"Holt has claimed to reverse course on the STU-UNB merger plans and Mount Allison privatization scheme, but that may be little more than sleight of hand to distract from the real target: a classic neoliberal transfer of wealth from the public sector to the private." NEW piece on NB Holt debacle.

The Liberal government of NB is proposing to sabotage our thriving higher ed sector. It's hard to tell if this is incompetence, malice, or neoliberal disaster capitalism. Regardless, it's not too late to turn back. @kristiallain.bsky.social and I explain for @canadiandimension.bsky.social.

More on New Brunswick's proposals to slash higher ed: “I think the government is grabbing at ideas without any serious study as to how this will work or how viable it will be,” said Geoff Martin, a Mt. A. politics professor who serves as MAFA’s executive director. warktimes.com/2026/02/26/m...

What a delight to see behind the scenes at @gaspereaupress.bsky.social in Sackville! Congrats and looking forward to your spring releases.

MLA Megan Mitton: "I would almost think that it wasn’t real because some of the things it mentions are so outlandish." The article by Bruce Wark includes a link to the list of ideas from the government: warktimes.com/wp-content/u... warktimes.com/2026/02/24/g...

#ShowMeYourKnits this week is Animals, including animals in knitwear. Our dog, Fennel, definitely wants a sweater this winter. She’s been borrowing our cowls for a bit of warmth. We put her cowl-lar on for walks. She especially likes colourwork and brioche.

Flabbergasted by the higher education budget proposals from the Liberals. Seriously, did they brainstorm with ChatGPT?? Make the #1 ranked undergraduate university a private institution? That is a thing in the US, but in Canada that category is kinda... religious colleges. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

NEW: Meta’s director of AI safety, supposedly the person at the company who is working to make sure that powerful AI tools don’t go rogue and act against human interests, had to scramble to stop an AI agent from deleting her inbox against her wishes...

Now more than ever, people have seen the real-world risk of invasive face recognition technology. We won’t lose focus. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

Just published! 🎉 A new translation of @cosovschi.bsky.social's lesson: doi.org/10.46430/phe... We’re grateful to Silvia Stoyanova for their translation. Thank you to Felix Vanden Borre + Maneesha Sane for their reviews, and to Laura Alice Chapot for editing.

Anyone have recommendations for ways to do card-sorting / collection structure activities digitally? We had sticky notes in person, and I need to follow up online. MS Visio seemed like it should work, but it’s so irritating! The canvas keeps expanding and it’s responsive in all the wrong ways.

#ShowMeYourKnits theme this week is gray. My favourite grays are weird neutrals that I can wear around bright colours. This gray yarn from @indigodragonfly.bsky.social has interesting blue and yellow undertones. It kept the knitting interesting!

#ShowMeYourKnits prompt this week is garter stitch. @ambahobrien.bsky.social plays with garter stitch in unusual ways. This is her Astria shawl. My yarn is a dark and moody set of miniskeins by @gobsmackedyarn.bsky.social I just fixed a few snags in this shawl from all the wear it gets! 🧶

I developed a new workshop, "Accessible Data for Everyone," for Love Data Week 2026. It's about making data accessible to people with disabilities. Anyone is welcome to sign up. The class is on Feb 10 at 2pm PST online. Register here: libcal.caltech.edu/event/16205574

Perfect timing for an upcoming guest lecture on epistemic injustice (and algorithms and AI). This whole issue of Kula looks excellent: kula.uvic.ca/index.php/ku... Great to be reading Sam Popowich again!

#ShowMeYourKnits prompt this week is helping hands! Fingerless mittens are an essential piece my librarian gear. This are my Deiknunai Mitts by @bristolivy.bsky.social in yarn by @indigodragonfly.bsky.social I made them in 2021 and wear them so often. Do you have fave brioche mitts?

#ShowMeYourKnits theme of the week is Works in Progress. I sorted my projects a few weeks ago and found a nearly finished pair of fingerless mittens. Thanks, past-me, my hands are so cold and I need these for my office 🧶 Pattern: Peaks and Valleys Mitts by Destiny Itano of @seattleyarn.bsky.social

We're excited that The Carpentries Lab lesson "Introduction to Deep Learning" has been accepted to the Journal of Open Source Education! 🎉 The lesson is a practical intro to deep learning, intended for researchers who are familiar with (non-deep) machine learning: jose.theoj.org/papers/10.21....

Immigrantly has a limited series called Borderly about the U.S.-Mexican border. The first episode was about the history of El Paso. As a Canadian, there’s so much I don’t know. No matter how much news I read or Bluesky I scroll. Gonna add Immigrantly to my regular listens: immigrantlypod.com

#ShowMeYourKnits prompt this week is “firsts” so I went digging for a moment of happiness in my knitting photos. This is the first project I knit with Marit’s yarn! At the time, I knew her as jessiebean because that was her user name. 12 years later, she’s my wife! And dyeing yarn full time!

Call for Proposals / Appel à propositions Deadline: 15 January, 2026 / Date limite: 15 janvier 2026 EN: https://ow.ly/W5Bj50XKtgB FR: https://ow.ly/QHoa50XKtgC

ACM! What are these publishers thinking? Abstracts go through peer review. The AI summary isn’t even approved by the author. Why would they make a design decision hiding the author’s work behind AI? Some of these publishers are losing trust as distributors of scholarly communication.

Interesting… That affiliation data could be rebuilt with ORCID if that data is still getting through to Crossref. @aarontay.bsky.social wrote about the disappearance of Elsevier abstracts from OpenAlex earlier this year aarontay.substack.com/p/the-petrol...

