#you can use them at checkout

[cheridraws]

my built in camera app doesn't even read QR codes so I had to download a SEPARATE app to read these cursed codes. its SO BAD

RIGHT, like why would you institute a system like this when you had a perfectly functioning one before??? And it’s even inaccessible for some people, as you said! What are you supposed to do if your phone can’t read QR codes? What if you don’t have a phone?

The paper coupons in those little magazines were fine!! They were cute even!! I looked through that shit like it was the evening paper!Now I have to go through a laggy app that barely works, or try and fail to scan a QR code in the middle of the store (and mine doesn’t even have service so. what am I supposed to do??)

Kroger I’m begging u go back to paper pleasepleadeplease

[muffinlance]

Crochet Pattern: Rollable Isopuppy (Giant Isopod Dog)

Crochet an isopuppy! As cuddled in Salvage; story and pattern both by me. Whether you’ve read the story or not, treat yourself to a Very Good Dog. You deserve it. <3

>>> Get the pattern here! <<<

[id: Photos of a crocheted isopuppy (giant isopod dog) from various angles. It has the head and tail of a dog, with isopod legs, shell, and antennae. It is a very Good Boi. End id.]

Also that is now my site for patterns, both sewn and crocheted (Dragon Zuko is also up there), so. Subscribe if you're interested in that. If you're interested in my writing, that's at this site. Also I'm on Ravelry now.

>>> Isopuppy Pattern! <<<

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

my strongest take is that if you have more than 5-10 items (range depends on size and ease of scanning) you should not use the self-checkout when there is a perfectly good cashier line already.

If you bring alcohol or other age restricted items to the self checkout I will kill you in the middle of the Walmart and everyone behind me in line will be cheering.

[dragonanne4fun]

.

[libelelle]

ALL CUSTOMERS BEED TO EXPLODE

[leafy-m]

So I hit my 700th edit for the WHA wiki today, because I am a totally normal person

[mbat]

i think people should be fully allowed to opt out of working jobs and still be able to live comfortably no matter what their situation is and im not fucking kidding

[this-doesnt-endd]

Im so tired despite sleeping all day and i have to go in at 8:30 tomorrow cause even tho its not christmas we have holiday hours still and i work the day after and friday abd then first week of january ill also prolly work all week cause second week i have my production assistant certification im like not having any rest till nearly mid january to which ill have 3 days then no more rest till after valentines

[july-19th-club]

i'm NOT sure but i think it MIGHT have been possible that our in with the local newspaper was . potentially in some way . flirting with me? in a way where i was able to maybe halfway pick up on it and. reciprocate . idk we had a little chitchat about the weather and then it became about star trek and wars themed coffee mugs until my boss showed up. and like during the entire convo with my boss he was also sort of talking to me? like in the angle he was standing at and when the convo stopped being about work stuff and devolved into chitchat he kept like. sort of including me eye-contact-wise. that might not be flirtign maybe its just normal conversation. he made a point to say he was glad we hadn't put jk rowling on our march madness author bracket. which is sort of apropos of nothing unless he wanted to make a point of telegraphing his social/political leanings such that anyone listening would know that information about him if he was attempting to get their attention in a positive way. also dont know if THAT'S flirting but it seems like it's Something. socially. also he gave me a free newspaper which was funny

[fakeasmr]

they finally started selling salt and vinegar poppables at the grocery store, but then they closed the self checkout because they want the cashiers to promote the new points card so they're on thin fucking ice

[ikkan]

went to ups to return my pc and the old man working there literally asked me if i was shipping it. like no, sir….this my emotional support pc that i decided to just casually place it down on the desk, here, so i can rest. 🙃

[swagging-back-to]

my unpopular opinion is that i actually really like self checkout in stores and I'm glad it's been implemented at basically every big retailer.

