Dishwashers are just objectively superior technology: convenient, efficient, unobtrusive. They’re a legitimate marvel of modernity.

“The Victorian era was an age of superlatives and larger-than-life characters, and as far as that goes, Dr. Wildman Whitehouse fit right in: what Victoria was to monarchs, Dickens to novelists, Burton to explorers, Robert E. Lee to generals, Dr. Wildman Whitehouse was to assholes.” ―Neal Stephenson

Salesman sample case for Christmas lights. 1960s. www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/...

Somewhere out there right now is a programmer vibe-coding an FDA-regulated medical device, and somewhere else is the unemployed person whose job was to inspect that code and hold it to standards and who was fired by a 19 year old.

The majority of archival material out there has NOT been digitized. So if you really want to figure something out, odds are that you have to go to an archive and dig. Historians are trained to dig.

I feel like there should be a personal version of the national emergency phone klaxon to remind me to put the bins out tomorrow night. If that recycling bin doesn't get emptied, I'm screwed.

People are saying that this is a problem for all library catalogues but that's not true: this is a problem for, in this case, Ex Libris Primo and more generally for outsourced proprietary library catalogues that libraries don't control. The answer, as always, is to build and control our own tech.

So, today I'm wrapping up People Watching. Massive thanks to everyone who has supported it & all the cool people I've met and drawn. I wrote an article in the Sunday Magazine today talking about the lessons I've learned doing it - and there were so many. www.thepost.co.nz/culture/3609...

As told by the late dancer and choreographer Agnes DeMille.

"This promise of an AI future, is really just a collective anxiety that wealthy people have about how well they're gonna be able to control us in the future." - @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit. Incredible words. Listen to all of it!

"AI citations often point to nothing. They’re citations to the idea of a citation. References to the concept of research. Footnotes in a dream." Excellent, useful article.

the '76 KING KONG is a lot more fun if you tell yourself it's a prequel to THE BIG LEBOWSKI

Some good news. Thank you Mayor-elect @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social for sticking to your campaign commitment. We need NYC residents to pressure the City Council to deliver. Help by sending a letter to your CM: actionnetwork.org/letters/city...

They're totally upside down. If you want to save towns you don't stop spending money. Instead you spend money in the towns. Do some projects. Create jobs. Create some buzz. Up the vibe. Austerity, theoretically, is being tight so good times return, but you actually need to build the good times.

Feeling discontent with civilization? Fear not, it's just about time to celebrate more work ascending into the public domain! We'll see you on the sunny side of the street in January! web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicd...

How to Draw Christmas, Ed Emberley 1986. We’ve scanned it in full here www.presentandcorrect.com/blogs/blog/h...

[0004323] Penguins' wings are more properly termed "flippers"

This tweet from Big Balls says the new “Tech Force” website is their first using the “America Design System.” Here are just a few reasons why that sucks. 🧵

Documentary ‘The Librarians’ is a must watch, it’s currently on iPlayer - likely to be Oscar nominated & rightly so. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Rob Reiner: I'm going to make a coming of age drama, a fantasy adventure story, a romantic comedy, a psychological horror and then a courtroom drama. Us: Across your entire career? Reiner: In a 6 year period. Us: That sounds- Reiner: -Each one will be arguably the best movie in that genre.

We library folk do a good job talking about all the free services we offer, but I don’t see many of us talking about how libraries are one or the only places where you can use services without being advertised to.

As an author, I’ve already gotten multiple emails from people asking me for fake articles and books that I’ve supposedly written, because chatbots have told them fake references. I *cannot imagine* the frustration and time waste for librarians and especially ILL library professionals right now.

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

When this "AI" bubble pops, the men pretending they weren't pushing the hype, like "critics" whose position is "AGI is real but LLMs aren't the way," who were in eugenicist and "AI existential risk"🙄 circles, will get specials discussing what they saw coming, when its the women who told you so.

"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more." This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular. pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...

you say "i asked chatgpt" i hear "i asked [an improv comedy group]" an improv group wrote this report instead of a therapist i use an improv comedy group

Maybe you've heard of our stash swaps? Or our month-long seed and plant swaps in Sept? Coming to libraries in January are stationery swaps just in time for back to school prep! Bring in any extras you don't need and leave with something that you do! christchurch.bibliocommons.com/v2/events?q=...

In early September I was outside on my street on a sunny day with some wind and thought OK, the seasons have switched it's now fall. I thought why am I feeling that even though everything still looks green and summary. The leaves sounded dry.

How good would this be? 😍 “Town Belt proposal: Car-free area to be considered. Under the proposal sections of Queens Dr and Braid Rd would be closed to through traffic for three months from January while a shared pathway connecting Roslyn, Mornington and City Rise is tested.”

not sure how to square ‘no one person can be reasonably expected to pay for every media subscription’ with ‘sorely underpaid writers need to make a living’ but my inclination is not to locate that problem with any of the broke ass people on either end of the complaint

Ooof. That’s Not Good. Thinking of the people who need to quarantine until the 16th.

When your country's collective ability to bullshit on the internet is extensive enough to shape AI slop.

boop

On this #GivingTuesday, we are excited to begin accepting donations to sustain our work & directly support Indigenous communities to uphold their sovereignty. Through your donations, the Local Contexts Label Development Fund provides capacity support for Indigenous communities.

“We completely blew out the value of a life. I’ve never seen such a high value put on life.”

Yes that is entirely the point. Force user-pays on everybody so that the wealthy can have a nice society that the poor aren't able to participate in but have to prop up.

I call my fists Patience and Fortitude because you’re about to read between the lions.

This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥

"I'm going to tax the everloving shit out of the rich people who made your life miserable and put every masked thug who broke the law or traitor who wrecked the government for their own profit in prison" I admit is too long for a sign, but at the very least this should be the spirit of the thing.

Some scientist believes this machine is sentient and capable of feeling hope; critics disagree

But but but how did they get those tens of thousands of people there without the dozen or so on-street parking spaces they surely removed?

The most maddening thing about this is that restoring inanga spawning habitat is really easy. Like, the easiest, fastest results I've seen in any project. We've got to stop monitoring towards extinction and actually start spending money on fixing the problems! www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you've seen in the wild: - Yellow-eyed penguin - Royal albatross - Elephant seal - Orca - Royal spoonbill (Also the answer to "tell me where you live with 5 animals you've seen in your neighbourhood")

Hey, anyone who works in a library in Aotearoa Te Waipounamu - there's books mentioned in some of the resource sections at end of chapters. If your library doesn't have already, could be worth suggesting? Support your local trans community + healthcare professionals to be able to offer booklist

There are a few times a year that essentially 10% of the population of Ōtepoti either want to leave or arrive in the city. It would be good for passenger rail to be a competitor to air at those times.

We used to spend time - real, substantive time - on "what does the data mean", "what are we trying to emphasise", "how is it going to be interpreted". But the slop is just... "dear sirmedem have gud ibfrograohic". It's *worse* than any of the bullshit we've ever had.

This Bill could invalidate the votes of enough people to swing the next election in favour of the current government for no reason other than that they failed to fill out the correct piece of paper by the "proper" time (as defined by the people who benefit from the rule change).

I keep a txt file open as a tiny work diary. Month headings, followed by a quick bullet point for each discrete piece of work I delivered or people I collaborated with. Since starting this practice, am amazed how often I forget things I did three weeks ago.

The Art Deco entrance to the Cranbrook Academy of Art Library Location: Bloomfield Hills, Michigan