libby app guide

aka how to support libraries and get books and audiobooks for free without pirating them.

disclaimer: this is so easy. it is also really fun.

one: download the libby app. you'll open it and it'll ask you to add a library.

two: get a library card. don't have one? good news, it's really easy and i am saying this as the laziest person on earth. it varies what you need to have to get a card library to library but almost all libraries will let you get one online. i have a card for my home town and for the town i moved to. sometimes you only need an email address, sometimes you need an area code. to get mine it took me about 5 minutes of lying on the couch aimlessly tapping on my phone. follow your heart. you can get cards for places you don't currently live. i will leave the ethics of that up to you but it's probably better than pirating and either way you're creating traffic for libraries which is what they need to exist.

three: add your card. you can add multiple cards for multiple libraries. you need the number. i have never had libby fail to recognize a valid account.

four: search for your book! some will be ready to borrow right away. others have an estimated delivery time. libby will always pick the one that's the fastest from the options available at all the libraries you have cards at. you can borrow audiobooks and ebooks. libby will send you a notification when you're book is ready to borrow. in my experience it's a lot faster than the estimate. if you aren't ready to read it, you can ask to be skipped over in line so you keep your place at the front but let someone else read it first.

five: read it!!! kindle is the most common way to do this. you can go to your loan and click read with kindle. it'll download it to all your devices where you have kindle. as long as you have the loan, it'll act like your book. when the loan ends, if the device is connected to the internet, it'll automatically be returned. it will save all your notes and highlights. (if you disconnect your device from the internet, it won't return the book. weewoo.)

anyway in case anyone else has been wondering about it, i really love it. is a nice surprise to see what i'm going to get and it's cut my reading costs down big time! it's also neat because i get to synch my books between devices unlike downloading books through cough cough other means. good luck!

Reblogging again to say that you do not need Kindle, the app or the device, to read ebooks on Libby!! You can read any book you borrow WITHIN the Libby app, and you can change the font and dark/light mode for accessibility too.

please be aware the libby app does NOT let you read or listen offline so the app itself is unusable for me for actual reading unfortunately! you guys who have access to the internet steadily can use it but be aware. you can't use it on a plane, for example, but if you download to kindle you can.

You should actually be able to use libby app offline (for those allergic to kindle like I am lmao). You just have to change your download permissions in settings. The web browser version of libby is online only though.

Go to Settings > Change Download Rules > toggle to “Everything” (and recommended to “Download only on Wi-fi” if you are worried about your data)

Then Settings > Read Books With… > Libby, so that it downloads to the correct app. You should be able to change your preferences on the main page by clicking the cloud icon to see where you’ve downloaded it too.

ALL OF THIS IS FUCKING AMAZING!!!!

If you have a (newer) Kobo ereader your Libby books can be downloaded directly thru wifi onto it too! (Overdrive is the older app for Libby)

Confirming you absolutely do NOT have to be online to read or listen directly through the Libby app! I use Libby on planes, when I'm hiking and there's no reception, when I'm in airplane mode because I don't want to be bothered by notifications, wherever. It's easy! It's free! You can do it wherever! You can support your local libraries (however many you can get a card for, and let me tell you I've been collecting!) and keep more money in your pocket and out of Jeff Bezos' pocket!

I resent the inevitable consequences the second law of thermodynamics has on my tea and the entropy of the universe. It always happens too damn soon.

The hell do you mean “use a tea light” you’re telling me those things can be used to heat tea???

Fam I’ve been lied to and deceived

Wait please what are you being told, this has raised many questions about tea lights for me.

Apparently the way you’re supposed to use tea lights is like this

Which no one ever told me is possible or exists and might now become my villain origin story after suffering years of cold tea

I'm sorry they're what

They heat tea. They heat tea because they’re tea lights. They’re named that way because they’re literally devices to keep your tea warm and somehow no one has ever told me this and they’re tea lights to heat tea and I might just—[CENSORED]

I’m glad we’re all having a normal one today folks

What's that bro? You began interacting with a media from a different country than yours and/or was made in time period different than the recent present day? Haha that's sick bro! Keep expanding your horizons bro! You're remembering to take into account that sociocultural norms, gender roles and genre expectations are different from what you are used to and meeting the story halfway, instead of forcibly superimposing your ideals into the story, right bro? Right? Right?