As 2025 wraps up, we invite you to take a moment and check out our top ten most popular datasets of the year! - En cette fin d'année 2025, nous vous invitons à prendre un moment pour consulter nos dix jeux de données les plus populaires de l'année ! oculsp.ca/224pd

Scotch Cove, my first knitting pattern, was published in @knitty.com 🧶 this week! Stripes, knit/purl texture, and a quiet gradient by @gobsmackedyarn.bsky.social knitty.com/ISSUEw25/PAT...

@fastenoffyal.bsky.social has officially begun! This team does lots of work to make their event accessible and inclusive. I feel like casting-on All The Things this year. Time to learn a new thing: the crochet cast-on for a design by @woollywormhead.bsky.social 🧶

. @audreywatters.bsky.social on AI+grief: 'In response to a radical outpouring of love, loss, life, grief—expressed together, embodied, on the streets—we were forced to use a tech that severs us from creative expression, dignity, truth. There is no choice, we're told. "Get over it." "Move on."'

Top of my Christmas list (for me and knitting friends)!

What if we could work with our public libraries to create + sustain convivial infrastructures for local news, local 🎶, digital equity, and more? I wrote abt lots of communities that are doing this work, bldg networks of solidarity + resistance, modeling alternatives to extractive commercial systems.

Speaker (French): “…. besoin…” Teams Live Captions (English): “… buzzwank …” I’m trying to get an official update on RDM policy implementation in Canada, not looking for more examples of bad AI. We need human translators. Got the gist, appreciate the work from the speakers.

✨📢 ENABLAR is a new initiative from @jisc.bsky.social + @proghist.bsky.social, bringing library and archive practitioners into dialogue with digital humanities researchers. We’re gathering a cohort to join our online programme of webinars, workshops, and writing sprints. tinyurl.com/enablar-blog

📢Employment opportunity at PKP! PKP is hiring a Managing Director, who will be responsible for ensuring PKP’s long-term sustainability and continued global impact. If you are interested, learn more at: pkp.sfu.ca/2025/09/17/h...

ITHAKA S&R has started a Generative AI Licensing Agreement Tracker sr.ithaka.org/our-work/gen...

Anyone have examples of research-creation or practice-led research projects by librarians or as part of information science generally? These could be called other things, including arts-based research, artistic research, and even design inquiry.

If you are an educator, here's our curated list of educational games to help improve your students' ability to identify deepfakes and develop digital literacy skills. deepfakestracker.org/digital-lite... More games will be added later this fall.

Neurodivergent joy.

The lack of transparency on this project is unending. Butler reports that the province HAS NOT made a decision on comprehensive review, despite what our mayor was told. Time to contact all our representatives. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

AI "boring history" slop has taken over YouTube and is particularly insidious because it flattens history and drowns out the tireless work of creators who have been integral to legitimizing YouTube as a place for high-quality history videos www.404media.co/ai-generated...

CFP Special Issue “Celebrating 60 Years of ELIZA? Critical Pasts and Futures of AI” ojs.weizenbaum-institut.de/index.php/wj...

Wikipedia editors trying to fend off the onslaught of AI crap have crowdsourced some telltale signs of LLM-generated writing; it might be handy for editors and proofreaders generally. Thanks to @ellenrykers.com for pointing me to it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take. thebullshitmachines.com

Causing immense stress for Canadian small businesses, not just because of the costs, but because the systems and mechanisms for implementing this don’t even exist yet. Canada Post says they’re on-boarding a third-party tech provider, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Generative AI changes what things mean because it focuses on words, not the meaning. It adds words, changes meaning, and makes "plain language" that is not accessible. We know, because we tested it. Generative AI has no place in plain language. autisticadvocacy.org/2025/07/asan...

[Blogged] The AI powered Library Search That Refused to Search - From Clarivate's Summon to Primo Research Assistant, content‑moderation layers meant mostly for chatbots are "quietly" blocking controversial topics from being searched aarontay.substack.com/p/the-ai-pow...

Over 7000 pages of medieval medical recipes are now freely accessible online at the end of the Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries project. 👉 Discover more about this ambitious project and its achievements: loom.ly/XFJt-Tg

This guest post by Jay Singley on ACRLog is a must-read. "In the age of AI, our access to information is not spared from these attacks. We must uncover answers to the questions Safiya Noble, Joy Buolamwini, and others elicit: Who and what is safeguarded through AI tools in discovery searches?"

Tantramar friends: this has a short environmental consultation period. Sounds like they’re planning info sessions, not consultations… echoing national energy projects. Read the letter from Atlantic Wildlife Institute linked in this story and join the Zoom on Jul. 21/22 warktimes.com/2025/07/19/m...

Investigating the “Feeling Rules” of Generative AI and Imagining Alternative Futures by Andrea Baer "rather than rushing to adopt and promote new technologies whose ethical implications raise major questions, we might slow down and claim more time & space for considering .... implications of GenAI"

Hey, @arquives.ca is hiring a 2SLGBTQIA+ education consultant to promote the importance of using primary sources to teach history with secondary school educators and others. Deadline: 20 July 2025 Pay: $35/h, flexible schedule, remote More info: arquives.ca/job-posting-... #AcademicSky 🌈🗃️ 🏳️‍⚧️🗃️

Ever feel like your brain just stopped cooperating during perimenopause? For many women, that’s not just brain fog—it might be undiagnosed ADHD colliding with hormonal shifts. We're finally starting to connect the dots. It's about time. 🧠✨ vajenda.substack.com/p/adhd-and-m...