librarypunk - 103 - It’s bad news roundup, pardner 3

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

We’re doing another bad news roundup. And you know we’re Bataille posting! https://discord.gg/jY4jaNgan  Media mentioned Justin https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2023/07/26/hisd-to-eliminate-librarians-turn-libraries-into-discipline-centers-at-28-campuses/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/publishers-booksellers-sue-texas-over-public-school-book-ban-2023-07-26/  Sadie https://www.thedailybeast.com/crowd-gives-campbell-county-library-board-in-wyoming-the-finger-after-library-director-is-fired  Jay https://www.metroweekly.com/2023/07/attempt-to-remove-san-diego-librarys-lgbtq-books-backfires/   The Pornographic Imagination (Sontag) https://www.remittancegirl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/124506505-The-Pornographic-Imagination-by-Susan-Sontag.pdf https://repeaterbooks.com/product/postcapitalist-desire-the-final-lectures/

Did you buy that seltzer that's got the real annoying name? It's like SIP with 2 peas or something. I think that's the one that I bought. They're from Massachusetts. It's called Ocean Breeze Cultivators. It's got a grizzled sailor on it, which I'm into. Someone I'm thinking of. Oh, man, there's a lot of these now.

Yeah, and it's the new hotness. Experience the wave of relaxation with Ocean Breeze Cultivators 5 milligram THC-infused grapefruit seltzer. You're a refreshing eyes of natural citrus flavors and a subtle calming high. And there's a hot, grizzled old sailor guy on it. Wink with a Y. These are all beef. Oh, this looks like PBR.

I love that. Oh, hell yeah. PBR, but for weed? My roommates were judging me for drinking PBR. There's one called Smazzy? That's you. Oh, he can. Smezy Y.

Smezzy? I'm like, listen, PBR is good. It is a union shop, I think, right? Yeah, people make fun of me for drinking PBR too. They're just wrong. I'm like, I'm like, just because I live in Boston where there's a bunch of fancy craft beer, doesn't mean I'm going to suck IPA dick, you know? Yeah, we only suck PBR dick and whiskey dick.

Exactly. We only suck PBR dick in this house. I hate IPAs. I do like craft beer. I do like IPAs. Justin, I'm a Skalkaum Library, and pronouns are he and they. I'm Sadie. I work IT.

at a public library and my pronouns are they them. And I'm Jay. I am a music librarian and my pronouns are he him. Let's go, lesbians! Let's go! That's for all those lesbians out there. You know who you are. Yeah, we totally let Butch Appreciation Day come and go and I just barely got in a happy birthday butchers on the last, like last hour. I mean, where would we be without Butch's? That's like, you know, listen, all you, all of you library school students out there and you're going to

get your big first job and you're going to have to move somewhere across the country, the very first thing you need to do is find a butch lesbian to be your best friend because they will help you build IKEA furniture and unpack and do other moving things and also like make you cookies and shit. This has happened to be every single time I've moved anywhere. Just do it. As a butch bisexual, yes, especially the baking cookies part. My wife will cover the the building of the IKEA furniture part. It's 18th of August

is Butch Appreciation Day. Well, we're a little late, but every day. In this house, every single day, this Butch Appreciation Day. Excuse you. As a former butch

as a dikt of fact. It's that pipeline. Slight down that pipeline fast within a Boston cop. We started a Discord. We just started doing there. Yeah, it's pretty fun so far. But yeah, join our Discord.

It's fun. We'll put the link in this episode, but we might have to have a new link. I don't know how that works. Yeah, whatever. It'll work. It'll work. We'll figure it out.

Yeah, it's fine. We're chill. Yeah. So my first story is a doozy. So we're doing another bad news roundup partner. Pacow, p' cow, p'o. Ney. We need horse, Dono to come in and like do a little.

That's what I was channeling was horse dono. Yeah, a segment intro for bad news roundup partner is horse dono. Dono, if you're listening. Send me some clips. Send us some clips. We'll bug you. So this is, I've got myself some more Texas stories because I can't help it. And everything's kind of weird in Texas right now. So the Houston Independent School District is not independent, so it probably should get its name changed.

But it's been taken over by the state government to reappoint the Board of Education, along with a superintendent, who is kind of the star of this story. because I found out more about him, but I think the reason librarians would have heard about HISD recently is that the new superintendent, Mike Miles, has a reform program called the new education system. It's not new. It's the same shit that people have been doing forever, which is tying faculty pay to student feedback forms

and standardized test scores, which is what he did in Dallas over the course of three whole years, really commits to it. I think he's more just a wrecking ball. he comes in and destroys shit and leaves. After he left Dallas, he went to fund a charter school system. So kind of tells you like everything about him. He's a West Point graduate.

He's a real piece of shit. And they were in the school about three weeks, in the news about three weeks ago for 28 of 85 schools in the NES program are eliminating their librarian positions and the rest are up for review, which means probably like half of them will go. That's what for review usually means. Ideally, those librarians will be able to move to other positions in the school district and not totally be fucked over. Obviously, these are low-income schools. All the rich schools get to keep their librarians.