Genuinely 90% of historical fiction would be so much better if more writers could get more comfortable with the fact that to create a good story set in a different time period you do actually have to give the characters beliefs & values which reflect that time period

#even if they share your values they would phrase things differently. ‘​I hate to see a man hanged for it’ vs ‘love is love’ (via @aurpiment)

You can research what people actually said in history!

In 1726, when William Brown was on trial for attempted sodomy in London, he didn't say "I was born this way", he said, "“I think there is no crime in making what use I please of my own body”.

In the 12th century, Hildegard of Bingen didn't say, "A woman can do anything a man can do!", she said, God created men and women with different humours and having too much of the male elements will throw society out of balance.

In the 1860s, Millicent Garrett Fawcett didn't say, "Women are just as smart as men", she said, Men get to vote no matter how dumb they are.

In the 1850s, William Craft didn't say, "Africans are just as smart as Europeans and it's bigoted to say otherwise", he said that Africans have thick skulls “to defend the brain from the tropical climate in which he lived. If God had not given them thick skulls their brains would probably have become very much like those of many scientific gentlemen of the present day”

THERE WE GOOO atla dragons !!! 🐉🐉

Genuinely the most fun I’ve had drawing something in a while AA

Spring midi skirt preorders are open this week, 4/13-4/19 at Vetiverfox Apparel!

As usual, all skirts are available in S-6XL, with an additional smaller size available in the bottom two (blackberry bramble & unicorn tapestry) There are also a few in-stock skirts in other designs too! Check them out at vetiverfoxapparel✷com!

Be gay do crime but in Barvaria and we're putting these everywhere

For those of you who don't know about the current discussions in German politics:

German is a heavily gendered language, with distinct female and male forms for a lot of words. While it's been pretty common to just use the 'generic male' term for, say, occupations (i.e. just using the male version of a word to refer to mixed groups of people), there's been a push in the last few years to use more gender-inclusive (or gender-sensitive, whatever you want to call it) versions of terms.

In written form, this usually means that you'll 'merge' the two terms with a * indicating that you're referring to a mixed group.

For example, if you're talking about teachers, instead of just using the generic male term Lehrer, or using both male and female (Lehrer und Lehrerinnen), you just write Lehrer*Innen (or LehrerInnen, or Lehrer_Innen, depending on preference).

The Bavarian state authorities, who are traditionally Christian maniacs, have now decided that this is unacceptable. They're arguing that this inclusive language goes against freedom of speech, that you need to be able to "have unrestricted discourse in a liberal society", and that an ideologically-influenced language like this would prohibit that. And so, in the name of freedom of speech, they are banning the use of the gender inclusive terms by schools, unis and state officials. It's as insane as it sounds.

This shit has been going on for like three years in schools in Saxony. I once got an official warning by my headmaster because I referred to students as Schüler*innen in a mail to a parent. (The parent complained.)

As far as I know, this rule refers only to "schools and their project partners", meaning that as long as a company adresses parents/kids in a school context (for an internship for example) they are forbidden from using this kind of gendered language.

This includes also projects working with students on LGBT+ topics, which is so stupid I don't even have words for it.

