ao3cassandraic

[ao3cassandraic]

*psst*

*PSST*

c'mon over to the information professions, where the information IS

I FUCKING LOVE INFORMATION!!! I WANT TO LEARN EVERY THING AND KNOW EVERYTHING!!!!! I WANT TO UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING ABOUT LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING!!!!!! I AM UTTERLY CONSUMED BY MY THIRST FOR KNOWLEDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ao3cassandraic]

if you don't do anything else today,

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

white people CAN interact with this post. share it, spread it.

[ao3cassandraic]

Honoring Freedom: Juneteenth

On June 19, 1865, news of emancipation reached the last enslaved person in Galveston, Texas, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Today, Juneteenth is a celebration of freedom, resilience, and Black history and culture.

This Juneteenth, we're highlighting two powerful works by author, educator and activist Booker T. Washington (1856-1915): Up from Slavery and Working with the Hands. Both volumes were published in New York by Doubleday, Page & Company. Originally published in 1901, our copy of Up from Slavery was published in 1902. Our copy of Working with the Hands is a first edition from 1904 and is illustrated with photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952), an American photographer and photojournalist. 

Booker T. Washington’s landmark autobiography, Up from Slavery, chronicles his journey from slavery in Virginia to becoming one of the most influential Black leaders in the United States. The book details his early life, his education at Hampton Institute, and his founding of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now known as Tuskegee University) in Alabama. Washington advocates for self-reliance, industrial education, and racial uplift through dignity and hard work. This text was widely read and continues to be a foundational work in African American literature and history.

A lesser-known sequel to Up from Slavery, Working with the Hands serves as a practical and philosophical follow-up. In it, Washington elaborates on the day-to-day operations, goals, and educational philosophy of the Tuskegee Institute. The book emphasizes the dignity of manual labor and the importance of vocational training as a means of achieving Black economic empowerment in the post-Reconstruction South.

From emancipation to education, Washington’s life and legacy are deeply tied to the ongoing struggle for Black freedom and self-determination. His writings emphasize resilience, practical knowledge, and the power of building a future by hand and by heart.

-View previous Juneteenth posts

--Melissa, Distinctive Collections Library Assistant

[ao3cassandraic]

It's Juneteenth yall. And I'm not letting this day go unmarked.

Black people fight for everybody. We stand in solidarity with women, lgbt people, poor people all over the world of every skin color and background. Every religion and nationality.

Today, stand with us. Be with us. Tell a black person you love them. Hug a black person (with consent). Ask that hot black girl out today. Make a black person smile. Black lives matter to everybody and you matter to us.

Stand with us on Juneteenth like we stand with you all year round, and I hope a happy Pride month continues for all of us

💝

[ao3cassandraic]

A year ago I saw the world premiere run of a play called The Virgin Queen Entertains Her Fool, by Michael Hollinger. It's fanfic (of Hamlet, King Lear, and Twelfth Night, among others), it's RPF (Queen Elizabeth I obviously, possibly Mary Queen of Scots and/or Mary Boleyn, likely the Roundheads), and it's an absolutely pantswettingly hilarious tragedy. (Yep, that's a thing that can exist.)

And it is all about this question. Each character in this tight four-hander has their own view on it, and three of the four characters' expressed views have been covered above. (The fourth is something like "If the people treat me like a monarch, I am one, baby! Git out mah way." Which is democracy-like, but not actually democracy -- the character isn't planning to ask anybody!)

If you've got four amazing actors, three middle-aged or older (two women, one man) and one high-school or traditional college-age (written for a man, could be any gender though), give this play a look. It sold out the (small) theatre I saw it in for a couple-three months; they had to add additional performances to meet demand.

The language is not for the most part Shakespearean (though there are nods to it, and poetic bits). Facility with snark, however, is obligatory in all four actors. Some lewd jokes, some gallows humor, nothing that will outrage a typical theatre audience. Onstage abuse, however, and mentions of emotional and sexual abuse.