The former superintendent had kept library staff on, so this is sort of a reduction. It's a reversal in their position on funding libraries in the system. And they will be turning the library spaces into what we're originally being referred to as discipline. Centers, and I went back to this Click to Houston version, and they are all referred to as team centers now, which I don't remember that when I first grabbed

this article. So actually, let me pull up the internet archive. 23, 7, 2. Okay, so they were always referred to as team centers. I believe. I just don't remember that at all until I reread it now. But they will be used to

hold, probably, just any student with an intellectual disability. They said behavioral problems. They'll zoom into their classrooms. Cool. Which I guess means there's cameras in every classroom, which I believe the union has said something about. You can go into the library apparently before and after, but they won't have librarians, so I don't know how they're supposed to be run. But anyway, that was how the story ended up on my radar.

But then I started reading to see if there was any updates on this story today. And Mike Miles, it turns out, is like a crazy person. So they put on a play about his new education system. We had students and teachers from the Performing Arts School take part in it. And he plays Mr. Duke, the owner of like a 50s diner who helps explain to the stuffy old public school teachers and the students. And intermediary, it's an intermediary for them. It's an hour-long musical. The choice of the name Duke with the setting of a 50s diner is not inspiring much confidence in this person's racial politics.

Yeah. And also, what fucking queen decided, let's do a play. We are lost as a profession. We are lost as a profession. My dreams are getting smaller and smaller a student later echoed. Well, maybe that new guy, you know, super, super, you mean superintendent miles? Maybe superintendent miles will make things better for us. So he plays Mr. Duke. He doesn't play himself.

He plays the 50s diner owner, but I guess he's in the play. So this was like a mandatory fun thing that the teachers were forced to go to. And I also saw one of the kids who was in the play, like they didn't know what the play was about until the second day of rehearsal. And they had already been promised like volunteer hours and stuff because that's a thing you have to do in high school, which is weird. So they were like, well, we all signed up for it already, and they promised us these service hours or whatever. So, yeah, I guess we're doing it. But then the student, like, fully named herself and everything. She's like, I hated being in this.

It was creepy propaganda. So he seems like he's giving me some real, like, what's the name of the mayor of New York City who's always doing weird stuff. Oh, Eric is Eric Adams? Eric Adams. Yeah, he's giving me Eric Adams vibes of just like, He's like, because he said something towards the end, Miles called his critics naysayers saying, you'll always have people who don't want change. Some people always want to bring down something good.

They didn't get into the spirit of it. So this guy's a real maniac. And I assume most of what he's supposed to be doing is eliminating positions and restructuring the school. And this is all stuff that's been done before. It doesn't seem to work anywhere. But I also saw that he wants more control over a stomach. of the budget that because it's all it's all being appointed directly by the governor anyway and their department of education the texas department of education so it doesn't matter if one person has all

the power or not apparently the trustees are still elected in houston iST this is the thing about reporting on local government is like every local government is set up different but yeah apparently the trustees are still elected but the board isn't and yeah i would say if you want to keep up with this story. It's hard to find any kind of interesting reporting, so I would just follow what the teachers union for Houston has to say. So I'm sure they've got social media presence out there. But anyway, the discipline centers are pretty creepy. A lot of the reform is also standardizing the lesson plans, so the teachers won't write their own lesson plans anymore. It's that model of, you have instructional faculty and you have design faculty, and they're not the same faculty.

so you can trade out any kind of instructor and they all just teach the same script, more or less. It's, I want to say, like, American University pioneered this in higher education, which is like an online university focused on veterans. I think it's American University. It might be also... American University is the one in D.C., right? That's, like, Christian, right? I think so, yeah.

Yeah. I think they're the ones who pioneered this instructional faculty, design faculty distinction. But anyway, they're trying to do the same thing with the school district. district. And so there's really no room for like independent reading or anything. It's a student, teachers who teach reading and I thought it was math, but yeah, I think it's reading in math, which are the things that count for the standardized star test in Texas, which is their, their standardized test. They get paid about $15,000 more dollars more than teachers who teach science, humanity, social sciences, and electives. And then there was another student,

another teacher who had her elective course that should have been teaching for a year. replaced with a course on like the skill of thinking, which she has received three weeks of curriculum for and school starts and now. So, yeah, it's very like, if you've heard about like what Eric Adams is doing in the schools, he like, he mandated people do like breathing exercises for all students.

He's like a really wild person, but it's fun that the mayor of New York City has some real Texas vibes, because this is totally something I would expect from like Texas or Florida. Yeah, because Eric Adams, also was the one who was like going to slash the New York Public Library's budget while throwing money at cops. I thought, I thought they didn't do it as bad after the outcry. It wasn't as bad, but there was a previous cut that had already happened. And then he did another 10% cut to like every board except police. And then they stopped that for the libraries.

But the library still lost like $28 million, some huge amount of money. Yeah. No, he's a piece shit. Yeah. Yeah. So is Miles. Superintendent Miles. Hi, Super Nintendo Chalmers. I want to get some Simpsons jokes. I can note to myself. Maybe I'll do that. Maybe I won't. If I do, it'll be here.

No, it must be the teachers who are wrong. I saw the teachers in the closet. I saw teachers teaching critical race theory, and then another critical race theory came out and it smiled at me. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, that was the first one. Publishers, booksellers, Sue Texas over the public school book ban. This also actually did have a bit of an update.