Actually, interesting addition: since students aren't really allowed to use it either, at my school some kids started using the female form as generic. I think it's funny as shit.

actually. that post about how its important to have weird kinky queer friends. i think the same is true of really every type of ostracized person but in particular i wanna point it out wrt mentally ill people.

if you watch a movie villainizing DID or schizophrenia or something, and you think, "hey, this seems sort of like its based on what my friend has and theyre just a chill person, why are they making my friends condition seem threatening?" thats good.

if you see someone use narcissist as a synonym for abuser and you think, "what, no, im friends with someone who has NPD and i know theyre a kind person, this isnt true at all," thats good.

if you hear politicians try to frame addicts as violent criminals who should be locked up and you think "no, my buddy sam is just sick, their withdrawals are really painful and they dont have a good support system, they shouldnt be locked up for that," thats good.

being able to counter ableist rhetoric with "i know from experience thats not how these people are" is a good thing. like yeah obviously dont make friends with mentally ill people just for brownie points but also try to make the conscious effort to be open to friendship with people who have stigmatized mental health issues. and maybe even more importantly, be someone who makes it clear to others that youre safe to be open about these things with, because chances are youre ALREADY friends with mentally ill people even if you dont realize it, because a lot of us with more demonized conditions try to hide those conditions out of fear, and it helps a lot to know our friends are allies - and then we might feel safe discussing our experiences, IF we want to, and in turn that can help you better understand the realities and diversities of our situations and be less susceptible to ableist rhetoric.

I've always had chronic fatigue. I remember being twelve, and an adult mentioned how I couldn't possibly know how tired they felt because adulthood brought levels of exhaustion I couldn't imagine. I thought about that for days in fear, because I couldn't remember the last time I didn't feel tired.

Eventually I came to terms with the fact that I was just tired, and I couldn't do as many things as everyone else. People called me lazy, and I knew that wasn't true, but there's only so many times you can say "I'm tired" before people think it's an excuse. I don't blame them. When a teenager does 20 hours of extracurriculars every week and only says "I'm too tired" when you ask them to do the dishes, it's natural to think it's an excuse. At some point, I started to think the same thing.

It didn't matter that I could barely sit up. It was probably all in my head, and if I really wanted to, I could do it.

When I learned the name for it, chronic fatigue, I thought wow, people that have that must be miserable, because I am always tired and I cannot imagine what it would feel like if it were worse.

Spoiler alert, if you've been tired for a decade, it's probably chronic fatigue.

Once I figured that out though, I thought of my energy as the same as everyone else's, just smaller in quantity. And that might be true for some people, but I've figured out recently that it absolutely isn't true for me.

I used to be like wow I have so much energy today I can do this whole list for sure! And then I'd do the dishes and have to lay down for 2 hours. Then I'd think I must gave misjudged that, I didn't have as much energy as I thought.

But the thing is - I did have enough energy for more tasks, I just didn't go about them properly.

With chronic fatigue, your maximum energy is obviously much smaller than the average person's. Doing the dishes for you might use up the same percentage of energy that it takes to do all the daily chores for someone else.

If someone without chronic fatigue was to do all the daily chores, they would take breaks. Because otherwise, they're sprinting a marathon for no reason and it would take way more energy than necessary. We have to do the same.

Put the cups in the dishwasher, take a break. Put the bowls in, take a break. So on and so forth. This may mean taking breaks every 2-5 minutes but afterwards, you get to not feel like you've run a marathon while carrying 4 people on your back.

Today, I had a moderate amount of energy. Under my old system of go till you drop, I probably could have done most of the dishes and wiped off the counter and then been dead to the world for the rest of the day.

Under the new system, I scooped litter boxes, cleaned out the fridge, took the trash out, cleaned the stove, and wiped off the counter and did all the dishes. And after all that, I still had it in me to make a simple dinner, unload the dishwasher, and tidy the kitchen.

It was complete and utter insanity. Just because I sat down whenever I felt myself getting more tired than I already was.

All this to say, take fucking breaks. It's time to unlearn the ceaseless productivity bullshit that capitalism has shoved down our throats. Its actively counterproductive. Just sit down. Drink some water. Rest your body when it needs to rest.

There will still be days where there is nothing to do but rest, and days where half a load of dishes is absolutely the most I can do. But this method has really helped me minimize those, which is so incredibly relieving.

Warding spells are real, if you want me to stay far away from you forever tell me that you practice reiki.