[neverendingford]

.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon illegally interferes with an historic UK warehouse election

I'm in to TARTU, ESTONIA! Overcoming the Enshittocene (Monday, May 8, 6PM, Prima Vista Literary Festival keynote, University of Tartu Library, Struwe 1). AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Amazon is very good at everything it does, including being very bad at the things it doesn't want to do. Take signing up for Prime: nothing could be simpler. The company has built a greased slide from Prime-curiosity to Prime-confirmed that is the envy of every UX designer.

But unsubscribing from Prime? That's a fucking nightmare. Somehow the company that can easily figure out how to sign up for a service is totally baffled when it comes to making it just as easy to leave. Now, there's two possibilities here: either Amazon's UX competence is a kind of erratic freak tide that sweeps in at unpredictable intervals and hits these unbelievable high-water marks, or the company just doesn't want to let you leave.

To investigate this question, let's consider a parallel: Black Flag's Roach Motel. This is an icon of American design, a little brown cardboard box that is saturated in irresistibly delicious (to cockroaches, at least) pheromones. These powerful scents make it admirably easy for all the roaches in your home to locate your Roach Motel and enter it.

But the interior of the Roach Motel is also coated in a sticky glue. Once roaches enter the motel, their legs and bodies brush up against this glue and become hopeless mired in it. A roach can't leave – not without tearing off its own legs.

It's possible that Black Flag made a mistake here. Maybe they wanted to make it just as easy for a roach to leave as it is to enter. If that seems improbable to you, well, you're right. We don't even have to speculate, we can just refer to Black Flag's slogan for Roach Motel: "Roaches check in, but they don't check out."

It's intentional, and we know that because they told us so.

Back to Amazon and Prime. Was it some oversight that cause the company make it so marvelously painless to sign up for Prime, but such a titanic pain in the ass to leave? Again, no speculation is required, because Amazon's executives exchanged a mountain of internal memos in which this is identified as a deliberate strategy, by which they deliberately chose to trick people into signing up for Prime and then hid the means of leaving Prime. Prime is a Roach Motel: users check in, but they don't check out:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

When it benefits Amazon, they are obsessive – "relentless" (Bezos's original for the company) – about user friendliness. They value ease of use so highly that they even patented "one click checkout" – the incredibly obvious idea that a company that stores your shipping address and credit card could let you buy something with a single click:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Patent

But when it benefits Amazon to place obstacles in our way, they are even more relentless in inventing new forms of fuckery, spiteful little landmines they strew in our path. Just look at how Amazon deals with unionization efforts in its warehouses.

Amazon's relentless union-busting spans a wide diversity of tactics. On the one hand, they cook up media narratives to smear organizers, invoking racist dog-whistles to discredit workers who want a better deal:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/amazon-chris-smalls-smart-articulate-leaked-memo

On the other hand, they collude with federal agencies to make workers afraid that their secret ballots will be visible to their bosses, exposing them to retaliation:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-violated-labor-law-alabama-union-election-labor-official-finds-rcna1582

They hold Cultural Revolution-style forced indoctrination meetings where they illegally threaten workers with punishment for voting in favor of their union:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-union-staten-island-nlrb.html

And they fire Amazon tech workers who express solidarity with warehouse workers:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-fires-tech-employees-workers-criticism-warehouse-climate-policies/

But all this is high-touch, labor-intensive fuckery. Amazon, as we know, loves automation, and so it automates much of its union-busting: for example, it created an employee chat app that refused to deliver any message containing words like "fairness" or "grievance":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/doubleplusrelentless/#quackspeak

Amazon also invents implausible corporate fictions that allow it to terminate entire sections of its workforce for trying to unionize, by maintaining the tormented pretense that these workers, who wear Amazon uniforms, drive Amazon trucks, deliver Amazon packages, and are tracked by Amazon down to the movements of their eyeballs, are, in fact, not Amazon employees:

https://www.wired.com/story/his-drivers-unionized-then-amazon-tried-to-terminate-his-contract/

These workers have plenty of cause to want to unionize. Amazon warehouses are sources of grueling torment. Take "megacycling," a ten-hour shift that runs from 1:20AM to 11:50AM that workers are plunged into without warning or the right to refuse. This isn't just a night shift – it's a night shift that makes it impossible to care for your children or maintain any kind of normal life.