So this is a law that went into effect in Texas. It was passed in the last legislative session. It has the, I believe we talked about it before, it has two ratings, has three ratings. has three ratings, not rated, sexually, let me get the exact terms, sexually explicit, and then sexually relevant, I believe, are the two ratings, and then not rated. Oh, yeah, I remember this.

Publishers, it would mean every vendor has to give these ratings. There is no ratings board in Texas. There are no guidelines for the ratings, and they will have to make up their own ratings of whether or not it's not rated, sexually explicit, that are sexually relevant. So that would mean everyone from like Amazon to an independent bookstore has to come up with their own assessment of whether or not that that book is explicit, relevant, or not rated,

in order to be a vendor to a school district. And so they were sued by the Austin, Blue Willow is a bookstore, Austin Bookstore, Austin Bookstor, Book People, Association of American Publishers, Authors Guild, Comic Book, Legal Defense Fund. And then they were joined with a friend of the court, Barnes & Noble, American Association of School Librarians and the Association of University Presses filed amicus briefs. So the law goes into effect September 1st. They have asked for the judge to file an injunction, issue a temporary injunction blocking the law from going into effect.

The judge seems kind of sympathetic, so it probably will get an injunction, particularly because the state officials have said they don't plan to enforce the law until a April 24 because they haven't made any rating guidelines for booksellers. So this law really can't go into effect. The judge, who's Judge Albright, asked why the law was compelling private bookstores to do work on behalf of the state. The state's lawyers argued that ratings were government-related speech and thus not subject to First Amendment claims. But since each bookseller must provide their own ratings, the plaintiffs argued that the businesses would have to publish the ratings as their own. And like we said last time, the law allows state agencies to correct any individual booksellers rating, and it's not clear who does that.

So the judge asked, what if everyone just put no rating and then made the state correct them? So, I don't know, it doesn't seem like the state has a very good case because this law is nonsensical. It was passed in a hurry. So I wouldn't be surprised if it gets put on hold, but there are several organizations already suing the state about it. And we'll know by next week. this is Justin in post-production. The judge did end up granting a preliminary

injunction barring the implementation of this law. So probably by the time this is out. Yeah, we'll know by the time this is out. We are ahead of the news cycle, finally. So that was Texas. Do I have a Texas drop? Marhabo Zumalai. That was Texas.

Cool. Rad. Okay, well, I have the one coming from Wyoming, where a library board instituted a instituted a policy aimed at shielding children and teens from sexual content of course

policy for protecting children from harmful sexually explicit material the board instituted in June of this year with guidance from mass resistance which Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a far-right anti-LGBQ hey group so you know where that's coming from But they said, okay, so when do you have, like, what they asked the director, do you have timeline for implementing this policy, which doesn't actually name any books, just says that librarians are responsible for going through and removing or weeding anything that could be

harmful to children, which is just kind of a wildly vague thing. And she came back with basically, we already have an established challenge. procedure that means that the challengers have to certify that they actually read the entire book, which I think is key to a lot of this. Yeah. But the board basically said, no, it's your professional duty to do this. And she said, it's our professional duty to violate First Amendment rights. And the board was like, well, it wouldn't be you doing it.

And she's like, well, it definitely feels like we're doing it because we're the ones who are removing these books physically from the shelves. and basically refused to put a timeline or any sort of plan in place to actually implement this incredibly vague policy. And she got fired over it. Let's support her. Good, good job, her. Yeah, like, good for sticking to your guns. Yeah.

Let's see. She says it puts the onus on the staff for violating the First Amendment instead of the leadership of the library. And the board person who is heading this says, well, they're not personally responsible. And she says, well, I feel like we are personally responsible. the ones doing it, we're the ones physically doing it. And then the board person said, if that's the way you feel, then I feel like you should find another job. And then five days later, they asked her to resign. And they explicitly said, it's because she refused to move the books, but they never told me which books they were

referring to or why should they should be removed to review. Just all the books. Just get rid of all of them. All of the books. I think it's specifically the children's area, but this article didn't say that specific. But they asked her to resign and she refused and they told her she would be fired at a board meeting called The Next Day. And she very smartly invoked her right under Wyoming law to have a public hearing and basically said, no, I'm going to make you do this in front of the whole community. I like her. Yeah. And she said, I had a good idea about what books they wanted removed. She told The Daily Beast, we could have, I could have just decided I don't want to endure the drama that will come from this, I could have done that, but then she added, but ethically, I could not have

done that. So this is what it actually looks like for, you know, a librarian to stick to their ethics. Unfortunately. Unfortunately. Thank you, Terry Leslie in Wyoming. We hope you are getting some form of financial help. Yes. But the thing is, is the Wyoming Democratic Party caught wind of this happening and tweeted about it. And about 250 people showed up to the board hearing where she got fired and, and the majority of them were there to support her.

They booed the board members, the one board member who said, who was the one who said, you know, you should go on and find another drop then, got flipped off by a whole, by a bunch of little ladies. And they eventually had to cut public comment because people wouldn't say. stop applauding and cheering. And when they officially came out of executive session and said that she had, her position had been terminated and she stood up to go, she got a standing ovation from like most of the room as she left.

