Obviously You Shouldn't Write In Library Books Or Books That You Otherwise Don't Own, But I Never Understood

Obviously you shouldn't write in library books or books that you otherwise don't own, but I never understood the "oh my god, don't write in, highlight, fold, or dog-ear any pages in your books, ever, or you're defacing them" mindset.

One of my favorite things in the world is borrowing paperbacks from my wife's collection and seeing all her little annotations. Notes in the margins of used university textbooks have helped me understand complex passages, and given me a connection to students struggling to understand the same things I did. Highlights in novels from the used bookstore have made me stop and really appreciate a passage I might have otherwise glossed right over. Marginalia and annotations in historical texts are a goldmine of information and humanity.

What people prefer for their personal collection is totally valid, but I hate how writing in books gets treated like inherent vandalism. It's just another one of those ways the physical paper of the book gets held as more sacred than the information and the connections made with the book's contents.

I feel like some people need to relearn Genre Expectations... "Man, this tragedy sucks!!! Why didn't they just do XYZ, then everything could have ended happily!!" well, then it wouldn't be a tragedy, would it. "Man, this lighthearted teen romcom is terrible, it's so sappy and unrealistic!!" Well, yeah. If it had been gritty and dark, it wouldn't have been a lighthearted romcom, would it. Is the writing actually bad or are you just trying to order a milkshake from a Home Depot

So, there's a lot of USians around who are very clearly fucking fed up with their political choices this election cycle, and planning to sit it out.

And I get it! What's the point of voting if there's no one to vote for?

The thing is, I'm Australian. In Australia, voting is compulsory. We don't get to sit out our elections, and I'll be real honest with you - we don't exactly get better choices than you lot. So how do you vote if there's no one to vote for? You find someone to vote against. And there's always someone to vote against.

Now, we have the pleasure of preferential voting in Australia - We get to rank every candidate from 1 to X, and I'll tell you, there's something so cathartic about putting the biggest bastard of the lot at the very bottom of your preferences. I understand that USians don't get that option - you get to mark one person, and that's it.

That means that you get one shot, so aim it at the biggest bastard of the lot. The candidate you most utterly detest. Put your vote in the worst possible place for them. Don't even think about who that vote's going towards, that's not the point. Remember, every vote is a vote against someone. Make sure you fuck up that someone's election day!

I'm sure there's a better word for this. But Australia really is a Soft Colony™ of the US. like yeah the Brits colonised this land first, but the cultural and political imperialism the US has over our media, government legislation, and military is also colonialism. So much so that it's pretty much accepted that the Whitlam dismissal was engineered in part by the CIA. Not to mention all the actual evidence of US government intimation over Australian national policy AND the amount of US military bases here. Like....I'm begging Usamerican voters who are going to abstain from voting to please also consider how your elections effect Australians and other soft colonies of the US as well as nations the US is in conflict with.

some ppl want to support palestine without aligning themselves with the anti-colonial movement and it shows