Any format counts (audiobook, physical book, ebook, graphic novel, article, essay, etc).

Hey Beehaw (and friends)! What're you reading?

Novels, nonfiction, ebooks, audiobooks, graphic novels, etc - everything counts!

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/books/t/223208

Perhaps the most surprising thing about prolific queer erotica author Chuck Tingle—who, talking via Zoom, wears a bubblegum pink bag over...

[Image decription: A round, light-reddish-brown loaf of bread on a wire cooling rack. There is a split down the center of the bread where it expanded in the oven while baking, called an "ear". The top of the bread is lightly dusted with flour except in the split area.]

I started learning to bake about a year ago with bread. Lately I've mostly been making cookies and recently been learning to make pie, but I felt an itch to come back to the basics.

Recipe:

• 400g bread flour
• 260g warm water (65%)
• 2g instant or active dry yeast (about 1 teaspoon) (0.5%)
• 8g salt (2%)

This bread was made with a poolish, not sourdough starter. A poolish is a preferment, and gives you a flavor similar to sourdough without the need to care for a sourdough starter. Poolish is the traditional way to make french baguettes, so if you know that flavor you know what to expect from a poolish.

Make the poolish:

• Mix 200g flour, 200g water, and a pinch of yeast (seriously, a tiny amount). Cover and let stand at room temperature for 12 hours. After this time the poolish should be bubbly and smell nice and yeasty, maybe slightly alcoholic.

Make the dough:

• Pour the remaining 60g of water into the poolish and mix to loosen it up. Then add the remaining 200g flour and mix thoroughly to combine. Let sit for 20 minutes to autolyse - this hydrates the flour and makes it stronger.

• Add in the yeast and salt and mix to combine. At this stage it's easiest to mix with wet hands in a pinching motion to combine in the salt and yeast.

• Optionally, knead for about 5 minutes by hand or about 3-4 minutes by stand mixer with a bread hook attachment. If kneading by hand, be sure to have a dough scraper handy, it will be sticky. You can skip this step entirely. Kneading will make it rise better in the oven, if you skip it may be a flatter loaf.

• Cover and let the dough stand in a bowl for 15 minutes, then stretch and fold it. Repeat, including the wait time, until you've stretch/folded 4 times total.

• Cover the dough and refrigerate for around 24 hours or up to a few days.

• About 1 hour before you plan to bake, take the dough out and shape it into a taut ball. Then put it seam side down into either a proofing basket or a mixing bowl lined with a well-floured kitchen towel. Cover with a damp towel and let rise. The dough should grow around 50-66% in size. When you firmly poke it with a damp finger, the spot you poke should bounce back slightly but still leave an indent.

• Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Place a dutch oven or heavy lidded pot in the oven to preheat it as well.

• Flip the dough onto parchment paper and slash it on top with a razor blade or a serrated bread knife to give it a weak spot to expand while baking.

• Bake in the dutch oven, lid on, for 30 minutes. Then remove the lid and bake at least another 15 minutes, or longer if you want a darker crust.

• Let cool for at least an hour before slicing - this is actually important, the inside of your loaf needs to finish baking from the residual heat when you pull it out! If you slice early it will wind up gummy

• Enjoy!

With the recent news that the r/blind community has migrated to a lemmy instance, I thought now would be a good time to post a quick PSA on image descriptions.

Blind and low vision computer users often rely on screen readers to navigate their computers and the internet. These tools work great on text-based platforms (when the backend is coded correctly to make buttons and UI elements visible to the screen reader), but they struggle a lot with images. OCR and image recognition have come a long way, but they're still not reliable.

On Lemmy, there's no way (yet) to add alt text to image posts, but one thing that we sighted folk can do to make the website a more accessible place for the blind/low vision community is to describe the contents of the image in text, so screen readers (or braille displays) can interpret the text for the user. This doesn't need to be anything fancy - you can see an example of me doing so in this post here - simply indicate somewhere that you are describing the contents of the image, and then do so in text. If you're transcribing text, it's best to do so as exact to the text in the image as you can (including spelling errors!). If you're describing something visual, it's best to keep it about the length of a tweet, but be as detailed as you need to be to give context to what you write about in the post.