So she was clearly being supported by her community at least. Like I don't know how. Yeah. So it's not communities asking for this kind of shit. Exactly. So like. Sometimes. I leant from the Daily Beast article to the one.

one that they cited from the Cowboy State Daily, which is far more sympathetic to the board. And for some reason, you know, obvious, like, obviously, they linked to sections from three books that had previously been challenged, two of which had been moved, already moved sections in the library. So, um, genderqueer, of course. Sex is a funny word. And how do you make, uh, how do you make a baby? They all remained in the library, but at least two of them got moved sections. Gender queer got moved to the adult section and how do you make a baby. I think it got moved to the parenting section, which was still in the children section, but on a higher shelf in marked parenting, right? It's like, okay, both of that, that makes, you know, both of those fine.

Yeah. I haven't read gender queer, so I don't actually know if it's meant for, quote, young adults or if it's like in all ages or if it is primarily an adult audience. Like, I've not read it. I can see it straddles the line between like young adults and adults because new adult Yeah It covers a lot of the authors like youth and like feelings about gender growing up So it is sort of like a coming of ageish theme Is it like a fun home kind of vibe? Yeah like kind of the same thing

So I can see why it would be why under protest it could be moved from young adults to, right? Sure. Sure. Whatever. But this article, it goes through and it talks about the previously challenged books and how they've been moved, but it also like cuts out certain parts of each one that were the ones that were being protested and like, of course, puts those in full thing, actually puts a trigger warning at the beginning of the article. Like there are some like upsetting things like proceed with caution. And I'm like, okay. There's faggotry and diketry in these books. You could use this, you can use this special snowflake thing to, to prime readers into going, well, of course this should be removed from the library when like it was already addressed. It,

it was not part of this like policy at all. So these libraries, like these librarians already did their, their due, their job and their due diligence when community members challenged, like, said, hey, maybe we should move these and they went, you know what? We agree. with you for our community in this collection, we will do that. Like, regardless of whether or not, like, we agree with those decisions, like, children can probably still access them, right? Yeah, they're still in the library. You know, which is fine.

They, you know, they do their professional duty and then the board turns around and says, well, we want you to do it harder, but we're not going to tell you how or where or under what procedure. We just expect you to go through the entire children's section and move anything with sexually, with sexual content, basically. And she's like, we don't have time for that for one. And for two, like, you're basically asking me to violate the First Amendment, which is not something I'm planning on doing.

So they fired her. And I'd like to note that this is one of the first library boards who back in October split with the ALA. So this is what's coming down the pike from all of that. They're going to start pushing people out and yeah. Run for your library board. Run for your library board. Get on your library board.

Go to boring meetings. Just show up. They're open to the community. You can just go. You can just go to your library's board meetings. Even if you're not on the board, you can just go to them. You can't just go. Because it is like a city.

or a neighborhood or whatever, like government thing, like those minutes are public and those meetings are normally open to the public. Just people just don't fucking go to them. And so they don't normally expect people to go, but like, you're allowed to go and you're allowed to make comments and shit.

Like, I've gone to library board meetings before because I saw like Nazi stickers on telephone poles outside the library. I was like, hi, this is happening in our community. Are you aware of this? Have there been book challenges? What do we have a place for this? Like, you can do, that. That's the thing you can do. So you should be annoying in your board meetings. That's what they're

there for. I know you're afraid to like stand out or be where you're not supposed to be or feel weird or uncomfortable or anything. I know. But just go to them and be annoying at them. If you if you have one place in this life to be annoying, it is at library board meetings, then that is my sense. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking about that because the city that I live in has a city library that is not the library that I work for. And I was thinking I should start going to some of those city council meetings because I literally live walking distance from them. So there's no real excuse. But I don't know what their, I don't know what their policies are about book challenges. And I live literally like three blocks from that library. So I should

probably know, like especially as a library person. So I have to remind myself to not get too complacent just because I live in Boston now. And the BPL is a great library, but still, you know. The two organizations that helped draft the policy, which is called policy for protecting children from harmful, sexually explicit material. I'm going through the changes to their collection development, but two of them are mass resistance, one of which is Massachusetts-based anti-gay organization. And the other one is Liberty Council, which is Florida-based.

So neither of these are even Wyoming organizations. This is all astroturfed. Oh, yeah. But I'm looking through... Astroterurfing shows up in mind, too. Yeah. So this one, I pulled up their collection development policy that they adopted in March.

I just found it. And they struck out all the sections that had to do with the ALA, which is just like kind of funny. But I found the policy that they added, and it's not that long. I want to see if there's anything that stands out to me.

Anything that would be harmful to miners or impede their development. standards established by the library board and requirements by SEPA. Okay. Shall include any picture, photograph, drawing, sculpture, motion picture, yada, yada, yada, which depicts nudity or sexual conduct, sexual excitement, sexual battery, beastiality or satemascistic abuse, which is obscene. Or, that's in blue for some reason. Or which is otherwise harmful to minors as a find by SEPA. No, it's like a revision document.

So this is all in red that they've added. And then there's like blue, which is like they added and then I guess added again. But they just added, which is obscene. Which is obscene. This is just saying you have to be SEPA compliant with your books, I guess. I have some Susan Sontag related things to say to all of this. And I'll wait until after mine, but it's relevant, I promise. Yeah, and it sounds like they don't even know what SEPA compliance means,

because if they're basing it on that, that's just straight up. You have to have filters in which place. to block child porn. And I really don't think that... I really don't think that publishers are publishing that. And it says the library may curate them, but must have them in a way that is not accessible to minors. So it just have to be sequestered for adults online.

