through that thing, do the math,” Mr. Bluemke said. The National Restaurant Association does not release figures about the cost of offering food-handler classes, but Mr. Bluemke said that — because they are generally offered online — the costs are low and the profits high.

“We always said the first course costs you a million dollars,” Mr. Bluemke said, for making the video. “And the rest are free.”

When managers take mandatory training, restaurant veterans say, the employer usually pays. But state websites say that restaurant employees should expect to pay for these classes themselves, and restaurant workers interviewed by The New York Times said that was their experience.

The restaurant association notes that some employers have covered the costs of getting certified and that employees are given lower rates in certain circumstances. So not all 3.6 million workers paid $15 each.

“The N.R.A. is different from most traditional trade associations in our business model,” Dawn Sweeney, the National Restaurant Association’s chief executive at the time, wrote to members in 2014 — reminding them of what a good deal they had.

Business leagues, which are tax-exempt, are generally allowed to run a for-profit business, as long as it advances the common interest of their broader trade. The National Restaurant Association contends that its business cleanly fits this standard.

“The rules the I.R.S. has passed are not always clear as to what is and is not allowed,” said Anna Massoglia, an investigations manager at OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks the flow of money in politics. “This makes it easier for groups to exploit that lack of clarity. I’m not familiar with another group that has done it to this scale.”

The Internal Revenue Service declined to comment, citing taxpayer-privacy rules.

For restaurant workers, there is little clue that money paid to ServSafe supports lobbying — much less lobbying that tries to keep workers’ pay low. The only hint is a line on ServSafe’s website, saying it “reinvests proceeds from programs back into the industry.”

Even some members of the restaurant association — the beneficiaries of this arrangement — said they did not know how it worked.

Johnny Martinez, a Georgia restaurateur, said he supports a $15 minimum wage and pays at least that much in a state where it is still $7.25 per hour. And he describes his association membership as “the price of entry” for navigating the industry, “even though I disagree with them on a lot of things.”

But he expressed frustration upon discovering the connections between ServSafe and lobbying efforts, saying “it feels very wrong” to him.

“This is a certification that’s also wrapped up inside of a lobbyist,” Mr. Martinez said. “It is weird that the tests that they require the workers to pay for are being run by the same company that’s fighting to make sure those people don’t make more money.”

[faeriekit]

you post about library stuff, and I wanted to ask if you had an MLIS, and if so, how did you go about getting it? No pressure of course!

I am always down to talk about library school, no worries! 🧡🧡

I think I do have a couple posts in my library posting tab that also talk about my MLS process, so they may cover details I forget here, but details to know are:

I already worked at a library at the time that I applied to an MLIS program

Therefore I had a lot of help from other librarians, library assistants, administrative persons, and friends along the way

There were several other prospective students in my system that applied simultaneously, so we all could pool information so that we didn't all have to retread the same research holes simultaneously

I applied at the height of covid.

Several people in my workplace had already told me that online was the way to go if I was going to get a degree; better scheduling possibilities, more choice of programs, and more opportunities to apply; otherwise I would have had to go to the state school. It would have been fine. But traveling in person is a pain.

I did research on schools; what the price was per credit hour, how long it took to graduate, criteria to graduate, whether it was synchronous or asynchronous, or other things I might want to know during the application process. When picking a school, make sure it is ALA accredited if you are in the united states! They are the only schools! Do not pick a graduate degree in librarianship if ALA has not given it their Okay!

So I used their searchable database for an online, asynchronous, relatively cheap program. When I found one I liked, I went to look online specifically to see if it was an online program PRE-Covid. I did not want amateurs trying to work out zoom for the first time. I wanted a good program that already knew what it was doing.

So I found a program I liked, and double checked to see what I needed to apply. Normally it was three recommendation letters; due to covid, they only wanted one. Great! Begged one off a former professor. Normally I would have needed to take the GRE, but it was covid so it was waived, and I had a GPA high enough that the program would have waived the need for a GRE test score anyway. Score!! As someone who tests horribly on cumulative stuff, that was a huge relief.