How do the rulers of your setting justify their power?

After you figured out the various forms of governments in your setting you should think about how these various governments justify their power. Here are a few examples:

Divine Right: Historically what a lot of monarchs used to justify their power. “The gods want me to rule you so I do“. Potentially very interesting if the gods are proveably real in your setting (Imagine the god descending upon the world to tell the king to resign).

Given by the public: What most democratic governments use to justify their power, but not necessarily only for democratic governments. Historically, there were some kings who were elected (insert monty python joke here)

Heroic deed: In her youth, the duke saved us from the dragon, so now she gets to rule us instead of that incapable king who does nothing all day. It’ll get very difficult for her heir to justify their rule though.

Absolute power: “I rule you, and if you disobey me, I’ll kill you.” Obviously they would be unable to follow through if there was a massive uprising because if a ruler kills half their subjects, that’s incredibly bad for them. But the threat of potentially being killed (and lone revolutionaries being killed every now and then) keeps almost everyone obedient

Skill: You may not like them, but you must admit, they are pretty good at keeping the peace with the much more powerful neighbouring empire. If we got rid of them and elected our own Khan, they’d probably not be able to do that and we’d all get conquered and enslaved, so we probably shouldn’t.

Sortition: This is what they did in ancient athens. The current rulers aren’t better than any of us, they were randomly selected. Don’t complain, their time is eventually going to run out and then you might get selected.

I bet there’s dozens of other possibilities, so if you have an idea, please tell me about it!

[ao3cassandraic]

I confess I do wonder whether Murderbot ships Captain/NavBot or Captain/Lieutenant or whether it thinks they should all be a polycule.

Tons of aroace people have ships and enjoy romance in fiction. In the same way people enjoy all kinds of things in fiction they do not personally want irl. Fictional tastes don't invalidate someone's orientation.

Anyway. I think Murderbot ships it. And I kind of wish I could watch Sanctuary Moon to follow their plot lol

In terms of narrative -- what a beautiful way to express how deeply it felt for the team already (I think a lot of the thoughts about connection and meaning it attributes to them it was also starting to feel) and how devastating it found their reaction to it killing Leebeebee. that whole sequence is another example of it doing "theory of mind" and trying to suss out someone's emotions. but instead of it just being on mensah, it's the whole team now

Sanctuary Moon really is its inner life and guide to deciphering emotions.

[ao3cassandraic]

explain your gender in 10 words or less without using boring words like “male”, “female”, “nonbinary”, “masculine”, “feminine” or “androgynous”.

go!

[ao3cassandraic]

scam scam scam scam scammetty scam scam

they're looking for marks

it's good you weren't one

but at least this was slightly more interesting than the usual run of Everything Conference In Exotic Locale acaspam

I have received an unsolicited email sent to Dr. Qqueenofhades, Valuable Member of Academic Research Community, to fill out a survey sent from a random email address which promises to donate money to charity if I do. They do not wish to tell me who the survey is sponsored by, "to avoid biasing results at the start." They do not wish to tell me anything else about it, except that they super swear it will not be used for marketing and has something to do with "online services" for academics. There are no names listed in this email; there is no way to say if they got my contact information from anything apart from a random data-scraper, or if this is indeed, as I expect, one giant phishing/AI/scam operation.

Needless to say, I will, hm. Not be doing that.

[ao3cassandraic]

what is your eye color. what is your favorite color. what is the color that appears most frequently in your wardrobe. what color is your favorite blanket. what color is your water bottle.

[ao3cassandraic]

*giggling*

Some editor had MUCH too much fun doing this.

*incoherent laughter*

[ao3cassandraic]

I explain stuff for a living. I'm good.

[ao3cassandraic]

Excellent point. I'd say Rule of Three, except I don't think the millipede counts, so we don't have a third...

... yet.