So she didn't even break their new policy. Yeah. Because that's the standards the board put forward. I don't see anywhere else where it says anything more specific. Of course, when you Google this, a bunch of Christian websites that are all like the same website with like 20 different fronts. And you could tell because the article is word for word showing up the same and Google results. So like Wacknuts Daily and some other one was popping up. Yeah, World News Daily and Breaking Christian News, some kind of WordPress called yes, gays are bullying.

Oh, dear God. I wish. Sweet Jesus. This copy basing word for word. And you can see it in a little Google snippet. And the thing that gets me about this is like, don't write off the conservative states because they're the canary and the coal mine. That's where they practice these tactics. So, you know, if you're one of those people who's like, oh, well, it's Texas.

Oh, well, it's Florida. Oh, well, it's Wyoming. It's like, well, yeah. Where do you think they're going to move next? Do you think they're going to be satisfied there? So like maybe you should care about communities. I'll remind people that one of the most vocal transgender politicians in this country right now is in Montana. Montana.

Yeah. So don't be one of those assholes that writes off entire states just because you happen to be lucky and live in a more liberal one. So yeah, don't be that asshole. There are good librarians everywhere. Not in Montana though. But actually, yeah, I was trying to find. find more Blue State stories to kind of explain this to people that, like, they're trying this, and that's what Jay's story is about.

Yeah. Even though I have a downer take about it, but it is, you know, mostly good. It's called Bad News Roundup. Yeah. We'll do a good news roundup eventually, I guess. Yeah, this happens in San Diego in good old California. And so there were in San Diego two people checked out, quote, nearly every single book in the library's Pride Month display because they didn't want those materials to be available for children. This has actually happened at libraries all over the country.

This has been happening for, you know, a few years now this kind of tactic of people are just going into libraries, checking out everything related to pride or whatever. and then just never returning those materials. This is old hat. Again, this is part of like an asher-turfing thing. However, in this particular instance in San Diego, this backfired spectacularly in a way that's kind of funny in that like there was a lot of community support that then came to this library.

So this support looked like increased monetary and book donations. So not just verbally, yay, our library support, but like, you know, people gave books and money. to the library in response to people doing this, which is, you know, good, yay. You know, that's the kind of like actual material support that is useful and not just, oh, hey, that's bad. Don't do that. You know, whatever.

Literally as soon as the San Diego Union Tribune, like, made wind of this, it says that, like, new copies of the books that had been checked out, they began to write over the library. It says, 180 people donated $15,000 to the, city's public library system, which is like small change in a city system that big that can buy a lot of books that were stolen and probably buy multiple copies of them, especially if it's just happening at this one branch. The funds, which the city will match. So that's $30,000 now. We'll go towards LGBTQ materials and programming, including Drag Queen Story Hour, which is good.

I think Drag Queen's Story Hour is kind of annoying, but I'm glad it exists. drag queens I want them to be mean and obscene again but you know whatever that's my own little personal bitchy opinions and also this is the funny part the people still the books returned them because they realize they're scheming backfired they're like oh well fuck this I guess that didn't work that's the part that gets me about this whole thing Well, and the thing that cracks me up to is like, why would you check them out first? Just steal them. Yeah, just if you really don't want them available and you don't want, like, just.

Because then they look lost or missing and people won't notice they're gone for a while. Yeah. Just, I guess that I'm more deviant than I thought, because that was my first thought is like, why would you even bother checking them out then? Like, you know, that's on your record now, right? you know, if, you know, law enforcement comes and looks for your record, it's going to say that you've checked out a bunch of gay books. How do you think your pastor will feel about that? Yeah, like in seven. That's how they caught the guy in seven. One of the ways is they looked at his library record. You don't want to be like Kevin Spacey, do you? So the manager of the, and I do not speak Spanish, so my apologies. Rancho Piniasquitos. That was probably bad. I'm sorry, several people listening. That branch of the San Diego Public. Library said that, so like the, her name is Adrian Peterson. Adrian Peterson, if you listen, shouts out, is the manager of this branch and said that these two residents had emailed her a month prior to say that they would not, or they emailed her last month to say that they would not return

the books unless the library removed this quote, inappropriate content, right? And I love this quote. it was just kind of like, whoa, curveball. This is what Adrian Peterson said. I began to wonder, oh, have I been misunderstanding our community? Right. But, you know, like they point out that like even in California, like challenges to this kind of stuff have been happening in recent weeks and months. Even the council member Marnie von Wilpert, who represents the community this branches in, condemned the library protest, condemned the people doing this.

And so, like, people were really quick to help restore the display and stuff. And what I find also interesting is that this suburb used to be Republican, but has grown more diverse as, like, more diverse people, like, move into it and stuff. And this council member is its first Democratic council member who is also LGBTQ. It doesn't say which alphabet letter this person is. All of them, apparently. They are LGBT. All of them.

Yes, honey. My fellow queer egot over here. You know, this is a sort of newly quote democratic community and everything. And they've got like a queer council member and everything. So it's not like all of like California used to be a Republican safe haven. Like people forget that just because it's like really Democrat now. like, it used to just be like, Red.

Like, it voted for Reagan. Ronald Reagan came to California. Reagan's from California. Like, come on, people. Use your heads. And also, the two protesters who, like, sent the email, their email was identical to a template posted online by the conservative group Catholic vote, which is actually not affiliated with the church at all.