I applied! I got in! I crammed as many classes in as I could simultaneously, since I was working part time and I needed to save money. I could have taken a maximum of six years to finish a degree, but every semester of tuition + sundry is a flat fee, So I saved my money by finishing as quickly as possible. (And, to be fair...nine credits a semester is easy. I used to do eighteen a semester in college. If you have ever taken an online course in your life, it's not that much harder in library school, especially when it's asynchronous.) I'd saved up money from a terrible former job where I couldn't see any friends or go anywhere to see anyone or take time to myself or even eat out, so I'd had money saved up I could use for my degree. 😬 I think in total it was somewhere between... $20,000 and $26,000. Semesters fluctuated between 4,000 and $6,000 depending on the classes I took. I never did winters and I never did summers, since the amount of classwork I could have done during those sessions wouldn't have made the flat fee worth it.

And then they were all keen to have me work on a practicum during my job, which was full time at that point, so I was working eleven hours a day in order to fulfill my degree requirements between my full time job and my part time job...it was super easy to arrange, since I just had to basically walk over to a former library I used to work and and be like "want me back here for free?" and they were like "is that illegal?" and I was like "apparently not", which is the benefit of networking, but our collective HR department had a conundrum of legal matters on their ends haha. And that's when I wrote Blister Pack out of sheer stress! 😊🧡🧡

And then I GRADUATED! Which just felt like Tuesday, since it was. I got my degree in the mail, my job made me pay a different entity $70 to make sure I was a "certified" librarian in this lovely state, and now I work the exact same job I did in grad school, but with slightly more pay.

Things I learned whilst pursing my degree:

Make out with a database. Seriously. Databases are 90% of your job now. The rest is on-the-floor maintenance, problem solving, and local politics. Learn to use limiters and Boolean goods and keywords and everything else, because you will need it.

The people who struggle the most are the former teachers and other alternate-profession professionals looking for a change in careers. The people who do the best are people who work in a library. If you have not worked in a library, volunteer at your local library. The concepts, lingo, and jargon will make so much more sense when you're exposed to them naturally.

Speaking of; network, network, network. Ask local librarians for help sooner rather than later, because eventually you are going to have to interview them or ask for their help or something. Know them now. Ask them your homework questions. Every librarian wants to talk shop. Let them.

Sometimes your books are cheap on Thriftbooks and Alibris and sometimes they are cheap because you find the PDF online for $0.00 and it feels morally wrong to use it for class but no it isn't. It's just illegal. But not even for you; it's only illegal for the site for hosting it. So...consider downloading your texts, lest they be $80 each.

OH but Worldcat does a price comparison on the side of every book entry so that you can see which site has a cheaper copy! That's just a library fact 🧡 Here's an example!

Anyway...this is just me. People who went in person ate up more time overall, but I also had a whole school of 90% White conservative-leaning students so that was kind of new and alarming for me. Go Texas! Double check if you're in any time zone changes if you go online...

People want to think that librarianship is a noble profession that can make a difference in a single life, and it is, but it's mostly public servitude. You will be paid less than other professionals with a graduate degree and you will have your budget slashed with no notice and you will have local townspeople and officials demand you justify the cost of running a library on the town and you will have to defend yourself every time, because you are a vital resource no one appreciates until they need it and every child deserves to read. Half of librarianship is fighting the good fight. The rest of it is construction paper and kid scissors, phone calls, public arguments, resource management, lysol wipes, and sometimes there's even books.

Anyway! If you read this far, make sure your library card is up to date! 🧡😘 Thanks for asking! I love it when I get library questions.

[burningvelvet]

I love the Romantics (esp 2nd gen) and was wondering where you learn more about them outside an academic setting?

I am by no means an expert, but I will try to answer by using stuff that has helped me!

For books, I highly recommend Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives by Daisy Hay as an introduction to the second generation Romantics. My only complaint is that it leaves out a ton of entertaining stuff imo, but it’s meant to be brief. It isn’t available for free anywhere afaik, but it’s very worth buying. It gives an overview of the movement & explains how all the key figures are interrelated in a very clever way. For biographies imo the best on Byron is Byron: a Portrait by Marchand, most agree the best on Shelley is Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes, most agree the best on Mary is Miranda Seymour’s Mary Shelley, & the best on Keats is (more arguably?) John Keats by Walter Jackson Bates. For critical analysis on the works, it’s best to research on a case-by-case basis (there are literally thousands of books & papers analyzing Frankenstein… I shudder to think of attempting to read even half of them).

This link to the BARS Blog "Romanticism: online resources list" -- https://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=2900 -- is a fantastic resource list by Dr. Anna Mercer who is an important Romanticist. She wrote a work called The Collaborative Literary Relationship of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (2019) which is also one of my favorites & I highly highly recommend it as well.