The nice thing is that I will probably never bring this kind of thing up. I'm never going to go out of my way to figure out if the people around me are, like, really into homeopathy. The less nice thing is that if you bring it up with me I am never, ever, ever going to shut up about it and if you attempt to show me a *study* on the healing power of prayer or the use of chiropractic to treat asthma we are forever enemies and I probably won't talk to you again but I will use the several hours of furious debunking that I did after our conversation to make arguments against your beliefs in the future. You are already a lost cause to me but other people are less stupid about the way that ice crystals form and I can work with them.

I *loathe* medical woo, it kills people and the people who engage in it are shitty human beings who are hurting other human beings.

RE: Herbalism

I don't think that there's a proponent of science-based medicine alive who doesn't understand that plant compounds are important in medicine and it is important to research them. We *DO* get a lot of medicine from plants.

But "medicine from plants" and "herbalism" are not the same.

The example that most people like to bring up is aspirin and willow bark tea. You can use willow bark as a painkiller, you can collect your own and brew it up when you've got a headache.

What you can't do is control the dose. You can't do this for a number of reasons, including having little control over the conditions the tree grew in and variations in preparation technique. If you're measuring very exactly you can control for some of these things, but even if you were in charge of the willow tree you collected the bark from it's not going to be the same at different places on the trunk or in different seasons.

That's not a huge deal if you're using aspirin for a headache, it can be a much bigger deal if you're using aspirin as a bloodthinner.

And the example that people LIKE to use is aspirin because it *isn't* a big deal. The example they *don't* like to use is foxglove (digitalis, which produced digitoxin, which can be used to treat heart failure) because that's a medicine from a plant that you can't fuck around with using herbalism, it needs extremely careful extraction and preparation because if it's done wrong it'll just straight kill you.

And then you get into herbal treatments that are generally safe and largely not harmful even if they may not do anything, and it can feel totally reasonable to recommend red raspberry leaf tea to a friend who is having cramps. As long as that friend isn't diabetic because red raspberry leaf interacts with insulin. And as long as your friend isn't on an anticoagulant because red raspberry leaf can ALSO act as an anticoagulant.

And those are just examples of what can happen if you know you are actually getting the plant that you think that you are getting and that it is unadulterated with fillers and uncontaminated with anything else and is properly prepared (or is prepared the same way as the last batch you bought and so it can be dosed the same way).

There are two ways that Kava Kava can be prepared; do you know which of those two ways is associated with more deaths and liver transplants? Do you know not to take Kava if you have a history of liver issues or if you are on antidepressants? (ctrl+f for "Hema Ketha" for the study from that overview that goes in depth on that; for whatever reason you can read the whole article in the overview but if you click on the link you only get the abstract)

Are you attempting to take therapeutic doses of turmeric? There's some evidence that it can help relieve joint pain. However you need to take really, really high doses because the medicinal compound in turmeric has low bioavailability. And because you're taking high doses you may be swapping out the risks of NSAIDs for the risk of lead poisoning, because it is unfortunately very common for turmeric to be contaminated with lead.

One of my big, big problems with CAM - including herbalism - is that people turn to it because they think it is safer than "allopathic" medicine. They think "it's better to drink raspberry leaf tea than it is to take midol because midol is full of chemicals and raspberry leaf tea is just tea." But midol doesn't interact with insulin, and most people are *aware* they're taking a blood thinner when they take NSAIDs.

There's this tea shop I go to that has maybe a hundred different kinds of herbal teas, some of which are clearly supposed to be medicinal, but the one that always stands out to me is the St. John's Wort tea that has "NOT FOR PREGNANT" on the label. It's good that they're recommending that pregnant people don't select that tea, but that tea is also not for people on antidepressants, triptans, birth control, warfarin, stantins, protease inhibitors, or people who have had solid organ transplants.

But it's just tea. And what could just tea do, right?

