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Good morning all, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!

The good thing about today being Monday is that it is not last Friday. So let's get to it, shall we?

Ways To Give:

Liz let me know about a tumblr post where a college student is looking for places to stay in NYC, Philly, and DC that are trans friendly, in order to get out of an abusive situation.

bluebombardier has a soft, huggable knit TARDIS up for auction at helpthesouth!

Gorgas let me know about her participation in the "Tread-a-thon" for Love146, an organisation working to help survivors of child sexual exploitation and trafficking, both locally and around the world. She's pledged to bike 900 miles in two months, but she's having trouble reaching her donations goal and would love for people to check out her fundraising page or her daily progress page.

Help For Free

Anon let me know about Voices For The Library, a UK campaign group supporting public libraries, which are under threat in the UK at the moment. They're always looking for stories about what libraries mean to the people who use them, and they offer resources for ways to help your local library.

Diane let me know about her entry into a contest to go to Dragon*Con; she's trying to win so she can take a friend who otherwise couldn't afford to go. It would help a lot if people could go to her Facebook and "like" the page and the video.

News To Know:

Chicagoans! soul_cake_duck let me know about a panel discussion at the Chicago Cultural Center today at six, about Vivian Maier's recently rediscovered urban photography. If you're not familiar with Vivian Maier -- she's amazing.

snaxcident linked me, mostly for lulz, to a news story about how Facebook hired a PR company to smear Google, and how that BACKFIRED DRASTICALLY when the company tried to pay a blogger to bash google -- and the blogger turned around and posted the emails on their blog. Gorgeous stuff.

bare_bear let me know that Lulu now has a printing branch in Canada, which has lowered shipping to Canada a great deal. There's also a coupon at the link good through the end of today.

GameSave is holding a hackathon event this June, where emergency relief professionals and game programmers will come together to design games that educate people about disaster relief and how it functions.

Just For Fun:

wistfulmemory got the classes she teaches to participate in the Cranes For Kids challenge, and took a picture of them with their cranes. ADORABLE.

Two awesome vids for you this morning: Slow Motion Jello and Out Of Phase Pendulums. SCIENCE IS AWESOME GUYS.

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can always post items for my attention in comments here (or on any post) or email me at copperbadge at gmail dot com. If you're not sure how to proceed, here is a little more about what I do and how you can help. Remember, non-embedded links are love.

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You know, when I started this journal and for the last eight years I didn't really have a plan or anything. In the early days I used to say "I'm in it for internet fame" but that was a joke, which in hindsight is funny for totally different reasons. Because I kind of did get just a tiny bit famous.

SO NOW I'M IN IT FOR A MILLION DOLLARS.

*expectant pause*

Dammit.

( The story of my life: you're soaking in it! )

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Okay kids, I am off for an evening of ADVENTUR, but I have a present for you before I go. lunate8 just completed reading a podfic of Jeffrey Nullier's "Man With Fedora", a White Collar fic I did a few months back. She and martinius, who did the sound art to go with it, have put it up at the Podfic Big Bang, or you can also download it at Lunate's LJ and DW pages. You can also listen to martinius's music for it here.

I haven't been able to listen to it yet -- no sound at work, and my stupid headphones got lost last week -- but I'm sure it's outstanding. Go thou, White Collar fans, and enjoy!

Millennium park, cold but pretty...

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Well, that was a reasonably good ADVENTUR.

Groupon does this thing, Groupon Now, where they offer deals that you have to buy and use in the same day. I was already planning to go to the Vivian Meier thing this evening, so I looked up deals in the loop and got a couple of bucks off a meal at Max's Carry Out. I think this place probably survives mostly on drunk people who really want a hot dog at three in the morning.

At any rate, I got my dinner and took it a couple of blocks north to Milennium Park, and had a lovely meal amongst the tourists and seagulls, though it was a bit cold out. It just never got warm today, and I thought it would. After that I ambled down to the Cultural Center -- which is always confusing to me, I don't understand what it intrinsically does, but it's never boring. I especially like the random Place To Hang Out which has SILENCE on one wall and LICENSE on the other.

I wasn't all that hot on the Vivian Meier panel, because I don't really like panels that much, but it was free and something to do. It turned out to be pretty great, mainly because there was a half-hour presentation before the panel, so I saw that and then left. :D The guy who 'discovered' Maier after her death talked a bit about what he'd found out about her; back when he was first posting the photos, he didn't really know anything about her or them, so it was lovely to see all the research he'd done, including finding the apartment she'd lived in with her name still on the buzzer. He showed some of her most iconic work and a couple of self-portraits, and talked about how she'd basically raised three children she was a nanny for, as well as her professional photography work and her hoarding tendencies. In a storage locker that the children she'd raised were still paying on, they found hundreds of binders filled with random newspaper clippings, boxes of rubber bands, a collection of railroad spikes...

Anyhow. Good evening. Burger in the park, brief invasion of the Cultural Center, and thus home. These things aren't easy for me; just going into a new place I've never been before and ordering a meal can be incredibly difficult, so I'm pretty pleased with myself.