Other good resource guides: 1 University of Texas at Arlington Romantic Resources under the internet & lib headings https://libguides.uta.edu/romantic/resources 2 Jack Lynch of Rutgers Romantic resources list https://jacklynch.net/Lit/romantic.html 3 Uni of Pittsburgh Romantic research guide under the links heading https://pitt.libguides.com/romanticism/links 4 Queen's Uni Romantic research guide https://guides.library.queensu.ca/engl340/websites

Having access to databases and libraries really helps, but those are academic (unless you have a public library—if so, pls use it). If I’m researching a broad topic I sometimes start through Wikipedia & go from there, searching for what information I need by “phrase searching” on Google.

IMPORTANT ADVICE: this will all feel very overwhelming and confusing at first! I highly suggest just picking a work or a writer, finding something that really interests you, then learn more about it/them if you’d like, & just continue from there as a starting point. For me: I knew a *little* about these writers, and I’ve always loved Frankenstein, but I didn’t start any heavy Romantic research until I read Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron, specifically Canto III, which is considered one of his best works and one of the key Romantic works in general. It really shook me to my core. I believe I discovered it from the Wikipedia page on the “Byronic Hero” concept (which stemmed from Childe Harold). I really just went down the rabbit hole from there… and I don’t know how I got here…

Good luck on your journey, and thx for the ask!

Btw — despite being an English Lit major, I haven’t actually studied Romanticism in any of my classes sadly! I just haven’t had the opportunity or it hasn’t come up; my program is mainly based on modern topics though, and so most of us only get to take a few historical classes. But my research on this has been independent. The first gen Romantics have been briefly discussed in one or two of my classes, and Frankenstein has featured in a lot of my classes, but that’s in a league of it’s own really—it’s one of the very few classic novels that most Americans are familiar with tbh!

[izicodes]

Don't know if you've touched on this topic before, but do you have any advice on dealing with discrimination within comp sci (specifically sexism)? I have bad anxiety and have constant thoughts telling me how I'll never be good enough or don't belong. My brother who is a senior dev has had a passion for computers since a small child while I just developed an interest within the past two years. My family takes his career seriously but then turn around and tell me how great of a secretary I'll be lol. Thanks for your time!

Hiya 💗

Just some background on me: I haven't had any sexist experiences in during my whole journey of learning software development during my apprenticeship and now working as a Junior Web Dev. I'm the only girl in the Dev team (6 of us in total), the only other woman is the Manager of the Dev team but she does databases + business oriented work so she doesn't code at all. I'm the youngest in the team also so they see me as "oh let's teach the kid of the group" kind of thing. So at work I don't feel any type of sexism, the lads are really open to teach me a lot stuff which I am thankful!

I don't know any other irl developers besides work so I'll move on to online. Online I know a lot more women developers; Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter (or X whatever it's called). Maybe it's because I've like cultured the content I see to them idk. I'm really glad to have that constantly on my timeline as it inspires me to push and do/become better because if those girlies can do it, so can I.

Though all the teachers/instructors I had were all men, they didn't make me feel small or not worthy to be in Computer Science, they were the opposite and pushed me to do it more. My Dad did Computer Science with CyberSecurity at university and he always pushed me to do computer science when I got older - not force but inspired me to do it (wanted to do medicine but too hard so switched to comp sci/programming)!

So, in my experience, I never had a really bad sexist interaction because I did computer science. People are shocked I am in programming in general but more like "Oooooh that's cool! Didn't know you did that!" kind of thing!

Now, this doesn't mean I haven't seen sexist remarks online, because I have but more through memes. I always ignore. Everyone, man or woman, should ignore such remarks/meme and move on. Don't let a bunch of people determine what you want and what's best for you! If you did, they would be controlling your life and not you yourself.

I don't know if that's easier said than done for you because I'm a hard person on people saying bad things to me. I just ignore you literally. I'm polite yes, but what you will say to me will go through one ear and out the other if it's really negative. Pretty much a "I don't care about your opinion, I will do me anyways" kind of person. E.g. if my brothers were to tell me "oh you a girl, don't do computer science" I won't listen to them at all.

And at the end of the day, what are they gonna do? Will your family members that are saying those stuff to you physically stop you from learning computer science? Especially since it's so accessible online so all you need a is a computer? All around the world, women are leaning computer science one way or another to change their lives and/or the lives around them.