Then there's Jeff Bezos's war on his workers' kidneys. Amazon warehouse workers and drivers notoriously have to pee in bottles, because they are monitored by algorithms that dock their pay for taking bathroom breaks. The road to Amazon's warehouse in Coventry, England is littered with sealed bottles of driver piss, defenestrated by drivers before they reach the depot inspection site.

There's so much piss on the side of the Coventry road that the prankster Oobah Butler was able to collect it, decant it into bottles, and market it on Amazon as an energy beverage called "Bitter Lemon Release Energy," where it briefly became Amazon's bestselling energy drink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

(Butler promises that he didn't actually ship any bottled piss to people who weren't in on the gag – but let's just pause here and note how weird it is that a guy who hates our kidneys as much as Jeff Bezos built and flies a penis-shaped rocket.)

Butler also secretly joined the surge of 1,000 workers that Amazon hired for the Coventry warehouse in advance of a union vote, with the hope of diluting the yes side of that vote and forestall the union. Amazon displayed more of its famously selective competence here, spotting Butler and firing him in short order, while totally failing to notice that he was marketing bottles of driver piss as a bitter lemon drink on Amazon's retail platform.

After a long fight, Amazon's Coventry workers are finally getting their union vote, thanks to the GMB union's hard fought battle at the Central Arbitration Committee:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/04/26/amazon-warehouse-workers-in-coventry-will-vote-on-trade-union-recognition/

And right on schedule, Amazon has once again discovered its incredible facility for ease-of-use. The company has blanketed its shop floor with radioactively illegal "one click to quit the union" QR codes. When a worker aims their phones at the code and clicks the link, the system auto-generates a letter resigning the worker from their union.

As noted, this is totally illegal. English law bans employers from "making an offer to an employee for the sole or main purpose of inducing workers not to be members of an independent trade union, take part in its activities, or make use of its services."

Now, legal or not, this may strike you as a benign intervention on Amazon's part. Why shouldn't it be easy for workers to choose how they are represented in their workplaces? But the one-click system is only half of Amazon's illegal union-busting: the other half is delivered by its managers, who have cornered workers on the shop floor and ordered them to quit their union, threatening them with workplace retaliation if they don't.

This is in addition to more forced "captive audience" meetings where workers are bombarded with lies about what life in an union shop is like.

Again, the contrast couldn't be more stark. If you want to quit a union, Amazon makes this as easy as joining Prime. But if you want to join a union, Amazon makes that even harder than quitting Prime. Amazon has the same attitude to its workers and its customers: they see us all as a resource to be extracted, and have no qualms about tricking or even intimidating us into doing what's best for Amazon, at the expense of our own interests.

The campaigning law-firm Foxglove is representing five of Amazon's Coventry workers. They're doing the lord's work:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/05/02/legal-challenge-to-amazon-uks-new-one-click-to-quit-the-union-tool/

All this highlights the increasing divergence between the UK and the US when it comes to labor rights. Under the Biden Administration, @NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has promulgated a rule that grants a union automatic recognition if the boss does anything to interfere with a union election:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

In other words, if Amazon tries these tactics in the USA now, their union will be immediately recognized. Abruzzo has installed an ultra-sensitive tilt-sensor in America's union elections, and if Bezos or his class allies so much as sneeze in the direction of their workers' democratic rights, they automatically lose.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/06/one-click-to-quit-the-union/#foxglove

Image: Isabela.Zanella (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ballot-box-2.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[katsukistofu]

peaches (you're the cream of the crop)

contents ౨ৎ ⋆ touya todoroki x fem reader. fluff. slightly suggestive. cursing. ⭑ a series of grocery trips after touya is discharged from the hospital gives you both a sense of normalcy you never thought you’d be able to have again.

monday

“put it back.” he wrinkles his nose as you continue to pick out tomatoes from the neat stack in front of you. “i said put it back.”

you stick your tongue out and tie up the bag after you put the last tomato in, dropping it in the cart he was pushing.

