TOMORROW IS HALLOWEEN!!!

A New Hampshire Republican State Representative anonymously created the “Red Pill” subreddit.

Wow.

what the hell is going on in this country?!

PETA

you guys remember when PETA stole people pets off their porches and euthanized them?

you guys remember how it came out that PETA kills about 90% of the animals it takes in, including healthy and adoptable puppies and kittens, stating “ We could become a no-kill shelter immediately. It means we wouldn’t do as much work”?

you guys remember when PETA advocated killing all pit bulls for the crime of being pit bulls?

you guys remember when PETA handed out these comics to children when there were no adults looking?

you guys remember when they made a porn site and then filled it with videos of animal abuse, and (also in that link) claimed cats should be vegetarian?

you guys remember when PETA lied about sheep shearing, got caught, and defended the lie as true even after they admitted the sheep in their picture wasn’t even real?

you guys remember when they tried to excuse their horrifying ways by claiming that the person who exposed them was manipulating the facts by taking them and putting them in the wrong context?

Because I remember. I remember everything. 

And I’m gonna make sure everyone else remembers too. 

can't expect to be able to use bathrooms in public

Hear me out: I think the trans and disabled communities should be bffs (like the ace and bi communities are). Not only are there a lot of people who are both, but consider our shared experiences:

The grand and noble tradition of lying to doctors to get semi-adequate medical care.

"It's all in your head."

Being told we're faking it to get those sweet, sweet benefits of being oppressed and having unusually high rates of poverty.

People asking us invasive personal questions within 0.2 seconds of meeting us.

Being told that we're not REALLY trans/disabled because we don't fit into preconceived notions of what we should look like.

Being held to ridiculously high standards of appropriate behavior/attire/language because if our whole lives don't revolve around being the perfect cripple/performing gender to the max, we are either faking or somehow being bad representation of ourselves.

Shocking people by actually being happy with our bodies and celebrating them.

Also shocking people by expressing negative feelings about our bodies.

Getting frustrated when people act like we're oppressing them for wanting to exist comfortably in public.

In short, we have a lot in common re: the shit we put up with, and we should be besties.

xoxo--a disabled

A research tip from a friendly neighborhood librarian! 

I want to introduce you to the wonderful world of subject librarians and Libguides. 

I’m sure it’s common knowledge that scholars and writers have academic specialties. The same is true for subject librarians! Most libraries use a tool called Libguides to amass and describe resources on a given topic, course, work, person, etc. (I use them for everything. All hail Libguides.) These resources can include: print and ebooks, databases, journals, full-text collections, films/video, leading scholars, data visualizations, recommended search terms, archival collections, digital collections, reliable web resources, oral histories, and professional organizations. 

So, consider that somewhere out there in the world, there may be a librarian with a subject specialty on the topic you’re writing on, and this librarian may have made a libguide for it. 

Are you writing about vampires? 

Duquesne University has a guide on Dracula

University of Northern Iowa: Monsters and Religion

Fontbonne University has a particularly good one on Monsters, Ghosts, and Mysteries

Washington University in St. Louis: a course guide on Monsters and Strangeness 

How about poverty? 

Michigan State: Poverty and Inequality with great recommended terms and links to datasets 

Notre Dame: a multimedia guide on Poverty Studies.

Do you need particular details about how medicine or hygiene was practiced in early 20th century America?

UNC Chapel Hill: Food and Nutrition through the 20th Century (with a whole section on race, gender, and class)

Brown University: Primary Sources for History of Health in the Americas

Duke University: Ad*Access, a digital collection of advertisements from the early 20th century, with a section on beauty and hygiene  

You can learn about Japanese Imperial maps, the American West, controlled vocabularies, Crimes against art and art forgeries, anti-Catholicism, East European and Eurasian vernacular languages, geology, vaudeville, home improvement and repairs, big data, death and dying, and conspiracy theories.

Because you’re searching library collections, you won’t have access to all the content in the guides, and there will probably be some link rot (dead links), but you can still request resources through your own library with interlibrary loan, or even request that your library purchase the resources! Even without the possibility of full-text access, libguides can give you the words, works, people, sites, and collections to improve your research.

Search [your topic] + libguide and see what you get!

Captain Hook’s death

Image prompt

More people should learn how to pack a wound.

Tips That Can Save Your Kid’s Life.

With some of this stuff it’s hard to tell if it’s ironic detachment or genuine racism, but at some point, what’s the f***king difference?