hi!!!!! i’m an actual librarian who has encountered this very situation before!!!!! and while i commend & admire op’s willingness to help another patron, this is why you really really should have a library worker, not another patron whom you don’t know, assist you with tech & information related issues in the library!!! because we are trained in how to handle this exact sort of thing
tl;dr: use proton mail. i’m not gonna gatekeep this info. it does not require a cell phone number, so it’s my go to for patrons in this situation!!! while i am acutely aware of the harm done by the digital divide & how many people are getting left behind as our world gets increasingly tech dependent, the situation is not hopeless. there ARE provisions in place to help the people most affected, and those provisions are usually wearing glasses & cardigans & sitting behind the circulation desk
librarians are not glorified bookworms!!!! we are information professionals who are highly trained in how to handle these sorts of seemingly impossible binds!!!! ask us for help!!!!!! as i always tell my patrons, that’s what i get paid the big bucks for
Re-re-re-re-re-reading Network Effect because I can, and I am fascinated and unsurprised by the part about a quarter of the way in when Amena says she’s not a hero like her Second Mom. Meanwhile, at this point in the narrative, I’ve involuntarily announced “Oh my God, she’s so much like Mensah” at least five times.
Just figured out something about Diesel that makes me feel like such a dumbarse
do share please
So for those who don’t know, Diesel is a typical housecat. He has typical cat behaviours and enjoys typical cat things. He’s my neighbour’s cat, not mine, but I feed him even though I probably shouldn’t, mostly because somebody has to.
Like most cats, Diesel enjoys tasty food. He gets wet food each afternoon and can get pretty pushy in the hour or so pre-food, which is normal for cats. Sometimes, he also gets pushy at random times of the day, including a couple of hours after already having wet food, which is also not unusual for cats, so I just chalk it up to his annoying cat behaviour. It’ll be a few hours after his dinner and he’ll stand in front of my computer screen staring at me and I’ll go to make a coffee and he’ll run to the fridge and meow at me, and grab my leg when I try to leave the kitchen; it’s all very annoying but hey, some cats are annoying, whatever. It’s particularly annoying because he mostly seems do to it when I’m super hungry and then it feels awkward to fix myself something while he’s looking at me like this, then pushing him away from my food, and somehow after I eat he’s never
He does it when I’m hungry.
If you can see where this is going then you’re a lot smarter than me, because it wasn’t until this week that I started paying attention. When Diesel started badgering me and luring me into the kitchen, I started going. I started making myself some food. I sit down to eat it, he jumps up to smell it like normal; I push him away like normal and he goes to eat some of his dry food (the same dry food that’s been there all day but he’s been ignoring and bugging me instead) while I eat my soup. Afterwards he stops bugging me and either goes off somewhere to do his own thing or comes over for a snuggle.
Diesel’s not leading me to the kitchen to ask for wet food. He’s leading me there to tell me to eat. I’m being fuckign. Handled. By a half-stray housecat.
He’s currently purring at me and asking for post-dinner snuggles but it just feels condescending now.
Me: Diesel do not eat my soup.
Diesel: I am confirming that you have food and not yet another craft project to get lost in. Good. Now I will go to my bowl and we can eat together.
the nearest depiction of an animal or other sentient fantasy creature to you at this moment comes to life right where it is (i.e. cat photograph, shark plushie, dragon painting, etc)
assume it doesn’t know you (unless it’s actually a specific animal you’ve met) and that it’s normal for its species and would do whatever was natural for it. including being too giant for and destroying the room it’s in. as well as dying immediately if its environment can’t support its life
Repeatedly chastising himself for making such a foolish decision, area man Anthony Vasquez reportedly spent all day Friday dreading the fun activity he had signed up for. “Goddamn it, I’ve only got two hours left before I have to go out and do this stupid thing,” Vasquez said of the enjoyable leisure activity that he had voluntarily paid $70 for, told multiple friends about, and has been looking forward to for the past three weeks.