“ew.”

you giggle, he was acting like a little kid.

“touyaaa, you have to eat your veggies to grow big and strong.”

“bullshit. all the brat eats is soba and he’s almost taller than me now.” he grumbles. “and tomatoes are fruits.”

“tastes like a veggie.” your hip gently bumps into his after you walk back to him from the vegetables. “and maybe shoto’s taller than you ‘cause he actually listens to me.”

he rolls his eyes at that, and hesitantly reaches for your hand.

he’s still not used to being with you like this, alone, despite knowing you stayed by his side through countless hospital visits he wished he was conscious for.

but it’s okay because you’re here now, soft skin soothing against his rough, charred flesh. you don’t seem to mind though, not even the fact that he tends to holds you a little more tightly than he used to.

touya doesn’t let go of your hand. not once. not when you went to get a napa cabbage, or when you inspected the peaches on sale for any mushy spots.

or even when he lets you drag him to a stand in the freezer aisle where a nice store employee offers you two samples of gyoza, which was surprisingly good considering it was from a brand you’ve never heard of.

you feed touya his share, his eyes wide as he waits for you to finish blowing on it for him before holding it in front of his lips to eat.

not until you ask “can you go get more bags for me touya?” in that soft voice of yours that turns his knees to jelly, does he even consider the idea of releasing you from his grasp. you ran out when you were getting green onions.

turquoise eyes flicker to you, a hint of disappointment in them. he really doesn’t want to let go.

with a quick glance around, it’s obvious the supermarket was practically empty. which made sense, the two of you purposely chose to come on a monday morning.

perfect.

you use the handle of the cart to push yourself on your tippy toes, taking the opportunity to give him a soft kiss on the cheek.

“please?”

he blinks rapidly, ducking his head down as he barely bites back a smile. you had him wrapped around your little finger and you didn’t even know it sometimes.

he’s always been weak for you.

“‘kay. be right back.” and you can’t help the laugh that bubbles up from your throat, knowing he means it this time.

from now on, he’ll always come back to you. to home.

he quickly returns from his trip to the dispenser roll of plastic bags near the checkout line and promptly dumps them in the cart.

“i changed my mind.” he says as he swiftly slips behind you to hug your waist, catching you in the middle of putting a packet of tofu skin in the nearly full cart. a soft weight can be felt on your hair as his chin rests on your head.

you smile, squeezing his forearms. “about what?”

“….i guess i’ll eat tomatoes.”

“awww, for me?”

“only for you.”

friday

— wild geraniums are rich in flower symbolism. they are associated with love, peace, joy, health, fertility, and spirituality.

it was a warm friday afternoon the next time you and touya go shopping.

the shizuoka prefecture had reached a new high today for the month, a sweltering thirty four degrees, and by the time you two get there you’re sweating bullets.

the cold air conditioning blasts you in the face, cooling your sweat as you’re met with the sight of mothers and elderly women bustling around, carts laden with fresh produce to last the next few weeks by cooking warm meals for their families.

he sighs next to you as the both of you stand in silence, enjoying the breeze for just moment longer.

touya grabs a basket for you, since you’re only planning to grab a few things for shoto anyway. a light pink sticky note rests on the palm of your hand, and he watches as you peer at the youngest’s neat handwriting.

a packet of soba noodles, a new pocky flavor, mousse matcha, that he wanted to try with his friends, and a bottle of green tea.

the two of you are in the snack aisle when he texts, touya too busy examining the ingredients of a box of choco-pie to notice you taking your phone out.

shoto [08:51]

Sorry for the late notice, can you please pick up a potted flower?

It’s for mom.

But don’t let Touya-nii pick.