If you'd like a more detailed guide on how to best do image descriptions and alt text, here's a site that describes more specifics - https://www.perkins.org/resource/how-write-alt-text-and-image-descriptions-visually-impaired/

Edit: You are able to add alt text to embedded images, as noted by @sal@mander.xyz here. This would only work for images within the text of your comment, not for image posts (topics which link to images).

Edit 2: @retronautickz@beehaw.org wrote a post on kbin on best practices in writing image descriptions and alt text.

When I joined this website, I remembered that my favorite cross stitch pattern artist Studio Ansitru had a bee haw pattern, so I had to stitch it. And now it is done.

[Image description: A cross stitch image of a bee wearing a cowboy hat hovering over a yellow flower with the text "bee haw" underneath. The piece is framed in a round embroidery hoop.]

So I'm a big advocate of utilizing your local public libraries. The best way to secure more funding for them is to use their services! So I thought real quick that I should write up a quick posts about the services that many libraries offer nowadays that you may not know about. Some of these points may be applicable mostly to America and Canada, but it's worth checking in with your libraries in other parts of the world to see if you have similar services available! And definitely post here if you have more to add.

Membership

One point I'd like to start off with is that, even if your local library system is smaller and doesn't offer the services you'd like (or have the books you'd like), check in with the nearest major cities! In many places in the USA, libraries don't require that you reside in the city the library is in, only the same state. For example, I don't live in the city of Los Angeles, but I have a Los Angeles Public Library card because I live in the state of California and that's all they require. Many times you have to get to the city to pick up the card in person, though, so plan on this the next time you're in the area.

Books

Of course, the first thing you'll think of at a library are "books." But did you know:

• Many libraries have suspended their fees for overdue books, due to the administration of the fee system costing more than they collect.

• Libby is a service many libraries offer that have ebook and audiobook checkout. If you have a Kindle or Kobo device you may also be able to read your ebooks on there instead of on your phone or tablet as well. Your books will automatically return themselves at the end of their loan period, so you don't have to worry about fees if your library still has those. Libby has a limited number of copies for each book, so you may need to wait for your book to become available.

• Hoopla is a similar service to Libby in that it has ebooks and audiobooks, but it also has comics, tv shows, and movies as well. And with Hoopla, your library has an unlimited number of copies, so there's no wait time! Instead, you have a limited number of items you can chekc out per month.

Movies

For movies, you might think of only DVD rentals. However, many libaries also offer streaming servies!

• Kanopy is a streaming service that offers high-quality movies such as the criterion collection, oscar nominees/winners, etc. You have a limited number of watches per month, set by your library.

• Hoopla, as mentioned above, also offers TV and Movies for streaming. They also have binge passes, which give you temporary access to the catalog of some major paid streaming libraries such as CuriosityStream and **

• My library offers these services but I haven't used them yet so I can't comment on the usage experience: Digitalia Film, which focuses on foreign language films and classic American cinema, and medici.tv which focuses on classical music including videos of concerts, ballets, operas, etc.

Music

Of course you may be able to check out CDs, but your library might also offer:

• Freegal, a service that allows you to download 5 DRM-free mp3 tracks per week from the Sony Music catalog.

• Hoopla also offers streaming music!

Video Games

via @any1th3r3 - Your local library may also offer video game loans!

News

Many libraries give you free access to paywalled news media, such as the New York Times Digital, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, etc.

Online Learning

Your library may also offer free access to some online learning websites such as LinkedIn Learning, Craftsy, Mango Languages, and more!

Makerspaces

Many library systems will offer makerspaces with access to 3d printers, laser cutters, specialty printers, sewing machines, photo studios, and sometimes even CNC mills! Of course the tools offered in these spaces are highly depending on the individual library system.

Seed Banks

Fairly self explanatory, some libraries have seed banks so you can start your own garden!

Tool library

Some libraries also let you check out tools such as power drills, circular saws, sewing machines, etc.

Passes

And last on my list, libraries often will offer passes to museums, zoos, and other local activities in your area.

Please utilize your libraries!

Finally, I'd like to end off by repeating what I said at the start: The best way to secure more funding for your library is to utilize your library. Libraries are one of the few spaces left where you can go and are not expected to exchange money for their services. They bring equity to many underserved communities and it is vitally important to preserve them. A lot of people I know think that they want to avoid using the library because they don't want to "take away the resources from those who need it more," but in reality it's the exact opposite! The more you want others to be able to use a library, the more you should use it yourself as well!

Hey Beehaw, whatcha reading right now?