Please Vote! Even If It Feels Like You Are Only Voting Against The Worse Candidate Or Voting For The

This is one of my pet peeves, and I’m going to loosen its leash a little.  The way the Big Five publishers handle e-books “sales” to libraries is depressing.  (I put “sales” in quotes because it is frequently more like leasing than buying.)  Libraries pay more, have limitations on the number of check-outs (which can only be used sequentially, no matter how many people are waiting to read the book), and/or have limitations on how long they can “own” an e-book.  Libraries also have to make their patrons jump through numerous hoops in order to access their e-books.

Want some examples?  These are books currently on the New York Times best seller list.

Where the Crawdads Sing -- list price: $26 (hardcover), e-book price on Amazon: $15, e-book price for a library: $55 (for a 24-month lease)

The Art of Racing in the Rain -- list price: $17 (paperback), e-book price on Amazon: $9, e-book price for a library: $17 (for 26 check-outs)

Becoming by Michelle Obama -- list price: $32.50 (hardcover), e-book price on Amazon: $15, e-book price for a library: $55 (for a 24-month lease)

Bitterroots -- list price: $28 (hardcover), e-book price on Amazon: $15, e-book price for a library: $60 (for the earlier of 52 check-outs or 24 months)

Bear in mind, if a library needs more copies of a physical book to fill holds, their vendors have it at a discounted price.  If not, the library can go to any bookstore or even to Amazon to get the book.  For an e-book, libraries can only buy from a small collection of companies because library e-books need extra restrictions to allow patrons to check them out at all.  A library can’t just go to Amazon to get e-books at consumer prices because they wouldn’t be able to loan that copy to people.

Libraries are fighting to preserve your right to borrow e-books

Creating barriers to access to e-books, which is what publishers are doing to resist dominance by Amazon, says Jessamyn West, disrupts the public good libraries were created to serve. Public libraries exist in large part because they are necessary to a functioning democracy, West writes.

As publishers struggle with the continuing shake-up of their business models, and work to find practical approaches to managing digital content in a marketplace overwhelmingly dominated by Amazon, libraries are being portrayed as a problem, not a solution. Libraries agree there’s a problem – but we know it’s not us.

This is a brilliant advertising campaign!

This regime wants to exert even more control over the news and information that the public receives – or doesn’t even receive at all. That's why it is attacking publicly funded media like NPR and PBS. But it's also part of a ploy to gut vital public services and oversight in order to clear the way for more tax cuts (and subsidies) that will predominantly go to the super-rich and powerful corporations. Know the truth. (Art work by @doodlebymeg)

Swoon!  @winterhawkkisses did an adorable story for my prompt.  Isn’t it wonderful?  (If you’re curious, this is the cake.)

I love your stories! Even when they don't have kisses, they brighten my day. Do you take image prompts? I saw a heart&arrow cake on Cake Wrecks and thought, "Bucky would definitely get that for Clint!" I'm torn on whether it would be a joke or an actual attempt at a romantic gesture though. I can't include a link to it here, but it's the last picture on the Feb. 8 post of Cake Wrecks.

“Mmph?” 

“It is Valentine’s day, Clint.” 

Clint attempted to unstick his eyelashes, shuffled his legs up so he was almost kneeling, considered shifting his face away from the pillow and then dismissed the idea. 

“Tony?” 

“I can hear the question, why is there a question? Like you don’t live for my dulcet tones in your -” 

“It’s four in the fuckin’ morning, Tony, what’n the hell’re you -” 

“Okay first, it’s ten, and I don’t want to know what you were doing last night unless pictures are likely to surface. Second, it’s Valentine’s day, and instead of snuggling up to my boo I’ve been called down to security -” 

“How is that my -”

“- because your boyfriend is deeply inappropriate and possibly insane.”

“Boyfriend?” Clint kinda flinched at the word, hard enough that he was scooted forward, further up the bed, hard enough that his skull made noisy contact with the headboard. “Woah, who said boyfriend? I didn’t say boyfriend. Did he say boyfriend?” 

“Oh this is just - this is sad,” Tony said. 

“No, seriously, Tony, did he - ‘cos you shouldn’t just go throwing words like that around, okay?” Mostly Clint had got through this - whatever it was - by not thinking about it too hard. Like if he handled the thought too much he’d smudge it, somehow screw it up. 

“Get down here,” Tony said. 

Clint shuffled out of bed. He stepped into his sneakers, figured the reception staff had seen him in weirder get-ups than the shirt and sweatpants he’d slept in, ran a hand through his hair and squeezed some toothpaste onto his tongue. If he had any say in this he was getting straight back into bed when they were through, so that was as much effort as he was willing to put in. 