(It could make your anti-rejection meds so weak that it kills you. That's what just tea can do. But maybe one cup of older tea, or one cup that is more leaf than flower, or one cup that wasn't steeped as long doesn't hurt, so you drink it and you think it's fine, it's not a problem, and it isn't a problem until it is but you don't know the difference between one cup of tea and the next because this shit is impossible to dose)

This is also why I'm extremely leery of the "you can try CAM as long as you are using it alongside your doctor's care and you do what the doctors say" thing because that is relying on:

So long story short I'm not particularly bothered if you try herbalism on yourself after looking into things that you think will help you. I do have a problem with people who *recommend* herbal treatments without A) a full medical background understanding of the person they recommend the treatment to and B) comprehensive knowledge of whether the thing that you're recommending will interact with any medications they might be taking or exacerbate any conditions that they might have and C) some kind of accountability mechanism in place - like a malpractice suit or the loss of license - like a doctor might if they prescribed a medication that was dangerous to their patient.

Because that's the other infuriating thing - CAM practitioners often aren't held to the same standards as medical professionals. Patients who trust CAM practitioners often think of them like doctors, but they don't have the same protection from CAM practitioners like they would from doctors. If your herbalist tells you to treat your cancer with apricot pits or black salve - even if that's in addition to chemotherapy - it could end up seriously injuring you and they're not committing malpractice because there's no legal standard for their practice. Nobody can remove their license because there's no such thing as an herbalist license, so whatever harm they did to you can be done to other people after you with no professional consequences.

I have pretty much limitless tolerance for things that people want to do to themselves. If you want to take valerian because you think it helps you sleep (in spite of essentially no evidence that it does so and more adverse reactions among natural sleep aids than things like camomile - which also has no evidence that it's an effective sleep aid) I don't care, just make sure to check for drug interactions first.

If you want to replace your elderly parent's NSAID painkillers with clove oil, fuck you.

If you want to replace your elderly parent's NSAID painkillers with clove oil, fuck you.

As someone who ended up with multiple dead teeth and an abundance of scar tissue inside my mouth in my teens because I was only allowed to medicate my sore teeth with clove oil because it was "natural" (yes, it's an analgesic, but it also burns soft tissue and can damage the dental pulp if used too frequently or at too high a dosage. It should also never ever be used on children or infants), I second the fuck you.

sometimes i think about the history of coffee culture in islam and how it spread like it’s so funny

the tags on this post are some of the funniest i’ve ever seen in my notifications but this one made me choke on my Mohammedan Gruel

GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE

The entire 3-minute city ambiance scene from Ghost in the Shell (1995) is already one of the best moments in all of cinema imo, but I NEED to talk about my absolute favorite part from it:

That brief moment when Major Kusanagi and a stranger with her exact same body model catch a glance at one another. How quickly the initial curiosity of seeing the doppelgänger turns into a feeling of unease as the boat carries her away.

She will never meet this stranger. She'll never know anything about her other than the simple reminder that every piece of her cybernetic body is not unique to her. There is no part of her other than her brain and all its memories that she has any true ownership of, and even that isn't immune to being hacked and potentially erased by outside forces. Despite being a part of a bustling city, all she can do is reflect on how utterly isolated she feels as a living being.

How can she possibly define her humanity when she herself is confined in the form of what is essentially a highly modified weapon? How can she relate to others when she has more in common with the mannequins on display in a shopping mall than with the any of the people walking the streets?

All of this inner turmoil at one’s own existence conveyed without a SINGLE word of dialogue spoken. Now that's the power of cinema if I've ever seen it!

you forgot the best part tho

(via @butchmuppet)

no lie, the second half of this post really helped me put a different perspective on my life and greatly the decreased the anxiety i have about my life to come

Microwave: either stand and wait or get up again when the thing goes off in five minutes. You have chronic pain or just had surgery or are just brutally fucking depressed or devoid of executive functioning that day, so this is an issue.

Delivery: get up once. It's more bearable and saves you spoons you could maybe use to stand and brush your teeth or something later.

Microwave: you have used the last thing in the fridge/freezer and can't go to the store to get more until tomorrow or the next day.