It’s your choice that I trust.

you giggle at his remark, while your fingers fumble for the pen you know is somewhere.

thankfully, touya saves you by magically pulling it out from the depths of your bag, and places it in the palm of your hand.

you whisper a quick thanks and kiss his cheek. his face goes hot the moment you pull away to scribble on the list in your hand.

‘stop by the plant nursery’ is added to your sticky. it was only a block away on the way back to the todoroki house, so touya and you could just swing by really quick after getting shoto’s stuff. due to lack of a hard surface to write on, your writing was kind of messy.

maybe you should’ve asked touya if you could use his chest, but you doubt the grandmas in the aisle over would approve.

a new notification pops up on your screen.

natsuo [09:03]

helloo my favorite future sister-in-law

can u pick up some fish for sashimi pls

pls pls i got an A on my presentation today

touya leans over your shoulder to read the text and fakes a gag. he never liked fish, and eating it raw? no way in hell.

between the four of them inheriting most of their mother’s likeness (fuck whatever his dad’s weak ass excuse for genes was), you’d think they’d also gain her love of warm dishes like oden and niku-jaga.

as the eldest, of course it was his duty to set things straight and comment on his sibling’s questionable tastes.

you [09:04]

ew

you [09:04]

hot soba is better

mission accomplished, touya proudly hands your phone back to you. you bite back a laugh as you read his texts.

how eloquent of him.

natsuo [09:05]

????????

natsuo [09:05]

BITCH

I KNOW THATS YOU TOUYA

you roll your eyes at the two’s antics and grab your boyfriends hand, leading him to the seafood section.

a wide array of fish was displayed before you, and you take a picture of the ones labeled for sashimi.

you [09:10]

which one? :)

natsuo [09:11]

the salmon !!!!!

you [09:12]

ʕ •ᴥ•ʔゝ☆

natsuo [09:13]

THANK USOMHCH

I LOV YOU

MORE THANTOUYA

another notification appears as you quickly swipe out of natsuo’s texts before your boyfriend can throw your phone across the supermarket.

fuyumi [09:26]

are you guys at the mart right now?

you [09:27]

we are lol :9

did natsu brag about getting sashimi the moment he got home from his lecture?

fuyumi [09:28]

yeah.

giggling a little, you can almost hear her slightly exasperated tone.

you take a picture of an unsuspecting dabi looking at the frozen steamed buns and he side eyes you after you turn away, already having a sneaking suspicion who you were sending it to.

you [09:28]

touyamakinghearteyesatredbeanbuns.png

fuyumi [09:30]

fatass

you muffle your laughter as touya stalks over to you, swiping the phone out of your hands just as fuyumi texts again.

fuyumi [09:31]

anyways i was going to ask

can you add panko bread crumbs to your cart please?

i wanted make katsudon for you all tonight :>

touya’s types furiously as you hide your face in his chest in a silent fit of laughter.

you [09:32]

only if you take back calling me a fatass, fatass

fuyumi [09:33]

please i’ve hear worse threats from my kindergarteners in the sandbox

you’re almost to the checkout line, before touya stops you.

you don’t even have to take a glance in the direction he’s looking in.

“touya, no.”

“touya, yes.”

he wants to grin so bad but his new staples are still fresh from last week’s surgery.

his mouth settles for a safe pout to win your pity.

unfortunately for him you had an iron will in concerns to his health.

“the nurse said ‘no processed foods for the next thirteen days.’ that includes shrimp chips, dummy.”

your hand around his bicep is firm as you drag him away, and he stares longingly back at the snack aisle.

“where are we going?” he murmurs, the grocery bags that he had insisted carrying in one hand while letting you drag him along in the other.

he makes sure he’s walking on the side of the curb.

you slow your pace to walk beside him and he can hear the teasing smile in your voice.

“to bring a baby home to your mom.”

“okay… wait what?!”

he stares at the potted geraniums in your hands as you exit the plant nursery, eyes flicking up to meet your cheeky grin.