“ - sorry, Mr Stark,” someone was saying when Clint pushed open the door to internal security; someone fairly important by the sharp creases in their suit. “Obviously cakes don’t usually have bloodstains, so my crew wanted to be sure -” 

“It’s fine,” Tony said, flapping a hand at them absently. He squinted up at Clint, then gestured at the cake that was sitting in a box on the table. “Seriously?” he said. “This is your type?” 

The cake was in the shape of an anatomical heart, colored like it’d been bled dry with stark red veins scrawled over the surface. Piercing it, at an angle, was one of Clint’s arrows, purple-fletched, and there was dark icing blood spatter covering the baked pillow. 

It was a little terrifying, and a little beautiful, and somehow exactly fuckin’ right. He had no idea what the hell his face was doing, but something in Tony’s expression softened. 

“Maybe you should have the ‘boyfriend’ talk, huh?” he said. 

Also, remember to vote your whole ballot and to vote in non-presidential elections.  The Senate is at least as responsible for two of the last three conservative Supreme Court Justices as Trump.

I am begging you to fucking vote. On November 3rd, early, and in all your local elections to come.

If you’re in the US, see if your local library has Hoopla!  They carry all five seasons of Leverage with no ads.

Hoopla is an online service libraries can provide.  The library pays for each thing people check out on Hoopla, so there is a limit to how much you can check out each month.  It’s completely free to you with no ads though.  You can watch on your browser or through Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, or a bunch of other devices.

If you’re willing to go with physical media, your local library may have Leverage DVDs that you can check out, if they don’t have Hoopla or you want to binge faster.

Any chance you know where I can watch the first season of leverage? i know its on hulu but i really cant afford to drop the money it wants for the subscription, and im having no luck finding working streams for some reason. I really want to get into it

It used to be on Netflix but then it disappeared... It is on Amazon, but it’s only free with ads if you have Amazon Prime. And there are...captioning issues... But! If captioning isn’t a concern and you have Amazon Prime, you can watch it on there, which is what I did (though captions were definitely a concern and I sent a lot of peeved complaints in).

Aside from that, tubi appears to have Leverage available to watch free? I swear I saw a post going around a while ago where folks could watch Leverage free and with bonus stuff from the creators... But I don’t know where I saw it and who reblogged it...

Anyone else have advice as to where to watch Leverage? Help an anon get into this absolutely amazing show!!

Mmmm, new-release Tuesdays!  (But do they *all* have to come in at the same time?!)

WHEN ALL MY HOLDS COME IN AT ONCE

I’m trying to figure out the downside to encouraging “the inventor of both magic and science and keeper of all wisdom.”

Callout post for people who use the word ‘thot’

Folks, I need to warn you

I’ve been seeing a sudden surge of use of the word ‘thot’ and I’m concerned

We’ve recently seen at least one ancient Egyptian deity resurrected through meme magic

Thoth is a significantly more powerful member of the pantheon than Kek and the consequences of summoning him may be even more drastic than the rebirth of Kek (Brexit, Trump winning the election, a series of celebrity deaths)

The phrase ‘return the bones thot’ radiates an obvious mystical power and it may herald that Thoth will come to preside over 2017 as Kek has presided over 2016 - the bones possibly refer to the millions of mummified ibises buried in his honor at his main temple in Khmun, by reblogging that post you may be unknowingly beseeching this ancient and powerful being to repay the thousands of years of sacrifices humanity once offered him - what form that might take, we can only speculate

Although it’s possible that Thoth has been with us for a while - his name in Greek letters is Θώθ, which is clearly referenced in the ‘OwO what’s this?’ meme

As the inventor of both magic and science and keeper of all wisdom, Thoth assuredly does know what ‘this’ is, but I’m not sure we want to find out

I’m also concerned that Thoth’s wife Ma’at may be connected to the frequent seemingly compulsive and superfluous use of the word ‘mate’ or ‘m8′ in memes

Please be careful with your memes, they may hold hidden arcane power

I love octopodes, and this one is particularly stunning!

Entranced by this larger Pacific striped octopus? Us too. “Rediscovered” by our own Rich Ross & UC Berkeley’s Roy Caldwell in 2013 (which validated another scientist’s 22-year-old findings), its unusually social behaviors—including beak-to-beak mating—"fly in the face of nearly everything we know about cephalopods.“ Learn more: calacade.my/1N6WbRt. 📽️ by biologist Tim Wong