Delivery: you still get fed.

Microwave: harder to prepare food for several people because the inside is small, does not typically yield leftovers.

Delivery: food for everyone, could yield leftovers.

Microwave: food texture can be terrible, soggy, tough.

Delivery: preserves the small pleasure of crisp, well-prepared food.

Microwave: have to cook several times a day, which is a chore from frozen.

Delivery: you can order food to last you all day, and get larger and more calorically dense meals. (If I can only manage one meal, yes. I do in fact need it to be full of calories. A 450kcal microwave dinner isn't enough to live on.

Microwave: relies on you having a fridge/freezer.

Delivery: sort of relies on you having a doorbell, I guess?

Microwave: on average, quality is unappealing.

Delivery: wide range of appetizing foods, including healthy foods.

Microwave: just you.

Delivery: you might see another human's face and pass a few words. Boyfriend did delivery. Don't laugh. People get fucking lonely. Yes. That is very sad. Meals on Wheels type programs that deliver regularly are a major source of socialization AND safety checks for shut-ins.

Microwave: you suddenly need a different kind of food than you have -- you might need soft food because your mouth hurts, plain food because your digestion is iffy, soup because you've been ill and aren't up for much more, etc.

Delivery: order whatever you like.

The smallest barrier can be enough to make me skip a meal or two or even three. People HATE that, they HATE the idea that disabled people are "weak" and "lazy" but I cannot emphasize enough, NOBODY WOULD CHOOSE THIS.

Laziness, in the way temporarily nondisabled people apply it to sick and disabled people, doesn't fucking exist.

Don't judge or question what people eat, when, how they prepare their food, where they get it, none of that.

Just because you cannot imagine a reason for something sick or disabled people do doesn't mean there isn't one. If something seems baffling or absurd or whatever, just be glad you aren't operating under conditions that mean you have to understand it.

Since I got sick I've spent almost three times as much money on food because often I NEED a good sized nourishing meal but will be burning all capacity I have just to get it off the doorstep, eat it and go back to resting as completely as I can in order to not ruin my minimal function for the week/month.

If you think for some reason we don't deserve or shouldn't use or ethically can't USE DOORDASH or other similar services

I AM BITING YOU BITING YOU BITING YOU

Me Giving a Pressed Conference: our advocacy for the disabled must include the addict, the imperfect victim, those we despise; the right to autonomy and life cannot devolve into a popularity contest

Reporter I Hate (Not Sexual Tension): Does that include all the attendees of the Bored Ape NFT event who went blind

Me: *Blood streaming from my nostrils and eyes* david, it includes everyone

i've been seeing this around a lot lately as like a little memey jokey thing but "this is what they took from you" is a fascist meme.

"they" are jewish people/"the global elite"/"cultural marxists"/"globalists"/"the woke left" etc.

and it's basically the same as "RETVRN" like this is explicitly a fascist thing that fascists say about their fascist beliefs

please don't go around saying it

you can talk about capitalist enshittification without invoking fascism, and just because YOU mean something different doesn't mean it's not invoking those things it's explicitly meant to invoke

"reject modernity, embrace tradition" is another fascist slogan I'm seeing people use like it's a cute meme. please stop with this shit.

adding onto these, the “blond wojak” image also originated from far-right meme spaces. even when used outside of an intentionally far-right context, the nature of the meme implies that the blond, blue-eyed, masculine dude represents the “correct” opinion, while the “incorrect” opinion is represented by figures that caricature disabled people, women, people of color, jewish people, etc (there are different images I’ve seen used to represent the “wrong” opinion in these sorts of memes, but many of them stem from some bigoted origin).

even if you use these memes outside of their intended context, they’re still serving to normalize far-right slogans and rhetoric by making them an acceptable part of “internet culture.” most people aren’t aware, so I don’t think unknowingly sharing these sorts of memes, especially those without an explicit far-right message, makes you a bad person, but it’s still something that’s good to be aware of.