Patron using the computer: “Your Google is broken! No matter what I search, it just shows me books!”

Me: “…you’re typing in the library’s catalog. This isn’t Google.”

Sounds like it’s a date!

=°-°=

Northeast, but I travel southeast usually at least once a year! How’s Lowe Mill in Huntsville sound for a fun date? 😉

I’m not like a huge fan of myself either, so there, we have a thing in common already lol

To all of the people whose reasons are something self-deprecating about their confidence/appearance/personality/etc:

I’ll go on a date with you, if you want! ☺

I have voted twice a year, ever year, for the entire time I’ve been old enough. That said, I really can’t remember the last time I actually expected any meaningful change from it… Electoralism is a bandaid at best, and a distraction at worst. At least in the U.S., maybe it’s different elsewhere.

Aside from all the very valid criticisms everyone else has pointed out, there’s one thing that always made it totally unusable for me… When you open the app, the very first thing it does is show your front-facing camera?? What kind of unhinged behavior is that, are they trying to ruin my day?!

This kinda conflates hate for the unethical practices of the company with hate for the quality of their products, which seems unfair. As a company they’re definitely bastards. There was a long, long period of time where their products were pretty unquestionably top-notch compared to everything else out there. However, for a while now everything has been going really downhill. Then recently it’s really accelerated, especially with them leaning into AI. These days I hardly even miss them anymore.

I think my biggest suggestion might be to try to avoid the huge industry of companies selling “makerspace” stuff to libraries, i.e. GlowForge, etc. All of it is wildly overpriced and underpowered, at the supposed tradeoff of having a lot of support. It’s a bad trade, the support isn’t worth it.

Try to build your own open source equipment, like Voron for 3d printing, OpenFlexure for microscopes, all the Precious Plastics designs for plastic scrap processing, etc. Building these from scratch is ultimately cheaper. Also, it means you’ll know how to fix anything that could possibly go wrong, since you know it inside and out

Don’t worry about not having the necessary skills/experience. It’s all very learnable by anyone, and also there are definitely members of your community with those skills willing to help out. On that note, you really want the community running this thing more than the library admin. They know what they want/need.

Pay attention to the environmental and health consequences of this stuff EARLY ON, before you invest in something terrible. Use easily compostable materials like PHA and hempwood, or post-consumer recycled stuff like PETg from used soda bottles. Get into making/recycling your own materials if/when you can.

That’s what i can think of for now, hopefully that’s at all helpful.

I work in a makerspace, that’s in a public library.

I’m like a 3-ish, and I do. I equally enjoy adult books though, if that helps or complicates whatever you’re trying to suss out.

I’m usually all for fediverse folks shitting on big corporate social media platforms, they definitely all deserve it. But unless I’m mistaken, and I very well might be, TT seems like it gets wayyyy more vitriol than the other big bads. Hopefully that’s not for “old man yells at cloud” type reasons.

Anyway, definitely looking forward to Loops when it’s ready!!

I’ll have to take your word for it, but I have my doubts! Regardless, I feel like it’s better to focus on whether you are doing or have done bad things, than to worry about whether you’re an inherently bad person. You can always work to do better in the future, and to make amends.

No, absolutely not. At least, certainly none of my own, even if I were capable of it… I don’t really see the point in procreating with the world on such a catastrophic trajectory. On the other hand, if I find myself in a situation where I have a home and resources to share, and some unfortunate already-existing kids need those things, I’d certainly offer them a place. That would be just as true for non-kids though, so I dunno how much of a “parent” that’d really make me.

Mostly I’m onboard with what you’re saying here. Although, like others have said, don’t forget there’s plenty of people on OF who aren’t women! If there is any problem at all, why isn’t it also a problem for them? Second, I definitely wonder how many of the opinions in this thread are coming from other women who’ve done sex work. Those are mostly the only people I wanna hear from on this topic.

As far as the “fakeness” not working for you personally, I might have some good news for you. While of course capitalism does tend to suck all of the joy out of everything, like all professions, there are sex workers who definitely do enjoy their work. At least as much as anyone can feasibly enjoy working under capitalism anyway.

You’d be surprised, attractiveness is subjective!

I was saying the same thing as you a while ago and somebody told me that I’d be surprised and that attractiveness is subjective. And you know what? They were right!

An old PS1 fighting game called Unholy War. It had a lot of really unique mechanics I haven’t seen since.

My boss would be really mad if I tried to not come in for that long

Lowe Mill in Huntsville, Alabama. It’s like a giant collaborative art space in an old factory building. Pretty much the most anarchist space I’ve ever been to, although that’s a very low bar for me.

It’s been great honestly. I’ve got two boyfriends I love very much. While it’s not all sunshine and roses all the time, they’re the only people in my life who I feel like truly have my back, and I have theirs. Of course that’s not something that’s unique or inherent to romance, you could have the same thing with friends, family, etc. Just worked out that way for me.