But that's part of this whole astroturfing thing, right? These people used a template from a, larger group that is probably used elsewhere in the country, right? Like, this is, this is part of like astroturfing. And I also find this funny. The group's president, Brian Birch, fuck you, Brian Birch, said that Catholic vote does not encourage people to break the law. But what if someone decided to keep a book indefinitely, which is actually literally

breaking the law? That's perfectly fine, he told the New York Times. It's like when I got caught stealing and I just bought Baldersgate 3. and part of my character is I just lie compulsively. And so I was stealing, like, some kids did a little scam on me and stole my, my, something from me. So I just stole the kids' fishing pole. And then they were like, why are you stealing? I was like, what?

Is borrowing a crime? And I failed my role when I ended up in jail. But then when I was in jail, I said, oh, I was cleaning and I got locked in here. And they're like, oh, sorry. And they let me out. And then I got the fishing pole out of the evidence locker. Incredible. With no my merry way.

However, the part where I turn into a fucking bummer now is this article ends by quoting Deborah Caldwell Stone, who is the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom Director, who has pointed out that a lot of these like people checking out things and ever returning them like to form a protest has started happening a lot because more and more libraries are getting rid of late fees. And so these groups are weaponizing these policies that are meant to help people who might be economically disenfranchised by late fees. Like libraries are doing a good thing by removing like just because people are abusing this, you still get rid of late fees and fines at your library. But like she rightly pointed out that like people are also weaponizing this in order to engage in censorship. And that's not cool. And like I feel like that's going to get used like if libraries who haven't already gotten rid of fines now try to get rid of fines. And you have to like make your case and your buy in and like, you know, there's all great, like all sorts of great statistics and everything. But people are going to be like, yeah, but what about the people who are going to weaponize these policies to like steal all of our books to censor, you know, gay shit, you know, or whatever or critical race theory.

like insert thing here. Like people are just going to weaponize this for protest. And like people like some well-meaning lib is going to say that undoubtedly. And board meeting. Right. And so that's where this turns into a bummer, even though this is like I find this funny that they return to the books because they realize it backfired. Like that's the funniest fucking thing in the entire world to me.

I'm sorry. Um, it's so funny. But yeah, like I also like, you know, we, you know, we have to get rid of finds and fees. So what do we do about people weaponizing that correct decision? You know, like, people are going to weaponize any good thing, right? And like, you know, sometimes we are like, yeah, but if you do this, it's just going to be weaponized against XYZ people and we decided then not to do it. But it's like we need to, in this instance, we need to not have library finds and fees. So what do we do?

Well, having gone, having every single, every single library I have worked at, while like have worked there has gotten rid of fines and fees. I've never had actually any part in it, but it's just coincidence, but which it's a really common thing, at least in Washington now. They have all gotten rid of late fees, but they haven't gotten rid of lost book fees. Yeah, that's also the thing I've heard. It is. So if you don't return the book within a certain amount of time, you will get charged for the book.

If you return the book after that, that fine will go away and become a no charge. thing, but if you don't, and you can still be sent to collections. So depending on how many books they checked out and refused to return, they could be sent to collections over them. I haven't heard of a library getting rid of late, like lost book fees or, so you have. So I'm not sure if that's the next evolution of the late fee thing. Yeah. But honestly, it's like, it's weaponized, but at the same time, I don't necessarily see that we need to treat it any different than people who just really like the books and don't want to give them back for other reasons. Because listen, people, even when people did have late fines and fees, people did this too.

Yeah. People just steal books sometimes. Yeah. It's just, it's treated as a stolen book. And if you notice that certain books are vanishing off of yourselves, buy extra copies of that book. Put it in every single one of your branches. So it is available to be transferred for a hold when somebody wants it if it happens to disappear from one library. I mean, and I am not a collection management person. So this is, again, not a professional opinion. But I really don't see

I really don't see how it would be any different from any of the other problems that would surface from getting rid of fines and fees. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not too worried about it. But it is, it is a good point that no matter even when we're doing good and we know we're doing good, that shit can still get turned around and weaponized on us. So, because that's just- And they might keep us from doing good because again, some board member's going to be like, but what about this? What about this?

I'm particularly concerned over a thing that is absolutely not like the majority case in the slightest. Yeah. So there is no perfect way to go about it, right? because everything can be a double-inch sword. So do it's best that you do the best you can by your own community, I guess. Agreed. Dot org also is Wisconsin-based.

Yeah, everyone's, everyone's astroturfing wherever they can. And I think it's just because of the way that communities are interlocked over, over the internet now. that these things aren't going to be limited to one state or another. It's going to pop up wherever you can get a foothold and, like, test out the policy and see if you can get someone to accept it and then point to it as a victory, which is something someone was pointing out about, like, all these state library associations leaving the ALA, because it really only affects, like, the people who work for the state library, which is like a couple dozen librarians, usually, and archivists.

But that still sucks for them because, like, now they, if they want to be ALA members, they have to pay individually. And I think more libraries should be ALA members and not force their staff to pay for the membership. It should be like a general covered thing. But I've never been, I've never worked in a library that covered our ALA membership. That's been an ALA member. I feel like with academic libraries, that's like also rare too because so many like, it's like a big expense.

