I miss when library books used to have little paper pockets inside with a list of all the people who borrowed it and when… I hate that this is now exclusive knowledge of librarians. I do care that a miss Mariana borrowed this book in 1985 and then Dario in 1997. They’re my brothers and sisters
but really, there’s a million reasons why it’s an issue for users and staff of the public library to have immediate access to a record of who has borrowed a specific item and when.
and that’s not even about keeping the information “privileged” to the library staff, these days they don’t even keep a digital record of an item’s history of borrowers; once you return a book, there isn’t a list of everyone thats ever taken that book out that your name gets added to (though they probably take a tally of how many times it is checked out for circulation statistics).
i think the card system is a remnant of a culture that could only exist in the world before the internet as it exists today, where this identifying kind of information wasn’t always readily at your fingertips, even for those at the “information professional” level.
don’t get me wrong here, i do understand the nostalgia factor to it as being part of a different time, but i think it’s always important to understand why this kind of system has its flaws and has been (at least in north america) taken out of practice
bear in mind that US public libraries spent most of the past twenty years fighting off lawsuits that they were prohibited from disclosing to the public because when 9/11 happened the federal government wanted a list of every person who read certain books and the librarians had a really bad feeling about where that kind of policy would end up going, for some reason.
not keeping the records in the first place is a way for the libraries to protect themselves when they stand up for your privacy.
I set my Discord banner to random photos of deer being silly on trailcams resulting in multiple people asking about My Collection so here are some of the finest photos from my unreasonably sized gallery of goofy deer trailcam pictures
Did you know deer will sometimes just straight-up box/slapfight with each other which often involves standing on two legs and it looks really silly
Here’s some kisses
Some weird chaotic ones. I call the first one of these four “girls night”
never not thinking about giant cisterns. THATS immanentizing the eschaton. when we get to heaven and its a bunch of giant wet concrete tunnels with vast columns holding up the ceiling, then you will see…
you know about the tokyo storm drains, yeah?
yeah that’s what inspired this post :)
im very exited to go here when i die :)
basilica cistern in istanbul
the famous “lake” that Gaston Leroux wrote about beneath the Palais Garnier is not a lake at all, but actually a cistern.
the coolest people are actually weird and fucked up and strange and peculiar and they just dont care. the coolest people are actually lame as hell and they rock it. this is what ive learned
I sent a letter today - something I haven’t done for years
It’s full of plastic bread clips
It’s for Science
At the risk of loosing some mystery, I think I should add some context:
There’s this website-I mean, scientific organization called the Holotypic Occlupanid Reasurch Group.
They are a group of abiologists who study and classify Bread clips.
I found a species that has not yet been described:
Yay for citizen science 👍
wtf?
Update:
Apparently HORG is widely appreciated by pediatricians since knowing exactly what kind of Occlupanid a child may have swallowed makes removing it safely much easier
IIRC this is actually part of the reason HORG was started. A man swallowed a breadclip and the clip closed around part of his tissue linings (in his intestines I think?). The specific shape and flexibility of the clip were significant determining factors in the removal process, as some bread clips have spikes and prongs that would have made extraction more complicated. They started the taxonomy so they could work out extraction techniques for each type.
are you fucking kidding me occlu like oculus or close and panid like bread. its a fancy word for breadcloser
In their cottage there will be pictures of them taken over all these years because Aziraphale will steal them from Heaven like thanks for the photoshoot I’m going to decorate the house with these.
oof! ouch! hang on there’s something stuck in my shoe *I remove my shoe and turn it over and a small wooden structure tumbles out* well fuck. looks like someone built a little birdhouse in my sole
some time ago i introduced the phrase “food pact” to my friends as a shorthand for “i’ll go make and eat food if you also make and eat food” and ever since then ive just started incorporating more pacts into my life. stay hydrated pact. stretch break pact. stop doomscrolling and go to bed pact. we need to bring this back in vogue more people should be making pacts imo
the best part of this is when you ask “who wants to do a shower pact” and you get a half dozen friends all rolling up saying “the pact is sealed”. faustian behavior