“our baby.”

so that’s what you meant.

you looked a little too pleased with yourself and had somehow gotten a smudge of dirt on your forehead in the process of choosing the perfect flowers for his mother.

he wipes it off with his thumb, and pretends to lick it to see your reaction. your squeals of protest and the way your eyes smile when you laugh make his stomach do a flip.

just like when he met you for the first time.

touya decides anything is worth it as long as he gets to see you make that face. especially pretending eating dirt. fuck the shrimp chips, the only snack he needed was you.

except you weren’t just a snack.

you were a goddamn meal.

he raises an eyebrow and smirks, eyes dancing with mischief as he looks down at you. a firm hand pressed against your belly as he places a painstakingly soft kiss on the spot where the dirt smudge used to be.

“don’t worry.” he breathes. you can feel him smile into the crook of your neck, his fingers caressing your stomach as you squirm ticklishly against him.

“i’ll get you a real one someday.”

you nearly drop the geraniums on his foot.

sunday

today is sunday.

meaning it’s weekly movie night in the todoroki household.

shoto was the one who made it a tradition, after liking it so much when he did it with his classmates. everyone agreed it was the perfect low-effort family bonding activity after a long week.

natsuo just finished taking his finals. you’re relieved not to see him pull anymore all-nighters.

fuyumi’s on summer break. letters from her students written in crayon and covered in silly doodles of her are litter the front of the fridge.

you smile as you pass by it when you’re on on the way to shoto’s room to help him do that little braid he liked on the side of his hair. he was starting to grow it out now.

rei makes sure to volunteer at the local gardening center in the mornings, ensuring her afternoons and evenings are free to spend time with her kids.

enji calls off from work the moment it hits six. his sidekicks at the agency can take care of whatever happens while he’s gone.

touya and you are in charge of buying snacks, and you get everyone’s favorite. after checking out, the two of you head home hand in hand.

you’re snuggled under a blanket with touya. it was shoto’s turn to choose a movie, and the sounds of shrek played as you grew sleepier and sleepier. touya’s warm arms, which had you trapped in his lap, were not helping.

you point at the plate of tuna mayo onigiri on the coffee table. rei and fuyumi had made them earlier while you and him were out at the supermarket.

“remember when you ate so many of those because natsuo dared you to and you got a tummy ache?” he lets out a noise akin to a giggle, and your mouth splits into a grin at the familiar sound.

memories of hot summers sleeping on the floor with the fan on full blast and staying up to see fireflies come flooding back to you.

lying on the roof, you remember him resting his head on your chest while pointing out constellations to you, echoes of shared laughter filling the night air as he’d get them wrong every single time.

the stolen glances at each other between bites of juicy watermelon and soba. his ears turning redder than the slice of fruit in his hands when you catch him staring, the smug look on your face quickly turning into one of concern as he choked on his food and you rushed to pat his back.

in the present, you cuddle up impossibly closer to him, and he shivers as your warm breath hits his neck.

you had really missed this. he did too.

he couldn’t wait to spend the rest of the summer with you.

the rest of his life, too. he wasn’t planning on leaving you alone again, not now, not ever.

with you in his arms, he focuses on the movie, laughing along with shoto as fiona attempts to yank out the arrow in shrek’s butt. he turns to you, a smile tugging at his lips. his hair looks even softer against the glow of the projector.

“would you love me if i turned into shrek?”

you grin, poking his cheek. “i’d miss this pretty face of yours too much.”

"scars and all?"

"scars and all."

he frowns playfully at that despite the butterflies coming to life in his stomach, and leans forward to rest his head against your shoulder. you smirk, catching a whiff of your conditioner. “i knew you only liked me for my looks.”

“shush.” you point at something on the coffee table.

he spots the bag of shrimp chips, not so subtly lighting up.

you must have snuck them onto the conveyor belt while you two were standing in the checkout line when he wasn’t looking.

“i love you so much holy shit.” he whispers, nuzzling into your shoulder.