And like rarely is ALA sort of the main thing, the academic librarians of any. Stripe tend to focus on, I feel, in my experience. Yeah, I don't even remember how the fee structure works for ACRL versus ALA. You normally have to, like, you get it at the same time. Yeah, I think I was a member for like one year. It showed up. Yeah. It made my membership like $400.

Yeah. Like, ALA plus ACL. Yeah. It's fucking stupid. Arthur, are you enjoying rubbing up against the mic buddy? Yeah. Arthur, don't, don't eat the wax that came off of my Maker's Mark bottle. I know, I know it looks like a worm, but it's not.

Don't eat my mic cable either. I know that also looks like a worm. Is he a lot of worms? I think that's maybe when he was a rough and humble street cat, what he was into was like worms and crawly things. Because I've tried doing like the cat dancer and like, you know, toys that are like feathers and birds and shit. And he's just like whatever. But like if there's a fucking bug, God help you. My delivery is here.

I shall return. Go down to Walmart and get like a like a, like, uh, those. fishing worms, like the plastic ones, the jelly worms. Oh, yeah. You can just hang them off a little fishing rod. They're already destroying the new bed I bought for them. How many beds have you gone through already? I bought it from the same person, so they're like handmade.

Oh. So they're a lot nicer than the ones you get from the pet store. But they started chewing at the lining in the middle, and then that pulls out like bluff. So I don't think this bed's going to last very long. They just get on chewing things. They're like, oh, we're going to chew the walls. like for a couple months, and then they'll get bored of that, and then they'll start chewing something else.

My dog does that with stuffed toys. If a seam comes apart, she can get at the stuffing. It's all downhill. There's no recovering. We've tried sewing up her toys, and she just goes right back at it. So she has lost many a toy. Although I will say about the other beds that aren't as nice, they are a lot more durable. And Millie's using one right now. So I've got two of them. Show me the bunnies. I hopscotch from the Metro Weekly site that Jay's article was on to YouTube chef confesses to murder of gay lover. I see that too.

Hang on. Spanish YouTube chef murdering and dismembering is gay lover while the two are visiting Thailand. What the fuck? I read it as he confessed this on YouTube while doing a cooking video. Hello, I'm back. And was like, excuse me what the fuck. and no, he was like arrested and confessed to it in court and stuff. But my brain when I first saw that headline was like, so on the Metro Weekly website that

your article. Oh, the YouTube chef confesses to murder of gay lover. Lover. What's that about? I interpreted it as he, as a Spanish guy who murdered his lover while they were in Thailand. I, yeah, no, I completely interpreted that as like he confessed it on camera to YouTube while doing a cooking video. for some reason my brain just went like he just admitted this casually while like chopping up some like meat or something and it was up you guys yeah i murdered my lover

cook with me with that little to like little youtube fucking music in the background my brain is not good at logical conclusions today i can tell you that he like american psycho to him he like premed it he bought a knife rubber gluds and a bottle of cleaning agent, which led to please to conclude the killing was premeditated. Gee, I wonder. Anyway, that's our true crime segment. Library Punk, true crime. No. I was going to say, it's a shame you didn't need them because then you could use it for your other podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of which, Justin's episode just came out last week. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah. I started reading my Jewish annotated New Testament, which is extremely long. And it's in hardback. I don't like reading hardback books.

That reminds me of the other thing I was going to say related to all of our stories. So I just read Story of the Eye because remember we're doing Batai mode. We're Betai posting now. So I read Story of the Eye. And the addition that I had and that I got from the Boston Public Library, Shouts out, came with two essays in it, one by Holmbatt and one by my girl, Susan Sontag. Now, listeners might be aware that I love Sizantag because she also wrote the erotics of art. No, it's against interpretation, but that's where the phrase erotics of art comes,

which is where I get my little goofy erotics of metadata thing from. I love Susan Sontag. We love her. And she has an essay in this about pornography and, like, pornographic literature, and I think it's called the pornographic imagination or something. And like there's a part in it. I already returned the book, but let's see if it like, if I can still access my like highlights because I was like highlighting it. Go away, Mark Fisher.

Mark Fisher, Metscher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did find a PDF of it, so I'll put that in the link in the in the in the doblea do. Whatever. Anyway, she's talking about at one point at the end of the end of the the essay, she makes the point that, like, you know, you get a lot of people trying to, like, more, like, have, like, moral arguments about why pornography is bad, especially, like, why, like, children shouldn't have access to pornography, right? Or to at least, like, pornographic literature is more so what she means, because her focuses on this, because Story of the Eye is

largely considered a form of pornographic literature. And she talks about, like, she feels sympathetic to those like arguments of like well people you know children shouldn't have access to this because well they they don't know how to you know it could be dangerous in their hands and how it might influence them or whatever and it's like but what if we can apply that to anything right like you can apply that line of thinking of like oh but like they won't know how to interact with it the way that we intend them to interact with it this is the exact same argument that Emily Knox makes about why book bans happen, right? Is that like we don't trust certain groups to be changed or transformed or react to reading the way we want them to. And so like the question shouldn't be like, are they going to, you know, is this going to change them

in a way we don't intend in a way we don't like or that will cause them to do harm or whatever? but more like her argument is kind of about the quality. And like she then goes in to say that like, you know, largely the quality of our pornographic, anything is bad because of capitalism and not because porn in and of itself is like a thing that is bad. Right. Like capitalism has sort of dictated like how and why we like connect with each other and our appetites and like what porn looks like largely is because of. of capitalism. Whereas, like, if we think about, like, what are other, like, what happens if we actually, like, do this right, you know? And then, and then the question becomes less of, like, you know, again, if you can ask the question, well, what happens if a kid gets a hold of

this and what will it do to them? Will it hurt them? You can ask that of literally anything. And so that's sort of a bullshit question to be asking a lot of the time. And there are other questions we can be asking. And I already returned my loan. And I don't know if I can access my highlights after I return it. So I can't quote her exactly. But yeah, I was like, I was like reading it on the tea. And I was like, it's exactly, Susan. This is exactly what we're talking about with like, again, I disagree.

