Ohtobefightingthefoos - Well… That’s Unfortunate

The universe knew Bobby’s second family needed to be full of cockroaches that can’t die and it gave him Athena and Buck specifically for that reason.

I love The Golden Girls.

Dripped out at Comic Con

Honestly not a fan of Ronance for the simple reason that I think Steve should get to have his best friend dislike his ex a little on his behalf. He's too much of a self-sacrificing sweetheart to do it himself, and tbh he deserves it.

Like I don't hate Nancy or anything, and I often enjoy when people write Stancy as still being friends, but resenting the ex simply on principle is, like, best friend basics! How can we talk about Steve not used to having someone in his corner without letting Robin have his back in the simplest of ways?

this episode killed me oh my god i am thriving

I love how the beginning s5 Ezran plot line is like “Here’s Sorvus, and their adopted son, the king of Katolis”.

The relation between nature and human being: Agnieszka Lepka

I feel the need to show off this TimBer I doodled cuz I actually really quite like it and I just think it’s really cute :)))

If we wanted to engage in nuance (lol, lmao) on the "are audiobooks reading" debate, we really do need to bring literacy, and especially blind literacy, into the conversation.

Because, yes, listening to a story and reading a story use mostly the same parts of the brain. Yes, listening to the audiobook counts as "having read" a book. Yes, oral storytelling has a long, glorious tradition and many cultures maintained their histories through oral history or oral + art history, having never developed a true written language, and their oral stories and histories are just as valid and rich as written literature.

We still can't call listening in the absence of reading "literacy."

The term literacy needs to stay restricted to the written word, to the ability to access and engage with written texts, because we need to be able to talk about illiteracy. We need to be able to identify when a society is failing to teach children to read, and if we start saying that listening to stories is literacy, we lose the ability to describe those systemic failures.

Blind folks have been knee-deep in this debate for a long time. Schools struggle to provide resources to teach students Braille and enforcing the teaching of Braille to low-vision and blind children is a constant uphill battle. A school tried to argue that one girl didn't need to learn Braille because she could read 96-point font. Go check what that is. The new prevalence of audiobooks and TTS is a huge threat to Braille literacy because it provides institutions with another excuse to not provide Braille education or Braille texts.

That matters. Braille-literate blind and low-vision people have a 90% employment rate. For those who don't know Braille, it's 30%. Braille literacy is linked to higher academic success in all fields.

Moving outside the world of Braille, literacy of any kind matters. Being able to read text has a massive impact on a person's ability to access information, education, and employment. Being able to talk about the inability to read text matters, because that's how we're able to hold systems accountable.

So, yes, audiobooks should count as reading. But, no, they should not count as literacy.

"Split Lip" some watercolor sketchbook play. prints for July over on patreon

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