“i know.”

cue the side eye from him.

you roll your eyes at his dramatics and turn around to straddle his strong thighs, raising your hands to gently hold his face in them.

touya shivers as your thumb brushes against his cheek, your touch sweet like the peaches he shared with you after breakfast that morning.

“i love you too.” you whisper back, just in time before he lifts the blanket up to cover the both of you in the dark as he hungrily leans forward to close the gap between you.

rei’s the first one to notice you two asleep on the couch as the ending credits roll.

she gets another fluffy blanket from the closet to layer on top of the one already on your sleeping forms, making sure you’re both properly covered.

she places a kiss on touya’s forehead, then yours, before hugging the rest of her children goodnight and giving them kisses as well.

enji follows suit, muttering a gruff goodnight to everyone. a chorus of quiet good nights trail after him as he lumbers off.

fuyumi, natsuo, and shoto are the last ones left in the living room.

they smirk knowingly at each other as they see touya squeeze you tighter in his sleep, mumbling something about how lucky he is that you’re his.

something about getting you a ring too.

as the three siblings exit the room, they wordlessly shared one last excited glance before heading separate ways to their respective beds. shoto was especially pleased.

when you started living with them, he could ask you to help braid his hair everyday.

he wants you to teach him when you have the time, too. touya could never get it right like you did when you weren’t here.

at least touya had enough of a grasp on his sense of style to help him pick outfits.

you, obviously, were already a todoroki in all of their hearts.

but they still couldn’t wait for their big brother to grow a pair and tie the knot with you.

[burins]

I know this is the Take Personal Responsibility for Systemic Issues website, but I keep seeing weirdly guilt trippy posts about libraries and ebook licenses, which are a labyrinth from hell and not actually something you personally need to feel guilty about. here are a few facts about ebook licenses you may not know:

in Libby/Overdrive, which currently operates in most US public libraries, ebook licenses vary widely in how much they cost and what their terms are. some ebooks get charged per use, some have a set number of uses before the license runs out, and others have a period of time they're good for (usually 1-2 years) with unlimited checkouts during that period before they expire. these terms are set by the publisher and can also vary from book to book (for instance, a publisher might offer two types of licenses for a book, and we might buy one copy of a book with a set number of uses we want to have but know won't move as much, and another copy with a one year unlimited license for a new bestseller we know will be really moving this year.)

you as a patron have NO way of knowing which is which.

ebook licenses are very expensive compared to physical books! on average they run about 60 bucks a pop, where the same physical book would cost us $10-15 and last us five to ten years (or much longer, if it's a hardcover that doesn't get read a lot.)

if your library uses Hoopla instead, those are all pay per use, which is why many libraries cap checkouts at anywhere between 2-10 per month.

however.

this doesn't mean you shouldn't use ebooks. this doesn't mean you should feel guilty about checking things out! we buy ebook licenses for people to use them, because we know that ebook formats are easier for a lot of people (more accessible, more convenient, easier for people with schedules that don't let them get into the library.) these are resources the library buys for you. this is why we exist. you don't need to feel guilty about using them!

things that are responsible for libraries being underfunded and having to stretch their resources:

government priorities and systemic underfunding of social services that don't turn a profit and aren't easily quantified

our society's failure to value learning and pleasure reading for their own sake

predatory ebook licensing models

things that are not responsible for libraries being underfunded:

individual patron behavior

I promise promise promise that your personal library use is not making or breaking your library's budget. your local politicians are doing that. capitalism is doing that. you are fine.

(if you want to help your local library, the number one thing you can do is to advocate for us! talk to your city or county government about how much you like the library. or call or write emails or letters. advocate for us locally. make sure your state reps know how important the library is to you. there are local advocacy groups in pretty much every state pushing for library priorities. or just ask your local librarian. we like to answer questions!

also, if you're in Massachusetts, bill h3239 would make a huge difference in letting us negotiate ebook prices more fairly. tell your rep to vote for it!)