Like, because everyone has been saying that like, you know, a lot of people, you know, the right is accusing all of these books of being pornographic. And we go, no, they're not pornographic. They're perfectly fine for kids, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that's seeding the argument. Like, I don't think that's the right course of attack because that's giving their argument legitimacy in the first place, because it just shows them as concerned people, afraid that our children are going to get into pornography.

And then we go, no, it's not pornography. We give the pornography over there, away from them. And it's like, it's like, again, these are the wrong arguments. These are the wrong questions. Like, queer people do be fucking, sorry. So do straight people, sorry. Teen books should have sex in them. And like all kinds of sex should be depicted in teen books because guess what,

teenagers have sex? Like, that's a part of life for a lot of teenagers, right? Not all of them, but some of them. And I don't know, like, sex is not this inherently bad thing. I don't know. It's anyway, like, we shouldn't see the argument. I know these things aren't pornographic, actually. Again, because that's anything can be harmful to anyone if they aren't, quote, reading it properly or whatever.

Or like, anyone can like take something and like do something with it. Like that means that no one should be readily read anything because we can ever trust anyone to react the way that we want them to. But that's why reading is so cool is because like you can like get the wildest interpretation that wasn't intended from something. I don't know. I'm a little bit rambly at this point, but... I see where you're coming from. I always just think of this Twitter threat that I saw that was like a reaction to a reaction. So I didn't actually get the whole thing, but was somebody talking about how like basically acknowledging that being a parent and acknowledging that you have sex in the same house as your kid is like inherently traumatic to the kid, right? Which is just like... Untrue, by the way.

Wildly off base to begin with. But somebody once, but somebody replied to it with, yeah, And when I was three years old, I got a hold of an avocado and squeezed it too tight and was some for some reason traumatized when I, when it was, uh, green and squishy. Like brains just do weird shit sometimes just because you overheard your parents having sex and it traumatized you. It doesn't actually mean that the thing that did it was necessarily like inherently bad in and of itself. He was like, I couldn't eat avocados for the first 25 years of my life. I don't know why my brain just decided that this was just a fucking wild thing. It couldn't handle. But like also I'd rather children over here their parents having loving, fun, good sex than to like, I don't know, have their parents like hid each other like have like domestic violence happen in front of a kid.

Right. Well, and the whole thing was just like it just cracked me up because it was like for some reason my three year old brain couldn't comprehend the fact that it would be green and squishy. And for some reason, this random avocado traumatized me so bad. I couldn't eat them for 25 years. Human brains are fucking wild. Also, we didn't used to have separate bedrooms. Yeah, like, there's so much there to go on. Read Breeze book.

Yeah, read Breeze book. But also joined the discard because we got live Susan Sontag reactions from Jay as he was, as he was reading this book. We were getting screenshots. So, like, if you went to feed there. Well, first I got a batai. a batai reaction and then it was a sauntag reaction so like yeah you want to you want to see this shit in real time join the discord well i already finished it now i'm reading mark fisher talk about

music i've never heard of so which i feel like is the standard experience of reading mark fisher is like what the fuck is he talking about i've never heard of this dub musician okay cool but i like the way he writes so yeah he likes talking about music i never listened to i love the what he writes about music. It's quite good, actually. But yeah, I know I finally finished capital's realism. Yay. I'm in Ghost of My Life now. I'm like reading. So like Repeater Books has like a complete K-punk collected K-punk collection thing. And it's like all his books as well as all of the K-punk blog. And I read I finished capitalist realism and now I'm in ghost of my life, which is, I'm in the hauntology section. Ooh, hauntology. So yeah. Should finish with that on the T this week.

maybe. I've just been reading on the T because I am on it for like two hours a day. Yeah, I was reading the book that was published posthumously, but I never got through it. Weird in the Erie? Maybe. I don't remember. Yeah, there was like

one or two of them, but. It was based on the last lectures he was working on. Oh, that one. So he was, uh, he committed suicide like halfway through the year, so he wasn't finished teaching the course. So he hadn't finished, uh, the layout for where the lessons were going. So people kind of had to guess how he would have wrapped it up.

Like what the rest of the themes were. So yeah, the Sontag essay, we've got like a crappy scanned version, but it'll be in the notes. For the pornographic imagination or whatever it's called. Yep, that's what it's called. The Holmbart one was a trip. If you want to read some like French nonsense, read that. It is some high linguistic, like, semiotic fuckery going on in that essay.

And also, read sort of the eye. It was really good. You'll never be able to eat an egg ever again. All right. Good night.