Solarpiracy - SolarPiracy

So in What Matters in Jane Austen, the author points out that Lizzie and Jane are constantly going off to have their own side conversations and gossip with each other, moreso than any other set of characters in Austen, and now I’ve decided a necessary feature of any modern au is Lizzie just CONSTANTLY texting Jane. Like the second any conversation ends she’s texting Jane about it. If she’s feeling particularly mean she’ll just text Jane while you’re still talking.

Do you have any interesting tidbits about everyone’s favorite hungry little guys, shrews?

we know these tiny mammalian terrors are hungry, but the question remains: why?

well, it's because these little guys are always running around DOING stuff, is why! shrews are constantly on the move, and their tinier-than-a-mouse size and short fur means that they lose body heat fast while they scamper around capering wildly, so to compensate they've developed one of the highest metabolisms on earth.

shrew hearts beat up to 1000 times per minute, fueling a body temperature of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but this takes a LOT of energy to keep up. shrews are essentially burning their candle at both ends and also in the middle, so is it any wonder that they need to eat up to 3 times their own body weight per day just to keep themselves going?

well ain’t this some fuckshit

Just heard about the mess that YA author Maggie Tokuda-Hall has been dealing with. tl;dr, Her publisher offered her the chance to be part of an initiative that would’ve put her work in a lot more stores and libraries. It’s an initiative specifically aimed at amplifying Asian voices… but only if she removed the word “racism” from her author’s note. On a book about the Japanese internment.

I am very glad she rejected this offer, and I 100% agree with her that this is pure cowardice. I’m appalled at Scholastic – or any other publisher who’s doing this but whose authors can’t take the risk of speaking out. This is the kind of crap that marginalized writers have to deal with all the time – and it is also how fascism takes root:  “just business” decisions that perpetuate injustice, systematic erasure of targeted groups from their own damn stories, institutions choosing to do what’s easy over what’s right.

(I have been very fortunate to never have a publisher do this to me. Plenty of disrespectful bs from institutions and individuals within the industry, but never from the people who signed my checks. I’m also somewhat insulated from the book ban bullshit because my work is genre and isn’t aimed at kids – though that’s coming, of course. Fascists don’t stop until they are stopped.)

Anyway. Pop over to Maggie’s blog to read the full story – or better yet hop on a retail site and buy her books. It’s up to readers now to support marginalized authors, since it’s clear nobody else will.

Vegans who are vegan because “but the earth” and “but the farmers” and “but the animals” and all this other hoity-toity nonsense and not just because they can’t or don’t wanna eat meat/animal products make me fuckin tired man.

National Parks Service Crochet Patterns:

FISH

nps.gov

Walleye Crochet Pattern (U.S. National Park Service)

Walleye Crochet Pattern (U.S. National Park Service)

nps.gov

Halibut Crochet Pattern (U.S. National Park Service)

Halibut Crochet Pattern (U.S. National Park Service)

GEOLOGY

nps.gov

Lava Flow Crochet Pillow (U.S. National Park Service)

Lava Flow Crochet Pillow (U.S. National Park Service)

INVERTEBRATES

nps.gov

Triops Crochet Pattern (U.S. National Park Service)

Triops Crochet Pattern (U.S. National Park Service)

Congratulations to Remington Richardson DDS, Chad Hannibal DDS, Tyler Thompson DDS, Taylor Sims DDS, and Demont Davis DDS.

French senator Claude Malhuret sums up the world made by the current American administration, 5 March 2025

If you aren’t totally quaking in your boots at the news of millions of bees dead, yet again, you’re nuts.

I need help feeding my family

I'm 22, non-binary, and disabled. I am currently 3 months behind on rent, behind on my utilities, and only have enough food left for one more day. There are 3 adults and 3 dogs in my house. We have food stamps, but got our first two months at the same time and don't get any more until the 18th of June. My partner and I do tattoos and piercings, but business is slow rn and we are really struggling. If you are able to help at all it would be greatly appreciated, and if you are not comfortable sending money but want to help we would really appreciate an instacart or some other grocery delivery, I'm really most worried about having food. If you do want to send money, my cash app is $enbymickie . Whether you are able to help or not, please share!! Thank you 💜 feel free to message me if you have any questions

Yesterday, Israel bombed one of the biggest bookshops in Gaza. The Samir Mansour bookshop was one of the few publishing houses in Gaza as well. I saw a video of the owner of the bookshop fighting tears and talking about how much this bookshop meant to him and how he used to skip meals to be able to save money to get this bookshop going. This bookshop was part of the Kahil building which had various stores and offices.

In another video that was circulating, a guy from Gaza was explaining why Israel targets these buildings and towers. Every day you hear about a building targeted and leveled. He explains that these towers have been the main destination for the youth of Gaza as they usually contain coffee shops, bookshops, restaurants, educational and learning centres. So by destroying them, Israel is destroying memories and any potential for communal relationships. 

This is what we mean when we say Israel is not only committing a full blown genocide as we have been witnessing publicly for days now, with over 200 deaths in the span of a week (as of May 19, 2021), but also this other form of incremental genocide that has been ongoing for decades; even when Israel isn’t bombing Gaza on a daily basis, there has always been an effort to erase Palestinian history and culture, from appropriating tatreez and the Palestinian cuisine to destroying literary works.

Highly recommend watching The Great Book Robbery documentary for more on that as it goes into the details about Israel’s appropriation of Palestinian books during the Nakba.

Erasing culture is an essential component of settler-colonialism, and what Israel is targeting in Gaza right now is by no means coincidental or “accidental”.