They are making so much effort so for me to say "oh well.. you know some lads in my comp sci class say I can't do comp sci so I shouldn't" or "oh well I don't think learning programming is a woman's thing yknow because it's so dominated by men" - excuse my language here but that's flipping ridiculous!

This isn't some feminist or even anti-feminist thing here, it's a plain simple human thing: proving yourself and even the people around you wrong. Go into it and succeed. You're not too old or too young.

Why are their programs like SheCodes or BGIT (black girl in tech) that are making effort to help women push into tech? There's more women in tech now than there has been ever so if you're a woman and want to go into Tech but some lads are saying no? Do it anyways.

If a company has lads like that in them, that's the company's fault for hiring a sexist non-team player - says a lot about that company.

As humans we are never good enough so just get that out of your mind, less stress. Good enough for a job? all you got to do is keep going out it. Keep learning the theory, keep building the projects, keep redoing your resume and applying for jobs - keep going.

You quit, you let yourself down - especially when programming/ computer science is your calling!

I went on a bit of a rant but I hope some of this helps 🥳👍🏾💗

[elisgeorge]

Did you know there are services that offer free university-level modules, for free?

I am one of those people that are obsessed with learning, but structured courses are expensive. Not these. Here are some links if you, too, are obsessed with the pursuit of knowledge and want to learn something (for FREE!)

EdX is my personal favourite. It offers loads of subjects that are usually taken from university courses, and the ones that I have done are pretty good. These can all be taken for free, or you can pay £40 to take the assignments and recieve a graded certificate. Now, the catch here is that most of the courses are archived, which means that, occasionally, some of the links won't work and you have to be creative with the readings. I have found this to be a pretty minimal issue though, and it is worth it.

I recently took this EdX course about 19th Century literature and it was excellent. Some of the links were broken so I took some creative liberties with the readings, but I read all of the books discussed and used the course materials to critically analyse them as I did so. I didn't follow the course exactly, but it was still an enriching experience and something I wouldn't have thought to do otherwise.

Another good one is OpenLearn, which is a branch of the Open University. The OpenLearn courses are usually pretty good, although some can feel a bit lackluster and basic. Don't expect super in-depth courses, but they're good for an introduction to a subject, or to top up your skills in somethign you haven't done in a while. These offer free certificates of participation, so they're great if, say, you want a career change but you haven't studied data science since college. I enjoyed the classes I took, but I wouldn't say they were as challenging as EdX.

I recently took this OpenLearn course about Hadrian's Rome. Classical history is something I'm interested in and this was a great way to guide my study of an aspect of it.

Coursera is a very popular one. Similar to OpenLearn, these courses can sometimes be a little surface-level. These also have a much larger focus on building transferrable skills than developing cultural knowledge and learning for your own enrichment. Even so, there are some wonderful gems on there if you're willing to scroll through and find them. Coursera is also great because it has project-centred courses, where you work towards a finished product under the (virtual, recorded) guidance of an expert. Think of it like a corporate skillshare.

Last summer I took this Coursera course about screenwriting. It was project based, and I came out of it with a fully realised first draft of a pilot episode of a TV show. I realised through this process that maybe screenwriting wasn't for me, but it allowed me to get out of my comfort zone with writing and explore that avenue that I would have probably always wodered about.

OpenCulture is a good database of free courses that then redirects you to other websites, but you have to be willing to sift through the sludge with this one, as some are more worth your time than others.

Another good way to find free courses is to search for them on university websites. I have found that most US universities (and loads of UK ones too, though it is less common) offer free online courses. You have to be careful here, because sometimes they will say they are free but actually the 'free' part is viewing the syllabus.

You might be thinking 'what is the point of a course that doesn't get me a qualification?' and I'd say 'I get you, because I felt the same way,' but if you're anything like me and love learning, they're a godsend. Of course, there is nothing stopping you from finding all of the course content online, and I'd actually encourage you to do that alongside the courses, but knowing where to start is the difficult part. There is so much information to learn about any given topic that it can be overwhelming. These courses provide you with a structure that you can then use within your own wider research to learn about subjects you maybe don't want to commit to in a formal setting.

I'm not paid by any of these websites, I just think the monetisation of knowledge is wrong and awful and disgusting and anyway to beat that should be celebrated and shared and used as widely as possible.

Happy learning! :)