Steampunk Gypsy

Today, we remember the  assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  It's a day to honor the Civil Rights movement and a man who was willing to die for the chance to be heard. As was made perfectly clear in our own history (and, honestly, more than once or twice), we need to be loud to secure our rights and we need to be quick to cry out against injustice - the quieter we are and the longer we wait, the more bloodsoaked our hands become. Especially when we shake hands with the Devil. So, yeah, these headlines worries me: Human Rights Abuses In Egypt Are ‘Best Discussed Privately,’ White House Says   Last year, during his presidential campaign, Trump hammered then-President Barack Obama for lacking what Trump called the “moral courage” to publicly condemn “systematic violations of human rights” in Egypt.... Yet Trump’s passion for human rights was nowhere to be seen Monday, amid his elaborate display of camaraderie with el-Sissi in the Oval Office. ...

I have nothing in particular to rant about today. Oh, but have a pretty picture, anyway: Links! Library Land Without school librarians, we're on a dystopian path  "Who needs to douse kerosene on a stack of books and light a match when it's so much easier to devalue our school libraries and lay off our librarians?" Open access campaigners toughen stance towards publishers  "Open access advocates want universities to be prepared to 'pull the plug' on their subscription deals with big publishers, in a sign of an escalation in tactics to open up more research." Brian K. Vaughan Recommends 10 Comics You Need to Read—Because They’re Awesomely Unadaptable  If you haven't read Vaughan's Saga , you need to read it. It is amazing. Now excuse me while I go put a bunch of these comics on my TBR pile... Health, Science, & Technology House Votes to Restrict EPA's Use of Scientific Studies  "...Democrats said the measure, call...

Yesterday, we got to have dinner with my parents - Hi, Parental Units! It was lovely. MP brought them a couple pieces he'd made for them, and I grabbed some pictures before they took them away. For my Mother Unit: Awwww.... For my Father Unit: TIM-BERRRR! The little saw is so cute! Also, surprisingly sharp. Youch... MP has some talent, hey? In other news, tomorrow in April Fools' Day. I won't be playing any pranks - but some people have apparently gotten started early, so:  An updated (and depressing) list of all the April Fool’s pranks on the Internet  Be careful, y'all! Also, the Google Maps Ms. PacMan is harder than I thought it'd be... Links! Library Land Top 10 things to know (and do) about saving library funding   "The talk of Washington and the library community (when people aren’t talking about the President’s tweets, anyway) is the recent recommendation by the President to completely eliminate funding for the Instit...

Energy Department climate office bans use of phrase ‘climate change’  A supervisor at the Energy Department's international climate office told staff this week not to use the phrases "climate change," "emissions reduction" or "Paris Agreement" in written memos, briefings or other written communication, sources have told POLITICO. When I was little, sometimes I had very vivid nightmares; I'd wake up and be sure there were monsters in my room. I'd keep my eyes shut very, very tight until I was sure there were not, in fact, monsters in my room. It worked - but only because the monsters weren't real. Climate change, however, is  real, and refusing to see the monster won't actually make it go away. Pretty picture time! Links! Library Land How celebrity deals are shutting children's authors out of their own trade  "One prize-winning writer, who didn’t want to be named, left her last publisher after a new me...

O'Reilly mocks Dem Maxine Waters for wearing 'James Brown wig' Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said Tuesday he "didn't hear a word" Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said during recent comments on the House floor because he was focused on "the James Brown wig."  Seriously. Watch it: This right here? Is why women still believe we are not taken seriously. This is why we need loud feminism. Here is a powerful woman being ignored and treated flippantly because a random man (and there are few men as random as O'Reilly) was so focused on the way she looks. She doesn't look unattractive, inappropriate, or clownish - she looks professional, which she is - but O'Reilly can't seem to help himself: the man's eyes somehow stop his ears and brain from working. Although, let's be clear, I don't particularly care if she was Deadpool ugly in clown make-up and a tutu: she should be heard. She should be taken seriously.  That a lo...

Elimination of IMLS Funds places TN Libraries AT RISK Create bar charts [ Source ] Let's be honest - your state's stats probably look much the same - and the more needed your libraries are, the more affected they're likely to be!  Links! Library Land Reading by Example: What Kids Learn About Books from Watching You "The fact that she — someone I admired — read made me want to read and eventually grew my appetite for devouring books. It didn’t matter to me what she read; I never did develop a taste for romance novels the way she loved them, and she never did understand why I would read science fiction and fantasy novels with such passion. But she shared a love of reading with me."   10 Books We Wouldn’t Have Without the NEA   "To put it more simply: NEA grants help writers. The grant money gives writes time to work on their creative output in a world that rewards them very little for such endeavors most of the time. To highlight this, we’...

I've been experimenting with  TiddlyWiki , and having fun doing it. So much so, I've just assembled a list o' links, rather than writing anything today. But here's a pretty picture, too: Links! Library Land Libraries as a luxury item  "We need government services that support our physical wellbeing, and we need the services that support our intellectual, aesthetic, and cultural lives too. Not only that, but libraries, museums, and cultural institutions don’t exist apart from essential services'; they’re intertwined with them, and in fact they often provide them.... Libraries and arts organizations are not luxury items for our society. (That’s especially the case for those segments of our society who already have the fewest luxuries, and yet poor and less educated people have seen disproportionate declines in library use  — perhaps because of cuts to local services.) Spending on them, and on the agencies which support their work, is not government ...