I wonder if the Murderbot show is going to do a reckoning with the fact that Arada and Pin-Lee also just killed the shit out of an enemy without negotiating because in the moment it was either that or die?

Like are we going to address the elephant in the room that is the fact that the enemy SecUnit was not less of a person than LeeBeeBee, or are we just going to let that sit because to the humans, it's different, even as they try and reckon with the issues surrounding their own SecUnit, and to our protagonist SecUnit it seems reasonable because eliminating hostile targets quickly and efficiently is just good sense?

Both LeeBeeBee and the enemy SecUnit were acting under orders from a corporate entity that owned them, and got killed by our heroes in defense of their friends. Is our SecUnit blowing off LeeBeeBee's head different from Arada and Pin-Lee landing the hopper on the enemy unit? Or does it just feel different?

[ao3cassandraic]

has a tv show that you enjoyed ever have a finale so bad it’s permanently ruined the entire show for you

[ao3cassandraic]

Why LeeBeeBee?

In All Systems Red, we first encounter the main villain indirectly, at the end of the first chapter. Putting quote and discussion after a cut for book spoilers.

Then I found something weird. There was an “abort” order in the HubSystem command feed, the one that controlled, or currently believed it controlled, my governor module. It had to be a glitch. It didn’t matter, because when MedSystem has priority —

And then Murderbot suddenly shuts down, as though for repairs.

How the hell does anyone pull this off in a TV show?!

How do you introduce HubSystem and MedSystem and how they work together? How do you clue in viewers to its importance really really fast? How do you show its orders to Murderbot? How do you explain why/how Murderbot isn't following those orders? How do you make viewers understand how serious this is when even Gurathin (were he to investigate, and if he does, how do you avoid him discovering the governor module hack?) might not totally get it?

And does it even make sense to introduce GrayCris this early, when we barely know Murderbot or PresAux and we've barely assimilated the millipede attack?

Yeah. This structure, this specific cliffhanger, just wasn't gonna work. They had to do something different, and given that, they likely want to let GrayCris sit a bit because there are some starter villains to clear out before getting to GrayCris as the series-final boss.

More subtly and thematically, there's a question of humanity-calling-the-shots here. In ASR, PresAux doesn't even see a human associated with GrayCris until the final climactic negotiation with them -- until then it's all trails of destruction and SecUnits and note-passing through the feed. In a horror/suspense-aligned version of the show, that could be made to work, I guess -- but that's not the show they were writing. So they needed GrayCris to have a human face, not least to drive home that (in Murderbot's trenchant words) humans are greedy bastards.

It's quite possible to argue with exactly how they wrote LeeBeeBee the character. I would have been happier with like 90% less coercive sexuality, myself. But I can't argue with the need to delay GrayCris's intro, to give GrayCris a human face early-ish on, and to rework Murderbot/PresAux's initial encounter with GrayCris. Those were just necessary.

[ao3cassandraic]

I am the Worst Plant Person Ever, so I chose a large chunk of yard to just... try this on. I figured I'd fail. It's what usually happens with me.

I smothered the grass for a year, re-sowed the area last spring, and re-seeded bare spots this spring. Y'all, that area is now more-than-knee-high in locally-native flowers -- the wild bergamot is particularly tall and impressive this year. There are spots I'm having to weed, but they're around the edges and fairly manageable, though creeping charlie is my nemesis. And I DO NOT HAVE TO MOW IT.

Last summer's dragonflies and darning needles were epic. They should be back soonish! I got myself an identification guidebook!

This happened a few days ago. (Blanket flower, genus Gaillardia. I'm not sure which species.)

Mom sent me a facebook link to a PBS news hour post about how the anti-lawn movement is growing. The vast majority of the comments on it were stuff like this:

Most people are on our side here, even the so-called "boomers." We just have to be spreading ecological knowledge and practical means of creating useful habitat in back yards! Educate! Protect! Resist!

[ao3cassandraic]

No Kings.